Page 58 - 1922 Hartridge

Commencement 1921
The weather-man was exceptionally kind to us and gave us a perfect day for commencement. Relations and friends from far and near came together on June 8 to say farewell to the graduating class. The Auditorium had donned its usual festive array—daisy chains drooped in long loops along the walls, and against a hank of green below the stage the numerals, 1921, were outlined in daisies.
Mr. Moment opened the exercises with a prayer and then Dr. Neilson of
Smith College gave us a very interesting address. Just before conferring the diplomas Miss Hartridge said her parting words to the class:
Alembers of the Graduating Class :
The girls of to-day have had few words of praise from the women—or, for the matter of that, from the men of the older generation. 1 am inclined to believe, as you may be
inclined to suspect, that no girls of any generation have ever won mucli in the way of commendation from their ciders and betters, or have been greatly disturbed by the lack of commendation. It has ever seemed the habit of the middle-aged to condemn the outrageous customs and manners of the young, and it has ever seemed the habit of the young to smile tolerantly upon that condemnation. You are smiling now. Take care. It may be only a question of time before you are in the seats of the outraged.
I love you for your honesty and your fearlessness, for your physical strength and for your initiative, for your courage to face the ills of life and your willingness to do your part in remedying those ills. I love you for your freedom from many of the old restraints. I hope that you will hold that freedom. One word of warning: Do not let the pendulum swing too
far, for then too far it will return, carrying with it the girls to come, back perhaps, from shapely hands and feet, from graceful, untrammeled limbs, from the loveliest form of dress that our country has ever known to the disfiguring gloves and boots and the all-embracing circle of steel that coerced your grandmothers; back to the belief that ignorance and innocence are synonymous,, and that girls should dwell in ignorance even if it prove only a fool’s paradise.
In the matter of restraint you owe something to the girls to come, just as you owe something to your predecessors for the freedom they have won you. For, seriously, how much of that freedom did you win for yourselves? It was won for you to some extent by those same elders who now reproach you. forgetting, apparently, the part that they once played But you must not forget. You cannot accept, without payment, as if you had created them, all the gracious and wonderful things that this century holds for you. The discoveries, the triumphs of to-day are made possible by the toil and the struggle of yesterday. It is yours to reap the rewards earned by those whom you follow. It is yours, too, to win further rewards for those who follow you; to make life more gracious and more beautiful than you have found it; to see to it ,if you can, that it is gracious and beautiful for many, and not for only the privileged few;
to make your gift to the next generation health and happiness and beauty for the children of our land and of all lands.
Members of the Class of Nineteen Twenty-one, I bid you good-bye, with much love, with much pride, and with confidence that you will pay in full to the future your debt to the past.
After the exercises were over the graduates, Ruth Broughton, Caroline
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