MINOR TOPICS

LIFE AND ITS ACTIVITIES

THE BEARING OF THE PAST ON THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

The eloquent and stirring address of President Merrill E. Gates of Rutgers college to the graduating class of 1889 is so fruitful in thought and rich in practical suggestion—almost every passage furnishing the text for a sermon--that we cannot forbear giving it to our larger audience. He said in part :

"Young men are the future personified and embodied. We sometimes speak of delight in the present as characteristic of youth. But young manhood, when mind and soul are once awakened, lives not in the present. It is of the nature of animals rather than of men to give themselves up to the present. Animals are the present personified,' says Schopenhauer. Young men who have made choice of a liberal course of study have, by that choice, given evidence that they are awake to future values. I see among you here, young gentlemen, more than one or two who on entering college relinquished honorable work-positions where you were already receiving the pay of men for men's work-that by college and its studies you might develop and train for future usefulness the powers God has given you. In the future, you have felt, lay your rewards. To the future, your eyes have constantly turned. However we may have striven to emphasize for you the value of the present as it came to you, day by day, with that persistent elusiveness which is characteristic of youth you have slipped on into the more attractive life of the future. And even now, while I speak to you, it is your own future that interests you.

My friends, it is your future that interests us, too. College life is in itself good. It is a period of life to be lived earnestly, faithfully, and honorably for its own sake. It has great value in itself, and it constitutes no small portion of the years of life which the actuary's tables tell us may be hoped for by any one of you. Yet, when all is said, college life is of value chiefly for its immense leverage upon the future. If no work as mature men lay before you in life, if twenty-two or twenty-three, your average age, were the allotted period assigned to the life of men, perhaps we should not have advised you to spend your last four years as you have spent them. For pleasant as are the friendships and the work of college years, these years are planned to be the introduction to a future essentially different in its modes of work, in its immediate motives and its daily incentives. Of this your own hearts forewarn you, for the future has been constantly before your

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thoughts in these last months.

You have lived in the future. The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,' and much of the work of education consists in lifting the eyes of boys from their immediate surroundings, in imparting steadiness to that impulsive boy's will' that is 'the wind's will,' and in teaching young men the true relations of the present and the future.

But have we taught you, have you learned that supreme lesson, the relation of the present and the future? Do you believe in your heart that there can be no wise use of the present, no true enjoyment of the present, that is not lighted up by its bearing upon the future? As certainly as your present has been influenced by your past, just so certainly your present is of value chiefly for your future. All turns upon your understanding the value of that eternal, ever-present now, in which you must always live. For you will never know any future, no one of us is ever to know or to use an hour of the future, save as it comes to us, moment by moment, as the present-as that omnipresent, mysteriously potent now, in which, moment by moment, we shape our life; that now which must hold for us, moment by moment, all we think and know and do and hope; that now which rules us while we ignore it.

You have spoken to one another and to this audience, in your orations, of entering now upon a life of action, as distinguished from a life of study and of thought. But in proportion as an educated man enters upon his heritage, the greater part of his life-activity lies in thought and words. These are his actions-these are his life. By thought he directs his own action; by thoughtful, earnest words he sways and influences the thoughts and actions of others. Save where his own hands lift the material burden, or in the arts shape the matter that expresses thought and feeling, it is by clear thinking and truthful strong speaking that the educated man does his life-work. And recognizing this fact you see clearly that the last four years of your life have been full of action-of action which, by the thought and feeling which prompted it, has already done much to mold your character and shape your future life.

We do not recognize any break in your life on this Commencement Day. We have not been accustomed to see men who have been successful and earnest in college fail in the years that followed the college course. Nor have we seen men whose college years have been marred by unfaithfulness and sloth leap suddenly to positions of trust and usefulness upon leaving college. Conditions of success are the same in college and in later life. Because you have shown yourselves faithful, honorable, trustworthy, open to ideas, and assiduous in effort in your college years, we believe that you will succeed in later life.

But hereafter you will, to a certain extent, make your own daily routine of duty. You will in some respects follow more freely your own choices (though you will find, my young friends, that the higher school of life is not organized upon that prettily optimistic theory which rewards a man for choosing soft elective courses'). You will be impelled by your own desires and emotions, with less of

guidance from without. Less of stimulus will be purposely applied to you by thoughtful men who love you and study your welfare.

It seems to you now, in the prospect, that the first year's work you do, in what you call the business of life, will be of vastly greater moment than has been the work of preparation. But if you look back, from fifty, upon these college years, with their hours of leisure and their potentiality for noble effort, with their steadily broadening horizon and the ever-quickening sense of aspiration they have brought to you, as the kindly voices of the great men who have gone before you in other generations have called down to you from the heights above-you will hardly dare to reckon any years of your life as more important than those which lie just behind you now.

College life has involved action. Character has been forming. Will has been growing dominant in intelligent self-direction. Moral responsibility you have felt and acknowledged with increasing emphasis. All these tendencies we have striven to intensify. And still you have felt, and we admit, that in the four years' work in college, such is the emphasis given to the intellectual life, that theories have had a more prominent place than have deeds. And with Carlyle you feel that the end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest.' It is emotion stimulating a volition, an act of self-control that issues in the manly deed done—it is this that shapes character while it molds the life of the world.

