~~][^ME.^(5i>.flJ Intellectual Culture. By EDWARD R. PALMER, M. D. I'ROKESSOR OK PHYSIOLOGY. A VALEDICTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE GRADIATINC CLASS OK THE MKUICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE, 1874. LOUISVILLE: PRINTED BY JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY. 1874. Intellectual Culture. By EDWARD R. PALMER, M. D. PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY. A VALEDICTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE, 1874. LOUISVILLE: PRINTED BY JOHN P. MORTON AND COMPANY. I874. INTELLECTUAL CULTURE. When I was notified by the Dean that my turn had come, in the regular order of succession, to speak the faculty fare- well to you, gentlemen of the graduating class, I remembered that it is just ten years since I received the medical degree at the hands of the distinguished Mr. Guthrie, so long President of the Board of Trustees of this University. I have never for- gotten the exercises and incidents of that evening, and I am quite certain that you will retain a vivid remembrance of this evening of your graduation, freighted as it is with so much of joy and hope for each; joy in the fruition of your scholastic labors, and hope of a future full of honorable usefulness; and well do I know, could the castles your busy minds are now building spring by a magic touch into living, visible realities, they would far outrival in the splendor of their tracery and design the romantic beauties of ancient Venice or the gor- geous wonders of the palace of Aladdin. Such day-dreams are not unworthy of you at an hour like this. We participate in your happiness, and I but speak the common sentiment of all this great assemblage when I wish for you in your future careers unbounded success and perfect happiness. 4 Intellectual Culture. To-night marks an epoch not alone in your careers, but in that as well of your Alma Mater. Like human life, hers has had its lights and shadows. Founded when Louisville was yet an infant city, she soon attained a success and renown which attracted the admiration of the entire medical world. The brightness of her morning splendor was not, however, destined to continue without interruption. A series of un- favorable developments which culminated in our recent war darkened her sky and sorely tried the confidence of her friends. The winter of 1862-63 came and went before her unopened doors. The patron of the art preservative of life hid her abashed face in the presence of an angry host bent upon life's destruction. The following fall a handful of stu- dents assembled, and with many misgivings on the part of the faculty lectures were resumed. At the close of that session eighteen of us constituted the graduating class, the smallest class the medical department has ever sent forth. Mr. Guthrie, advanced in years, yet firm in mien and unfaltering in speech, addressed us in that impressive style which so well became him. The father of the University and its warmest friend, he had watched its course with unconcealed anxiety; yet even in that its darkest hour he saw the silver lining of the clouds and prophesied the advent of a refulgent sunlight which would bathe its historic walls with noonday brightness. This day, this hour, witnesses the fulfillment of his prophecy, and we can well imagine his proud satisfaction, were he still living, while contrasting the exit of the few ten years ago with the ovation of this commencement, which ushers through the open portal a class larger than the largest of the olden time, and fully its equal in intellectual worth. With us it is a night for mutual congratulations, and one that can never be forgotten. Your lives, which have thus far been like rivulets, confined within the narrow bounds of college rule, escape to-night from the old familiar surroundings into the broad expanse of Intellectual Culture. 5 life's vast ocean. With the shore still near at hand you dream of success and home, while the friends and former guides from whom you are now severing are wishing you prosperity and happiness. To-morrow the struggle begins, when dreams must give place to work, and when each must strike out lustily and persistently among the waves if he expects to keep his head above the breakers. It has been said that advice is a cheap commodity, and often dear at any price. Notwithstanding this, I am going to preach you a sermon to-night in an advisory strain from THE EXPERIENCE OF A DECADE IN THE DOCTORATE. In seizing the reins of the Esculapian steed you are as it were grasping the poles of an electric battery, whose succes- sive shocks will shake almost every tenet of your student faith and threaten you with an absolute skepticism. I trust, however, that you possess a nature that will not falter when the fancies you have builded in student-life fall before the realities of actual practice. You have already discovered that the handsome descriptive plates of your anatomical text- book are quite unlike the actual dissections