ADVICE

TO

YOUNG MEN AND BOYS

Stephen Girard.

ADVICE
TO
YOUNG MEN AND BOYS

A SERIES OF ADDRESSES

DELIVERED BY B. B. COMEGYS
MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF CITY TRUSTS OF PHILADELPHIA

TO THE PUPILS OF THE GIRARD COLLEGE

ILLUSTRATED WITH

Six Photogravure Portraits on Steel

PHILADELPHIA
GEBBIE & CO., Publishers
1890

Copyright by
Gebbie & Co.,
1889.

PREFACE.

In January, 1882, I was appointed by the Judges of the Courts of Common Pleas of Philadelphia to the Board of Directors of City Trusts, which has charge of Girard College, having for some years previously, by the kind partiality of President Allen, been on the staff of speakers in the Chapel on Sundays. My interest in the Pupils was of course at once increased, and ever since I have given much time and thought to the moral instruction of the boys.

From the many Addresses made to them I have selected the following as fair specimens of the instruction I have sought to impart. Some repetitions of thought and language may be accounted for by the lapse of time between the giving of the Addresses, not forgetting the well-known Hebrew proverb, “Line upon line—precept upon precept—here a little—there a little.”

The word “Orphans” as used in the will of Mr. Girard has been defined by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to mean boys who are fatherless.

The book is published in the hope that it may be the means of helping some boys and young men other than those to whom the Addresses were made.

4205 Walnut St.,
November, 1889.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS.

STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE.[A]

INTRODUCTORY.

[A] This introduction is taken by permission from “The Life and Character of Stephen Girard, by Henry Atlee Ingram, LL. B.”

Stephen Girard, who calls himself in his will “mariner and merchant,” was born near the city of Bordeaux, France, on May 20, 1750. At the age of twenty-six he settled in Philadelphia, having his counting-house on Water street, above Market. He was a man of great industry and frugality, and lived comfortably, as the merchants of that day lived, in the dwelling of which his counting-house formed a part. He was married and had one child, but the death of his wife was followed soon by the death of his child, and he never married again. He lived to the age of eighty-one and accumulated what was considered at the time of his death a vast estate, more than seven millions of dollars. One hundred and forty thousand dollars of this was bequeathed to members of his family, sixty-five thousand as a principal sum for the payment of annuities to certain friends and former employés, one hundred and sixteen thousand to various Philadelphia charities, five hundred thousand to the city of Philadelphia for the improvement of its water front on the Delaware, three hundred thousand to the State of Pennsylvania for the prosecution of internal improvements, and an indefinite sum in various legacies to his apprentices, to sea-captains who should bring his vessels in their charge safely to port, and to his house servants. The remainder of his estate he devised in trust to the city of Philadelphia for the following purposes: (1) To erect, improve and maintain a college for poor white orphan boys; (2) to establish a better police system, and (3) to improve the city of Philadelphia and diminish taxation.

The sum of two millions of dollars was set apart by his will for the construction of the college, and as soon as was practicable the executors appropriated certain securities for the purpose, the actual outlay for erection and finishing of the edifice being one million nine hundred and thirty-three thousand eight hundred and twenty-one dollars and seventy-eight cents ($1,933,821.78). Excavation was commenced May 6, 1833, the corner-stone being laid with ceremonies on the Fourth of July following, and the completed buildings were transferred to the Board of Directors on the 13th of November, 1847. There was thus occupied in construction a period of fourteen years and six months, the work being somewhat delayed by reason of suits brought by the heirs of Girard against the city of Philadelphia to recover the estate. The design adopted was substantially that furnished by Thomas U. Walters, an architect elected by the Board of Directors. Some modifications were rendered advisable by the change of site directed in the second codicil of Girard’s will, the original purpose having been to occupy the square bounded by Eleventh, Chestnut, Twelfth and Market streets, in the heart of the city of Philadelphia. But Girard having, subsequently to the first draft of his will, purchased for thirty-five thousand dollars the William Parker farm of forty-five acres, on the Ridge Road, known as the “Peel Hall Estate,” he directed that the site of his college should be transferred to that place, and commenced the erection of stores and dwellings upon the former plot of ground, which dwellings and stores form part of his residuary estate.

The college proper closely resembles in design a Greek temple. It is built of marble, which was chiefly obtained from quarries in Montgomery and Chester counties, Pennsylvania, and at Egremont, Massachusetts.

The building is three stories in height, the first and second being twenty-five feet from floor to floor, and the third thirty feet in the clear to the eye of the dome, the doors of entrance being in the north and south fronts and measuring sixteen feet in width and thirty-two in height. The walls of the cella are four feet in thickness, and are pierced on each flank by twenty windows. At each end of the building is a vestibule, extending across the whole width of the cella, the ceilings of which are supported on each floor by eight columns, whose shafts are composed of a single stone. Those on the first floor are Ionic, after the temple on the Ilissus, at Athens; on the second, a modified Corinthian, after the Tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, also at Athens; and on the third, a similar modification of the Corinthian, somewhat lighter and more ornate.

The auxiliary buildings include a chapel of white marble, dormitories, offices and laundries. A new refectory, containing improved ranges and steam cooking apparatus, has recently been added, the dining-hall of which will seat with ease more than one thousand persons. Two bathing-pools are in the western portion of the grounds, and others in basements of buildings. The houses are heated by steam and lighted by gas obtained from the city works. Thirty-five electric lights from seven towers one hundred and twenty-five feet high illuminate the grounds and the neighboring streets. A wall sixteen inches in thickness and ten feet in height, strengthened by spur piers on the inside and capped with marble coping, surrounds the whole estate, its length being six thousand eight hundred and forty-three feet, or somewhat more than one and one-quarter miles. It is pierced on the southern side, immediately facing the south front of the main building, for the chief entrance, this last being flanked by two octagonal white marble lodges, between which stretches an ornamental wrought-iron grille, with wrought-iron gates, the whole forming an approach in keeping with the large simplicity of the college itself.

The site upon which the college is erected corresponds well with its splendor and importance. It is elevated considerably above the general level of the surrounding buildings and forms a conspicuous object, not only from the higher windows and roofs in every part of Philadelphia, but from the Delaware river many miles below the city and from eminences far out in the country. From the lofty marble roof the view is also exceedingly beautiful, embracing the city and its environs for many miles around and the course, to their confluence, eight miles below, of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.

The history of the institution commences shortly after the decease of Girard, when the Councils of Philadelphia, acting as his trustees, elected a Board of Directors, which organized on the 18th of February, 1833, with Nicholas Biddle as chairman. A Building Committee was also appointed by the City Councils on the 21st of the following March, in whom was vested the immediate supervision of the construction of the college, an office in which they continued without intermission until the final completion of the structure.

On the 19th of July, 1836, the former body, having previously been authorized by the Councils so to do, proceeded to elect Alexander Dallas Bache president of the college, and instructed him to visit various similar institutions in Europe, and purchase the necessary books and apparatus for the school, both of which he did, making an exhaustive report upon his return in 1838. It was then attempted to establish schools without awaiting the completion of the main building, but competent legal advice being unfavorable to the organization of the institution prior to that time, the idea was abandoned, and difficulties having meanwhile arisen between the Councils and the Board of Directors, the ordinances creating the board and authorizing the election of the president were repealed.

In June, 1847, a new board was appointed, to whom the building was transferred, and on December 15, 1847, the officers of the institution were elected, the Hon. Joel Jones, President Judge of the District Court for the City and County of Philadelphia, being chosen as president. On January 1, 1848, the college was opened with a class of one hundred orphans, previously admitted, the occasion being signalized by appropriate ceremonies. On October 1 of the same year one hundred more were admitted, and on April 1, 1849, an additional one hundred, since when others have been admitted as vacancies have occurred or to swell the number as facilities have increased. The college now (1889) contains thirteen hundred and seventy-five pupils.

On June 1, 1849, Judge Jones resigned the office of president of the college, and on the 23d of the following November William H. Allen, LL. D., Professor of Mental Philosophy and English Literature in Dickinson College, was elected to fill the vacancy. He was installed January 1, 1850, but resigned December 1, 1862, and Major Richard Somers Smith, of the United States army, was chosen to fill his place. Major Smith was inaugurated June 24, 1863, and resigned in September, 1867, Dr. Allen being immediately re-elected and continuing in office until his death, on the 29th of August, 1882.

The present incumbent, Adam H. Fetterolf, Ph.D., LL. D., was elected December 27, 1882, by the Board of City Trusts. This Board is composed of fifteen members, three of whom—the Mayor and the Presidents of Councils—are ex officio, and twelve are appointed by the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. Its meetings are held on the second Wednesday of each month.

It has been determined by the courts of Pennsylvania that any child having lost its father is properly denominated an orphan, irrespective of whether the mother be living or not. This construction has been adopted by the college, the requirements for admission to the institution being prescribed by Mr. Girard’s will as follows: (1) The orphan must be a poor white boy, between six and ten years of age, no application for admission being received before the former age, nor can he be admitted into the college after passing his tenth birthday, even though the application has been made previously; (2) the mother or next friend is required to produce the marriage certificate of the child’s parents (or, in its absence, some other satisfactory evidence of such marriage), and also the certificate of the physician setting forth the time and place of birth; (3) a form of application looking to the establishment of the child’s identity, physical condition, morals, previous education and means of support, must be filled in, signed and vouched for by respectable citizens. Applications are made at the office, No. 19 South Twelfth street, Philadelphia.

A preference is given under Girard’s will to (a) orphans born in the city of Philadelphia; (b) those born in any other part of Pennsylvania; (c) those born in the city of New York; (d) those born in the city of New Orleans. The preference to the orphans born in the city of Philadelphia is defined to be strictly limited to the old city proper, the districts subsequently consolidated into the city having no rights in this respect over any other portion of the State.

Orphans are admitted, in the above order, strictly according to priority of application, the mother or next friend executing an indenture binding the orphan to the city of Philadelphia, as trustee under Girard’s will, as an orphan to be educated and provided for by the college. The seventh item of the will reads as follows:

“The orphans admitted into the college shall be there fed with plain but wholesome food, clothed with plain but decent apparel (no distinctive dress ever to be worn), and lodged in a plain but safe manner. Due regard shall be paid to their health, and to this end their persons and clothes shall be kept clean, and they shall have suitable and rational exercise and recreation. They shall be instructed in the various branches of a sound education, comprehending reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, geography, navigation, surveying, practical mathematics, astronomy, natural, chemical, and experimental philosophy, the French and Spanish languages (I do not forbid, but I do not recommend the Greek and Latin languages), and such other learning and science as the capacities of the several scholars may merit or warrant. I would have them taught facts and things, rather than words or signs. And especially, I desire, that by every proper means a pure attachment to our republican institutions, and to the sacred rights of conscience, as guaranteed by our happy constitutions, shall be formed and fostered in the minds of the scholars.”

Although the orphans reside permanently in the college, they are, at stated times, allowed to visit their friends at their houses and to receive visits from their friends at the college. The household is under the care of a matron, an assistant matron, prefects and governesses, who superintend the moral and social training of the orphans and administer the discipline of the institution when the scholars are not in the school-rooms. The pupils are divided into sections, for the purposes of discipline, having distinct officers, buildings and playgrounds.

The schools are taught chiefly in the main college building, five professors and forty eight teachers being employed in the duties of instruction; and the course comprises a thorough English commercial education, to which has been latterly added special schools of technical instruction in the mechanical arts. As a large proportion of the orphans admitted into the college have had little or no preparatory education, the instruction commences with the alphabet.

The order of daily exercises is as follows: the pupils rise at six o’clock; take breakfast at half-past six. Recreation until half-past seven; then assemble in the section rooms at that hour and proceed to the chapel for morning worship at eight. The chapel exercises consist of singing a hymn, reading a chapter from the Old or New Testament, and prayer, after the conclusion of which the pupils proceed to the various school-rooms, where they remain, with a recess of fifteen minutes, until twelve. From twelve until the dinner-hour, which is half-past twelve, they are on the play-ground, returning there after finishing that meal until two o’clock, the afternoon school-hour, when they resume the school exercises, remaining without intermission until four o’clock. At four the afternoon service in the chapel is held, after which they are on the play-ground until six, at which hour supper is served. The evening study hour lasts from seven to eight, or half-past eight, varying with the age of the pupils, the same difference being observed in their bedtimes, which are from half-past seven for the youngest until a quarter before nine for the older boys.

On Sunday the pupils assemble in their section rooms at nine o’clock in the morning and at two in the afternoon for reading and religious instruction, and at half-past ten o’clock in the morning and at three in the afternoon they attend divine worship in the chapel. Here the exercises are similar to those held on week days, with the important addition of an appropriate discourse adapted to the comprehension of the pupils. The services in the chapel, whether on Sundays or on week days, are invariably conducted by the president or other layman, the will of the founder forbidding the entrance of clergymen of any denomination whatsoever within the boundaries of the institution.

