Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/425

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INTEGRITY IN EDUCATION
417

methods of dealing with us. They were not taskmasters to us, and their work was not a harsh and ungrateful routine to them.

One figure will inevitably arise before the minds of all when these words are said, the figure of one who died with the harness on. I have never seen anywhere, in my experience, a man of more simple and unconscious high-breeding, one who combined more thoroughly the dignity of official authority with the suavity of unrestrained intercourse with his pupils. It is a part of the good fortune which came to us and to this city from this institution that so many young people here enjoyed his personal influence.

It follows, as a natural consequence, from these facts, that we enjoyed here to a high degree what I have described as integrity in education. Sensationalism of any kind has always been foreign to the system here. It must perish in such an atmosphere. We had instruction which was real and solid, which conceded nothing to show and sacrificed nothing to applause. We learned to work patiently for real and enduring results. We learned the faith that what is genuine must outlast and prevail over what is meretricious. We learned to despise empty display. We had also a discipline which was complete and sufficient, but which was attained without friction. There was no sentimentality, no petting, no affectation of free and easy manners. Discipline existed because it was necessary, and it was smooth because it was reasonable.

Now there is nothing to which people apply more severe criticism, as they grow old, than to their education. They find the need of it every day, and they have to ask whether it was sufficient and suited to the purpose or not. It is because we find, I think, that our education here does stand this test that we are able to meet here on an occasion like this with genuine interest and sympathy. The years in their flight have sacttered us and brought us weighty