THE RECTORIAL ADDRESS DELIVERED

AT ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY

MAY 3rd 1922

COURAGE

BY

J. M. BARRIE

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITEDTORONTO

To the Red Gowns of St. Andrews

Canada, 1922

You have had many rectors here in St. Andrews who will continuein bloom long after the lowly ones such as I am are dead and rottenand forgotten. They are the roses in December; you remember someonesaid that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. But I do not envy the great ones. In my experience--and you may findin the end it is yours also--the people I have cared for most and whohave seemed most worth caring for--my December roses--have been verysimple folk. Yet I wish that for this hour I could swell into someoneof importance, so as to do you credit. I suppose you had a meltingfor me because I was hewn out of one of your own quarries, walkedsimilar academic groves, and have trudged the road on which you willsoon set forth. I would that I could put into your hands a stafffor that somewhat bloody march, for though there is much about myselfthat I conceal from other people, to help you I would expose everycranny of my mind. 

But, alas, when the hour strikes for the Rector to answer to hiscall he is unable to become the undergraduate he used to be, and sothe only door into you is closed. We, your elders, are much moreinterested in you than you are in us. We are not really important toyou. I have utterly forgotten the address of the Rector of my time, and even who he was, but I recall vividly climbing up a statue to tiehis colours round its neck and being hurled therefrom with contumely. We remember the important things. I cannot provide you with thatstaff for your journey; but perhaps I can tell you a little about it, how to use it and lose it and find it again, and cling to it morethan ever. You shall cut it--so it is ordained--every one of you forhimself, and its name is Courage. You must excuse me if I talk agood deal about courage to you to-day. There is nothing else muchworth speaking about to undergraduates or graduates or white-hairedmen and women. It is the lovely virtue--the rib of Himself that Godsent down to His children. 

My special difficulty is that though you have had literary rectorshere before, they were the big guns, the historians, the philosophers;you have had none, I think, who followed my more humble branch, whichmay be described as playing hide and seek with angels. My puppetsseem more real to me than myself, and I could get on much moreswingingly if I made one of them deliver this address. It isM'Connachie who has brought me to this pass. M'Connachie, I shouldexplain, as I have undertaken to open the innermost doors, is the nameI give to the unruly half of myself: the writing half. We arecomplement and supplement. I am the half that is dour and practicaland canny, he is the fanciful half; my desire is to be the familysolicitor, standing firm on my hearthrug among the harsh realities ofthe office furniture; while he prefers to fly around on one wing. Ishould not mind him doing that, but he drags me with him. I havesworn that M'Connachie shall not interfere with this address to-day;but there is no telling. I might have done things worth while if ithad not been for M'Connachie, and my first piece of advice to you atany rate shall be sound: don't copy me. A good subject for arectorial address would be the mess the Rector himself has made oflife. I merely cast this forth as a suggestion, and leave the workingof it out to my successor. I do not think it has been used yet. 

My own theme is Courage, as you should use it in the great fight thatseems to me to be coming between youth and their betters; by youth, meaning, of course, you, and by your betters us. I want you to takeup this position: That youth have for too long left exclusively inour hands the decisions in national matters that are more vital tothem than to us. Things about the next war, for instance, and whythe last one ever had a beginning. I use the word fight because itmust, I think, begin with a challenge; but the aim is the reverse ofantagonism, it is partnership. I want you to hold that the time hasarrived for youth to demand that partnership, and to demand itcourageously. That to gain courage is what you came to St. Andrewsfor. With some alarums and excursions into college life. That iswhat I propose, but, of course, the issue lies with M'Connachie. 

Your betters had no share in the immediate cause of the war; we knowwhat nation has that blot to wipe out; but for fifty years or so weheeded not the rumblings of the distant drum, I do not mean by lackof military preparations; and when war did come we told youth, whohad to get us out of it, tall tales of what it really is and of theclover beds to which it leads. 

We were not meaning to deceive, most of us were as honourable and asignorant as the youth themselves; but that does not acquit us offailings such as stupidity and jealousy, the two black spots inhuman nature which, more than love of money, are at the root of allevil. If you prefer to leave things as they are we shall probablyfail you again. Do not be too sure that we have learned our lesson, and are not at this very moment doddering down some brimstone path. 