The discipline of the college is administered through admonition, deprivation of recreation, and seclusion; but in extreme cases corporal punishment may be inflicted by order of the president and in his presence. If by reason of misconduct a pupil becomes an unfit companion for the rest, the Will says he shall not be permitted to remain in the college.

The annual cost per capita of maintaining, clothing and educating each pupil, including current repairs to buildings and furniture and the maintenance of the grounds, is about three hundred dollars. Between the age of fourteen and eighteen years the scholars may be indentured by the institution, on behalf of “the city of Philadelphia,” to learn some “art, trade, or mystery,” until their twenty-first year, consulting, as far as is judicious, the inclination and preference of the scholar. The master to whom an apprentice is bound agrees to furnish him with sufficient meat, drink, apparel, washing and lodging at his own place of residence (unless otherwise agreed to by the parties to the indenture and so indorsed upon it); to use his best endeavors to teach and instruct the apprentice in his “art, trade, or mystery,” and at the expiration of the apprenticeship to furnish him with at least two complete suits of clothes, one of which shall be new. Should, however, a scholar not be apprenticed by the institution, he must leave the college upon attaining the age of eighteen years. In case of death his friends have the privilege of removing his body for interment, otherwise his remains are placed in the college burial lot at Laurel Hill Cemetery, near Philadelphia.

Citizens and strangers provided with a permit are allowed to visit the college on the afternoon of every week day. Permits can be obtained from the Mayor of Philadelphia, at his office; from a Director; at the office of the Board of City Trusts, No. 19 South Twelfth street, Philadelphia, or at the office of the Public Ledger newspaper. Especial courtesy is shown all foreign visitors, and particularly those interested in educational matters.

In December, 1831, Mr. Girard was attacked by influenza, which was then epidemic in the city. The violence of the disease greatly prostrated him, and, pneumonia supervening, it became at once apparent that he could not live. He had no fear of death. About a month before this attack he had said: “When Death comes for me he will find me busy, unless I am asleep in bed. If I thought I was going to die to-morrow I should plant a tree, nevertheless, to-day.”

He died in the back room of his Water street mansion on December 26th, aged eighty-one years (or nearly), and four days after he was buried in the churchyard at the northwest corner of Sixth and Spruce streets.

For twenty years the remains reposed undisturbed where they had been laid in the churchyard of the Holy Trinity Church; when, the Girard College having been completed, it was resolved that the remains of the donor should be transferred to the marble sarcophagus provided in its vestibule. This was done with appropriate ceremonies on September 30, 1851.

Girard’s great ambition was, first, success; and this attained, the longing of mankind to leave a shining memory merged his purpose in the establishment of what was to him that fairest of Utopias—the simple tradition of a citizen. A citizen whose public duties ended not with the State, and whose benefactions were not limited to the rescue or advancement of its interests alone, but whose charities broadened beyond the limits of duty or the boundaries of an individual life, to stretch over long reaches of the future, enriching thousands of poor children in his beloved city yet unborn. His life shows clearly why he worked, as his death showed clearly the fixed object of his labor in acquisition. While he was forward with an apparent disregard of self, to expose his life in behalf of others in the midst of pestilence, to aid the internal improvements of the country, and to promote its commercial prosperity by all the means within his power, he yet had more ambitious designs. He wished to hand himself down to immortality by the only mode that was practicable for a man in his position, and he accomplished precisely that which was the grand aim of his life. He wrote his epitaph in those extensive and magnificent blocks and squares which adorn the streets of his adopted city, in the public works and eleemosynary establishments of his adopted State, and erected his own monument and embodied his own principles in a marble-roofed palace. Yet, splendid as is the structure which stands above his remains, the most perfect model of architecture in the New World, it yields in beauty to the moral monument. The benefactor sleeps among the orphan poor whom his bounty is constantly educating.

“Thus, forever present, unseen but felt, he daily stretches forth his invisible hands to lead some friendless child from ignorance to usefulness. And when, in the fullness of time, many homes have been made happy, many orphans have been fed, clothed and educated, and many men made useful to their country and themselves, each happy home or rescued child or useful citizen will be a living monument to perpetuate the name and embalm the memory of the ‘Mariner and Merchant.’”

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

OF

CITY TRUSTS,

1889.

W. HEYWARD DRAYTON, President,
Ex-Officio Member of all Standing Committees.

LOUIS WAGNER, Vice-President.

ALEXANDER BIDDLE,
JAMES CAMPBELL,
JOSEPH L. CAVEN,
BENJAMIN B. COMEGYS,
JOHN H. CONVERSE,
WILLIAM L. ELKINS,
WILLIAM B. MANN,
JOHN H. MICHENER,
GEORGE H. STUART,
RICHARD VAUX.

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD “EX OFFICIO:”

EDWIN H. FITLER, Mayor.
JAMES R. GATES, President Select Council.
WILLIAM M. SMITH, President Common Council.

F. CARROLL BREWSTER, Solicitor.
FRANK M. HIGHLEY, Secretary.
JOHN S. BOYD, M.D., Supt. Admission and Indentures.

B. B. Comegys.

HOW TO WIN SUCCESS.

May 27, 1888.

I wish to speak to you to-day about some of the plainest duties of life—of what you must be, of what you must do, if you would be good men and succeed.

It would be strange if one who has lived as long as I have should not have learned something worth knowing and worth telling to those who are younger and less experienced. I have had much to do with young people here and elsewhere, and I have seen many failures, much disappointment, many wrecks of character, and have learned many things; and I speak to you to-day in the hope that I may say such things as will help some boy, at least one, to determine, while he is here this morning, to do the best he can, each for himself, as well as for others. My remarks are particularly appropriate to those just about to leave the college.

It is convenient for me to consider the whole subject—

1. As to health.
2. As to improvement of the mind.
3. As to business or work of any kind.
4. As to your duties to other people.
5. As to your duty to God.

As to health. You cannot be happy without good health, and you cannot expect to have good health unless you observe certain conditions. You must keep your person cleanly by bathing, when that is within reach, or by other simple methods (such as a common brush) which are always within your reach. Be as much in the open air as possible. This is, of course, to those whose work is within doors and sedentary, such as that of a clerk in any shop or office. Pure, fresh air is Nature’s own provision for the well-being of all her creatures, and is the best of all tonics.

Be careful of your diet; for it is not good to eat food that is too highly seasoned or too rich. Don’t be afraid of fruit in season and when it is ripe. But don’t eat much late at night. Late hot suppers are apt to do great harm. The plain, wholesome food provided here, accounts for the extraordinarily good health which almost all of you enjoy.

Have nothing whatever to do with intoxicating drinks. And the only way to be absolutely safe is not to drink even a little, or once in a while. Don’t drink at all.

Be sure you get plenty of sleep. Be in bed not later than eleven o’clock, and, better still, at ten. A young fellow who goes to work at seven o’clock in the morning can’t afford to keep late hours. Young people need more sleep than older ones, and you cannot safely disregard this hint. Late hours are always more or less injurious, especially when you are away from home or in the streets. Beware of the temptations of the streets and at the theatres.

As to public entertainments or recreations in the evening, go to no place of seeing or hearing where you would not be willing to take your mother or sister. If you keep to this rule you are not likely to be hurt. If you play games, avoid billiard saloons, and gambling houses, or parties. You cannot be too careful about your recreations; let them be simple and healthful as to mind and body, and cheap.

Have no personal habits, such as smoking, or chewing, or spitting, or swearing, or others that are injurious to yourselves or disagreeable to other people. All these are either injurious or disagreeable. Have clean hands and clean clothes, not while you are at work—this is not always possible—but when going and coming to and from work.

Always give place to women in the streets, in street-cars, or in other places. Do not rush into street-cars first to get seats. A true gentleman will wait until women get in before he goes. Do not sit in street-cars, while women are standing, unless you are very, very tired. Here is a temptation before you every day almost in our city. Hardly anything is more trying than to see sturdy boys sitting in cars while women are standing and holding on to straps. And yet I see this every day. What is a boy good for, that will not stand for a few minutes, if he can give a woman or an old man a seat?

If you are so favored as to have a few days or two weeks holiday in summer, go to the country or to the sea-shore, if your means will allow. The country air or sea air is better for you than almost any other change.

Do not be extravagant in dress; but be well dressed—not, however, at your tailor’s expense. It is the duty of all to be well dressed, but don’t spend all your money on dress, and especially don’t buy clothing on credit. It is particularly trying to pay for clothing when it is nearly or quite worn out. By all means keep out of debt, for your personal or family expenses, unless you are sure beyond any doubt that you can very soon repay your dealer the money you owe. The difference between ease and comfort, and distress, in money matters, is whether you spend a little more than you make, or a little less than you make. Don’t forget the “rainy day” that is pretty sure to come, and you must lay up something for that day.

Very much of the crime that is committed every day (and you cannot open a paper without seeing an account of some one who has gone wrong) is because people will live beyond their means; will spend more than they earn. They hope for an increase of pay, or that they will make money in some way or other, and then when that good time does not come, and as they can’t afford to wait for it, they take something, only borrowing it as they say, but they take it and spend it, or pay some pressing debt with it, and then, and then—they are caught, and sent to court, and tried and sent to—well, you know without my telling you.

As to the mind.

You have fine opportunities for education here, but they will soon be over, and if you leave this college without having a good knowledge of the practical branches of study pursued here, and which Mr. Girard especially enjoined should be taught, you will be at a great disadvantage with other boys who are well educated. I had a letter in my pocket a few days ago written by a Girard boy, and dated in the Moyamensing Prison, full of bad spelling and bad grammar; and next to the horror of knowing he was in prison, I felt ashamed, that a boy so ignorant of the very commonest branches of English education should have ever been within the walls of this college.

I think I have told you before of a man who employs a large number of men, whose business amounts to perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in a year, who is entirely ignorant of accounts, and who a few years ago was robbed and almost ruined by his book-keeper, and who would now give half of what he is worth, and that is a good deal, if he could understand book-keeping; for he is entirely dependent upon other people to keep his accounts.

As to books, be careful what you read. How it grieves me to see errand boys in street-cars, and sometimes as they walk in the streets, reading such stuff as is found in the dime novels. Not merely a waste of time, though that is bad enough, but a positive injury to the mind, filling it with the most improbable stories, and often, also, with that which is positively vicious. Read something better than this. Do not confine yourselves to newspapers, and do not read police reports. Attractive as this class of reading is, it is for the most part hurtful to the young mind. There is an abundance of cheap and good reading, magazines and periodicals; and books and books, good, bad, indifferent; and you will hardly know which to choose unless you ask others who are older than you, and who know books. Most boys read little but novels; and there are many thoroughly good novels, humorous, and pathetic, and historical. Don’t buy books unless you have plenty of money; for you can get everything you want out of the public libraries; and this was not so, or at least to this extent, when I was a boy.

As to work or business.

Set out with the determination that you will be faithful in everything. Only last week a Girard boy called on me to help him get employment. I asked him some questions, and he told me that he had been out of the college five or six years, and had five or six situations. Do you think he had been faithful in anything? If he had been, he would not have lost place after place. When you get a place, and I hope every one of you will have a place provided for you before you leave here, be among the first to arrive in the morning, and be among the last to leave at the end of the day’s work. Do not let any fascination of base ball or anything else lead you to forget that your first duty is to your employer. Be quick to answer every call. Don’t say to yourself, “It is not my place to answer that call, it is the other boy’s place,” but go yourself, if the other fellow is slow, and let it be seen that you are ready for any work. And be very prompt to answer. Do whatever you are told. Say “yes, sir,” “no, sir” with hearty good-will, and say “good-morning” as if you meant it. In short, do not be slovenly in anything you have to do; be alive, and remember all the time that no labor is degrading.

Be sure to treat your employers with unfailing respect, and your fellow-clerks or workers, whether superiors, inferiors or equals, with hearty good-will.

Do not tell lies directly or indirectly, for even if your employer do so, he will despise you for doing so. No matter if he is untruthful, he will respect you if you tell the truth always. Do not indulge in or listen to impure talk. No real gentleman does this, and you can be a real gentleman even if you are poor, for you will be educated. Make yourself indispensable to your employer; this, too, is quite possible, and it will almost certainly insure success. Be ambitious in the highest sense. Remember, that if not now, you will hereafter have others dependent upon you for support or help. It is a splendid thing for a boy to go out from this college with the determination to support his mother; and some that I know and you know are doing this, and many others will do it.

