and that is all I am going to do. I ignore the presence of the older men. I am with the boys. It takes me back a good many years, I admit, to be with the boys and yet it seems but a short time, and I do not regret that I am not now with you in point of years. I am just as much a boy as any of you, and if you do not believe it, come out and spend the night with me, and get up at five o'clock and go a horseback with me at half past. I do it every morning.

"I hardly know just how to say just what I would like to say to you boys and you young men. I am going to start it by going back to my own early days and to some of the influences which have had their effect, I believe, on me and on my life. One of them trivial, very, and yet marked in its effect, begins with my entrance into business life in Boston almost fifty years ago, when I came from the farm into the city and, talking with a friend, the other day, somewhat older than myself, who saw me for the first time the first week I came to Boston from the farm, he said he believed I was the greenest little cuss he ever saw. I guess he was right.

"Well, some of you know, that there has been in the Legislature the past five or six years, a bill called the Ellis Milk Bill. That had its inception a good many years ago. When I first came to Boston in the winter and began work it was with a pretty small salary. Things were somewhat different in those days to what they are now, and perhaps a boy could do somewhat different than what he would to-day, but I slept in the office on a lounge and obtained my meals in various ways. I went home Saturday nights, and Monday mornings when I came in, I would bring in with me an eight-quart can of milk, put it outside the window on the roof of a shed adjoining, and that furnished me with considerable sustenance for the early part of the week. One of the Monday mornings in those early days there came into the office, associated with the office with which I was engaged, Rev. Edward Everett Hale, then a comparatively young man. He learned that I had this can of milk. He came to me and said, 'George, I want you to give me a glass of milk.' I gave it to him, and more gladly than any of you can imagine. It was not the biblical cup of water, but it was a glass of milk to a man whom I had already revered from my knowledge of him through the press. For the next few weeks and so long as cold weather enabled me to bring in that can of milk, Edward Everett Hale visited the office every Monday morning for that glass of milk, and there began with me an association with a man whom it was a pleasure, and more than a pleasure, for any man to be at all friendly with. He was not only my friend, and as he grew older he became to be more and more my friend, but he was, as every one knows, the friend of every man, no matter what his station in life, no matter what his nationality, Edward Everett Hale was his friend. (Loud applause.) This was soon after he had written 'The Man without a Country,' for which he was of course then noted. You are all acquainted with his saying, 'Look out and not in; look up and not down;

look forward and not back; and lend a hand.' Now, if there is any one thing that had as much influence with me in my business life as anything, it was the contact in those early days with such a man as Dr. Hale and others who were associated with him. I say that because I want to impress on you young men and you boys the value of your associates and environment. I believe nothing else will have more to do with your future than the sort of men and women with whom you associate. It is up to you to choose those associations. In my case it so happened that the association was chosen for me. It was none the less valuable, but boys just keep that in mind,-don't be caught in bad company; reach out for the men who are looking forward, not back and who are always lending a hand. That, I think, as I have before stated, has had as much to do with my life as any other one thing.

"Now I am going to touch upon another personal experience. I do not think it is good taste, I grant that. I wish you older men were not here. I would rather talk to the boys alone. But never mind that. In the early days of my association in Boston, I was connected with a weekly newspaper. In those days the distribution of the newspapers. was different than what it is to-day. The post office did not distribute daily or weekly newspapers at all. They were all delivered by private carrier and, in our case, there were two men with pretty long routes who distributed most of those papers. I think in the second year that I was in Boston, there came word to us on Saturday morning-it was on Saturday the papers were delivered-that one of these carriers was sick, and the question was what would be done with the delivery of the papers. It was a rainy, slushy day, the slush too deep for real comfort, but there seemed to be nothing to do but to see those papers delivered. I took those papers on my own initiative and delivered the route. I went down through the business section, and in so doing I went through the store of one of Nature's noblemen of that day in business whom some of you here have known, Mr. Warren Sawyer, a man who in the days just preceding that had been one of the most active men in the old Mercantile Library Association. You young men would not appreciate that the old Mercantile Library Association, before the Young Men's Christian Association or the Young Men's Christian Union were thought of, was doing very much the same work with the same class of boys and young men that is being done by the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Men's Christian Union and, by jerks, if we may say so, by the Boston City Club, represented by you young men here to-day. Mr. Sawyer was that type of man. I guess it would be hard to place him any better in your eyes than to say he was the George Coleman type of man. My trip that day took me through his store and it so happened that he saw me going through. He called after me and wanted to know what I was thinking of in going in such shape as that in rainy weather, no rubbers, no covering. I said it did not make any difference to me, that I didn't care anything about that. I kept on and delivered those papers.

"It was only a few weeks after that that the business manager of that association went to another position. The question then arose what shall we do for a business manager. Mr. Warren Sawyer, who was the President of the Corporation stepped forward, and said: 'Make George Ellis business manager, and I will stand back of him.' And he did, when I was nineteen years of age.

"Now, I speak of that, not because it was anything to do, for it was not. It was just in the course of business to me, but this man, seeing what I was willing to do, and without a thought of it being anything, this one single thing gave him enough confidence in me, so that he did stand back of me for the next twenty-five years. (Applause.)

"Now, as I said before, it is bad taste to refer to these things in a certain sense and yet, I do not so consider it, for I want you young men to realize that little things will sometimes give you the confidence and the backing that it might otherwise take you years to get. I, from my boyhood, had a definition of the word 'obstacle.' It was, that it was a thing to be overcome. That is what you boys want to understand, that whatever happens go ahead and do it; get the confidence of other men and get it by earning it. Form the habit of doing your best all the time and it will not come hard to you, and you will never realize that you are doing anything but just what you ought to do.