which your scal- pels have made, and what seemed quite simple, viewed by light of text and plate, was soon vested with unexpected difficulties when sought for with the knife; so also in the field of practice will you often strive in vain to fit the text of the book to the language of the sick-couch. You have studied with commendable zeal descriptions of disease and the action of remedies ; but you have yet to study the nature of mankind, and learn humanity as well as its diseases. This is particu- larly the case when we view the totality of a physician's life. Like ordinary life, it is made up of little things. You are not going forth to wage a constant battle against grave diseases. Serious cases will arise now and then, demanding your best medical skill and knowledge; but what will really try your abilities the severest are the little things of daily practice. A patient who is not very ill has both time and inclination 2 6 Intellectual Culture. to analyze his medical adviser, and you must make up your minds to be probed at such times more skillfully than ever surgeon probed patient. It is quite often a complaint of the smart young graduate that Dr.----, his neighbor, whose ignorance of medical books is locally proverbial, has so much practice, while all his knowl- edge lies idle in the well-filled vaults of memory, waiting in vain for a requisition from the sick. Versed as this young doctor is in the pathology and therapeutics of grave disease, he may now and then teach his senior a valuable lesson; but he will find in return much that is worth knowing in the so- called "hard sense" of his successful though unscientific elder brother. I do not purpose by this assertion to underrate the valu- able knowledge you have thus far gained. Foster it, and be proud of it. But what I wish to impress upon you is that such knowledge forms but one part of all that is required in the superior physician. Moderate success may be won with "hard sense" alone; moderate success may be won with a knowledge of books alone; but both of these must be com- bined in order to insure that high success to which I trust each of you aspires ; and, while the elements of the former must be instinctive with the possessor, they are nevertheless susceptible of a high degree of cultivation. How is this cul- tivation best advanced ? An eminent philosopher has recently written: "This faith in lesson-books and readings is one of the superstitions of the age. Even as appliances to intellectual culture books are greatly overestimated. Instead of second-hand knowledge being regarded as of less value than first-hand knowledge, and, as knowledge, to be sought only where first-hand knowl- edge can not be had, it is actually regarded as of greater value. Something gathered from printed pages is supposed to enter into a course of education; but if gathered by ob- servation of life and nature is supposed not thus to enter. Intellectual Culture. 7 Reading is seeing by proxy—is learning indirectly through another man's faculties instead of directly through one's own faculties; and such is the prevailing bias that the indirect learning is thought preferable to the direct learning, and usurps the name of cultivation." This extract from the writings of one whose views are widely read and accepted serves to show you that wisdom is by no means always found with greatest certainty by reading books. You must bear in mind also in this connection that books supply the reader with one form of mental food, and that intellectual dyspepsia as well as gastric dyspepsia may follow upon injudicious feeding. In supplying the wants of the body, however good a dinner may be, one does not want to eat it all day long, nor by any means does one desire the same dinner every day in the week, still less the month or year. So also of books; you should read something each day—read medicine—but in the name of all that is wise read something else besides medicine; at the same time never neglect to observe and reflect whenever and as often as is pos- sible. The tendency of reading to the neglect of observation and due reflection is greatly to narrow one's mind; and of all men the doctor should cultivate a broad and liberal spirit, sedulously avoiding ruts as dangerous to both his usefulness and happiness. Among the various benefits which a broad and liberal culture is apt to bestow upon man is naturalness— an unconstrained ease of manner. One can not read Hamlet's advice to the players without being struck with the applica- bility of much of it to the newly-fledged doctor. To be natural is to him every way most desirable. Of all things distasteful to persons of taste nothing is more so than a pompous doctor, whose long scientific terms, solemn airs, and funereal garb, while they may impress the ignorant that he is vastly learned, will with greater certainty inspire young children with dread and sensible grown people with serious doubts as to his ability. Remember always that 8 Intellectual