If I were to ask you individually as students to deliver an address upon this platform, or to read an essay, I should not be at all afraid that you would fail. I believe that you would carefully prepare that address or essay. You would look up all the references necessary in order to give you what information you needed, and then you would get up here and speak or read successfully. I feel sure that I would hear something that I should not be ashamed of. The average man and woman does succeed when before the public. But where I fear for your success is when you come to the performance of the small duties—the duties which you think no one else will know about, the things which no one will see you do. It is when you think that no one is going to see you washing dishes, or getting dirt out of crevices, that I am afraid you are going to fail.
I remember that some time ago when I was travelling in a buggy from one New England village to another, after we had gone some miles on our way, the young man who was driving me stopped the horse and got out. I asked him what was the matter, and he said that something was the matter with the harness. I looked with all the eyes I had, and yet I could see nothing at fault. Still the man mended a piece of harness that he said was not as it should be. It had not seemed to me that this fault in the harness had been irritating the horse or hindering him from going so fast as he ought, but after it had been repaired I could see a difference for the better. That, to my mind, was a great lesson. It taught me how the people of New England have educated their consciences so that they cannot allow themselves to let even the smallest thing go undone or be improperly done. It is this trait in the New England character that has come to make the very name itself of that part of the country a synonym for success. Don't we wish that we had a hundred such men as that driver here! If I could put my hand on a thousand such persons as that, we could find employment for all of them as soon as they got their diplomas.
One learns to judge persons by their character in this respect. Not long ago I had an opportunity to go through the jail of this county. As the sheriff showed me through the building I was impressed to see how clean everything was, and I noticed that the man who seemed to be the janitor of the jail, although he too was a prisoner, seemed to take a great deal of pride in showing me the cleanness of the corners and the general good appearance of the place. He seemed to put his whole heart into the keeping of that jail clean.
"Who is that man?" I asked the sheriff, after we had got out of the janitor's hearing.
"He is a prisoner," the sheriff replied, "but I believe he is innocent. I do not believe that a man can be so honest and faithful about his work and be guilty of a crime. When I see how well he does his work here, notwithstanding the fact that he is shut up here in prison, I believe that he is an honest man and deserves his freedom."
In plain words, then, the problem we must work out here is not:—Can you master algebra, or literature? We know you can do that. We know you can master the sciences. The general problem we have to work out here, and work it out with fear and trembling, is:—Can we educate the individual conscience? Can we so educate a group of students that there will be in every one of them a conscience on which we can depend. Can we educate a class of girls here who will not be satisfied when sweeping their rooms to make the middle of the rooms look clean, but leave a trail of dirt in the comers and under the furniture? Will they see to it that everything is properly cleaned and put in its appropriate place? Can we educate a class of young men who will do their duty on the farm as they would do it on this platform? Can we educate your consciences so that you will do certain things, not because it is the rule that they should be done, but because they should be done? These are the problems we must work out here.