Rudyard Kipling on Wealth. Following is a portion of the ad dress recently made by Rudyard Kipling before the students of Mc Gill University, Montreal : When, to use a detestable phrase, you go out into the battle of life you will be confronted by an organized conspiracy which will try to make you believe that the world is gov erned by the idea of wealth for wealth's sake, and that all means which lead to the acquisition of that wealth are, if not laudable, at least expedient. Those of you who have fitly imbibed the spirit of our uni versity—and it was not a material istic university which trained a scholar to take both the Craven and the Ireland in England—will violent ly resent that thought, but you will live and eat and move and have your being in a world dominated by that thought. Some of you will probably succumb to the poison of it. Now, I do not ask you not to be carried away by the first rush of the great game of life. That is expect ing you to be more than human. But I do ask, after the first heat of the game, tnat you draw breath and watch your fellow'S for awhile. Sooner or later you will see some man to whom ihe idea of wealth as mere wealth does not appeal, whom the methods of amassing that wealth do not interest, and who wil: not ac cept money it you offer it to him at a certain price. At first you will be inclined to laugh at this man, and to think that he is not smart in his ideas. I sug gest that you watch him closely, for he will presently demonstrate to you that money dominates everybody except the man who does not want money. You may meet that man on your farm, in your village. or in your legislature. But be sure that, whenever or wherever you meet him, as soon as it comes to a direct issue between you, his little finger will be thicker than your loins. You THE STATE COLLEGIAN will go in fear of him; he will not go in fear of you. You will do what he wants; he will not do , what you want. You will find that you have no weapon in your armory with which you can attack him; no argu ment with which you can appeal to him. Whatever you gain, he will gain more. I would like you to study that man. I would like you better to be that man, because from the lower point of view it doesn't pay to be obsessed by the desire of wealth for wealth's sake. If more wealth is necessary to you, for purposes not your own, use your left hand to ac quire it, but keep your right hand for your proper work in life If you employ both arms in that game you .will be in danger of stooping; in danger also of losing your soul But in spite of everything you may succeed, you may be successful, you may acquire enormous wealth,. in which case I warn you that you stand in grave danger of being spoken and written of and pointed out as a smart man. And that is one of the most terrible calamities that can overtake a sane, civilized white man in our empire to-day. They say youth is the season of hope, ambition and uplift—that the last word youth needs is an exhorta tion to be cheerful. Some of you here know, and I remember, that youth can be a season of great de pression, despondencies, doubts, and waverings, the worse because they seem to be peculiar to ourselves and incommunicable to our fellows There is a certain darkness int 3 which the soul of the young man some time descends-- a horror of desolation, abandonment. and realized worthlessness, which is one of the most real of the hells in which we are compelled to walk. I know of what I speak. This is due to a variety of .causes, the chief of which is the egotism of the hu man animal itself. But I can tell you tor your comfort that the chief cure for it is to interest yourself, to lose yourself, in some issue not personal to yourself—in another man's trouble or, preferably, another man's joy. But if tne dark hour does not vanish, as sometimes it doesn't;• if the black will not lift, as sometimes it will not; let me tell you again for your comtort that there are many liars in the world, but there are no liars like our own sensa tions. The •despair and the horror mean nothing, because there is for you nothing irremediable, nothing ineffaceable, nothing irrecoverable in anything you many have said or thought or done. If for any reason you cannot believe or have not been taught to believe in the infinite mercy of Heaven, which has made us all, and will take care we do not go far astray, at least believe that you are not yet sufficiently impor tant to ne taken too seriously by the powers above us or beneath us. In other words, take everything serious ly except yourselves. Congratulations, Bill. The rollo wing poem was found in the Engineering building. The owner can get it by applying to the Collegian: Having reached the age of twenty three, The evils of vice I can plainly see, My system is racked and full of cold, And I feel like a man about 70 years old ; My nose is red a tell-tale sign, That the cup that cheers has oft been n ine, And now, as I think how I've rambled about, A wee small voice says, "Bill cut it out " So, I, Bill —, do solemnly swear, To stop devouring Polar Bear, To give up women, wine and song, And stop my cursing the whole day long : I'd like to reform my bed-fellow, 'Bill," But he says he's too far down the hill, And as for Jim, he just laughs at me And says I talk like a man up a tree ; But I don't care a rap what the whole world will say, I'm out for reform, so Hip-Hooray ! A framed group of Northfield and Niagara Conference photographs has also been added to the pictures hanging Room 273.
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