Culture. with cultivated people solemn pomposity usually passes for a cloak to ignorance. An ostentatious mannerism is a very different thing from that easy dignity which intuitively adapts itself to surroundings with a readiness which marks true gentility. This ease of manner is not the only benefit you will derive from liberal culture. The fund of varied knowledge you have thus stored up may often, when medical skill is uncalled for or of little avail, serve as a power for much good in your hands. In the social circle, where all is health and vivacity, your wit and learning, as they excite the throb and flush of pleasure in others, will excite the throb and flush of happiness in you. Far more in that dreary abode where the hours are as days and monotony rules relentlessly — the chamber of tedious convalescence — can you wield for positive good the power of variety in learning. To the invalid on his couch the quick step on the stair is no longer "the leech's stealthy tread." It means to the sufferer a respite from self; it means a respite from a study of the pattern on the wall; and, more than all else, it means a few moments of bright sunshine that will leave behind them hours of blessed twilight. Never fear that such knowledge will make you pedantic. Pedantry is the especial perquisite of the book-worm, while one of the many offspring of varied culture is that nice discernment and large recognition of things, called tact — a most desirable quality, and one which prevents pedantry and like evils, and vests the possessor with more power than any other one attribute he may have. If then your ambition's aim is high success, you must combine the observation and study of social life and of nature with the observation and study of disease, and read general literature as well as medical. In recognition of the truth of part of what I have just said, it has been asserted that the excellence of the English physi- cian is largely due to the fact that travel so uniformly enters Intellectual Culture. 9 as a prominent part into his education; for "travel is the opportunity that best enables man to combine study, thought, and observation." It is long since I have read a more inter- esting book than the late Sir Henry Holland's " Recollections of a Past Life"—a life which abounded in travel. Few careers have been more enviable in every respect than that of this finished scholar and wise physician. It can not of course be the good fortune of many of you to travel in foreign parts, but there are leisure seasons in the life of every doctor when he owes it to himself and his patrons to break through the boundaries of his professional circuit, and leaving his medical paraphernalia behind go forth and see what is taking place in the world without. Each year the American Medical Association invites the brethren through- out the states to throw off their medical harness and come together for social enjoyment and an interchange of thought. A week away from home, spent at one of these gatherings, is medicine to the professional man's physical nature and food to his intellectual. In your future life you will never regret a resolution well carried out to snatch each year a short respite from the labors of practice and spend it in travel and sight-seeing. I have always thought an important part of the student's education while here is contact with and observation of the customs of a large and populous city, and you will bear me witness that I have frequently counseled you not to cling too closely to the grooves of college-life, but to take advantage now and then of the outside opportunities which offer for social and intellectual enjoyment and improvement. In like manner do I advise you to seek often in the future the society of intelligent and cultivated people as one of the surest means for increasing cultivation and refinement in yourselves. To the poet's fancy, when the world was young, man was a sigh- ing hermit till woman smiled, and in the prosaic reality of our day he is far worse than that if he bears not in his nature the 3 10 Intellectual Culture. impress of her gentleness and her soul. When no call of duty summons to other scenes let the society of the fair and the conversation of the wise be to your admiring eyes and willing ears an oft-sought pleasure. When you have selected your future harvest-fields, and sit watching for the first sprouting of the seeds of wisdom you have therein planted, do not be beguiled by the fallacy that a year or two more of unapplied medical reading will make better doctors of you. Thus far you have read with your graduation as an object in view ; from this hour you read with a view to practice, and the sooner and oftener you combat dis- ease the sooner will you become good doctors. It is known that unless physical exercise has some object in view apart from the mere movement of muscles it is devoid of good to the invalid. So in the reading of medicine the doctor must needs have some case in mind as an object if he