I pause here to say that, so far, my words have been spoken as to your duties to the world, to yourselves. I have supposed that you boys would rather be bosses than journeymen, that you would rather own teams than drive them for other people, that you would rather be a contractor than carry the pick and shovel, that you would rather be a bricklayer than carry the hod, that you would rather be a house-builder than a shoveler of coal into the house-builder’s cellar. Is it not so?

Now, I say that if you should do everything I tell you, and avoid everything I have warned you against, you cannot succeed in the best sense, you cannot become true men, such men as the city has a right to expect you to be, unless you seek the blessing of God; for he holds all things in his hands. “The silver and the gold are mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.” If God be for us, who can be against us?

In these closing words, then, I would speak to you as to your duty to God.

What shall I say about this? I can hardly tell you anything that you do not already know, so often have you been talked to about this subject. But nothing is so important for you to be reminded of, though I fear that to some of you hardly anything is so uninteresting. Naturally the heart is disinclined to think of God and our duty to him. But we cannot do without him, though many people think they can, or they act as if they thought so. Such people are not wise; they are very foolish.

He made us, he preserves us, he cares for us with infinite love and care, he has appointed the time for our departure from this life, and he has prepared a better life than this for those who love him here. We cannot afford to disregard such a being as this, for all things are in his hands. If you will think of it, some of the best men and women you know are believers in God, and are trying to serve him. Do you think you can do without him?

Cultivate, then, the companionship, the friendship of those who love and fear God, both men and women. You are safe with such; you are not quite so sure of safety in the society of those who openly say they can do without God. When I speak of those who fear God, I do not mean merely professors of religion, not merely members of meeting or members of church, but I mean people who live such lives as people ought to live, who fear God and keep his commandments. You know there are such, you have met with them, you will meet many more of them, and you will meet also those who call themselves Christians, but whose lives show that they have no true knowledge of God, who are mere formalists, mere professors.

Become acquainted with your Bible. I mean, read it, a little of it at least, every day. You need not read much, it is well sometimes that you read but a little; but read it with a purpose—that is, to understand it. The literature of the Bible as you grow older will abundantly repay your careful and constant reading even before you reach its spiritual treasuries. In reading a few days ago the argument of Horace Binney, Esq., in the Girard will case, I was surprised to see how familiar Mr. Binney was with the Bible, and he was one of the ablest lawyers that has ever lived in our own or any other country. Yet Mr. Binney thought it quite worth his while to read and study the Bible. Don’t you think it is worth your while also?

Be a regular attendant at some church. I do not say what church it shall be. That must be left to yourselves to determine, and many circumstances will arise to aid you in your choice. But let it be some church, and, when you become more interested in the subject than you are now, join that church, whatever it may be, and so connect yourselves with people who believe in and love God. If there be a Bible class there, connect yourselves with it, and so learn to study the Scriptures systematically.

Do not be ashamed to kneel at your bedside every night and every morning and pray to God. You are not so likely to be ashamed if you have a room to yourself; but you must not be ashamed to do this even if there are others in the room with you, as will be the case with many of you. This is a severe test, I know, but he who bears it faithfully will already have gained a victory.

Commit to memory the fifteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke: “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth.”

On last Monday, Founder’s Day, there were gathered here many men, a great company, who were trained in this college, and who, after graduation, went out into the world to seek their fortune. It is always a most interesting time, not only for them but for the teachers and officers who have had charge of them.

Some of them are successful men in the highest and best sense, and have made themselves a name and a place in the world. Bright young lawyers, clerks, mechanics, railroad men—men representing almost all kinds of business and occupations—came here in great numbers to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the Founder of this great school. It was a grand sight. Hardly anything impresses me more. I do not know their names; for many of them had left before I began to come here; but from certain expressions that fell from the lips of some of them I am persuaded that they, at least, are walking in the truth.

It would be very interesting if we could know their thoughts, and see with what feelings they look back on their school-life. I wonder if any of them regret that they did not make a better use of their time while here. I wonder if any feel that they would like to become boys again and go to school over again, being sure that, with their present experience of life, they would set a higher value on the education of the schools. I wonder if any feel that they would have reached higher positions and secured a larger influence if they had been more diligent at school. I wonder if there are any who can trace evil habits of thought to the companions they had here. I wonder if any are aware of evil impressions which they made on their classmates and so cast a stain and a dark shadow on other young lives, stains never obliterated, shadows never wholly lifted. I wonder if there are any among them who regret that the opportunity of seeking God and finding God in their school-days was neglected, and who have never had so favorable an opportunity since. “If some who come back here on these commemoration days were to tell you all their thoughts on such subjects, they would be eloquent with a peculiar eloquence.”

I wish I could persuade you, especially you larger boys, to give most earnest attention to the duties which lie before you every day. You will not misunderstand me, nor be so unjust to me as to suppose that I would interfere in the least degree with the pleasures which belong to your time of life. I would not lessen them in the least; on the contrary, I would encourage you, and help you in all proper recreation, in all sports and plays. The boy who does not enjoy play is not a happy boy, and is not very likely to make a happy man, or a useful man. But it is quite possible, as some of you know, to enjoy in the highest degree all healthful sports, and at the same time to be industrious and conscientious in your studies. I am deeply concerned that the boys in this college shall be boys of the best, the highest type; that they “shall walk in the truth.” There are, alas, many boys who have gone through this college, and fully equipped (as well as their teachers could equip them), have been launched out into life and come to naught. I do not know their names nor do you, probably, though you do not doubt the fact.

Whatever others say, who speak to you here, I want to discharge my duty to you as faithfully as I can. I know some of the difficulties of life, for they have been in my path. I know some of the fierce temptations to which boys and young men are exposed, for I have felt these assaults in my own person. I know what it is to sin against God, for I am a sinner; so, with my sympathies quick towards you, I come with these plain, earnest words, and I urge you to look up to God, and ask him to help you. He can help you, and he will, if you ask him.

LIFE—ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND TEMPTATIONS.

March 12, 1885.

I propose to speak to you now of some plain and practical duties which await you in life; and, as there are many boys here who are anxiously looking for the time when they will leave the college to make their way in the world, some of whom will probably have left the college before I come again, I speak more especially to them. And my first words are words of congratulation, and for these reasons:

1. Because you are young. And this means very much. You have an enormous advantage over people that are your seniors. Other things being equal, you will live longer, and I assume that “life is worth living.” Then you have the advantage of profiting by the mistakes committed by those who precede you, and if you are not blind, you can avail yourselves of the successes they have achieved.

You have the freshness, the zest of youth. You are full of courage and endurance. You can grapple with difficult subjects and with a strong hand. And if you blunder, you have time to recover yourselves and start anew. In short, life is before you, and you look forward with the inspiration of hope, and it may be, also, of determination.

2. I congratulate you also because you are poor. You have your own way to make in the world. You know already that if you achieve success, it must be because you exert yourselves to the very utmost. Indeed, you must depend upon yourselves, and this means that you must do everything in your power that is right to do, to help yourselves.

You must understand that there is no royal road to success, any more than there is to learning, and that there is no time to trifle. If you were rich men’s sons, these remarks would have no special pertinence, or importance.

My congratulations are quite in order also because very many, if not most of the high places in our country, are held by those who once were poor lads.

Should you turn upon me and say, “Why, then, if one is to be congratulated on his poverty, do fathers toil early and late, denying themselves needed recreation, not ceasing when they have accumulated a good estate, almost selling their souls to become millionaires—why do they so much dread to leave their sons to struggle for a living?” More than one answer might be given to these questions. Some fathers have so little faith in God’s providence that they forget his goodness, which now takes care of their families through the instrumentality of parents; and who can continue that care through other means, just as well, when the parents are gone; but high authority says that “they who will be rich, fall into temptations and snares,” one of which is that the race for riches unfits the racer for all other pursuits and amusements, and he can’t stop his course, he can’t change his habits, he has no other mental resources—he must work or perish.

Do not, then, let the fact that you are poor discourage you in the least—it is rather an advantage.

3. But again I congratulate you, because your lot is cast in America. Do not smile at this. I am not on the point of flying the American eagle, nor of raising the stars and stripes. It is, however, a good thing to have been born in this country. For in all important respects it is the most favored of all lands. It is the fashion with certain people to disparage our government and its institutions; and one must admit that in some particulars there might be improvement, and will be some day; but, notwithstanding these defects, it is unquestionably true that it is the best government on earth. Is there any country where a poor young man has opportunities as good as he has here, to get on in life? Is there any obstacle or hindrance whatever, outside of himself, in the way of his success? If a young man has good health of mind and body, and a fair English education and good manners, and will be honest and industrious, is he not much more certain to attain success, in one way or another, in this country than anywhere else? You know he is. Why? Because of our equal rights under the law. There is no caste here, that curse of monarchies. There is no aristocracy in sentiment or in power, no House of Lords, no established church, no law of primogeniture. One man is as good as another under the law as long as he behaves himself.

If you want further evidence, only look for a moment at the condition of the seething, surging masses of Europe, and the continual apprehensions of a general war. Before this year 1885 has run its course the United States may be almost the only country among the great powers that is not involved in war.

And if still further illustration were needed, let me point to that most extraordinary scene enacted in Washington some weeks ago.

A great political party, which has held control of this government nearly a quarter of a century, and which has exercised almost unlimited power, yields most quietly and gracefully all high places, all dignity, all honor and patronage, to the will of the people who have chosen a new administration. And everybody regards it as a matter of course.

Was such a thing ever known before? And could such a thing occur anywhere else among the nations?

Once more, I congratulate you because you live in Philadelphia. Ah, now we come to a most interesting point. Most of you were born here, and you come to this by inheritance. This is the best of all large cities. More to be desired as a place to live in than Washington, the seat of government, the most beautiful of all American cities, or New York, with its vast commerce and enormous wealth, or Boston, with its boasted intellectual society.

They may call us the “Quaker City,” or the “worst paved city,” or the “slow city,” or the “city of rows of houses exactly alike;” but these houses are the homes of separate families, and in a very large degree are occupied by their owners, and you cannot say as much of any other city in the world. Although there are doubtless many instances in the oldest part of the city, and among the improvident poor, where more than one family will be found in the same house, yet these are the exceptions and not the rule; and so far as I know there is not one “tenement house” in this great city that was built for the purpose of accommodating several families at the same time. I need not point you to New York and Boston, where the great apartment houses, with their twelve and fourteen stories of flats for rich and well-to-do people prevail, utterly destroying that most cherished domestic life of which we have been so proud, and introducing the life of European cities, with its demoralizing associations and results; nor shall I describe the awful tenement houses in those two cities, where the poor are crowded like animals in a cattle-train, suffering as the poor dumb creatures do, for want of air, and water, and space, and everything else that makes life desirable.

Of all cities on the face of the earth, Philadelphia is the most desirable for the young man who must make his own way in the world....

And having shown you how favorable are the conditions which are about you, the next point is, What will you do when you set out for yourselves?

All of you are expecting when you leave school to be employed by somebody, or engaged in some business. And I suppose you may be looking to me to give you some hints how to take care of yourselves, or how to behave in such relations.

I will try to do so plainly and faithfully.

I cannot absolutely promise you success. Indeed, it would be necessary first to define the word. And there are several definitions that might be given. One of the shortest and best would be in these words, “A life well spent.” That’s success. And this definition shall be my model.

Work hard, then, at your lessons. Let your ambition be, not to get through quickly, not to go over much ground in text-books, but to master thoroughly everything before you. If you knew how little thorough instruction there is, you would thank me for this. There are so many half-educated people from schools and colleges that one cannot help believing that the terms of graduation are very easy. There have been, and are now, graduates of colleges who cannot add up a long column of figures correctly, nor do an example in simple proportion, nor write a letter of four pages of note paper without mistakes of grammar and spelling and punctuation, to say nothing of perspicuity and unity and general good taste.

It is quite surprising to find how helpless some young men are in the simple matter of writing letters; an art with which, in these days of cheap postage and cheap stationery, almost everybody has something to do. If you doubt this let me ask you to try to-morrow to write a note of twenty lines on any subject whatever, off-hand, and submit it for criticism to your teacher. Do you wonder, then, that an employer calling one of his young men, and directing him to write a letter to one of his correspondents, saying such and such things, and bring it to him for his signature, is surprised and grieved to see that the letter is in such shape that he cannot sign it and let it go out of his office?

It is very true that letter-writing is not the chief business of life, not the only thing of importance in a counting-house, but it is an elegant accomplishment, and most desirable of attainment.

