Page 61 - 1929 Hartridge

Commenceinent, 1928
Nature seemed to conspire with the Seniors last year to help them make their commencement a perfect one. The sun was streaming through the audi­
torium windows as the Class of '28, the speakers, and the faculty marched to their places on the stage. After Dr. Hugh Black had made a most interesting address, and before the di\])lomas were presented. Miss Hartridge spoke as follows:
Members of the Class of 1928:
All of you, from the one who has been with us for thirteen years to the two that entered only last September, have recently made for the first time in connection with your education, an imi)ortant choice. Thirteen have chosen college, one preparation for Kindergarten work, one study in
Europe. The very act of choosing must have aroused in you, perhaps also for the first time, a consciousness of opportunity. For, try as we may to alter the fact, you cannot help— in a sccondar\}' school in which you are
placed as a matter of course—the feeling that you have been sent to be taught, not that you have come to learn.
Come to learn—a magic thought. Keep it before you and you "a'ill learn, learn in ways undreamed of. For when you stud\}', not that you may be graduated, not that you may pass college entrance examinations,
but only that you ma\}^ learn, you will develop powers undreamed of, in­ telligence tests to the contrary notwithstanding.
Opportunity is a magic w o r d ; its magic cannot be dulled even by frequent repetition. You have not always recognized it, because you have always had it. You are of the favored few whose paths have been made easy. And that reminds me that with opportunity we always find, though
we may not always face, obligation. When 1 hear that word 1 think of a story that President Taylor of Vassar once told me, of the little Dauphin, son of Marie Antoinette. His gaolers, wishing to torture the queen, told her that day by day and week by week they were teaching the
boy evil words and evil habits. Years afterwards one of them confessed that the child had cried out to his tormentors: “I cannot say the things you say, I cannot do the things you do, for 1 was born to be a king.”
Perhaps you, too, will find it a story worth remembering.
Members of the Graduating Class, take your opportunity. Go to college, or to training schools, and go to learn. Then go on through life still learning. Fulfil your obligations. . . . And do not forget us, who
wish for you the success that comes from hard work aiul from difficulties conc\[uered.
The members of the class were: Jane Alston, Shirley Clark, Janet Dunning, Barbara Graham, Mavin Hamilton, Ydrginia Hamilton, Iless Houghton, Virginia Howell, Anne Moment, Dorothy O ’lhden, Cornelia Robison, Virginia Sykes,
\])everley Trosdal, Constance Van Duyn, and Mary Margaret Wemple.
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