would derive material benefit from his studies. The objection has been urged that plenty to do debars the young physician from needful reading. That active practice might be used by him as an excuse for such neglect is possible, but that it will actually prevent him from study is not probable. Indeed to my mind nothing will so often and so imperatively send him to his books as the exigencies of practice. Where there is a will to read the way and the time can readily be found, and the busiest physicians of this city to-day are many of them the most assiduous readers, not only of medicine, but of gen- eral literature. The study of my illustrious colleague, the Professor of the Science and Practice of Medicine, filled as it is with the latest and best publications of the day, furnishes marked evidence of this notable fact. I remember when I entered the profession being told again and again that the paucity of my patients was my good for- tune, as a blank visiting-list gave an abundance of time for study. It was some years before my time was any thing like occupied among the sick, and I well remember my faithful Intellectual Culture. II efforts at systematic reading, and how, after a few months, the whole subject became so monotonous that a distaste for treatises on disease and its remedies took such possession of me that I despaired of ever being a successful doctor, and became almost half convinced that I had mistaken my voca- tion. Under that cloud I laid my Watson and Stille aside and spent much of my leisure time with the best poets, essay- ists, and fiction-writers of the age. As I remember now the course I took, it is with a pleasure which more than repays me for the serious misgivings I then felt in thus supplementing the course which my seniors, had advised. Perhaps it was this experience which has led me to believe in a doctor's being a man of varied learning, and in his cultivating a taste for some improving pursuit or study with which to occupy his leisure hours. In indicating intellectual recreation for you I can by no means specify a common course for all or a definite course for any one to follow. Each must needs pay due heed to his tastes and opportunities. The vast domain of natural science is open to you, inviting to a study that will not only give pleasing variety to your lives, but at the same time enlarge your minds and improve your understandings. Ask him who in the ripeness of his years looks backward while you are looking forward, the senior Dr. Yandell, if he regrets the hours of rare pleasure spent by him in geologic research, and he will tell you with more weight than I can the real pleasure and benefit to be gained by combining such studies with that of medicine. Ask others, who in the countless fields of ani- mated nature have unveiled its wonders and brought to light its hidden beauties, if they have suffered by such lapses from professional routine and study, and they too will answer in a similar strain. Would that the lamented Bayless were here to speak for the many hours which he spent so happily and so profitably among those "stars of earth's firmament," the beautiful flowers. 12 Intellectual Culture. I am speaking to men most of whom will live apart from the bustling life of large cities, in regions where spare time is apt to hang idly on one's hands, and I know the nature of the temptations that will at such times beset them. Let me sketch you a picture of one of these temptations, and in contrast with what I have been advising. Each of you can easily add the finishing touches. It occupies the foreground of a typical village. A country store; before the door a long, low bench, well notched by industrious pen-knives ; a broken chair or two on either side; and yonder, standing demurely at the hitch-rail, a saddle-mare, well laden with the household goods for which some worthy dame has just exchanged her last week's churning. In the doorway, leaning against the side, and divested of coat and hat, stands the village mer- chant, while, deepening the notches in the bench or tilting on the chairs, the village loungers while away the sleepy hours. They smoke and chew and chat and laugh, talk of the news, the latest foal, or the price of corn—good fellows, whom we all like, and whose opinions upon stock-raising and planting are by no means to be lightly estimated. Now and then they slap a well-dressed comrade on the back and familiarly call him " Doc." He is in high favor at the store, a sort of chair- man of the gathering. Have you ever seen this picture ? Be careful how you make a constant figure in it. You will go there with an eye to business, and will teach yourselves to believe that with the people "good fellow" means "good doctor" also. Guard against such a course and such fancies, however much you may desire to increase your practice. It is easy enough to stop as you pass for a momentary exchange of good-will without becoming a stereotyped member of that little party; and, believe me, the country people, like those in cities, take most pride in a doctor who from his refinement and superior education can find little pleasure in such idle associations. He is expected to be the first man of his neighborhood, and the higher and broader his culture the Intellectual Culture. 