Let me say some words about shorthand writing. In this day of push and drive and hurry, when so many things must be done at once, there is an increasing demand for shorthand writers. In fact, business as now conducted cannot afford to do without this help. It often occurs that a principal in a business house cannot take the time to write long letters. Why should he? It does not pay to have one that is occupied in governing and controlling great interests, or in the receipt of a large salary, tied to a desk writing letters, or reports, or statements of any kind. He must talk off these things; and he must be an educated man, whose mind is so disciplined to terse and accurate expression that his dictation may almost be taken to be final. He wants a clerk who can take down his words with literal accuracy, and who will be able to correct any errors that may have been spoken, and submit the complete paper to his chief for his signature. The demand for this kind of service is increasing every day, and some of you now listening to me will be so employed. See that you are ready for it when your opportunity comes.

If you get to be a clerk in a railroad office, or in an insurance company, or in a store, or in a bank, devote yourself to your particular duties, whatever they may be. And don’t be too particular as to what kind of work it is that falls to your lot. It may be work that you think belongs to the porter; no matter if it is, do it, and do it as well as the porter can, or even better.

Let none of you, therefore, think that anything you are likely to be called upon to do is beneath you. Do it, and do it in the best manner, and you may not have to do it for a long time.

Make yourself indispensable to your employer. You can do that; it is quite within your power, and it may be that you may get to be an employer yourself; indeed it is more than probable; but you must work for it.

If you get to be a book-keeper in any counting-house or public institution, remember that you are in a position of trust and responsibility. When you make errors do not erase the error; draw faint red or black lines through it and write correct characters over the error. Do not hide your errors of any kind. Do not misstate anything in language or figures. Everybody makes errors at some time or other, but everybody does not admit and apologize for them. The honest man is he who does admit and apologize, and does so without waiting to be detected.

There have been of late some deplorable instances of betrayal of trust in our city. I may as well call it by its right name, stealing. The culprits are now suffering in prison the penalty for their crimes. While I am speaking to you there are men, young and not young, in our city who are now stealing, and who are falsifying their books in the vain hope that it may be kept secret; who are dreading the day when they will be caught; who cannot afford to take a holiday; who cannot afford to be sick, lest absence for a single day may disclose their guilt. What a horrible state of mind! They will go to their desks or their offices to-morrow morning, not knowing but it may be their last day in that place.

And the day will come, most surely, when you will be tempted as these wretched ones have been tempted. In what shape the temptation may come, or when, no human being knows. The suggestion will be made, that by the use of a little money you may make a good deal; that the venture is perfectly safe; some one tells you so, and points to this one or that one who has tried it and made money. It is only a little thing; you can’t lose much; you may make enough to pay for the cost of your summer holiday, or for your cigar bill, or your beer bill; or you will be able to smoke better cigars or drink better beer, or buy a gold watch, or a diamond ring, or anything else; you can’t lose much. You have no money of your own, it is true, but what is needed will not be missed if you take it out of the drawer. Shall you do it? No! Let nothing induce you to take the first dollar not your own. It is the first step that counts.

But suppose you don’t care for this warning, or forget it. Suppose the time comes when you find that you have taken something that was not yours, and that it is lost, and that you cannot repay it, what then? Why, go at once to your employer; tell him the whole story; keep back nothing; throw yourself upon his mercy, and ask forgiveness. Better now than later. You will assuredly be caught. There is no possibility of continuous concealment. Tell it now before you are detected, and, if you must be disgraced, the sooner the better.

Am I too earnest about this? Am I saying too much? Oh, boys, young men, if you knew the frightful danger that you may be in some day, the subtle temptations that will beset you, the many instances of weakness about you, the shipwrecks of character, the utter ruin that comes to sisters and to innocent wives and children by the crimes of brothers, husbands and fathers, as we who are older know, you would not wonder that I speak as I do.

Every case of breach of trust, every defalcation, weakens confidence in human character. For every such instance of wrong-doing is a stab at your integrity if you are in a position of trust. Men of the fairest reputation, men who are trusted implicitly by their employers, men who are hedged about by the sacredness of domestic ties, on whom the happiness of helpless wives and innocent children depend, men who claim to be religious, go astray, step by step, little by little; they defraud, steal, lie, try to cover up their tracks, cannot do it long, are caught, tried, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned. Then the question may be asked about you or me: “How do we know that Mr. So-and-So is any better than those who have fallen?” Don’t you see that these culprits are enemies of the public confidence, enemies of society, your enemies and mine?

If the names of those who are now serving out their sentences in the public prisons for stealing, not petty theft, but stealing and defrauding in larger sums, could be published in to-morrow morning’s papers, what a sad record it would be of dishonored names and blighted lives and ruined homes, and how the memory would recall some whom we knew in early youth, the pride of their parents, or the idol of fond wives and lovely children; and we should turn away with sickening horror from the record! But, if there should appear in the same papers the names of those who are now engaged in stealing and defrauding and falsifying entries, who are not yet caught, but who may, before this year is out, be caught and convicted and punished, what a horrible revelation that would be!

I close abruptly, for I cannot keep you longer.

But do not think that it is for your future in this life only that I am concerned. Life does not end here, though it may seem to do so. Our life in this world is a mere beginning of existence. It is the future, the endless life before us, that we should prepare for; and no preparation is worth the name except that of a pure, an upright and honorable life, that depends for its support on the love and the fear of God. You must accept him as your Father, you must honor him and obey him, and so consecrating your young lives to his service, trust him to care for you with his infinite love and care.

William Welsh.

ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM WELSH,
First President of the Board of City Trusts.

February 22, 1878.

When I spoke to you last from this desk I tried to persuade you to adopt the thought so aptly set forth by one of the old Hebrew kings, Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. I little thought then that Mr. Welsh, who was one of the most conspicuous examples of working with all his might, and so much of whose work was done for you, whom you so often saw standing where I now stand, I little thought that his work on earth was so nearly done. Last Sunday he addressed you here. One, two, three services he conducted for the boys of this college, one in the infirmary, one in the refectory for the new boys, and one in this chapel. I venture to say from my knowledge of his method of doing things that these services were all conducted in the best manner possible to him; that he did not spare his strength; that there was nothing weak or undecided in his acts or speech, but that he took hold of his subject with a firm grasp, and did not let go until the service was finished. It is very natural that we should desire to know as much as we can about a life that has come so close to us as the life of Mr. Welsh, and to learn, if we may, what it was that made him the man that he was. The thousands of people that gathered in and about St. Luke’s Church on the day of the funeral, as many of you saw; the very large number of citizens of the highest distinction who united in the solemn services; the profound interest manifested everywhere among all classes of society; the closing of places of business at the hour of these services; the flags at half-mast, all these circumstances, so unusual, so impressive, assured us that no common man had gone from among us. What was it that made him no common man? What was there in his life and character that lifted him above the ordinarily successful merchant? In other places, and by those most competent to speak, will the complete picture of his life be drawn, but what was there in his life which particularly interests you college boys? It will surprise you probably when I tell you that his early education—the education of the schools—was very limited. He was not a college-bred man. At a very early age (as early as fourteen, I believe) he left school and went into his father’s store. You know that he could not have had much education at that age. And he went into the store, not to be a gentleman clerk to sit in the counting-house and copy letters and invoices, and do the bank business and lounge about in fine clothing, but he went to do anything that came to hand, rough and smooth, hard and easy, dirty and clean, for in those days the duties of a junior clerk differed from those of a porter only in this, that the young clerk’s work was not so heavy as the robust porter’s. And even when he grew older and stronger he would go down into the hold of a vessel and vie with the strong stevedore in the shifting and placing of cargoes. And the days were long then: there were no office hours from nine to three o’clock, but merchants and their clerks dined near the middle of the day, and were back at their stores, their warehouses, in the afternoon and stayed and worked until the day was done. So this young clerk worked all day, and went home at night tired and hungry, to rest, to sleep and to go through the next day and the next in the same manner. But not only to rest and sleep. The body was tired enough with the long day’s work, but the mind was not tired. He early knew the importance of mental discipline, of mental cultivation. He knew that a half-educated man is no match for one thoroughly equipped, and so he set himself to the task of making up, as far as he could, for that deficiency of systematic education which his early withdrawal from school made him regret so much. What definite means or methods he resorted to to accomplish this I cannot tell you, for I have not learned; but the fact that he did very largely overcome this most serious disadvantage is apparent to all who have ever met him. He was a cultivated gentleman, thoroughly at ease in circles where men must be well informed or be very uncomfortable. As the President of this Board of Trustees, having for his associates gentlemen of the highest professional and general culture, he was quite equal to any exigency which ever arose. All this you must know was the result of education, not that which was imparted to him in the schools, but that which he acquired himself after his school life. He was careful about his associates. Then, as now, the streets were alive with boys and young men of more than questionable character. And the thought which has come up in many a boy’s mind after his day’s work was done, must have come up in his mind: “Why should I not stroll about the streets with companions of my own age and have a good time? Why should I be so strict while others have more freedom and enjoy themselves so much more?” I have no doubt that he had his enjoyments, and that he was a free, hearty boy in them all, but I cannot suppose, for his after life gave no evidence of it, his general good health, his muscular wiry frame forbade the thought, I cannot suppose his youthful pleasures passed beyond that line which separates the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. Few evils are so great as that of evil companions.

William Welsh was not afraid of work. I mean by that he was not lazy. A large part of the failures in life are attributable to the love of ease. We choose the soft things; we turn away from those which are hard. We are deterred by the abstruse, the obscure; we are attracted by the simple, the plain. A really strong character will grapple with any subject; a weak one shrinks from a struggle. A character naturally weak may be developed by culture and discipline into one of real strength, but the process is very slow and very discouraging. A life that is worth anything at all, that impresses itself on other lives, on society, must have these struggles, this training. I do not know minutely the characteristics of Mr. Welsh’s early life in this particular, but I infer most emphatically that his strong character was formed by continuous, laborious, exacting self-application.

I would now speak of that quality which is so valuable (I will not say so rare), so conspicuously and so immeasurably important, personal integrity. Mr. Welsh possessed this in the highest degree. He was most emphatically an honest man. No thought of anything other than this could ever have entered into the mind of any one who knew him. All men knew that public or private trusts committed to him were safe. Mistakes in judgment all are liable to, but of conscious deflection from the right path in this respect he was incapable. His high position as President of the Board of City Trusts, which includes, among other large properties, the great estate left by Mr. Girard to the city of Philadelphia, proves the confidence this community had in his personal character. His private fortune was used as if he were a trustee. He recognized the hand of God in his grand success as a merchant, and he felt himself accountable to God for a proper expenditure. If he enjoyed a generous mode of living for himself and his family—a manner of life required by his position in the community—he more than equalized it by his gifts to objects of benevolence. He was conscientious and liberal (rare combination) in his benefactions, for he felt that he held his personal property in trust.

Such are a few of the traits in the character of the man whose life on earth was so suddenly closed on Monday last. Under Providence, by which I mean the blessing of God, that blessing which is just as much within your reach as his, these are some of the conditions of his extraordinary success. His self-culture, the choice of his companions his persistent industry, his integrity, his religion, made the man what he was. I cannot here speak of his work in that church which he loved so much. I do not speak with absolute certainty, but I have reason to believe that, next to his own family, his affections were placed on you. He could never look into your faces without having his feelings stirred to their profoundest depths. He loved you—in the best, the truest sense, he loved you. He was willing to give any amount of his time, his thought, his care, to you. The time he spent in the chapel was a very small part of the time he gave to his work for you. You were upon his heart constantly. I do not know—no one can know—but if it be possible for the spirits of just men made perfect to revisit the scenes of earth—to come back and look upon those they loved so much when in the flesh—I am sure his spirit is here to-day—this, his first Sabbath in Heaven—looking into your faces, as he often did when he went in and out among you, and wishing that all of you may make such use of your grand opportunity here as will insure your success in the life which is before you when you leave these college walls, and especially as will insure your entering into the everlasting life. Such was his life, full of activity, generosity, self-denial, eminently religious, in the best sense successful. He was never at rest; his heart was always open to human sympathy; he denied nothing except to himself. He wanted everybody to be religious. He died in the harness; no time to take it off; no wish to take it off. But in the front, on the advance, not in retreat. He never turned his back on anything that was right. His eye was not dim; his natural force was not abated. Death came so swiftly that it seemed only stepping from one room in his Father’s house to another. We are reminded of the beautiful words in which Mr. Thackeray describes the death of Colonel Newcome in the hospital of the Charter House School, after a life spent in fighting the enemies of his country abroad, and the enemies of the good in society at home. “At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll and Thomas Newcome’s hands outside the bed feebly beat time. And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face. He lifted up his head a little and quickly said Adsum, and fell back. It was the word they used at school when names were called, and lo, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name and stood in the presence of ‘The Master.’”

BAD ASSOCIATES.

November 11, 1888.

I wish to speak to you to-day about the danger of evil company, a danger to which you will necessarily be exposed when you go out from this college to make your way in life.

