THE
CAP AND GOWN

The larger part of the material in this book was originally used in anumber of addresses given in various colleges and universities reachingfrom Yale and Cornell in the East to Stanford and the University ofCalifornia in the West. It is here offered to a wider circle in thehope that these chapters may prove suggestive to college students andto those who are interested in having them make the best use of thebewildering array of opportunities awaiting them on the modern campus.

It was one of the shrewdest and kindliest observers of student life,himself a long-time resident of Cambridge and a genial friend ofHarvard men, who said: “It is a never-failing delight to behold everyautumn the hundreds of newcomers who then throng our streets, boys withsmooth, unworn faces, full of the zest of their own being, taking[Pg vi]the whole world as having been made for them, as indeed it was. Theirvisible self-confidence is well founded and has the facts on its side.The future is theirs to command, not ours; it belongs to them even morethan they think it does, and this is undoubtedly saying a good deal.”

It is this joyous and confident company arrayed or about to be arrayedin “cap and gown” which the writer of these chapters would fainaddress. The academic costume and accent may speedily be replaced bythe less picturesque garb and tone of the work-a-day world, but theadvantage of special training, of accurate knowledge and of the largeroutlook upon life attainable in any well-equipped university will giveto the fortunate possessors of all this a significance for the life ofthe nation far beyond that belonging to an equal number of similarlyendowed but untrained men.