13 more is he reverenced, beloved, and sought after, provided always that the true gentleman is there as well as the scholar. Another picture hardly less objectionable could be drawn by transferring the scene and the actors to the doctor's office. I have known such places that looked more like the card- room of a corner saloon than the habitation of science and culture, and I urge you to discountenance, from the start, idling in your sanctum. This can be done by you without giving offense, and if commenced early may be accomplished easily. Let me remark here in passing that a well-furnisbed, well-kept office, one that has an atmosphere of studiousness and cleanliness pervading it, will go far as a legitimate means for increasing your practice. A doctor's office should be something more than a barren room, with a bare floor, few chairs, deal-tables, and dusty slate. Like the dress of woman, it is a gauge of one's taste and culture, and when neat and cozy will exert a sanitary influence upon both the possessor and his patrons. The same principle is true as applied to the doctor's personal appearance. An eminent lawyer, advanced in years, while recounting some of his reminiscences of the law, gave the following instance of the effect which a lawyer's personal appearance has upon clients: " It sometimes occurs," said he, "that a prisoner at the bar presents himself for trial without any counsel, and as the law will not try a man unless he be defended the judge instructs the accused to select counsel from the lawyers who are present. Nine times out of ten he selects the one who is cleanest and best dressed; and," said the lawyer, "ninety-nine times out of a hundred it is a wise choice. In his uneducated wisdom, which the world calls shrewdness, he reasons to himself somewhat after this manner: 'This lawyer is a self-respecting man. He is a man who respects also the requirements of good society. He is a man with a good sense of justice. His dress betokens pros- perity. If he were a rich man he would hardly be here; therefore his prosperity is due to his success as a lawyer, and H Intellectual Culture. he is successful because he is a man of ability.' Once in a great while the prisoner chooses a lawyer despite his unkempt exterior because he looks wise; but of such he usually reasons in this way: 'This is evidently a smart man, but with his unclean person he probably has unclean morals, or with his ragged coat an eccentric character, and neither of these will serve me in my necessity.'" The moral of this anecdote applies with even greater force to the doctor who, avoiding dandyism on the one hand and slovenliness on the other, should always present a neat and cleanly exterior to the sensitive sick people who may require his services. This is, however, somewhat of a digression, though I trust a pardonable one. I was speaking of the doctor as a man of varied learning and refinement. In the matter of general reading I may perhaps be some- what more explicit; and first I will say subscribe for one of the excellent weekly newspapers which emanate from our chief cities. A Tribune, a Sun, a World, or a Courier-Journal dropping in once a week will keep you informed with the progress which our globe is making in the various depart- ments of science, art, and learning. The valuable columns of a first-class weekly paper, such as our Courier-Journal, constitute a faithful map of busy life, and will go far toward preventing your falling into a fossil state. In this same direc- tion it will not be amiss for you to take one or more of the reviews or leading scientific periodicals which appear monthly or quarterly, reflecting the ideas of the leading thinkers of the day. Against the trashy, sensational stuff with which the country is too much flooded I can not too forcibly warn you. Such productions, false as they are to life and nature, are debasing in the extreme when read, and I gladly turn from them to suggest such writers as Taine and Ruskin in art; Dana, Tyndall, and Helmholz in science; Macaulay and Carlyle in essays; Thackeray and Dickens in fiction; and that great world of humanizing, immortal verse, in the past Intellectual Culture. 