Page:Independence, Rectorial address delivered at St Andrews October 10 1923.pdf/33

INDEPENDENCE their cost, give its members fresh strength for renewed forays.

And that same strength is your third and chief blessing. I have already touched on the privilege of being broken by birth, Custom, precept and example to doing without things. This is where the sons of the small houses who have borne the yoke in their youth hold a cumulative advantage over those who have been accustomed to life with broad margins. Such men can and do accommodate themselves to straitened circumstances at a pinch, and for an object; but they are as aware of their efforts afterwards as an untrained man is aware of his muscles on the second morning of a walking tour; and when they have won through what they consider hardship they are apt to waste good time and place by subconsciously approving, or even remembering, their own [21]