Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/181



Y first conscious memory as a child is of standing in the open doorway on a spring morning and of looking out upon a world to me unknown. There was before me a pleasant flower-bordered path leading down through a shadowy valley, and beyond all this the hills frowning dark and mysterious. It was an untried world that beckoned to me and that stirred within my childish heart longings to get out into it. It was my first Commencement.

You stand on Commencement day much as I did then, eager, curious, uncertain, holding out your hands hopefully to the future. It is a good many years since I had that first view of the world. I have been down the flower-bordered path of youth. I have seen something of the shadowy valley of sorrow and hardship and sacrifice, and I