attention to some of the many forms
in which the winning of knowledge presents itself.

The first of these is happiness. Everybody wants "a good time,"
especially every girl in her teens. A good time, it is true, does not
always in these years mean what it will mean by and by, any more than
the girl of eighteen plays with the doll which entranced the child of
eight. It takes some time to discover that work is the best sort of
play, and some people never discover it at all. But when mothers ask
such questions as these: "How can I make my daughter happy?" "How can
I give her the best society?" "How can she have a good time?" the
answer in most cases is simple. Send her to college,--to almost any
college. Send her because there is no other place where between
eighteen and twenty-two she is so likely to have a genuinely good time.
Merely for good times, for romance, for society, college life offers
unequalled opportunities. Of course no idle person can possibly be
happy, even for a day, nor she who makes a business of trying to amuse
herself. For full happiness, though its springs are within, we want
health and friends and work and objects of aspiration. "We live by
admiration, hope, and love," says Wordsworth. The college abounds in
all three. In the college time new powers are sprouting, and
intelligence, merriment, truthfulness and generosity are more natural
than the opposite qualities often become in later years. An
exhilarating atmosphere pervades the place. We who are in it all the
time feel that we live at the fountain of perpetual youth, and those
who take but a four years' bath in it become more cheerful, strong, and
full of promise than they are ever likely to find themselves again; for
a college is a kind of compendium of the things that most men long for.
It is usually planted in a beautiful spot, the charm of trees and water
being added to stately buildings and stimulating works of art.
Venerable associations of the past hallow its halls. Leaders in the
stirring world of to-day return at each commencement to share the fresh
life of the new class. Books, pictures, music, collections, appliances
in every field, learned teachers, mirthful friends, athletics for
holidays, the best words of the best men for holy days,--all are here.
No wonder that men look back upon their college life as upon halcyon
days, the romantic period of youth. No wonder that Dr. Holmes's poems
to his Harvard classmates find a