I have seen a place full of
high possibilities and hopes, bestowing a treasure of bright
memories of work, of play, of friendship, upon the majority of its
members, and upholding a Spartan ideal of personal subordination to
the common weal, an ideal not enforced by law so much as sustained
by honour, an institution which, if it does not encourage
originality, is yet a sound reflection of national tendencies, and
one in which the men who work it devote themselves unaffectedly and
ungrudgingly to the interests of the place, without sentiment
perhaps, but without ostentation or priggishness. A place indeed to
which one would wish perhaps to add a certain intellectual
stimulus, a mental liberty, yet from which there is little that one
would desire to take away. For if one would like to see our schools
strengthened, amplified and expanded, yet one would wish the
process to continue on the existing lines, and not on a different
method. So, in our zeal for cultivating the further hope, let us
who would fain see a purer standard of morals, a more vigorous
intellectual life prevail in our schools, not overlook the
marvellous progress that is daily and hourly being made, and keep
the taint of fretful ingratitude out of our designs; and meanwhile
let us, in the spirit of the old Psalm, wish Jerusalem prosperity
"for our brethren and companions' sakes.
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