I am far from implying that even worse things than war may not cometo a State. There are circumstances in which nothing can so wellbecome a land, as I think this land proved when the late war didbreak out and there was but one thing to do. There is a form ofanaemia that is more rotting than even an unjust war. The end willindeed have come to our courage and to us when we are afraid in diremischance to refer the final appeal to the arbitrament of arms. I suppose all the lusty of our race, alive and dead, join hands onthat. 

 'And he is dead who will not fight; And who dies fighting has increase. '

But if you must be in the struggle, the more reason you should knowwhy, before it begins, and have a say in the decision whether it isto begin. The youth who went to the war had no such knowledge, nosuch say; I am sure the survivors, of whom there must be a numberhere to-day, want you to be wiser than they were, and are certainlydetermined to be wiser next time themselves. If you are to get thatpartnership, which, once gained, is to be for mutual benefit, it willbe, I should say, by banding yourselves with these men, not defiantlybut firmly, not for selfish ends but for your country's good. In themeantime they have one bulwark; they have a General who is befriendingthem as I think never, after the fighting was over, has a Generalbefriended his men before. Perhaps the seemly thing would be for us, their betters, to elect one of these young survivors of the carnageto be our Rector. He ought now to know a few things about war thatare worth our hearing. If his theme were the Rector's favourite, diligence. I should be afraid of his advising a great many of usto be diligent in sitting still and doing no more harm. 

Of course he would put it more suavely than that, though it is not, I think, by gentleness that you will get your rights; we are doggedones at sticking to what we have got, and so will you be at our age. But avoid calling us ugly names; we may be stubborn and we may beblunderers, but we love you more than aught else in the world, andonce you have won your partnership we shall all be welcoming you. I urge you not to use ugly names about anyone. In the war it wasnot the fighting men who were distinguished for abuse; as has beenwell said, 'Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant. ' Never ascribeto an opponent motives meaner than your own. There may be studentshere to-day who have decided this session to go in for immortality, and would like to know of an easy way of accomplishing it. That isa way, but not so easy as you think. Go through life without everascribing to your opponents motives meaner than your own. Nothingso lowers the moral currency; give it up, and be great. 

Another sure way to fame is to know what you mean. It is a solemnthought that almost no one--if he is truly eminent--knows what hemeans. Look at the great ones of the earth, the politicians. Wedo not discuss what they say, but what they may have meant when theysaid it. In 1922 we are all wondering, and so are they, what theymeant in 1914 and afterwards. They are publishing books trying tofind out; the men of action as well as the men of words. There areexceptions. It is not that our statesmen are 'sugared mouths withminds therefrae'; many of them are the best men we have got, uprightand anxious, nothing cheaper than to miscall them. The explanationseems just to be that it is so difficult to know what you mean, especially when you have become a swell. No longer apparently canyou deal in 'russet yeas and honest kersey noes'; gone for ever issimplicity, which is as beautiful as the divine plain face of Lamb'sMiss Kelly. Doubts breed suspicions, a dangerous air. Withoutsuspicion there might have been no war. When you are called toDowning Street to discuss what you want of your betters with thePrime Minister he won't be suspicious, not as far as you can see;but remember the atmosphere of generations you are in, and when hepasses you the toast-rack say to yourselves, if you would be in themode, 'Now, I wonder what he means by that. '

Even without striking out in the way I suggest, you are alreadydisturbing your betters considerably. I sometimes talk this overwith M'Connachie, with whom, as you may guess, circumstances compelme to pass a good deal of my time. In our talks we agree that we, your betters, constantly find you forgetting that we are your betters. Your answer is that the war and other happenings have shown you thatage is not necessarily another name for sapience; that our avoidanceof frankness in life and in the arts is often, but not so often asyou think, a cowardly way of shirking unpalatable truths, and thatyou have taken us off our pedestals because we look more natural onthe ground. You who are at the rash age even accuse your elders, sometimes not without justification, of being more rash thanyourselves. 'If Youth but only knew, ' we used to teach you to sing;but now, just because Youth has been to the war, it wants to changethe next line into 'If Age had only to do. '

