sober duty; that resourcefulness which discovers better methods of getting work done; that directing intelligence by which one man can effectively organize for a given purpose, many materials and many workers. In addition to the knowledge and the qualities I have mentioned, most of you have a settled disposition toward some form of self-support appropriate to an exceptional training; while you know that some men must black other men’s boots, you also know that a boot-black with a high school diploma at home means waste—waste of time, waste of money, waste of education. Moreover, you appreciate the duties and value the privileges of citizenship in a democracy, and most of you have on the whole a serious intent to do what you reasonably can to promote the general welfare. Such is your equipment as citizens. Finally, as human beings, you are able to participate in the intellectual, æsthetic, and moral interests of cultivated people. How may you with such equipment be really useful under the conditions of American life? That is our problem.

[4]

And right here let me say that nobody wishes you to make a profession of uplifting your race. In the first place, that’s a pretty big job; and in the second place, your race is uplifted whenever one of you manages well a truck farm, a grocery store, a school room, or a bank. Charity begins at home; your chief business should[5] be to uplift each himself. My present purpose, however, is to consider mainly how such individual success may contribute to the welfare of the many.

[5]

Let us consider, first of all, how you may be of direct service by work in which the chief factor is personal influence and by work in which the chief factor is directing intelligence.

Teaching is an art inseparable from the personality of the teacher,—an art in which a mature person seeks by personal influence to help immature persons build their characters soundly. Teaching ability, to adapt the words of Cardinal Newman, “is not a mere extrinsic or accidental advantage which is ours to-day and another’s to-morrow, which may be got up from a book and easily forgotten again, which we can command or communicate at our pleasure, which we can borrow for the occasion, carry about in our hands and take into the market; it is an acquired illumination, it is a habit, a personal possession and an inward endowment.” The best way to become a good teacher is, therefore, to become a good man or a good woman, and to grow in power to interest and influence young people. Such personality and power cannot be manufactured 

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