It is will that is the essential man. 'What is properly substantial in us is the will.' Society is incorporated will, the steadily inter-acting volitions of many men moving it forward along its appointed course. The sum of your volitions it is that makes the personal identity of each man of you. And as added years of study have given you clearer convictions of what should be brought to pass in the world, you have felt the growing on-thrust from within, impelling you to have your share in the work of noble achievement,, to do what one man may do toward bearing the world's burdens, and lifting your fellow-men to a higher vantage-ground of life. After the mock engagements of the joust and the tourney, there was a thrill of eager delight in the heart of the young knight as he laid his lance in rest and spurred his steed against a real foe in the first engagement that meant life or death for the contestant, success or failure for his cause. And so, as the senior year has drawn to its close, as we have discussed together high themes that bear upon the conduct of life, I have seen from the earnest eye and the changing expression of one and another of you that the trumpet-call has stirred your soul, that you have seen a standard, white, spotless, lifted far above the devices that lure men to selfish gain. And I have learned to cherish the hope (highest and richest reward for the teacher of young men) that there has fallen on many of you that highest gift, the intense passion to be useful in life, to be helpers of your fellow-men, to be among those who see and love the truth and put it in practice, and bear others' burdens while they faithfully do their own work. This passion for service it is which is the sword-blow of Christian knighthood, forever setting apart him who receives it to

noble, unselfish service for the sake of One whom he loves, One who loves him with an unchanging love.

That through many years of patient, cheerful, steadfast effort, the high hope and the lofty purpose of this crowning hour of your college course may never fail you, we ask God to grant you his grace, and deep draughts from that unfailing fountain of his love, which alone can strengthen you for such long and high endeavor."

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF KEOKUK

CHIEF OF THE SACS AND FOXES, 1832-1845

At the close of the Black Hawk war, General Scott, in treaty with the Sacs and Foxes and with the assent of the tribe, appointed Keokuk chief, presenting him with the silver medallion of President James Monroe. This was the brave red man's reward for keeping two-thirds of the warriors neutral during the war, and because of his intelligence, tact, sound sense, integrity, and gifts of oratory. His predecessor, Black Hawk, with his two sons and principal advisers, were carried to St. Louis in chains, thence to Fortress Monroe, and Keokuk ruled in his stead and became even more famous as a warrior. In 1833 Black Hawk and his party were released from captivity and returned to Iowa; but Black Hawk was dethroned with much ceremony, and Keokuk, by authority of the President, was installed as principal chief of the nation. Keokuk was of medium height and somewhat stout, but graceful and commanding. His manners were dignified, and his elocution vigorous and animated. His flow of language in speaking was rapid, clear, and distinct, and there was an element of remarkable power in his wellmodulated voice. He was a splendid horseman, owning the finest horse in the country, and was excessively vain of his appearance when mounted; he excelled also in dancing.

The wit and humor of this forest chieftain have often been quoted. On one occasion, in 1838, he was invited by the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, to attend a council at his palace. Keokuk accepted, and with a mounted escort of Indians appeared at Nauvoo. Smith made an address to the assemblage, referring to the children of Israel and the lost tribes, trying to convince Keokuk that the Indians were the lost tribes-that this had been revealed to him--and that they must come into his fold. Keokuk replied with characteristic cleverness: "If my brother is ordered by the Great Spirit to collect our lost tribes together and lead them into a land flowing with milk and honey, it is his duty to do so. But I wish to ask about some particulars that my brother has omitted, which are of great importance to my people. The red men are not much used to milk. They prefer streams of water,

and in the country where they live there is a good supply of honey. The points we wish to inquire about are whether the new government will pay large annuities and whether there will be plenty of whisky." The conference, it is said, came to an abrupt termination.

Keokuk was one of the shrewdest of commanders in the management of his tribe. On one occasion the savages were flourishing war-paint and demanding that he lead them on a raid against the whites. He was silent until the right moment came; then, rising in council, he said: "I am your chief; it is my duty to lead you if you are determined to go to war. But the United States is a great power, and unless we conquer that great nation we must perish. I will lead you instantly against the whites on one condition—that is, that we shall first put all our women and children to death, and then resolve, that having crossed the Mississippi, we shall never return, but perish among the graves of our fathers rather than yield to the white man." It is needless to add that the argument was forcible and the foray was abandoned.

Another occasion when the wonderful ingenuity of Keokuk was displayed was in his mourning for President Harrison in 1841. John Chambers of Kentucky had been appointed governor of Iowa to succeed Governor Lucas, and by virtue of his office he was superintendent of Indian affairs for the territory. Keokuk had a rival among his leading chiefs, named Hard Fish, who with his band hurried to meet the governor and secure his favor. Chambers declined seeing him, but promised to visit the tribe in a few days. When the governor at length arrived at the agency at Des Moines, both parties were on the alert. Hard Fish came first, showily dressed, his warriors shouting and yelling, making it a festive day, and was received by the governor with much ceremony. Keokuk decked his tribe in mourning, and to the sound of the funeral drum called on the governor. Hard Fish was amazed, for he knew of no death in the tribe. Keokuk, with great solemnity, apologized for his delay in coming to the governor, and paying a touching tribute to President Harrison said: "We had to keep our father waiting while we performed that part of our mourning we must always attend to before we leave our lodges with our dead." Governor Chambers's heart was won, and Hard Fish retired severely disappointed.