The desire for companionship sometimes leads people, and especially young people, into bad company. A boy finds himself associated with a schoolmate, a fellow-apprentice or fellow-clerk, who is attractive in manners, full of fun, but who is not what he ought to be in character.

No one is entirely bad; almost all persons old or young have some points that are not repulsive, and sometimes the very bad are attractive in some respects. A comparatively innocent boy is thrown into such company, and, at first, he sees nothing in the conduct of his new friends which is particularly out of the way. The conversation is somewhat guarded, the jokes and stories are not specially bad, and, for a time, nothing occurs to shock his feelings; but, after a while, the mask is thrown off and the true character is revealed. Then very soon the mind of the pure, innocent boy receives impressions that corrupt and defile it. All that is polluting in talk and story and song is poured out. Books and papers, so vile that it is a breach of law to sell them, are read and quoted without bringing a blush to the cheek, and, before his parents are aware of the danger, the mind and heart of their son are so polluted and depraved that no human power can save him.

I very well remember a boy older than myself who, early in life, gave himself up to vile company and vile books and vile habits, and who, long ago—almost as soon as he reached an early manhood—sunk, under the weight of his sinful habits, into a dishonored grave, but not until he had defiled and depraved many a boy who came under his influence. Better would it have been for his companions if their daily walks and playgrounds had been infested with venomous serpents, to bite and sting their bare feet, than to associate with a boy whose heart was full of all uncleanness.

It is dangerous to make such friendships. Circumstances may throw us among them; the providence of God may send us there, but we ought never to seek such company, except for good purposes. What I mean is that we ought not to seek such associates, however agreeable they may be in other respects, and not to remain among them except for their good.

There are wicked people in every community, of all ages. We cannot altogether avoid contact with them. We find them among our schoolmates and in the walks of business.

Many a young man, many a boy, has been forever ruined by evil companions. A corrupt literature is bad enough, but evil companions are more numerous and, if possible, more fatal. Bad books and papers have slain their thousands; bad companions have slain their ten thousands. I can recall the names of many who were led away, step by step, down the broad road that leads to destruction, by companions genial, attractive, but corrupt.

There are some companions from whom you cannot separate yourselves. They are with you continually; at home and abroad, in school or at play, by day and by night, asleep and awake, they are always with you. There is no solitude so deep that they cannot find you, no crowd so great that they will ever lose you. No matter who else is with you, they will not—cannot—be kept away. I mean your own thoughts, your bosom companions. Shall they be EVIL companions or GOOD? Ah! you know who, and who only, can answer this question.

I once went through a monastery in the old city of Florence, in Italy. It was a retreat for men who were tired of the world, or who felt so unequal to the strife and conflict of life in the world that they believed peace could be found only in retirement. The house was of the order of St. Francis. One of the monks took me into his cell, and I sat down and talked with him. It was a very small room—one door, one window, bare walls, a small table, two wooden chairs, a few books, a crucifix, a washstand, and some pieces of crockery; and that was all. In this room he lived, never to leave it except to go to the chapel, just across the corridor, and to walk in the cloisters for exercise; here he expected to die. It seemed very dreary and lonely to me. But I thought, if this were a certain and sure way of escaping from evil thoughts, and the only way, men may well submit to the confinement, the solitude, the monotony, the dreariness of this way of life. But, alas! it is not so. No close and narrow cell, no iron doors, no bolts and bars, can shut out our thoughts, for they are a part of ourselves: they are ourselves; for, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

Some years ago a country lad left his home to seek his fortune in the city. His mother was dead and his father broken in health and in fortune. The boy reached the city full of high hopes, promising his father that he would do his best to succeed in whatever fell to his lot to do. He was tall, strong and good-looking. A place was soon found for him, and until he was better able to support himself he found a home with some friends. He was a boy of good mind but with a very imperfect education, and he seemed inclined to make up for this in part by reading during his leisure hours. The situation found for him was in a large commercial house, where everything was conducted in the best manner and on the highest principles. Here he made rapid progress and was soon able to contribute to the support of those he had left at home in the country. He became interested in serious things, united with the Sunday-school, and after a while made a profession of religion. Everything went well with him for several years, until he fell in with some boys near his own age, who had been brought up under very different circumstances. Two or three of these were inclined towards skepticism in religious things, and their reading was quite unlike that to which this boy had been accustomed. Some fascination of manner about them attracted the lad to their society, and he grew less and less fond of his truest and best friends. He became irregular in his attendance at the Sunday-school, and when remonstrated with by his teacher and friends had no candid and manly answer for them. After a while he ceased going to church entirely, spending his time at his lodgings reading profane and immoral books or in the society of his new companions. Then he found his way with these friends (so he called them, but they were really his greatest enemies) to taverns and even to worse places, reading a corrupt literature and thinking he was strengthening his mind and broadening his views. A little further on and his habits grew worse, and became the subject of observation and remark. His early friends interposed, talked kindly with him and received his promise to turn away from his evil associates (who had well-nigh ruined him) and to lead a better life. He promised well, and for a time things with him were better. But after a while he fell away again into his old ways and with his old tempters, and before his friends were aware of it he disappeared and went abroad. Then letters were received from him. He was without means; he found it hard to get employment; he had no references, and the people among whom he found himself were distrustful of strangers.

One of his friends to whom he wrote for a letter of recommendation replied something like this:

“It is impossible for me to give you a letter of recommendation except with qualification. If you are seeking employment it is your duty to make a candid statement of your condition. Make a clean breast of it. Keep nothing back. Say that you had a good situation; that you were growing with the growth of your employers; that your salary had been advanced twice within the year; that one of the partners was your friend; that he had stood by you in your earlier youth; that he had extricated you from embarrassment and would have helped you again when needed, and that in an evil hour you forgot this, and your duty to him and to the house which sustained you; that you left your place without your father’s knowledge and well-nigh or quite broke his heart, and that all this grew out of your love of bad associates and your love of drink, and that while under this infatuation you went astray with bad women; and that in very despair of your ability to save yourself, and ashamed to meet your employers, you sought other scenes in the hope that in a new field and with new associates you could reform.

“If you say this or something like this to a Christian man, little as you affect to think of Christianity, his heart will open to you and you can then look him frankly in the face, and have no concealments from him. Any other course than this will only prolong your agony, and in the end plunge you in deeper shame and disgrace. If you will take this advice, you may yet make a man of yourself, and no one will be more rejoiced than myself or more ready to help you. Read the parable of the prodigal son every day; don’t think so much of your fancied mental ability; get down off your stilts and be a man, a humble, penitent man, and make your father’s last days cheerful, instead of blasting his life.

“You see that I am in earnest and that I feel a deep interest in you, else I would have thrown your letter to me into the fire.”

I believe that this young man’s fall was due entirely to the influence of his foolish, bad companions. And I know that this sad history is the record of many others; in fact, that the same experience awaits all who think it a light matter what company they keep, and who drift on the current with no purpose except to find pleasure, without regard to their duty to God. When I see, as I so often do, young men standing at the corners of the streets, or lounging against lamp-posts, and catch a word as I pass, very often profane or indecent, I know very well that a work of ruin is going on there, which, if unchecked, will certainly lead to destruction. And I wonder whether these boys and young men have parents or sisters, who love them and who yet allow them to pass unwarned down the road that leads to death.

But there are other companions, foolish, bad companions, besides those that appear to us in bodily form. They confront us in the printed page. You read a book or a pamphlet or paper which is full of dialogue. Such books are often more attractive than a plain narrative with little conversation. You enter fully, even if unconsciously, into the spirit of the story. The characters are real to you. You seem to see the forms before you; you make a picture of each in your mind, so that if you were an artist you could paint the portrait of each one. Sometimes the dialogue is full of profanity, and though you make no sound as you read, you are really pronouncing each word in your mind. And every time you say a bad word, in your mind, you defile your heart. You are in effect listening to bad words not spoken by other people merely, but spoken by yourself, and before you are aware of it you will be in the habit of thinking oaths when you are afraid to speak them out. It is even worse, if possible, when the language is obscene. Now do you ever think that when you are reading such wretched stuff you are in effect associating with the characters whose talk you are listening to, and without rebuke? They are thieves, pirates, burglars, dissolute, the very worst of society, even murderers. You may not have the courage to rebuke those who are defiling the very air with their foul talk; you may be too cowardly even to turn away from such company lest they sneer at you; but what do you say of a boy who deliberately, and after being warned, reads by stealth such stuff as I have described? Is there any one here who would be guilty of such conduct?

These evils of which I am speaking, and I do so most reluctantly, for these are not pleasant subjects—are not mere theories. They are sad realities. It was my ill fortune in my boyhood to know some boys who were essentially corrupt. Their minds were cages of unclean birds. They were inexpressibly vile. And it is this fear of the evil that one sinner may do among young boys that leads me to say what I do on this most painful subject. Oh, boys, if I can persuade you to turn away from foolish company, from bad associates, I shall feel that I am doing indeed a blessed work. For what is the object, the purpose of all this that is said to you? It is to make men of you and to give you grace and strength to assert your manhood. It is to build you up on the foundation of a substantial education, and so prepare you for the life that is before you here and for that life which is beyond. But the education of text-books illustrated by the best instructors is not enough; it is not all you need for the great work of your lives. You must be ready when you are equipped not only to take care of yourselves, but to help those who may be dependent upon you, for you are not to live for yourselves. And you cannot be fully equipped unless you have the blessing of Almighty God on your work and on your life.

I want you to be successful men, and no man can be a successful man, in the highest and best sense, unless he is a religious man. How can one expect to make his way in life as he ought, without the blessing of God? And how can one expect the blessing of God who does not ask God for his blessing? Prayers in the church are not enough; the reading of the Scriptures in the church is not enough; you must read the Scriptures for yourselves; you must pray for yourselves and each one for himself, as well as for others.

James A. Garfield.

ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

September 25, 1881.

I wish to lead your thoughts to one of the strangest things—one of the most difficult things to understand, which has ever occurred. On the second day of July last the President of the United States, when about to step into a railway train which was to carry him North, where he was to attend a college commencement, at the college where he was graduated, was shot down by an assassin.

I say it is one of the strangest things, because the President did not know the assassin, and had never injured him nor any of his friends. There was absolutely no motive for the hideous deed.

I say it is most difficult to understand, because we believe that Divine Providence overrules all events, holds all power, and we wonder why He permitted the wretch to do so deplorable a deed.

President Garfield was no ordinary man. He was emphatically a man of the people. He was born in a log-cabin which his father had built with his own hands. It was a very small house, twenty feet by thirty. When James was two years old, his father died, late in the autumn, and this boy with three other children were all dependent upon their mother for a support. How the lone widow passed that winter we do not know; but when the spring came there was a debt to be paid, and part of the farm had to go to pay it. About thirty acres of the clearing were left, and this little farm was worked by the mother and her oldest son. Only those who have lived on a farm in the country know how hard the work is. When James was five years old he was sent to school, a mile and a half away, and as this was a very long walk for so young a boy, his sister often carried the little boy on her back.

After a while the boy tried to learn the carpenter’s trade, and in this effort he spent two years or so, going to school at intervals and studying at spare hours at home. So he mastered grammar, arithmetic and geography. After that he became a sort of general help and book-keeper for a manufacturer in the neighborhood at $14 per month “and found,” and this was to him a very great advance. But not being well treated there, he soon left and took to chopping wood—at one time cutting about twenty-five cords for some $7. Then having read some tales of the sea, sailors’ stories, such as you have often read, he wanted to be a sailor; but when he applied for a place on the great lake, he looked so like a landsman from the country that no captain would engage him. So he went to the canal, and found employment in leading or driving horses or mules on the tow-path. But he was soon promoted to be a deck-hand and steersman, and often falling into the water (once almost being drowned) and meeting some other mishaps, he concluded that “following the water” was not his forte, and he abandoned it. By this time he had saved some money, and his brother Thomas lent him some more, and with another young man and a cousin he went to a neighboring town to the academy. These young fellows rented a room, borrowed some simple cooking utensils, a table and some chairs, made beds and filled them with straw, and set up house-keeping, and went to the academy.

Young Garfield spent three years at this academy, doing odd jobs of carpenter work when he could, and so eking out a living. Then he went to an eclectic institute, and paid his way in part by doing the janitor’s work of sweeping the floor and making the fires. Here he prepared himself to enter the junior class in a higher college, and, after some delay, he entered that class in Williams College, Massachusetts.

While pursuing his college course at Williams he filled his vacations by teaching in district schools in the neighborhood until his graduation, in 1856, at twenty-five years of age—quite advanced, you see, in years for a college graduate.

