EVERY-DAY LIFE.*

GENTLEMEN OF THE LITERARY SOCIETIES:

I have chosen a common, homely theme-Every-day Life. Many of you may hastily pronounce it uninteresting and uninstructive. It is not set forth in your list of studies. It is not a favorite field for rhetoric. Most students habitually overlook it; too many great teachers forget or ignore it. It does not mingle with the pleasing fancies which are busy weaving future garlands for the graduate. It may unsettle some delightful castles reared in your moments of repose from weary labor; but it is the life we each and all must live. Let us look at it soberly and cultivate it kindly, and it will reward us with many cheering smiles and charming attributes.

While our every-day life is the theme that should be most familiar to all, it is the one important part of education that is most neglected. You may here become what the world of letters calls a great scholar, and yet be to the world, and in the world, a novice. If successful, it will be an accident; if useful, it will be grudgingly acknowledged only after you are dead, if even then. Mere scholarship, in its relations to the great purposes of human life, is like an intricate machine in unskillful hands. While it will run itself it is well; but when it wants direction its beauty and mechanism go for naught. Our colleges and higher schools are of inestimable value, but they cannot do everything for the student. They can store the mind

* Delivered before the Literary Societies of Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., June 20th, 1871.

and fit the man for the ceaseless lesson of life; but when they have done, the work of learning has but commenced. When you shall have passed safely through your recitations and examinations, you are just fitted to enter the boundless school that is ever open around us.

The world itself is the master teacher of its countless pupils. It has no sessions or vacations. Its vast books are never closed. Its million-tongued voices are never silent. Its precepts and admonitions, its gentle suasions and vengeful mandates, throng upon us wherever we are. In its sources of instruction, aiming to make man each day better than before, it is as varied as the handiwork of God; and yet how many of the living profit by these multiplied teachings as they swiftly pass?

You have read, and doubtless often quoted, the truism, that "the proper study of mankind is man." It is the plain, broad channel of advancement, for the study of man involves the study of everything. For him all things were created. All of the world's beauty is but a tribute to his excellence. All of its thorns and brambles are but chastening rods to make him mindful of the purpose of his being. The grandest themes of the painter and poet relate to his destiny. The pulpit is inspired by the theory of his redemption. Senators and commoners win distinction only as they promote his happiness, and that heroism is enshrined over all that has achieved his amelioration.

It is an imperative lesson to enable us to know something of ourselves. Whether we would pay court to the fickle goddess of fame, or aspire to wealth or to usefulness, or to the nearest possible perfection of human character, the one unending study is of man. The supreme problem that confronts the faithful student from day to day and from year to year ever revolves closely about himself, and yet it takes within its scope all of nature's infinite variety of ever-present and ever-changing

text-books. Look out upon the world's tumultuous school. Each one so like his fellow, and all so unlike; yet each varied understanding is bountifully furnished with endless sources of culture. Did all pursue the same beaten path the world would be monotonous, and most of its beauty and teachings would be lost. But no two have just the same aspirations or garner the same harvest from the same field of thought, while the larger number go out and come in, from the cradle to the grave, and are insensible of the riches they have cast aside. The absorbed astronomer may explore the heavens when opportunity is presented, and then pass on through the world unconscious of its offerings. The geologist may delve into the earth's recesses and rocks and forget the living in his search for the records of the past. The scholar of books performs only what some other mind bids him-all else is a sealed treasure around him. He could solve the most abstruse problem for the student, but would be confounded if asked to solve the problem the student himself presented. Many righteous men teach from the Holy Book and teach in vain. They know only what they teach, and not to whom they teach. The thoughtless, plodding son of toil rejects all things save as necessity becomes his master. Thus do the learned and unlearned jostle on, like truant children, discarding the best means of usefulness to their fellows, and dooming to pitiful thralldom the immortal element of our existence.

If I were to call upon the learned young men before me to tell of the great epochs of human history, you would answer promptly and correctly. I could tell you nothing of the world's mutations that would be novel to you. So much you have learned, or are learning, well. Do not understand me as assuming that you should have learned more, for I have already told you that life is one unending lesson; and here, when all has been done that can be done, you are only fitted to begin the great study.

Let me kindly, and, I trust, pleasantly and profitably, lead you from the stilted plane that youthful ambition builds, to look into the fountains which have given the world its varied eras. You have studied its heroes, its sages, its patriots, its poets, its scholars, and its masters. I would now have you study the sources whence they came. The marked events of the world's history may always be traced to the every-day life of the peoples who were the chief actors therein. You would point to Cæsar or Alexander as the great hero of the ancients; but without Rome, just as she then was, what could Cæsar have been? and without Greece, trained as one vast military camp, Alexander might have been a slave instead of the conqueror of the world. Heroes are made and unmade, not by circumstances alone, but heroism must ever be the joint creation of the man and of the occasion-the people must find their true type with the particular elements of excellence which meet their supreme want. We speak thoughtlessly of great leaders, forgetful that they are created, and that their followers have had much to do with their creation. Rienzi deserved greater honors from Rome than ever did Cæsar, yet the one was master of Rome when she was mistress of the world, and the other failed and fell ignominiously, and is remembered only as the last of the Tribunes. He was not overthrown by rivals, as was Cæsar when he fell at the foot of the statue of Pompey. The boisterous fountains of ambition which made Brutus a murderer gradually coursed like subtle poison through the ranks of the people, and patrician and plebeian alike were tainted and paralyzed. Cæsar had a party, and Antony a party, but Rome had none, and the sad sequel is told in the single sentence-" Rienzi fell from the vices of the people." At last a mere handful of banditti possessed the capital of the once proud empire, and her liberties were overthrown because her people had lost all their noblest attributes.

Washington was perhaps the only man who could have won the independence of the colonies, and yet there were those in the revolutionary army no less brave, and much more brilliant. It was rare wisdom that called him to the chief command. Had Arnold commanded, he would have lived a patriot, fought desperately, and lost his cause. Between Washington and the people there was a common inspiration. They mutually led, mutually followed, mutually suffered, and mutually triumphed. The desire for liberty became part of the every-day life, part of the every-day devotion, of the colonists; and the patriot hero became the Father of his Country.

Let us for a moment transpose the two chief military leaders of the early part of the present century. Transfer Napoleon to Britain and Wellington to France. Could there have been a Marengo, or Austerlitz, or Waterloo? Had Napoleon been in the English army with all his fiery zeal, he would have been cashiered before he reached a colonel's commission; and had Wellington been under the eagles of France he would have lived and died a subaltern. But each in his own army was a great captain, and each typified the people he so successfully commanded. The people of France created Napoleon; the people of England made Arthur Wellesley Lord Wellington. "Soldiers! from these monuments forty centuries look down upon you," were the inspiring words of Napoleon to his victorious army in Egypt. "England expects every man to do his duty," was the strongest appeal that could be made to the British soldier. Napoleon would apostrophize the "sun of Austerlitz,” and hurl his columns into battle like the whirlwind; while Wellington would silently, calmly and stubbornly maintain his position in presence of defeat, and wait for Blucher. The people of these two powerful nations molded their leaders, and through them molded their