s
and conduct of men. So the new subjects which stand beside the
classics and mathematics of medieval culture are history, economics,
ethics, and sociology. Although these subjects are as yet merely in
the making, thousands of students are flocking to their investigation,
and are going out to try their tentative knowledge in College
Settlements and City Missions and Children's Aid Societies. The best
instincts of generous youth are becoming enlisted in these living
themes. And why should our daughters remain aloof from the most
absorbing work of modern city life, work quite as fascinating to young
women as to young men? During many years of listening to college
sermons and public lectures in Wellesley, I always noticed a quickened
attention in the audience whenever the discussion touched politics or
theology. These are, after all, the permanent and peremptory
interests, and they should be given their full place in a healthy and
vigorous life.

But if that life includes a love of books, of nature, of people, it
will naturally turn to enlarged conceptions of religion--my sixth and
last gift of college life. In his first sermon as Master of Balliol
College, Dr. Jowett spoke of the college, "First as a place of
education, secondly as a place of society, thirdly as a place of
religion." He observed that "men of very great ability often fail in
life because they are unable to play their part with effect. They are
shy, awkward, self-conscious, deficient in manners, faults which are as
ruinous as vices." The supreme end of college training, he said, "is
usefulness in after life." Similarly, when the city of Cambridge
celebrated in Harvard's Memorial Hall the life and death of the gallant
young ex-governor of Massachusetts, William E. Russell, men did well to
hang above his portrait some wise words he has lately said, "Never
forget the everlasting difference between making a living and making a
life." That he himself never forgot; and it was well to remind citizens
and students of it, as they stood there facing too the ancient words
all Harvard men face when they take their college degrees and go out
into the world, "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for
ever and ever." Good words these to go out from college with. The
girls of Wellesley gather every morning at chapel to bow their heads
together for a moment before they scatter amo