Then he went back as a teacher to his eclectic institute, became a professor of Greek and Latin, and then at twenty-eight years of age became a Senator in the Ohio Legislature. When the war broke out in 1861, while still a member of the State Senate, the Government commissioned him as colonel of a regiment, and he did good service in the State of Kentucky in driving out the rebels. In a few months he was promoted to be brigadier-general. So he went on distinguishing himself wherever he was placed, and, having been assigned for duty to the Army of the Cumberland, fighting his last battle at Chickamauga, his gallantry was so conspicuous and so successful that within a fortnight he was made a major-general.

While in the army he was elected representative to Congress, and on December 5, 1863, he took his seat in the House, the youngest member of Congress.

Some time after this, the war still going on, he wished to rejoin the army, but President Lincoln would not permit it, on the ground that his military knowledge would be invaluable to the government. After serving seventeen years in the House of Representatives, at times Chairman of most important committees, he was elected to the Senate, but before he took his seat he was nominated for the Presidency, and last November was elected by a large majority to that high office.

On the 4th of March last he was inaugurated, and four months afterwards (July 2d) he fell by the hand of an assassin.

You know how during this long, dry, hot summer he has been lying in Washington until the last two weeks, hanging between life and death; and you know how tenderly and lovingly he has been nursed; how gently he was removed to the sea, in the hope that a change of air and scene would do what the best surgical and medical skill had failed to do; and you know how last Monday night, while you were sleeping soundly in your beds, the bells of our city and all over the land were tolling the tidings of his death.

He was a good man—in many respects as well qualified to fill the Presidential chair as any man who has ever sat in it. So I say it is most difficult to understand why he was taken away.

Like all of you he lost his father by death at an early age; as is the case with all of you his mother was poor. He struggled hard for an education, and he acquired it, who knows at what a cost! He was never satisfied with present attainments; he was always on the advance. At an early age he gave himself to the Lord, joining the church; and as that branch of the church does not believe in the necessity of ordination for the ministry he preached the Gospel as a layman, as the great Faraday preached in London and as Christian laymen preach the same truths to you, and it was my purpose, formed when he was elected in November last, to persuade him, some time when he might be passing through Philadelphia, to come to this chapel and address you boys. This, alas, now can never be.

President Garfield loved his mother. No more touching incident was ever witnessed than that which hundreds of people saw on inauguration day, when, after taking the oath of his high office, he turned immediately to his dear old mother and kissed her.

Our great sorrow is not felt by us alone. All nations mourn with us. The Queen of Great Britain with her own hand sends messages of the sweetest, the most touching sympathy. She, too, is a widow and her children are fatherless. She sends flowers for Mrs. Garfield and puts her court in mourning, a compliment never extended before except in the case of death in a royal family. Other European and Asiatic and African governments send their sympathy—they all feel it—they all deplore it. Emblems of mourning are displayed in every street in our city, and every heart is sad. The people mourn.

Boys, you may not be Presidents—probably not one here will ever be at the head of this nation; nor is this of any moment; but remember it was not only as President of the United States that General Garfield was wise and good—it was in every place where he was put; whether in school, in college, in teaching, in the army, in Congress, in the President’s chair, in his family and on his sick and dying bed, languishing and suffering, wasting and burning with fever, exhausted by wounds cruel and undeserved, he was always the same brave, true, real man.

Some of you know with what profound and tender interest people gathered in places of prayer that Tuesday morning to ask that the journey from Washington to Long Branch might be safe and prosperous, and how the hope was expressed, almost to assurance, that the Saviour would meet his disciple by the sea. The prayer was granted. The Lord did meet his disciple, not, as was so much desired, with gifts of healing; nothing short of a miracle could do that, but by a more complete preparation of the people for the final issue. It came at last. And while many of us were sleeping quietly, telegraphic messages were flashing the sad intelligence everywhere that, at last, he was at rest.

Now that we know that he is taken away, we stand in awe and amazement. We cannot yet understand it.

Shall we gather a few lessons from his life? Some of the most apparent may be mentioned very briefly.

The simplicity of his character is most interesting. Conscious as he must have been of the possession of no ordinary mental force, he was never obtrusive nor self-assertive. What seemed to be his duty he did, with purpose and completeness. And his associates often placed him in positions of high trust and responsibility.

He was an accomplished scholar. Even while engrossed in Congressional duties, to a degree which left him little or no time for recreation, he did not fail to keep himself fresh in classic literature. It is said that a friend returning from Europe, and desiring to bring him some little present, could think of nothing more acceptable than a few volumes of the Latin poets.

When his life comes to be written by impartial hands, it will be found that along with his great simplicity and his high culture there will be most prominent his devotion to principle. This was his great characteristic. I have no time, and this is not the place, to speak of his adherence, under strong adverse influences, to his sound views on the great currency question which has occupied so much the attention of Congress.

In a not very remote sense his death is to be attributed to his devotion to principle. That great and most discreditable contest at Albany might have been settled weeks before it was, although in a very different manner, if the President could have yielded his convictions. He did not yield, and he was slain.

The funeral services in the capitol are over and the men whom Mrs. Garfield chose as the bearers of her husband’s coffin were not members of the cabinet, nor senators, nor judges of the Supreme Court, any of whom would have been honored by such a service, but they were plain men, of names unknown to us, members of his own little church.

They are gone. They have taken his worn and wasted and mutilated form, all that remains in this world of the strong, pure life that was not yet fifty years old, to the beautiful city by the lake, and there within sight and almost within sound of the waves of the great inland sea, they will to-morrow lay him to rest until the morning of the resurrection.

What use shall we make of this deplorable calamity? Shall our faith in the prevalence of prayer be weakened? God forbid that we should so distort his teachings. “Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?”

Our prayers are answered, not as we wished, and almost insisted, but in softening the hearts of the people and drawing them as they have never before been drawn towards the Great Ruler of the universe, and in uniting the people, and also in promoting a better feeling between the different sections of our country than has been known for half a century. And if, in addition to this, the people would only learn to abate that passion for office which has been so fatal to peace, and would be content to allow fitness for office to be the only rule of appointment, then a true civil service would be a heritage for the securing of which even the sacrifice of a President would seem not too great a price.

“And the archers shot at King Josiah, and the king said to his servants, Have me away for I am sore wounded. His servants therefore took him out of that chariot, and put him in the second chariot that he had, and they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died and was buried. And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.” 2 Chron. xxxv. 23, 24.

THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED.

March 25, 1888.

A distinguished lawyer of our city delivered an address before one of the societies in the venerable University of Harvard on this subject: “The Case of the Educated Unemployed.” With an intimate knowledge of his subject, and with rare felicity of thought and expression, he set before his audience, most of whom were either in the learned professions or preparing to enter them, the overcrowded condition of those professions, especially that of the law, a preparation for which is supposed to imply a more or less thorough academic or collegiate education.

I have a different task; for I would show the importance of education to the workers with the hand, whether in the mills, the shops, or among the various trades and occupations. By education I do not mean that of the colleges, or of the common schools merely, but also that which is acquired sometimes without the advantage of any schools. And I particularly desire to show that an uneducated worker, whatever be his work, is at an immense disadvantage with one who is engaged in the same kind of work, and who is more or less educated.

A mechanic may be well trained; may have more than his share of brains; may be highly successful in his business; indeed, may have acquired a large property, and have very high credit, and may hardly know how to write his name. A man may have scores or hundreds of men in his employment, and be conducting business on a very large scale, indeed, and yet be so ignorant of accounts that he is entirely at the mercy of his book-keeper, and may be so defrauded as to be on the very brink of ruin and not know it until it is almost too late. In the course of a long business life more than one such case has come under my observation. A man may be partially educated, able to cast up accounts, able to keep books by double entry (and no other kind of book-keeping is worthy of the name), and yet not be able to write a simple agreement in good English, nor understand clearly the meaning of such a paper when written by another.

Very many of the business failures that occur are due to the fact that the person or firm did not know how to keep accounts. This is not confined to people of small business. How often after a failure are we told “that the man was very much surprised at his condition; he thought he was all right; he could not account for his failure, and that in a short time he would have his books in such a shape that he would be able to make a statement to his creditors and ask their advice. It would require ten days or so, however, before he could tell how he stood.” Why, if the man had been an educated business man, and an honest man, he would have known in twenty-four hours how he stood.

The great majority of people who are employed are not educated. They do not know how to do in the best manner, that which they have to do. Perhaps a good definition of education, as the word is applied to a working man, may be that he knows how to do that which he has to do, in the very best way.

Education may be of three kinds, viz.:

That of the schools.

Self-education.

That of trade or business.

That of the schools. And this is the best of all; for the whole of one’s time is given to it; and if you are so inclined you may go through the whole course, as provided in this school. And all this with text-books, instruments and other appliances, absolutely free of cost. A boy, therefore, who passes through the entire course of study here, has superior opportunities of acquiring a most substantial education.

Certainly the education of the schools is the best; and let me urge you with all seriousness to make the best use of your opportunities. You can never learn as easily as now. You are young. You are not burdened with cares. Do not relax your efforts in the least; do not yield to weariness; do not think you know enough already; do not be impatient lest others of your own age, who have already left school to go to work, get ahead of you in trade or in any kind of business; if they have the start of you, they may not be able to keep it; and depend upon it, in the long run you will overtake and pass them, other things being equal, if you have a better school education than they have. When you are told that young men who are well educated are thereby unfitted or unwilling to take the lowest places in trade or business, do not believe it. I know the contrary. The better the school education you have, and the more you know, the more valuable you will be to your employer.

Another kind of education is called, but most inaccurately, self-education. All that I mean by it is, that education which one acquires without teachers. As so defined, it may be divided into two parts, viz.: the incidental and the direct.

Let me speak first of the incidental.

I mean by this that education that comes to us from society.

You cannot live alone, and you ought not to if you could. You seek companions, or other persons will seek you. Let your associates be those whose friendship will be an instruction to you, rather than simply a means of social enjoyment. There are young people of both sexes who, without being vicious, are utterly weak and foolish, idle and listless, drifting along a current, the end of which they do not care to think of. They are living for this life only, with no thought of the future, no ambition, mere butterflies, who float in the sunshine when the sun is shining, but who, in a dark and cloudy day, are bored and miserable, and utterly useless. Sometimes they are pleasant enough to chat with for a few minutes, but to be shut up to such companionship as this, would be intolerable. Society has a large element of this description, and you are likely to see it in your daily life.

But this is not the worst phase of life among the young people with whom you may be thrown. There are worse elements than this. There are those who are depraved to a degree quite beyond their age; who have given themselves up to work all uncleanness with greediness; who put no restraint on their inclinations; in whose eyes nothing is pure or sacred; who have no respect for that which is wholesome or decent; who are the devil’s own children, and who are not ashamed of their parentage. And to such baleful, deadly influences and associations will you be exposed, my young friends, and you may not be apprised of their true character until it is too late.

But there are direct means of education, so called.

The first of these which I mention is the use of books. This is unquestionably the best means. I am supposing that you have some taste for reading; if you have not, it is hardly worth while for me to speak, or for you to listen. I know some people who rarely read a book, and I pity them. They seem to think that all that is necessary to read is the daily newspaper. I do not say that such persons are necessarily very ignorant, for very much may be learned from the daily paper. But the newspaper does not pretend to supply all that you need, to fit you for a life of business, either as a dealer in merchandise, a professional man or a mechanic. No; you must read books, not only for entertainment and recreation, but for information and culture, which you can obtain nowhere else. If there is no public library within your reach, seek out some kind-hearted man or woman who has books, and who will be willing to lend them to one who is in search of knowledge. I well remember a gentleman in my early life who did this kind office for me before I was able to buy books, and there are such now who will do the same for you.

If you have little knowledge of books, you ought to ask the advice of some practical friend to point out such as you may most safely and properly read. For if left to your own judgment or taste, you will probably waste valuable time, or be discouraged by an attempt to read something not immediately necessary or appropriate. But do not attempt to follow an elaborate plan of reading, such as you will find detailed in some books, for you are very likely to be discouraged by the greatness of the task. Such lists, I fancy, are made out by scholars who have read almost everything, and to whom reading is no task whatever, and who have plenty of time. Do not attempt to read too many books, nor too much at a time, and do not be disappointed or discouraged if you are not able to remember or put to good account all that you read. You cannot always know what particular kind of food has afforded you the most nourishment. You may rest assured, however, that as every morsel of food that you take and are able to digest does something to build up and develop your system, or repair its waste, so every book or paper that you read, that is wholesome, does something, you may not know how much, to strengthen or develop your mind.

