XI

AN ADDRESS TO FRESHMEN 1

WILLIAM DE WITT HYDE

A graduate of Christ Church College, Oxford, recently remarked to me: “One can have such a good time at Oxford, that it's a great waste of opportunity to work." The humor of this remark, however, was turned to pathos when his wife told me sadly that: “An Oxford training does not fit a man for anything. There is absolutely nothing my husband can do"; and then I learned that the only thing this thirty-year-old husband and father had ever done was to hold a sinecure political office, which he lost when the Conservative party went out of power; and the only thing he ever expected to do was to loaf about summer resorts in summer, and winter resorts in winter, until his father should die and leave him the estate. Fortunately, American society does not tolerate in its sons so worthless a career; yet the philosophy of college life which was behind that worthlessness, translated into such phrases as "Don't let your studies interfere with your college life,” and “C is a gentleman's grade," is coming to prevail in certain academic circles in America.

Put your studies first; and that for three reasons: First, you will have a better time in college. Hard work is a necessary background for the enjoyment of everything else.

1 Delivered to the incoming class at Bowdoin College in 1908. Reprinted through the courtesy of William De Witt Hyde and of The Independent.

Second, after the first three months you will stand better with your fellows. At first there will appear to be cheaper roads to distinction, but their cheapness is soon found out. Scholarship alone will not give you the highest standing with your fellows; but you will not get their highest respect without showing that you can do well something that is intellectually difficult. Third, your future career depends upon it. On a little card, five by eight inches, every grade you get is recorded. Four or eight years hence, when you are looking for business or professional openings, that record will, to some extent, determine your start in life. But you are making a more permanent record than that upon the card; you are writing in the nerve-cells and films of your brain habits of accuracy, thoroughness, order, power, or their opposites; and twenty, thirty, forty years hence that record will make or mar your success in whatever you undertake.

Make up your minds, then, to take a rank of A in some subject, at least B in pretty nearly everything, and nothing lower than C in anything. If you ask why I place such stress upon these letters let me tell you what they mean.

A means that you have grasped a subject; thought about it; reacted upon it; made it your own; so that you can give it out again with the stamp of your individual insight upon it.

B means that you have taken it in, and can give it out again in the same form in which it came to you. In details, what you say and write sounds like what the A man says and writes; but the words come from the book or the teacher, not from you. No B man can ever make a scholar; he will be a receiver rather than a giver, a creature rather than a creator, to the end of his days.

C means the same as B, only that your second-hand

information is partial and fragmentary, rather than complete.

D means that you have been exposed to a subject often enough and long enough to leave on the plate of your memory a few faint traces, which the charity of the examiner is able to identify. Poor and pitiful as such an exhibition is, we allow a limited number of D's to count toward a degree.

E means total failure. Two E's bring a letter to your parents, stating that if the college were to allow you to remain longer, under the impression that you are getting an education, it would be receiving money under false pretenses.

Please keep these definitions in mind, and send a copy to your parents for reference when the reports come home. Whatever you do, do not try to cheat in examinations or written work. If you succeed, you write fraud, fraud, fraud, all over your diploma; and if you get caught—there will be no diploma for you.

Your own interest and taste are so much more important factors than any cut-and-dried scheme of symmetrical development, that we leave you free to choose your studies. At the same time, the subjects open to choice are so limited by conflict of hours, and the requirement of a major and minors, that you can hardly miss the two essentials of wise choice; the consecutive, prolonged, concentrated pursuit of one or two main subjects, and some slight acquaintance with each of the three great human interests-language and literature, mathematics and science, and history, economics, and philosophy.

Having put study first, college life is a close second. College is a world artificially created for the express purpose of your development and enjoyment. You little

dream how rich and varied it is. I was myself surprised in looking over the record of the last senior class to find that the members of that class won four hundred and sixty-seven kinds of connection and distinction, of sufficient importance to be printed in the official records of college achievement. On the other hand, I was a little disappointed to find that one hundred and forty-two of these distinctions were taken by five men, showing that the law, "to him that hath shall be given," applies in college as well as out of it. Some colleges, like Wellesley, have attempted to limit the number of these non-academic points an individual student may win.

Aim to win some of these distinctions, but not too many. Concentrate on a few for which you care most. Do you ask what they are?

There are eight fraternities, each with its own chapter house and its committees for the control of its own affairs; twelve sectional clubs, covering most of the geographical divisions from which students come; a Christian Association, of which a majority of the students, and a much larger majority of the best fellows among them, are members, and which every one of you ought to join who wants help and support in living the life you know you ought to live, and is willing to give help and support to others in living the Christian life in college. There is the Deutscher Verein, the Rumania, the History Club, the Good Government Club, the Chemical Club, devoted to their special subjects; the Ibis, which represents the combination of high scholarship and good fellowship, and whose members, together with the undergraduate members of Phi Beta Kappa, are ex-officio members of the Faculty Club, a literary club composed of members of the faculty and their families.

There is the Interfraternity Council; the Athletic Council; the Debating Council; there is the Glee Club; the Mandolin Club; the Chapel Choir; the College Band; the Dramatic Club; the Press Club; the Republican Club; the Democratic Club. We have three papers-the Quill for literature, the Orient for college news, the Bugle for college records and college humor.

Besides, there are public functions with their management and their subjects; rallies, banquets, assemblies, Ivy Day, Class Day, college teas, fraternity house parties.

Last, but not least, come athletics-baseball, football, track, tennis, hockey, fencing, gymnastics, cross-country running, with first and second teams, captains, managers, and assistant managers.

With all these positions open to you in these four years, every one of you ought to find opportunity for association with your fellows in congenial pursuits, and training in leadership and responsibility in the conduct of affairs.

As I said at the outset, taken apart from study these things are trivial, and absorption in them amounts to little more than mental dissipation; but taken in their proper relation to study, which is your main purpose here, the social experience and capacity for leadership they give are so valuable that if you take no responsible and effective part in them, you miss the pleasantest, and in some respects the most profitable, part of what the college offers you.

I suppose I ought to say a word about college temptations, though the man who enters heartily into his studies and these college activities will not be much troubled by them. That is the case with nine-tenths of the men who come here. But in every class there is a weaker five or ten per cent, and I suppose this class of 1912 is no exception.