1/12/2024 0 Comments Valedictorian speechLet us go cheerfully, hopefully, and earnestly, and set ourselves to find our especial part. Schoolmates: though the dear happy years we have spent together are over, yet the ties of friendship, and an enduring love and reverence for our school, and the sacred memory of her whom God has called from her labor of love to be an unseen but constant inspiration to us through life, are bonds of union that time and a and absence will only strengthen.įellow-graduates: duty bids us go forth into active life. We thank our trustees for the zeal and invariable interest which they have shown in all that concerns our well-being.ĭirectors, teachers and matrons: we enter life’s battle-field determined to prove our gratitude to you, by lives devoted to duty, true in thought and deed to the noble principles you have taught us. We thank His Excellency, the Governor, and the legislature of Massachusetts, and the governors and legislatures of the several New England states, for the most generous and efficient aid they have given our school. The search for knowledge, begun in school, must be continued through life in order to give symmetrical self-culture.įor the abundant opportunities which have been afforded to us for broad self-improvement we are deeply grateful. It is by battling with the circumstances, temptations and failures of the world, that the individual reaches his highest possibilities. The advancement of society always has its commencement in the individual soul. Every man who improves himself is aiding the progress of society, and every one who stands still, holds it back. Self-culture is a benefit, not only to the individual, but also to mankind. If a love for truth and beauty and goodness is not cultivated, the mind loses the strength which comes from truth, the refinement which comes from beauty, and the happiness which comes from goodness. The memory, understanding and judgment must be used, or they become feeble and inactive. The muscles must be used, or they become unserviceable. It is a duty we owe to ourselves, to our country and to God.Īll the wondrous physical, intellectual and moral endowments, with which man is blessed, will, by inevitable law, become useless, unless he uses and improves them. We can educate ourselves we can, by thought and perseverance, develop all the powers and capacities entrusted to us, and build for ourselves true and noble characters. We receive impressions and arrive at conclusions without any effort on our part but we also have the power of controlling the course of our lives. To a certain extent our growth is unconscious. God has placed us here to grow, to expand, to progress. We shall be most likely to succeed in this, if we obey the great law of our being. And now we are going out into the busy world, to take our share in life’s burdens, and do our little to make that world better, wiser and happier. We have spent years in the endeavor to acquire the moral and intellectual discipline, by which we are enabled to distinguish truth from falsehood, receive higher and broader views of duty, and apply general principles to the diversified details of life. Today we are standing face to face with the great problem of life.
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