st
hopes will be disappointed; and the life of these teachers, and the
promise of the youth who may be gathered here, will be like the sun and
the winds upon the desert, which bring neither refreshing showers nor
fruitful harvests. Every form of labor requires faith. This labor
requires faith in yourselves, and faith in others;--faith in yourselves,
as teachers here, based upon your own knowledge of what you are and are
to do; and faith in others upon the divine declaration that God breathed
into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul,--not merely as
the previous creations, possessed of animal life; but as a sentient,
intellectual, and moral being, capable of a progressive, immortal
existence.

"'Tis nature's law
That none, the meanest of created things,

* * * * *

Should exist
Divorced from good,--a spirit and pulse of good,
A life and soul, to every mode of being
Inseparably linked.

See, then, your only conflict is with men;
And your sole strife is to defend and teach
The unillumined, who, without such care,
Must dwindle."

And always, as in the beginning, the reliance of this school is upon the
people of the commonwealth, whose voice has spoken into existence
another instrumentality to give eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, a
heart for the work of this life, and a hope for an hereafter, to those
who from neglect and vicious example would soon pass the period of
reformation. But may the people always bear in mind the indisputable
truth, that schools for the criminal and the exposed yield not their
perfect fruits in a day or a year! They must, if they will know whether
the seed here planted produces a harvest, wait for the birth and growth
of one generation, the decay and death of another. Yet these years of
delay will not be years of uncertainty. The public faith will be
strengthened continually by cases of reformation, usefulness, and
virtue. But, whether these cases be few or many, let no one despond. The
career of the criminal is, often in money and always in influence, the
heaviest burden which an individual can impose upon society.

This is a school for girls; and we may properly appeal to the women of
Massachusetts to do their duty to this institution, and to the cause it
represents. We can already see the second stage in the existence of many
of those who are to be s