CHOOSING A VOCATION

"Now, the question that comes up with all young men-no, not all-because you young men, many of you, are better placed than were the boys in my day. Your fathers are members of the City Club, and that means that they are better placed in the world financially than were my people in my early days, but most of you have got to choose a vocation. Some of you boys know that you will take up a certain vocation. I knew, as a schoolmate, a young man who, from his earliest boyhood knew what he was going to do. He was going to be a doctor, and there never was any question in his mind. His training from first to last was a doctor, and he became one of the most famous doctors in this State. That is easy, where the boy knows what he wants to do, but most of you do not. Most of you are looking for the thing that may come to your hand to do, and when it comes to that, it does not make so much difference, unless you are especially fitted for some particular thing, but when you have decided what it shall be, then put your heart into it. I know a good many people will say to us, 'Don't think too much of business.' Now, I am going to say to you, young men, that I hope you will do one thing; I hope you will consider well what success in life is going to mean to you. We have been thinking altogether too much in the past that success for a business man meant simply how much money he could make. Now we want to get over that. You have heard to-night, in the two speeches that have gone before-and they were speeches-mine is a talk-but you have had only advice as to taking a hand in public work. You, if

you choose wisely, will I think look forward to a life, not merely of business, not simply to accumulate money, but how much you can do in the world for the world, and for others, and, just to the extent that you do, I believe you will get the greatest pleasure in that form of work and life, giving pleasure to others. Seeing others getting pleasure out of life through your instrumentality will give you some of the greatest pleasure you will get in all your life.

"I am thinking just how I will say again that I came here under protest in a way, that I came here to talk to you boys and I have been more or less embarrassed by the number of men so near my own agenot many as old, I will admit-but near my own age, but I am going to again say to you boys, just look forward, and not back, and I don't mean that-nor did Dr. Hale mean it-in the sense in which some might take it. As most of you know, Dr. Hale was a historian. He looked back in the sense that he took lessons from the past, but he looked forward to his work and his achievements. That is what you boys want to do; look forward and press forward and never forget to lend a hand." (Applause.)

The Toastmaster. "Intensive application and concentration of effort and mind are the fundamentals in the processes of education for life's work, and these fundamentals obtain for men in business or professions, as well as for young men who are still in school, in college, and the last speaker is a leader of men, young men, young men grown old and old men grown young again, and it is my pleasure to introduce the President of Boston University, Dr. Murlin.

PRESIDENT L. H. MURLIN

"Members of the Club, Fathers, and Sons. I am very much like Mr. Coleman. I should not want to go back and be a boy again unless I could be a boy in this day and age in the world and in the city of Boston. If I had my choice of exactly what I would like to be, I think I would choose to be Civic Secretary of the Boston City Club. (Applause.) He is the only man in all of my acquaintances whom I envy. I think I have about the finest job there is in the world, but if ever I do get a little discouraged about my work in life-and we all get a little discouraged about our work I think-I think I would like to fly to that haven of rest, the office of the Civic Secretary.

"I came a stranger to this city some four years ago and, next to the immediate circle of friends with whom I have to deal and who gave me the glad hand, because after they elected me to come, they could not help themselves and they had to stand by me, next to that group of friends, I have found my best friends right here in this City Club. (Applause.) 'I was a stranger and ye took me in.' Here was the place next to my own home and my own office and people with whom I had to work, here was the place I found good fellowship and friends, and I shall be grateful all the rest of my life for the privileges of the Boston City Club.

"The store is an educational opportunity; business is an educa

tional process; the practise of medicine is an educational enterprise; this Boston City Club is one of the greatest educational enterprises in America, and the Chamber of Commerce is an educational enterprise. The college is only one of the great enterprises, and I want you to bear that in mind in the few things I will say. There are those who say that the end and aim of this educational plant is to make life a little bit easier. I have had fathers whose hands were knuckled and gnarled by hard toil say, 'I propose my son to have an education so he will not have such a hard time in life,' and I have known mothers who had to work at the wash tub, say: 'I propose that Mary shall have an education, so she will not have the time I had,'-mistaken father, mistaken mother, and mistaken boy and girl.

"You will never secure an education except by dint of the hardest kind of labor, and you will never be able to pay back to society the duty which you owe to society for giving you that educational opportunity except you give back to society all the rest of your life in hard toil for common welfare. (Applause.) A diploma of graduation from the high school or the college is not a promotion to privilege but a sentence to hard labor all the hours of your life.

"Then, there are those who say that the purpose of this educational process is to prepare us for a particular profession or trade, or calling in life. A father once said to me, 'I wish I knew what my boy was going to do.' I said, 'I hope he will not know until the day of his graduation.' The purpose of this educational process is not to make a lawyer, or a mechanic, or an engineer, or a farmer, or a minister out of your son. It has a much larger purpose than that. I think it is a fine thing. to send out into the world a doctor well equipped and I should be exceedingly proud of an educational institution which turns out good doctors. It is a great thing to make a lawyer. It is a great thing to give to the community a good business man, but I say to you gentlemen, that is not the end and aim of the educational process. It may be a means of education, but it is not the end and aim of education. Now, this theory that we must know early in life, as we go through school and bend all other energies to that end, is, in my judgment, a very serious and a very mistaken theory in life. As a result of that we are sending out into society men whose trade or profession or calling in life completely overpowers them, and you simply know he is a banker, a doctor, or a lawyer, and that is all he is. We do not need any more lawyers of a kind we already have, heaven knows. We do not need any more bankers of a kind we already have, although there are among bankers many good men. We do not need any more preachers of a kind we already have. We do not need any more editors of a kind we already have. We do not need any more railroad builders of a kind we al"eady have, or railroad manipulators for that matter. We do need beter railroad men, and better lawyers, and better doctors, but we are not going to have them until we have something else back of them.

"I plead for an education that makes a man greater than his busi