There are books that you read for entertainment or recreation, and that are written for that purpose only. You may read such; indeed, you ought to read them, for you need, as everybody else needs, recreation and amusement, and there is much of the purest and best of this that you can get from books. But you must not make the mistake of supposing that most, or even a very large proportion, of your reading can be of this character. You would not think of making your daily meals of the articles of food that you enjoy as the sweets of your meals. You would not think of living on sponge-cake and ice-cream for a regular diet. You might as well do so, as to read only the light and humorous matter that was never intended for the mental diet of a working man. No. If you would attain the real object of reading and study, you must read and study books and papers that tax the full powers of your mind to understand them. This will soon strengthen the quality of your mind, even as the exercise of your muscles in work or play will develop a strength of body that the idle or lazy youth knows nothing of.

If you would know how to make yourself master of any book that you read, form the habit, if the book is your own, of making notes with a pencil in the margin of the pages; but if the book is not your property, or in any case, take a sheet of paper and write at the end of every chapter questions on the matter discussed, and the answer to such questions will probably bring out the author’s meaning so fully that you will have absorbed the book and made it your own; for, as an eminent American author has said, “thought is the property of whoever can entertain it.”

I said just now that the daily newspaper does not pretend to supply all that you need to fit you for a life of business, either as a dealer in goods, or as a mechanic or clerk. But the daily paper is a most important means of education—so important that no one can afford to ignore it. Now-a-days one cannot be well informed who does not read the newspaper. The whole world is brought before us every morning and evening, and, if we do not read the news as it comes, we shall not know what we ought to know. It is not necessary to read everything in a daily paper; there are some things that it will be better for you not to read. You need not read all the editorials, brilliant as some of them are, for sometimes they discuss subjects that are not at all interesting nor useful to you. The newspaper from which I make the most clippings is one which is the fullest of advertisements, but which sometimes has nothing whatever in it that I read. But when it does discuss a subject of interest, it is apt to leave nothing further to be said.

But to read with the most advantage one ought to have within easy reach a dictionary, an atlas and, if possible, an encyclopedia. Then you can read with profit, and the mere outlines which the newspaper gives can be filled up by reference to books which give more or less complete histories.

The political articles which appear in the height of a campaign are hardly worth reading, unless you think of entering politics as a money-making business, which I sincerely hope none of you think of doing. And I am sure that the full accounts of crime, and especially the details of police reports and criminal trials, you will do well to pass by and not read. I really believe that a familiarity with these details prepares the way, in many instances, for the commission of crime, just as the reading of accounts of suicide sometimes leads to the act itself.

Some of the best minds in our country, and in the world, are now employed in writing for the periodicals and magazines. No one can be well informed without reading something of the vast amount of matter which is thus poured out before him. I have not named the newspapers nor the magazines which you may read with the most profit; but your teachers can advise you what to read. Rather is it important for you to know what not to read. Many of the most popular and the most useful books that have been published within the last quarter of a century have appeared first in the pages of a weekly or monthly paper. The best thoughts of the best thinkers sometimes first see the light in such pages.

Besides the newspaper and the literary magazine, there are scientific periodicals, which are of essential value to a worker who wishes to be well informed in any of the mechanical arts. The Scientific American is, perhaps, the best of this class, both in the beauty of its illustrations and in the high quality of its contributions. The Popular Science Monthly is a periodical of a wider range and more diversified character. These periodicals, if you are not able to subscribe for them as individuals or in clubs, you may find in the public library. But let me urge you to turn away from “dime novels.” Not because they are cheap, but because they are often unwholesome and immoral. The vile, fiery, poisonous whiskey which so many wretched creatures drink until the coatings of the stomach are destroyed, and the brain is on fire, is no more fatal to the health and life, than is the immoral literature I speak of, to the mind and soul of him who reads. There is an abundance of good literature that is cheap—do not read the bad.

Having now spoken of the education you may get in the schools, and that which you may acquire for yourselves, if you have the pluck to strive for it, either in the society which you cultivate, or more directly from books, whether read as an entertainment and recreation, or, better still, by careful study; or through the daily newspaper, or the periodical, whether literary or scientific; or, what is best of all, that which is decidedly religious; I turn now to the education which you will acquire when you work day by day at your trade or business.

Let me beg of you to consider the great value of truthfulness in all your training. Hardly anything will help you more to reach up towards the top. And when you are at the head of an establishment of your own or somebody else’s (and I take it for granted you will be at the head some day), whether it be a workshop or factory of any kind, or a store, no matter what, a fixed habit of keeping your word, of not promising unless you are certain of keeping your promise, will almost insure your success if you are a good workman. How many good mechanics have utterly failed of success because they have not cared to keep their promises? A firm of high reputation agrees to supply certain articles of furniture at a time fixed by them. The time comes but the articles do not come. A call of inquiry is made and new promises are made only to be broken. Excuses are offered and more promises given; then incomplete articles are sent; then more delays, until, when patience is nearly exhausted, the work is finished. Then comes the bill and there is a mistake in it. The whole transaction is a series of disappointments and misunderstandings. Will you ever incline to go to that place again?

It is usual for miners of coal to place their sons, as they become ten or twelve years of age, at the foot of the great breakers to watch the coal as it comes rattling and broken down the great wire screens, and catch the pieces of slate and throw them to one side and allow only the pure coal to pass down into the huge bins, from which it is dropped into the cars and taken to market. To an uneducated eye there is hardly any perceptible difference between the coal and the slate. But these little fellows soon become so quick in the education of the eye, that they can tell in an instant the difference. When the boy grows older he graduates to the place of a mule driver, and has his car and mule, which he drives day by day from the mouth of the mine to the breaker. Then when he begins to be of age he fixes his little oil lamp in the front of his cap, and goes down into the mines with his pick and becomes a miner of coal. It seems a dreary life to spend most of one’s time under the ground, shut out from the sunshine and from the pure air. And most of these men having no education, and never having been urged to seek one, are content to spend all their days in this manner. But occasionally there is one who feels that he is capable of better things than this. And I know one at least, who began his work at the foot of a coal breaker and worked his way up through all these stages, as I have told you, and who determined to do something better for himself. So he gave much of his leisure (and everybody has some leisure) to study; nor was he discouraged by the difficulties in his way. He persevered. He rose to be a boss among the men; then having saved some money, instead of wasting it at the tavern, he bought his teams, and then bought an interest in a coal mine, and became a miner of his own coal, and had his men under him, and has grown to be a rich man, and is not ashamed of his small beginnings nor of his hard work. This is only one instance of success in rising from a low position to a high one.

The same thing is going on all around us and we see it every day. It would hardly be proper to give you names, but I could tell you of many within my own knowledge who, from positions of extremely hard labor and plain living, have risen to be the head men in shops and other places which they entered at the lowest places. Such changes are continually occurring. And there is no reason whatever, except your indifference, to prevent many of you from becoming, if God gives you health, the head men, in the places where you begin work as subordinates or in very low positions. And I tell you what you know already, that there is plenty of room for advancement. It is the lowest places that are full to overflowing. Who ever heard of a strike among the chiefs of any industry? No, indeed. They have made themselves indispensable to their employers and they don’t need to strike. And there is hardly a youth who cannot by strict attention to business, and conscientious devotion to the interests of his employer, make himself so invaluable that he need not join any trades union for protection. Do the vast army of clerks in the various corporations, or in the great commercial houses, or in the public service, or in the army and navy—do these people ever band themselves in any associations like the trades unions? They know better than that; they accomplish their purposes in better ways. If the working classes, so called, were better educated, they would not suffer themselves to be led by the nose by people who will not themselves work, who will not touch even with their little fingers the burdens which are crushing the life out of the deluded ones whom they are leading to folly. It is a true education that is needed, a true conscience that must be cultivated, to enable men to do their own thinking, and to determine for themselves what are their best interests.

I urge you all to seek that higher and better education which will make you true men. You have now the great advantage of the education of the school. I have tried very simply, but not the less earnestly, to show you how you can fit yourselves for high places. It is for you to say whether you will avail yourselves of these plain hints. No earthly power can force you to do that which you will not do. You may lead a horse to a brimming fountain of water, but if he is not thirsty, no coaxing nor threatening nor beating can make him drink. I may show you, to demonstration, the abundant fountain of learning, but I can’t make you drink, or even stoop to taste the stream, if you are not thirsty. I can’t make you study, however great the advantage to you, or however much they who are interested in you desire that you should.

Every year this question which I have been pressing upon you becomes more and more important. The great colleges of the country are graduating their thousands of students, many of whom will compete with you for the high places in the mechanic arts. So are the public schools of the country sending out hundreds of thousands, many of them having the same aim. Technical schools, teaching the mechanic arts, are multiplying. Great changes have been made recently in our own city in this respect. The Spring Garden Institute is doing a noble work in this way. Our own college is moving in the same direction, and soon it will be sending out its hundreds every year to compete for places in the shops, with this great advantage, that you Girard boys have a school education—the best that you are able to receive, and you must not let any others go ahead of you.

Look at the poor, ignorant people from abroad who sweep our streets—look at the stevedores who load and unload the ships—look at the men who carry the hod of mortar or bricks up the high and steep ladders—look at the drivers and the conductors on our street cars, the most hard worked people among us—and are you not sure that most of these people are uneducated? No one wants to be at the bottom all the time. We may have been there at the first; but those who have made the most progress are generally those who have had the best education. I know that education is not a sure guarantee of success; many other things enter into the consideration of the question; but I am saying that, other things being equal, he who knows the most will do the best. There are, alas, many instances of the sons of the rich, who have been well educated, who have everything provided for them, who have no stimulus, no spur; who have no regular occupation, and need not have any; many of whom sink into idleness and dissipation, and their fine education goes for nothing. But you are not of this class. You will have to make your way in the world by your own exertions.

I shall fail of my duty if I do not say some words about such boys as sometimes stand at the corners of the streets in large or small companies and amuse themselves by smoking and chewing tobacco, telling bad stories and making remarks upon those who pass by. I am sure much of this arises from thoughtlessness; but I wish to point out the exceeding impropriety of this behavior. I have known ladies to cross the street and, at much inconvenience, go quite out of their way rather than pass within hearing of these boys and young men. What right has any one to make the streets disagreeable to any passenger, to block up the way or make loose or rude remarks, or defile the pavement over which I walk?

All this most serious waste of time is probably because no one has particularly called attention to it. The time may come when you will recall the words of advice which you hear to-day, and you may regret when it is too late that you turned a deaf ear to what was said.

I have now tried, in as much detail as the time will permit, to show the importance of that education which will enable you to rise in your trade or business, whatever it may be, to the upper places; and I have tried to show that a true ambition leads one to strive to be chief rather than a subordinate, to be a foreman rather than a journeyman.

But, after all, everything will depend upon yourselves and upon God. There is no royal road to education; the very meaning of the word shows this; the mind must be drawn out, worked over, developed, rounded, hammered, somewhat as a blacksmith puts a piece of rough iron in the coals, keeps it there until it is red-hot, then draws it out, lays it upon his anvil and hammers it, turning it over and over, striking it first on this side and then on that, rounding it off; then when it cools thrusting it among the coals again, then hammering away again until he has brought the rough piece of iron to the size and shape he wishes, when he allows it to cool and harden. If you are willing to work your mind into the shape you want it, you will surely bring yourself to the front among active, ingenious and successful men. But this means hard work, and work all the time.

Now if you mean to avail yourselves of any of the hints which I have given you, if you really mean to succeed, if you are not content to be workers low down in the scale of industry, if you mean to rise rather than to be obscure, if you intend to be well-to-do men, instead of living from hand to mouth, you must grapple with the subject with all your might and keep at it all the time. And you must keep out of the streets at night, away from the taverns and from the low theatres, and from gambling dens, and from other places which I will not name; and, in short, you must be true Americans, for there is no truer type of manhood in all the world than a real American; and nowhere else in all the world has a poor boy so good an opportunity to be and do all this, as in our own good city of Philadelphia.

WILLIAM PENN.

October 22, 1882.

In the early autumn of the year 1682, a vessel with her bow pointing towards the west was making her way slowly across the Atlantic ocean. She was a small craft, rigged as a ship, and crowded with emigrants. The discomforts of a long and tiresome voyage, the very small accommodations, the horror of sea-sickness, were in this vessel aggravated by the breaking out of that most awful of all scourges, the small-pox. In a very short time, out of a population of one hundred, thirty passengers died. No record is left of the incidents of that voyage except this; but it is easy to imagine that all the circumstances were as deplorable as they could well be.

After a weary time of head winds and calms, in about seven weeks, this ship, the “Welcome,” came within the capes of the Delaware bay.

The most distinguished person on that little ship was William Penn. He had left his home in England, embarking with his trusty friends in a vessel only one-tenth the size of the ships of our American Line, to come to Pennsylvania. He had bought the whole province from the government of England for the sum of £16,000 sterling, which, measured by our money, is about $80,000, and this money was due to him for services rendered and money loaned to the government by his father, an admiral in the English navy.