In so far as this attitude of yours is merely passive, sullen, negative, as it mainly is, despairing of our capacity andanticipating a future of gloom, it is no game for man or woman. It is certainly the opposite of that for which I plead. Do notstand aloof, despising, disbelieving, but come in and help--insiston coming in and helping. After all, we have shown a good dealof courage; and your part is to add a greater courage to it. There are glorious years lying ahead of you if you choose to makethem glorious. God's in His Heaven still. So forward, bravehearts. To what adventures I cannot tell, but I know that yourGod is watching to see whether you are adventurous. I know that thegreat partnership is only a first step, but I do not know what areto be the next and the next. The partnership is but a tool; whatare you to do with it? Very little, I warn you, if you are merelythinking of yourselves; much if what is at the marrow of yourthoughts is a future that even you can scarcely hope to see. 

Learn as a beginning how world-shaking situations arise and how theymay be countered. Doubt all your betters who would deny you thatright of partnership. Begin by doubting all such in high places--except, of course, your professors. But doubt all other professors--yet not conceitedly, as some do, with their noses in the air; avoidall such physical risks. If it necessitates your pushing some of usout of our places, still push; you will find it needs some shoving. But the things courage can do! The things that even incompetencecan do if it works with singleness of purpose. The war has done atleast one big thing: it has taken spring out of the year. And, thisaccomplished, our leading people are amazed to find that the otherseasons are not conducting themselves as usual. The spring of theyear lies buried in the fields of France and elsewhere. By the timethe next eruption comes it may be you who are responsible for it andyour sons who are in the lava. All, perhaps, because this year youlet things slide. 

We are a nice and kindly people, but it is already evident that weare stealing back into the old grooves, seeking cushions for our oldbones, rather than attempting to build up a fairer future. That iswhat we mean when we say that the country is settling down. Makehaste, or you will become like us, with only the thing we proudlycall experience to add to your stock, a poor exchange for thegenerous feelings that time will take away. We have no intentionof giving you your share. Look around and see how much share Youthhas now that the war is over. You got a handsome share while itlasted. 

I expect we shall beat you; unless your fortitude be doubly girdedby a desire to send a message of cheer to your brothers who fell, the only message, I believe, for which they crave; they are notworrying about their Aunt Jane. They want to know if you havelearned wisely from what befell them; if you have, they will bebraced in the feeling that they did not die in vain. Some of themthink they did. They will not take our word for it that they did not. You are their living image; they know you could not lie to them, butthey distrust our flattery and our cunning faces. To us they havepassed away; but are you who stepped into their heritage onlyyesterday, whose books are scarcely cold to their hands, you whostill hear their cries being blown across the links--are youalready relegating them to the shades? The gaps they have leftin this University are among the most honourable of her wounds. But we are not here to acclaim them. Where they are now, hero is, I think, a very little word. They call to you to find out in timethe truth about this great game, which your elders play for stakesand Youth plays for its life. 

I do not know whether you are grown a little tired of that word hero, but I am sure the heroes are. That is the subject of one of ourunfinished plays; M'Connachie is the one who writes the plays. If any one of you here proposes to be a playwright you can take thisfor your own and finish it. The scene is a school, schoolmasterspresent, but if you like you could make it a university, professorspresent. They are discussing an illuminated scroll about a studentfallen in the war, which they have kindly presented to his parents;and unexpectedly the parents enter. They are an old pair, backbent, they have been stalwarts in their day but have now gone small;they are poor, but not so poor that they could not send their boyto college. They are in black, not such a rusty black either, and you may be sure she is the one who knows what to do with his hat. Their faces are gnarled, I suppose--but I do not need to describethat pair to Scottish students. They have come to thank theSenatus for their lovely scroll and to ask them to tear it up. At first they had been enamoured to read of what a scholar theirson was, how noble and adored by all. But soon a fog settledover them, for this grand person was not the boy they knew. He had many a fault well known to them; he was not always sonoble; as a scholar he did no more than scrape through; and hesometimes made his father rage and his mother grieve. They hadliked to talk such memories as these together, and smile over them, as if they were bits of him he had left lying about the house. So thank you kindly, and would you please give them back their boyby tearing up the scroll? I see nothing else for our dramatist to do. I think he should ask an alumna of St. Andrews to play the old lady(indicating Miss Ellen Terry). The loveliest of all young actresses, the dearest of all old ones; it seems only yesterday that all the menof imagination proposed to their beloveds in some such frenziedwords as these, 'As I can't get Miss Terry, may I have you?'

