HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE LIBRARY OF COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY DAVID M. STEELE The Knickerbocker Press, New York OUNG Ladies of the Graduating done me the honor to make me your Honorary Member, I would dedicate this volume to you as a token of affection. I recall the banquet on your Ring Night and the toast I tried to give you. It was this: Here's to the Class, to itself, its teacher and its preacher. Here's to its members, both actuary and honorary. Here's to its admirers, both those now present and those jealous absent mortals who would like to be. Here's to your Class Flower, which is fading in its Orchid beauty as compared with yours. Here's to your fine Class Motto, to your Honor and your Courage and your Loyalty. Here's to your Rings, both present and prospective. May their gold be dross, compared with the refinement of your natures. Here's to your Lions-since I notice you have one apiece. And, last of all. Here's to your awkward-seeming but affectionate tame lamb. D. M. S. PHILADELPHIA, PA. Christmas, 1918. Foreword HAVE no apology to make for the fact that most of these addresses and sermons have been delivered a number of times. They were not addressed, in any two cases, to the same people. This always seems to me to make the point one not well taken that a preacher should never use over again the same sermon. The companies of hearers were as various as the audiences attendant at the same play in a half-dozen different cities. I would estimate that all the hearers together, of these twelve discourses, make up a composite company of forty thousand persons. Inasmuch as this means maybe fifty different schools and colleges, and congregations other than my own in churches, one of the rewards of labor incident has been the privilege this has afforded me of making personal acquaintance with the principals and deans and rectors of that many institutions. I prize this more highly than they can possibly have valued any service rendered by me. I have come to number them among my valued friends. I cannot name them all: I have chosen a dozen. I acknowledge this indebtedness. But there is yet one other matter. I have had recourse-and frequently to printed words of others upon allied subjects. This does not mean plagiarism. That again is not a point well taken. Every speaker, unless he is so conceited that he thinks his own ideas better always than anything that anybody else has ever said or heard or thought of, will check up his own by the pronouncements of those who have written out of more age or experience. I have done this; but I hope I have used invention of others only by absorption. I have tried to make their thoughts my own by purchase, not by theft. I know that those who first put them in words would not recognize them here. I am even fearful they would not agree with them. All this is permissible, then; but it is perilous. There is a whole fund of verbal coinage out of which all speakers buy their tools. There is a mass · of mental bricks and mortar out of which all writ |