And it is a great honour to do some deed or fulfill some duty, so that a college or a nation gives you some distinguished degree which allows you to put letters after your name.
But it is all right to be proud of honours, if a fellow really earns them by hard work or genuine service. The only kind to be shunned are the kind you buy with money or get through some second-hand institution without any standard of toil.
Yet, after all is said and done, the great majority of you will perhaps never have a college degree, and will never be called over to meet the king and kneel before him, dressed up in gorgeous court clothes, while he strikes your shoulder with a sword and says, "Rise up, Sir Knight." You may never be a big lawyer and write K.C. after your signature, to show you can plead in the king's name; or K.C.M.G., to show you are one of the select knights of the royal castle; but I want to suggest you can still wear a title, and use the letters that stand for things worth while.
"Say, Billy, would you not feel big if the day came when your friends called you Sir William?" Who knows but what they may! The big men were schoolboys with some one else, and you may be one of the coming big men.
You remember when Tom Brown went to Oxford, he used to walk around and read the names of men like Raleigh and Wycliffe, and feel two inches taller. He said, "Perhaps I may be going to make dear friends with some fellow who will change the history of England. Why shall not I? There must have been some freshmen once who were chums of Wycliffe and Raleigh!"
Now, my point is that even if you do not, you need not fail.
Some day when you read, or now when you are reading Tennyson, you will find a poem called "Idylls of the King," where he speaks of knights who are "wearing the white flower of a blameless life," and who "live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the king——"
If you are that, then I have the power to confer on you titles, and although you may not put the letters after your name, you can if you care to—William Blank, K.C.
"K" stands for kindness, and you know,
"There's nothing so kingly as kindness;
And nothing so royal as truth;"