15 adorned by Shakespeare and Milton, and in the present by Longfellow and Tennyson, not forgetting that school which Hood rendered famous, and which our own Saxe and Holmes to-day so richly grace. These or any of the writers belong- ing to the classes represented, and whose productions are not deemed unworthy of careful perusal by the best minds of the day, may well occupy a goodly share of your leisure moments. These views, partly the result of experience, are also largely due to early associations, and are, I am convinced, not only safe but excellent precepts to inculcate at this time. When- ever my memory reverts to him who was once pre-eminently dear to me—a patient friend, a wise counselor, a loving father— I most frequently think of him as a student and admirer of such authors as I have just named. At such times I love best to pic- ture him as he spent many of his leisure hours with a volume of the immortal novelist of Scotland in his hand, absorbed in the contents of its oft-read pages, and well do I know the rare pleasure he was wont to draw from those matchless tales of feudal times and Scottish chivalry. The following anecdote is told of the late Lord Jeffrey, who was a fervent admirer of Charles Dickens: One day a lady surprised him sitting in his library, his eyes suffused with tears, and was about to withdraw, when he led her to a seat and said, "Don't go; I shall be right again soon." "Have you received bad news ?" asked the lady; " is any one dead ?" " Yes," said he solemnly, " Little Nell is dead. Are you not sorry?" He had just read the last number then out of the "Old Curiosity Shop." Who among you would not rather have a soul of kindly sympathy in his nature, ready to respond to the sorrows or the joys of others, than to be a mere machine, with no ideas above pills and potions ? And yet the very life you are now about entering will dim every kindlier faculty of your nature if you allow yourselves to narrow down into the bare routine 16 Intellectual Culture. of every-day practice. I am reminded, as I write, of one far nearer to us than Lord Jeffrey, who also found unutterable pleasure in the pages of England's great fiction-writer — the loveliest character and one of the noblest intellects that ever graced the halls of our University with his teachings, or en- riched medical literature with the pen—the lamented Bartlett. In an allegory written by him upon the familiar story of " Hard Times " there appears the following gem, which so befits this occasion that I give it you in full: " This was the lofty moral of his creed, That these were man's chief duties : trust in God; The doing of his will in serving man With earnest work and words of kindly cheer; Always with work and words, for good, not ill, Since man is bound to man by subtile bonds No strength nor craft can sunder or untie, For help or hurt, for blessing or for bane; Hands washed in innocence—the wayward heart Kept with all diligence; and a daily life Unspotted from the world through which it flows." By no words of my own can I so well indicate to-night the moral element which is necessary in the lofty character of the true physician. I am well aware that there are those of the profession who differ from me in much that I have said, and who hold that a doctor should give his whole time to his special science if he would master it and attain eminent success. With due deference to this opinion, I make this plea for more varied intellectual cultivation in our ranks, convinced that one of its most certain effects will be not only to make us better and happier as men, but to make better doctors of us, and give a more exalted position to our vocation, which is justly called one of the learned and liberal professions. On an occasion like this, when but little more than a part- ing word or two is expected of the speaker, it is manifestly impossible for him to say many things that would otherwise Intellectual Culture. 17 be eminently proper, and it may perhaps appear to you that in speaking of the doctor as a liberal scholar I have neglected giving due prominence to the importance of his being pro- foundly versed in his own special science. To have told you that your chosen calling must ever stand first with you; that medical literature in its newest and best forms should be eagerly sought for and carefully studied by you; that patient painstaking, care, and watchfulness must ever be unfailing traits of your character; in short, to have told you through- out the hour that your new life will be one of grave responsi- bilities, demanding untiring mental and physical energies, would have been but a trite recital of what you already know or will quite soon learn. For this reason I have passed these important precepts by, and also because I wished to arouse in you, now in the plasticity of your young manhood, an ambi- tion not by any means incompatible with your great life duties. My colleague, the Dean, in his admirable introductory address of 1872, called your student-life "the novitiate of that true nobility of our times, the aristocracy of intelligence." The true nobility rather of all time, and on whose royal roll, min- gled with the names of Plato and Galileo, of Gothe and of Newton, shine those of Sydenham and Chomel, of Rush and of Niemeyer. A nobility which, like those by monarchs made, has fought even to death in defense of a cause; but which, unarmed with fire and sword, has ever battled for truth and right against error, superstition, and wrong. Its aim un- erringly the