About the 24th of October the vessel reached the town of Newcastle, where Penn landed and was cordially received by the people of that little village. Afterwards they came farther up the river to Uplands, now the town or city of Chester. Then, leaving the vessel here, they came in a barge (Penn and some of his principal men) to the mouth of Dock creek, the foot of what is now known as Dock street, where they landed, near a little tavern called the Blue Anchor.

There was already a settlement on the shore of the Delaware river, and the people, mostly Swedes, had built a little church somewhat farther down the stream. The entire land between the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, and for a mile north and south, was owned by three brothers, Swedes, named Swen. Penn bought this tract from them, and at once proceeded to lay out his new city. When he bought the whole province from the crown he desired to call it New-Wales, because it was so hilly, but the king insisted on calling it Penn’s Sylvania, in memory of the admiral, William’s father. But when the new city came to be named, Penn having no one to dispute his wish, called it by that word, of whose meaning we think so little, Philadelphia—brotherly love. Two months after this he met the Indians, it is said, under a great elm tree in the upper part of the city, in what we now call Kensington, and concluded that treaty which has been said to be the only treaty that was ever made without an oath, and that was never broken. Shortly after this Penn proceeded to lay out the city, and, as a distinguished English author has said, he must have taken the ancient Babylon for his model, for this was the first modern city that was laid out with the streets crossing each other at right angles.

The charter which Penn received from Charles the Second, King of England (the original of which is in the capital at Harrisburg, on three large sheets of parchment), makes him proprietary and governor, also holding his authority under the crown. He at once therefore set about making a code of laws as special statutes, which with the common law of England should be the laws of the province. One of these special laws was this: “Every one, rich or poor, was to learn a useful trade or occupation; the poor to live on it: the rich to resort to it if they should become poor.” And I do not know what better law he could have enacted.

When the news of Penn’s arrival and cordial reception reached England and the continent of Europe, the effect was to arouse a spirit of emigration. Although Penn’s first thought and purpose was to found a colony, where he and others who held the religious views of the Society of Friends might worship without hindrance (which liberty was denied them in England), the people from other countries in Europe came here in great numbers for other purposes. The population therefore multiplied rapidly, and the people were generally such as had determined to brave the privations of a new country, to make themselves a home where life could be lived under better conditions than in the old countries, under the harsh government of tyrannical kings. This emigration was stimulated also by the very liberal terms which the governor offered to new-comers; for to actual settlers he offered the land at about ten dollars for a hundred acres, subject, however, to a quit-rent of a quarter of a dollar an acre per annum forever; and this may be the origin of that ground-rent instrument which is almost peculiar to Pennsylvania, and which is such a favorite investment for our rich men.

After a stay of two years Penn returned to England, where he had left his wife and children; the care of the government having been left with a council, of which Thomas Lloyd was president, who kept the great seal.

Not long after his return to England the king, Charles the Second, died, and having no son he was succeeded by his brother, James Duke of York, as James the Second. Although Penn was on the most cordial terms with the new king, as he had been with Charles, this did not secure him from the repeated annoyances and persecutions of those who detested his religion. So severe was the treatment to which he was subjected, and such was his personal danger from unprincipled men, that he escaped to France. But not being able nor willing to bear this exile, he returned to England, was tried for his offence against the law of the church and was acquitted. After this he came to America again, intending to spend the rest of his life here, but he remained only two years.

The rest of his life was spent in England, but it was a life broken by persecutions and trials at law and other annoyances, the expenses of which, added to the losses by the unfaithfulness of his stewards, were so great as seriously to involve him in financial embarrassments; and he was even compelled to mortgage his great estate in Pennsylvania to relieve himself; but the interest annually payable on such encumbrance was so heavy that he felt the necessity of relieving himself of the property entirely, and he offered to sell it to the crown. While the matter was under consideration, his health began to decline; however, the terms were agreed upon, but while the papers were in the course of preparation he died peacefully at Rushcombe, in Buckinghamshire, July 30, 1718, and was buried five days after in the burial ground belonging to Jordan’s meeting house.

Such is the briefest outline of the life of the founder of this commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and of this city of Philadelphia.

Let us see now what there was in this life which we may find it interesting to recall and dwell upon; what there was in it which may be useful for us to consider in its application to ourselves.

William Penn was born in the city of London on the 14th of October, 1644, in the parish of St. Catharine’s, near the Tower. His father was an admiral and his grandfather was a captain in the English navy. Then, as now, it was the custom of English families of good condition to send their boys away from home to school. This boy, an only son, was therefore sent to school near the town of Wanstead, in Essex, called Chigwell. Here he remained until he was thirteen years old, with no incident particularly worthy of notice, except that he was, at the age of twelve, brought under deep religious impressions, which, however, like many other boys, he soon threw aside. He seems to have been apt to learn, and was fond of the childish sports belonging to his age. For two years after leaving school, he was under private instruction at home, until he was fifteen years old, when he entered the University of Oxford. Here he devoted himself most diligently to his studies and became a successful student. But this did not prevent him from entering most heartily into the sports which were common to young men of his quality. He was very fond of boating, fishing, shooting, and other pleasures, and he was extremely handsome; but he avoided dissipation of all kinds, thus proving that the keenest enjoyment of healthful sports is quite consistent with a pure life. If the college students of this day would believe and act upon this principle, it would be better for them and better for the world.

With this hearty enjoyment of sports, and this diligent application to study, he had a very tender sympathy and love for domestic animals. Towards those that were the most helpless, he evinced a kindliness that was almost womanly.

But he had a strong will, and it was impossible to turn him aside from a course of duty, when he was satisfied that it was real duty. During his school and college life there were many seasons of religious interest in his experience, and he was at last brought (under the preaching of a member of the Society of Friends named Thomas Loe) to declare himself a member of that society. He therefore refused to attend the services of the Church of England. The custom of wearing surplices by Oxford students, which had been abolished in Cromwell’s time, had been restored by Charles; but Penn, when he came out as a religious man, threw off his surplice and refused to wear it. This act was bad enough in the eyes of the authorities; but his zeal went further than this, and, in common with some others of the same way of thinking, he so far forgot himself as to attack other students and tear off their surplices. This very grave offence could not be overlooked, and, admiral’s son though he was, he was expelled from the University of Oxford. This was a great blow to his father, who was building the fondest hopes on the advancement of his son at college and his career as a courtier. No persuasion, however, could induce the son to reconsider his conduct, and his father at last flogged him and drove him from the house. Some time after this, through the intercession of the mother, the young man was brought back to his home; and his father, in the hope that a change of scene and circumstances would work a change in the lad’s feelings, sent him to Paris, and to travel on the continent.

While in Paris he studied the French language, and read some books in theology, and went as far as Turin, in Italy, from whence, however, he was recalled to take charge of a part of his father’s affairs. He then studied law for a year, which no doubt was of some help to him in the founding of his commonwealth. Then his father sent him to take care of his estates in Ireland, at that time under the vice-royalty of the Duke of Ormond. He entered the army here, and did good service too; and was, apparently, so much pleased with his new life that he suffered the only portrait of him that was ever painted, to be taken when he was wearing armor and in uniform. This picture, or a copy of it, may now be seen at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in Spruce street, above Eighth.

About this time he came again under the influence of the preacher Loe, and was recalled by his father, who remonstrated with him on his new mode of life, but with no success whatever. He would not give up his new religion. His father tried to compromise the matter with him, and he even went so far as to propose to his son, that if he would remove his hat in the presence of the king and the Duke of York and his father, as his superiors, their differences might be healed; but the son, believing that the removal of his hat would be dishonorable to God, absolutely refused.

His life for some time after this was stormy enough. He came out boldly and in defiance of law as a preacher of the Society of Friends; and was repeatedly imprisoned, sometimes in the Tower of London and sometimes in the loathsome prison of Newgate, from which places he was released by the intercession of the Duke of York and his father and other friends.

Those were very rough times, not likely, let us hope, to be repeated. Society was very corrupt at the highest sources, and religion was more violent and aggressive in its measures then than now. The world has grown wiser and better—there is more toleration, more of the Spirit of the Master now than then, and in our favored land every soul can worship God as he may choose to do.

William Penn was a statesman. He founded this great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He established a code of laws that were in advance of his time. He stipulated that the law of primogeniture, that law which gives the lands of the father to the oldest son, with little or no provision for younger sons, that law which is the corner-stone of the crown of England, should have no place in this new commonwealth. The property of a parent dying without a will should be equally divided among his children. Penn was a statesman in the broadest sense of the term. His laws were for the greatest good of the greatest number. He treated the Indians as if they were human beings, and not as if they were brute beasts. Indeed, he never treated the brutes as the Indians have been treated even in our day by harsh and unscrupulous agents of the government. Whether he was exactly just in his dealings with Lord Baltimore, the settler of Maryland, I do not know. Perhaps he was not. We know this misunderstanding gave him great trouble, and was indeed the prime cause of his return to England.

Penn was a rich man. The inheritance left him by his father was handsome, and he could have lived most comfortably upon it. But when he received from the crown the charter which made him the owner of Pennsylvania, he was the largest landholder, except sovereigns, known in history. He did not use his wealth for personal indulgence, or for luxurious living for himself or his family. He believed that he held his property as a trustee, and that he had no right to waste it. He might have lived the life of an ordinary English nobleman (for it is said his father was offered a peerage), but such a life had no charms for him.

Penn was a conscientious man. I mean by this that he followed his inner convictions, without regard to consequences. What he wanted to know was, whether a given thing was right and according to his way of determining what the right was; and he did it if it were a duty, without flinching. No personal inconvenience, no consideration for the views or wishes of other people, was allowed to stand in the way of his duty, as he understood it. It was the custom of that time for gentlemen to wear swords, as some gentlemen now carry canes, and with no purpose except as an ornament or part of the dress. Some time after he joined the Society of Friends, and while still wearing his sword, he said to his friend George Fox, “Is it consistent with our principles and our testimonies against war for me to wear my sword?” When Fox replied, “Wear thy sword as usual, so long as thy conscience will permit it.” This friendly rebuke led him to lay aside his sword never to resume it.

William Penn was a religious man. He was called by the Holy Spirit at the early age of twelve years, as I have already said. He resisted that call and many others, until under faithful preaching he could resist no longer, when he yielded himself to the divine call and became an open professor of the principles of the Society of Friends. This was a very different thing, so far as personal comfort was concerned, from professing religion in the ordinary forms; for this was to join a hated sect, and bear all the contempt and persecution that belonged to a profession of religion in the early days of Christianity, when men, women and children perilled their lives in the service of the great Master. But Penn cared not for the cost; he was ready to go to prison, and to death if necessary, for his opinions. He did go to prison over and over again, and bore right manfully all that was put upon him. He was not idle, however, in the prison. He preached to his fellow-prisoners; he wrote pamphlets; he did everything in his power to make known to others the good tidings of salvation that had come to him. He wrote a great many letters, and they were all full of the spirit of religion. He wrote treatises on religious truth, that might have been written by a systematic theologian; but among the most practical things he wrote was the address to his children, that it would be well if all people would read, and which, with a few exceptions, is as appropriate for the people of to-day as it was for those who lived two hundred years ago.

If Penn had not been a religious man, his life had not been worth recording. He would have lived the life that was lived by almost all men of his class at that time, a life of unrestrained worldliness and luxury. The Almighty, who had great purposes in store for the New World, to be wrought out by the instrumentality of man, could have chosen another man, but he chose Penn.

Such is the story of the life of a man who was one of the world’s heroes. His name will never die. There is a large literature on the subject of his life, some of which you will find in your own library, if you choose to look further into it. This is all that I feel it proper to say to you to-day about it.

Boys, it is a great thing to have been born in Pennsylvania, as all of you were. And this could hardly be said of any other congregation in this city to-day. This is a great commonwealth. As to its size, it is (leaving out Wales) nearly as large as the whole of England. As to great rivers and mountains and mines and metals, as to forests and fields, we are far in advance of anything of the kind in England. No valleys on earth are more beautiful or more productive than the valleys of our own Pennsylvania.

It is a great thing, boys, to have been born in the city of Philadelphia, as most of you were. It was founded by a great and good man. There are, in the civilized world, but three cities that are larger than ours. There is no city, except London, that has so many dwelling-houses, and there is none anywhere in all the world where the poor man who works for his living can live so happily and so well.

In this State, in this city, your lot is cast. You will soon many of you take your place among the citizens, and have your share in choosing the men who make and execute the laws. Some of you will be the men who make and execute the laws. William Penn founded this commonwealth, not only to provide a peaceable home for the persecuted members of his own society, but to afford an asylum for the good and oppressed of every nation; and he founded an empire where the pure and peaceable principles of Christianity might be carried out in practice. When you come to take your part in the duties of public life, see to it that you forget not his wise and noble purpose.