This play might become historical as the opening of your propagandain the proposed campaign. How to make a practical advance?The League of Nations is a very fine thing, but it cannot save you, because it will be run by us. Beware your betters bringing presents. What is wanted is something run by yourselves. You have more incommon with the Youth of other lands than Youth and Age can everhave with each other; even the hostile countries sent out many ason very like ours, from the same sort of homes, the same sort ofuniversities, who had as little to do as our youth had with theorigin of the great adventure. Can we doubt that many of theseon both sides who have gone over and were once opponents are nowfriends? You ought to have a League of Youth of all countriesas your beginning, ready to say to all Governments, 'We will fighteach other but only when we are sure of the necessity. ' Are youequal to your job, you young men? If not, I call upon thered-gowned women to lead the way. I sound to myself as if I wereadvocating a rebellion, though I am really asking for a largerfriendship. Perhaps I may be arrested on leaving the hall. In sucha cause I should think that I had at last proved myself worthy to beyour Rector. 

You will have to work harder than ever, but possibly not so muchat the same things; more at modern languages certainly if you areto discuss that League of Youth with the students of other nationswhen they come over to St. Andrews for the Conference. I am far fromtaking a side against the classics. I should as soon argue againstyour having tops to your heads; that way lie the best tops. Science, too, has at last come to its own in St. Andrews. It isthe surest means of teaching you how to know what you mean whenyou say. So you will have to work harder. Isaak Walton quotes thesaying that doubtless the Almighty could have created a finer fruitthan the strawberry, but that doubtless also He never did. Doubtlessalso He could have provided us with better fun than hard work, butI don't know what it is. To be born poor is probably the next bestthing. The greatest glory that has ever come to me was to beswallowed up in London, not knowing a soul, with no means ofsubsistence, and the fun of working till the stars went out. To have known any one would have spoilt it. I did not even quiteknow the language. I rang for my boots, and they thought I saida glass of water, so I drank the water and worked on. There wasno food in the cupboard, so I did not need to waste time in eating. The pangs and agonies when no proof came. How courteously tolerantwas I of the postman without a proof for us; how M'Connachie, on the other hand, wanted to punch his head. The magic days whenour article appeared in an evening paper. The promptitude withwhich I counted the lines to see how much we should get for it. Then M'Connachie's superb air of dropping it into the gutter. Oh, to be a free lance of journalism again--that darling jade!Those were days. Too good to last. Let us be grave. Here comesa Rector. 

But now, on reflection, a dreadful sinking assails me, that this wasnot really work. The artistic callings--you remember how Stevensonthumped them--are merely doing what you are clamorous to be at;it is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else. My so-called labours were just M'Connachie running away with me again. Still, I have sometimes worked; for instance, I feel that I amworking at this moment. And the big guns are in the same plightas the little ones. Carlyle, the king of all rectors, has alwaysbeen accepted as the arch-apostle of toil, and has registered hismany woes. But it will not do. Despite sickness, poortith, wantand all, he was grinding all his life at the one job he revelled in. An extraordinarily happy man, though there is no direct proof thathe thought so. 

There must be many men in other callings besides the arts laudedas hard workers who are merely out for enjoyment. Our Chancellor?(indicating Lord Haig). If our Chancellor has always a passionto be a soldier, we must reconsider him as a worker. Even ourPrincipal? How about the light that burns in our Principal'sroom after decent people have gone to bed? If we could climb upand look in--I should like to do something of that kind for thelast time--should we find him engaged in honest toil, or guiltilyengrossed in chemistry?