elevation of mankind, dispensing true charity with a lavish hand, illuminating the darkness, planing down the rugged places, and bridging over the deep abysses, enlarg- ing its power from age to age, and opening its teeming vaults that a whole world may enjoy the blessings which its wealth bestows—a glorious nobility, whose untainted letters-patent kings can not cancel and wealth can not purchase. It had its cradle among dynasties long since passed away. In the ages of tyranny and oppression its lamp still burned, though hid i8 Intellectual Culture. for the hour in the humble attics of its faithful votaries; but now that growth of national and religious liberty of which it is the father has untrammeled its hands and widened its scope of usefulness. No age, no principles of government have ever existed so favorable to the growth of its power as ours. By education, by history, by all the laws of social life, the physi- cian belongs to this lofty brotherhood of learning. And yet how few of the profession in this land feel the grand import of this truth! The physician who lowers his calling to the level of ordinary mercenary pursuits rarely amasses wealth, and invariably sacrifices a higher and a purer joy, the joy of being one of the noblemen of letters. He feels so often the littleness of his compensation ; he sees so soon the vanity of his hopes ; and if he adheres to his calling, does so regretting that he has assumed a life of hardship and small reward. That so many follow this course is not surprising. In a land where money is so universally worshiped we need not wonder if the scholar too prostrates himself at that fane. Such should not, however, be, and the day will surely come here as well as in older lands when the aristocracy of learning will hold un- disputed supremacy. In the midst of that engulfing tide of mankind which rolls to-day through every avenue of this fair land, restlessly seeking for wealth, you stand witnesses rather than participants. But in the purer stream which flows from the Pierian fount you may find, if you will, a proper channel for your intellectual training. Never forget then that the diploma which you now hold certifies that you are enrolled in the " aris- tocracy of intelligence," and let it ever be your proud ambition as you advance in years to advance also in scholarly wisdom, so as days ripen into years and seed-time rolls to harvest-time, "At the full breasts of wisdom clinging, Thou 'It find each day a greater rapture bringing." But enough; I must close ere you grow restless with delay. The hour of our parting is at hand. On the bosom of yonder Intellectual Culture. 19 swollen Ohio a goodly boat lies waiting to bear a part of your number to the land of sunshine and of flowers. On the banks of the " Father of Waters," in the balmy air of the gulf, and far and wide through the fertile lands of cotton and of cane,— Where the orange-groves open their soft golden bloom, And the spotless magnolia fills the air with perfume; Where the mild breeze of heaven a rich melody floats That is trilled by gay songsters in amative notes; Where the plowman, new turning the rich fallow soil, Is cheerily whistling, in joy with his toil; And even the cypress, that emblem of sadness, Grows green and alive with bright vernal gladness,— all nature smiles her happy greeting, and anxious hearts are waiting ready to welcome you home. Not less the welcome in keeping for others of your band in the fertile, wide-spreading prairie lands of the West or the rich mineral fields of Penn- sylvania and Virginia. The great commonwealth that once nurtured for her country's glory that hero and statesman, the immortal Jackson—east, middle, and west—waits in pride the coming of her sons. Over the river a sister state is ready to rejoice in the new ties that bind her still more closely to old Virginia's proud daughter, while at scores of Kentucky fire- sides busy, loving hands pile higher yet the blazing logs, and spread an old Kentucky welcome for the "boys" who are coming home. Go, and may joy mingle its sweets with the blessing which your Alma Mater sends with you through life. Go proudly to those who await you. Go bravely to the duties in store for you. Go confident in your power to soothe the brow of pain. Go faithful to her who has trained you and taught you the rudiments of your art. She will not forget you. She will never lose her watchful interest in you. In your prosperity she will rejoice with you, and should reverses befall her strong right arm is ready and willing to sustain you. Her words of parting counsel are those of peace and love. She bids you 20 Intellectual Culture. remember the ties of professional brotherhood; to be slow in thinking evil of a brother, quick to defend, and charitable where fault is manifest. Life has enough asperities without your adding one jot to the burden. Forbearance and charity are the central jewels of earth's richest diadem, and brotherly love is the sum of human perfectness. Farewell!