You will all fall into one of those two callings, the joyous or theuncongenial; and one wishes you into the first, though our sympathy, our esteem, must go rather to the less fortunate, the braver oneswho 'turn their necessity to glorious gain' after they have put awaytheir dreams. To the others will go the easy prizes of life, success, which has become a somewhat odious onion nowadays, chieflybecause we so often give the name to the wrong thing. When youreach the evening of your days you will, I think, see--with, I hope, becoming cheerfulness--that we are all failures, at least all thebest of us. The greatest Scotsman that ever lived wrote himselfdown a failure:

 'The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know And keenly felt the friendly glow And softer flame. But thoughtless follies laid him low, And stained his name. '

Perhaps the saddest lines in poetry, written by a man who could makethings new for the gods themselves. 

If you want to avoid being like Burns there are several possible ways. Thus you might copy us, as we shine forth in our published memoirs, practically without a flaw. No one so obscure nowadays but that hecan have a book about him. Happy the land that can produce suchsubjects for the pen. 

But do not put your photograph at all ages into your autobiography. That may bring you to the ground. 'My Life; and what I have donewith it'; that is the sort of title, but it is the photographs thatgive away what you have done with it. Grim things, those portraits;if you could read the language of them you would often find itunnecessary to read the book. The face itself, of course, is still more tell-tale, for it is the record of all one's pastlife. There the man stands in the dock, page by page; we oughtto be able to see each chapter of him melting into the nextlike the figures in the cinematograph. Even the youngest of youhas got through some chapters already. When you go home for thenext vacation someone is sure to say 'John has changed a little;I don't quite see in what way, but he has changed. ' You rememberthey said that last vacation. Perhaps it means that you look lesslike your father. Think that out. I could say some nice thingsof your betters if I chose. 

In youth you tend to look rather frequently into a mirror, not atall necessarily from vanity. You say to yourself, 'What aninteresting face; I wonder what he is to be up to?' Your eldersdo not look into the mirror so often. We know what he has beenup to. As yet there is unfortunately no science of reading otherpeople's faces; I think a chair for this should be foundedin St. Andrews. 

The new professor will need to be a sublime philosopher, and forobvious reasons he ought to wear spectacles before his senior class. It will be a gloriously optimistic chair, for he can tell hisstudents the glowing truth, that what their faces are to be likepresently depends mainly on themselves. Mainly, not altogether--

 'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. '

I found the other day an old letter from Henley that told me of thecircumstances in which he wrote that poem. 'I was a patient, 'he writes, 'in the old infirmary of Edinburgh. I had heard vaguelyof Lister, and went there as a sort of forlorn hope on the chance ofsaving my foot. The great surgeon received me, as he did and doeseverybody, with the greatest kindness, and for twenty months I layin one or other ward of the old place under his care. It was adesperate business, but he saved my foot, and here I am. ' There hewas, ladies and gentlemen, and what he was doing during that'desperate business' was singing that he was master of his fate. 

If you want an example of courage try Henley. Or Stevenson. I could tell you some stories abut these two, but they would notbe dull enough for a rectorial address. For courage, again, take Meredith, whose laugh was 'as broad as a thousand beeves atpasture. ' Take, as I think, the greatest figure literature hasstill left us, to be added to-day to the roll of St. Andrews'alumni, though it must be in absence. The pomp and circumstanceof war will pass, and all others now alive may fade from the scene, but I think the quiet figure of Hardy will live on. 

I seem to be taking all my examples from the calling I was latelypretending to despise. I should like to read you some passages of aletter from a man of another calling, which I think will hearten you. I have the little filmy sheets here. I thought you might like to seethe actual letter; it has been a long journey; it has been to theSouth Pole. It is a letter to me from Captain Scott of theAntarctic, and was written in the tent you know of, where it wasfound long afterwards with his body and those of some other verygallant gentlemen, his comrades. The writing is in pencil, stillquite clear, though toward the end some of the words trail awayas into the great silence that was waiting for them. It begins:

 'We are pegging out in a very comfortless spot. Hoping this letter may be found and sent to you, I write you a word of farewell. I want you to think well of me and my end. ' (After aome private instructions too intimate to read, he goes on): 'Goodbye--I am not at all afraid of the end, but sad to miss many a simple pleasure which I had planned for the future in our long marches. . . . We are in a desperate state--feet frozen, etc. , no fuel, and a long way from food, but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and our cheery conversation. . . . Later--(it is here that the words become difficult)--We are very near the end. . . . We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this, but we have decided to die naturally without. '

I think it may uplift you all to stand for a moment by that tent andlisten, as he says, to their songs and cheery conversation. When Ithink of Scott I remember the strange Alpine story of the youth whofell down a glacier and was lost, and of how a scientific companion, one of several who accompanied him, all young, computed that thebody would again appear at a certain date and place many yearsafterwards. When that time came round some of the survivors returnedto the glacier to see if the prediction would be fulfilled; all oldmen now; and the body reappeared as young as on the day he left them. So Scott and his comrades emerge out of the white immensities alwaysyoung. 

How comely a thing is affliction borne cheerfully, which is notbeyond the reach of the humblest of us. What is beauty? It isthese hard-bitten men singing courage to you from their tent;it is the waves of their island home crooning of their deeds to youwho are to follow them. Sometimes beauty boils over and them spiritsare abroad. Ages may pass as we look or listen, for time isannihilated. There is a very old legend told to me by Nansen theexplorer--I like well to be in the company of explorers--the legendof a monk who had wandered into the fields and a lark began to sing. He had never heard a lark before, and he stood there entranced untilthe bird and its song had become part of the heavens. Then he wentback to the monastery and found there a doorkeeper whom he did notknow and who did not know him. Other monks came, and they were allstrangers to him. He told them he was Father Anselm, but that wasno help. Finally they looked through the books of the monastery, and these revealed that there had been a Father Anselm there ahundred or more years before. Time had been blotted out whilehe listened to the lark. 

That, I suppose, was a case of beauty boiling over, or a soul boilingover; perhaps the same thing. Then spirits walk. 

They must sometimes walk St. Andrews. I do not mean the ghostsof queens or prelates, but one that keeps step, as soft as snow, with some poor student. He sometimes catches sight of it. That is why his fellows can never quite touch him, their bestbeloved; he half knows something of which they know nothing--thesecret that is hidden in the face of the Monna Lisa. As I see him, life is so beautiful to him that its proportions are monstrous. Perhaps his childhood may have been overfull of gladness;they don't like that. If the seekers were kind he is the one forwhom the flags of his college would fly one day. But the seekerI am thinking of is unfriendly, and so our student is 'the ladthat will never be told. ' He often gaily forgets, and thinkshe has slain his foe by daring him, like him who, dreading water, was always the first to leap into it. One can see him serene, astride a Scotch cliff, singing to the sun the farewell thanksof a boy:

 'Throned on a cliff serene Man saw the sun hold a red torch above the farthest seas, and the fierce island pinnacles put on in his defence their sombre panoplies; Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees, till all the beauty of the scene seemed one, led by the secret whispers of the breeze. 

 'The sun's torch suddenly flashed upon his face and died; and he sat content in subject night and dreamed of an old dead foe that had sought and found him; a beast stirred bodly in his resting-place; And the cold came; Man rose to his master-height, shivered, and turned away; but the mists were round him. '

If there is any of you here so rare that the seekers have taken anill-will to him, as to the boy who wrote those lines, I ask you tobe careful. Henley says in that poem we were speaking of:

 'Under the bludgeonings of Chance My head is bloody but unbowed. '

A fine mouthful, but perhaps 'My head is bloody and bowed' is better. 

Let us get back to that tent with its songs and cheery conversation. Courage. I do not think it is to be got by your becoming solemn-sidesbefore your time. You must have been warned against letting thegolden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only becausewe let them slip. Diligence--ambition; noble words, but only if'touched to fine issues. ' Prizes may be dross, learning lumber, unless they bring you into the arena with increased understanding. Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity--that corpulent cigar; ifyou became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around formore like a diseased goldfish. Look to it that what you are doing isnot merely toddling to a competency. Perhaps that must be your fate, but fight it and then, though you fail, you may still be among theelect of whom we have spoken. Many a brave man has had to come to itat last. But there are the complacent toddlers from the start. Favour them not, ladies, especially now that every one of you carriesa possible marechal's baton under her gown. 'Happy, ' it has been saidby a distinguished man, 'is he who can leave college with anunreproaching conscience and an unsullied heart. ' I don't know; hesounds to me like a sloppy, watery sort of fellow; happy, perhaps, butif there be red blood in him impossible. Be not disheartened byideals of perfection which can be achieved only by those who run away. Nature, that 'thrifty goddess, ' never gave you 'the smallest scrupleof her excellence' for that. Whatever bludgeonings may be gatheringfor you, I think one feels more poignantly at your age than ever againin life. You have not our December roses to help you; but you haveJune coming, whose roses do not wonder, as do ours even while theygive us their fragrance--wondering most when they give us most--thatwe should linger on an empty scene. It may indeed be monstrous butpossibly courageous. 

Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes. What says ourglorious Johnson of courage: 'Unless a man has that virtue he hasno security for preserving any other. ' We should thank our Creatorthree times daily for courage instead of for our bread, which, if we work, is surely the one thing we have a right to claim of Him. This courage is a proof of our immortality, greater even thangardens 'when the eve is cool. ' Pray for it. 'Who rises fromprayer a better man, his prayer is answered. ' Be not merelycourageous, but light-hearted and gay. There is an officerwho was the first of our Army to land at Gallipoli. He wasdropped overboard to light decoys on the shore, so as to deceivethe Turks as to where the landing was to be. He pushed a raftcontaining these in front of him. It was a frosty night, and he was naked and painted black. Firing from the ships wasgoing on all around. It was a two-hours' swim in pitch darkness. He did it, crawled through the scrub to listen to the talk of theenemy, who were so near that he could have shaken hands with them, lit his decoys and swam back. He seems to look on this as a gayaffair. He is a V. C. Now, and you would not think to look at himthat he could ever have presented such a disreputable appearance. Would you? (indicating Colonel Freyberg). 

Those men of whom I have been speaking as the kind to fill the fifecould all be light-hearted on occasion. I remember Scott byHighland streams trying to rouse me by maintaining that haggisis boiled bagpipes; Henley in dispute as to whether, say, Turgenieffor Tolstoi could hang the other on his watch-chain; he sometimesclenched the argument by casting his crutch at you; Stevensonresponded in the same gay spirit by giving that crutch toJohn Silver; you remember with what adequate results. You mustcultivate this light-heartedness if you are to hang yourbetters on your watch-chains. Dr. Johnson--let us have him again--does not seem to have discovered in his travels that the Scotsare a light-hearted nation. Boswell took him to task for sayingthat the death of Garrick had eclipsed the gaiety of nations. 'Well, sir, ' Johnson said, 'there may be occasions when it ispermissible to, ' etc. But Boswell would not let go. 'I cannotsee, sir, how it could in any case have eclipsed the gaiety ofnations, as England was the only nation before whom he had everplayed. ' Johnson was really stymied, but you would never haveknown it. 'Well, sir, ' he said, holing out, 'I understandthat Garrick once played in Scotland, and if Scotland has anygaiety to eclipse, which, sir, I deny----'

Prove Johnson wrong for once at the Students' Union and in yourother societies. I much regret that there was no Students' Unionat Edinburgh in my time. I hope you are fairly noisy and thatmembers are sometimes let out. Do you keep to the old topics?King Charles's head; and Bacon wrote Shakespeare, or if he didnot he missed the opportunity of his life. Don't forget to speakscornfully of the Victorian age; there will be time for meeknesswhen you try to better it. Very soon you will be Victorian or thatsort of thing yourselves; next session probably, when the freshmencome up. Afterwards, if you go in for my sort of calling, don'tbegin by thinking you are the last word in art; quite possibly youare not; steady yourself by remembering that there were great menbefore William K. Smith. Make merry while you may. Yetlight-heartedness is not for ever and a day. At its best it isthe gay companion of innocence; and when innocence goes--as it must go--they soon trip off together, looking for somethingyounger. But courage comes all the way:

 'Fight on, my men, says Sir Andrew Barton, I am hurt, but I am not slaine; I'll lie me down and bleed a-while, And then I'll rise and fight againe. '

Another piece of advice; almost my last. For reasons you may guessI must give this in a low voice. Beware of M'Connachie. When Ilook in a mirror now it is his face I see. I speak with his voice. I once had a voice of my own, but nowadays I hear it from far awayonly, a melancholy, lonely, lost little pipe. I wanted to be anexplorer, but he willed otherwise. You will all have yourM'Connachies luring you off the high road. Unless you areconstantly on the watch, you will find that he has slowly pushedyou out of yourself and taken your place. He has rather donefor me. I think in his youth he must somehow have guessed thefuture and been fleggit by it, flichtered from the nest like abird, and so our eggs were left, cold. He has clung to me, lessfrom mischief than for companionship; I half like him and his pennywhistle; with all his faults he is as Scotch as peat; he whisperedto me just now that you elected him, not me, as your Rector. 

A final passing thought. Were an old student given an hour inwhich to revisit the St. Andrews of his day, would he spend morethan half of it at lectures? He is more likely to be heardclattering up bare stairs in search of old companions. But if youcould choose your hour from all the five hundred years of this seatof learning, wandering at your will from one age to another, howwould you spend it? A fascinating theme; so many notable shadesat once astir that St. Leonard's and St. Mary's grow murky with them. Hamilton, Melville, Sharpe, Chalmers, down to Herkless, thatdistinguished Principal, ripe scholar and warm friend, the loss of whom I deeply deplore with you. I think if that hourwere mine, and though at St. Andrews he was but a passer-by, I would give a handsome part of it to a walk with Doctor Johnson. I should like to have the time of day passed to me in twelvelanguages by the Admirable Crichton. A wave of the hand toAndrew Lang; and then for the archery butts with the gay Montrose, all a-ruffled and ringed, and in the gallant St. Andrews studentmanner, continued as I understand to this present day, scatteringlargess as he rides along, 'But where is now the courtly troupe That once went riding by? I miss the curls of Canteloupe, The laugh of Lady Di. '

We have still left time for a visit to a house in South Street, hard by St. Leonard's. I do not mean the house you mean. I ama Knox man. But little will that avail, for M'Connachie is aQueen Mary man. So, after all, it is at her door we chap, a lastfutile effort to bring that woman to heel. One more house of call, a student's room, also in South Street. I have chosen my student, you see, and I have chosen well; him that sang--

 'Life has not since been wholly vain, And now I bear Of wisdom plucked from joy and pain Some slender share. 

 'But howsoever rich the store, I'd lay it down To feel upon my back once more The old red gown. '

Well, we have at last come to an end. Some of you may rememberwhen I began this address; we are all older now. I thank you foryour patience. This is my first and last public appearance, and I never could or would have made it except to a gatheringof Scottish students. If I have concealed my emotions in addressingyou it is only the thrawn national way that deceives everybodyexcept Scotsmen. I have not been as dull as I could have wishedto be; but looking at your glowing faces cheerfulness and hope wouldkeep breaking through. Despite the imperfections of your betters weleave you a great inheritance, for which others will one day callyou to account. You come of a race of men the very wind of whosename has swept to the ultimate seas. Remember--

 'Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves. . . . '

Mighty are the Universities of Scotland, and they will prevail. But even in your highest exultations never forget that they arenot four, but five. The greatest of them is the poor, proudhomes you come out of, which said so long ago: 'There shall beeducation in this land. ' She, not St. Andrews, is the oldestUniversity in Scotland, and all the others are her whelps. 

In bidding you good-bye, my last words must be of the lovelyvirtue. Courage, my children and 'greet the unseen with a cheer. ''Fight on, my men, ' said Sir Andrew Barton. Fight on--you--for the old red gown till the whistle blows.