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r COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS I By JUDGE W. C. BENE! V ' x f I [' DELIVERED AT COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES OF ABBEVILLE ? HIGH SCHOOL.?A SCHOLARLY ADDRESS BY A SCHOLAR? . LY MAN, ONE THAT SHOULD BE READ BY EVERYBODY.?PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF t FRIENDS IN ABBEVILLE AND ELSEWHERE \ I ' 41 aoam/??C/V? n-f A KVlP. The commencement address at xne commencement caciuovs el- \ r" ville High School this year was made by Judge Benet. It was really a literary address, the kind that should be made on such occasions. It had noth? , ing to do with the piyce of cotton,nor did the speaker choose to settle worldproblems in what he had to say. The address, we say, was a literary adfiress, a scholarly address, delivered by the most scholarly man we have L known. The readers of The Press and Banner, we feel sure, will bbe glad IT to have it in order that they read it now, and put it aside for future reading. Nothing better could be put aside for the boy or girl, to be thought of in the years coming on. The following is the address: h ? 1?? - -1 '?- - n-t cfn/ionta nn their Commence tie wno IS cnosen to auui CJ?a O VVUJ vx UVMV*V?.VW ment Day, while he cannot fail to be sensible of the honour thus conferred, would greatly nr'stake if he did not feel the responsibility devolved upon him at. the same time. The honour is one which should neither be hastily bestowed nor lightly accepted. But when he accepts, the speaker should do ft his utmost endeavor to have something to say which he thinks is worth .oirino* onH wivVli hones that his audience will think is worth hearing fm and remembering. Should I fail to interest you and give you food for , thought?food to be desired to make one wise?be assui'ed the failure will n0t7.be due to lack of honest endeavor. % Free to choose my own subject, but moved by the'considerations I have just stated, I determined to address you on the THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE EDUCATED This subject invites" us to consider the duties and responsibilities of educated men and women?graduates of high-school, college, and univei. Sity. But in 'this Southern State, and in this historic Southern town, and before thi9 audience of Southerners, I feel that I am justified in considering more especially the weighty.and serious obligations which rest upon the shoulders of the educated men and women of the South, the debt they owe to their country and the duties they ^iould strive to fulfil. ' * T ?~v"11 mn.irtV okrmt +V10 Snn+.h arid things , 11 in wnai I Will say yuu snail ncoi uiuvii ouv?? p. - - peculiarly Southern, my justification is that I am a Southerner of my own free will and accord,?for I was not born in the South. Far be it from me, however, to inculcate sectional feeling; to encourage a narrowing provincialism, or to stir up any but the friendliest sentiments between the Southern States and the Northern and other divisions of fhis great Repub lis. A true friend of the North as well as a true friend of the South, still i: ' I cannot help loving the South ^ore than the North, for here is my home, and here are the graves of my dear dead. And no doubt the Northemei loves the, North rather than the South for similar reasons. & is Consider, then, with me some of the more weighty and pressing obliiT -J +v,Q Cnnftiom S+atoc?snmp of the debt: ^riOIlS 01 I-Iie cuucaicu tiaooca vi K/wi?vi?v*t* ? v and duties they owe to their country and their State. The first I would poiiit to is their obligation to be the friends, guardians and preservers oi thfe iiberal and classical cuurriculum, including Greek If possible, but hold ing Latin as ndispensable. The Old Curriculum X would earnestly urge upon you graduates the duty of doing all ir your power to uphold the old course of study, to drive from Southerr < seats of learning the ulititarian doctrine which advocates the substitution" of the mpdern for the dead languages, and exact knowledge and technica science for the studies included in the classical course. Aj - * With this doctrine of utility,?which simply looks to money-making? we have no controversy so long as it concerns itself with the physical want! f of man's lif6; but when it knocks at the doors of our schools and college: and speaks of time and money being wasted on the dead languages and olc philosophies, it becomes the very doctrine of Judas Iscariot when he ig. i?orantly asked, "To what purpose is this waste?" Education is n? Intended primarily to help us to -get on" in the world, to make money. Education cons;sts not in cramming the mind full of useful facts and information; it is the drawing out and training and strengthening the powers of the mind. There is something higher and nobler in life than making a fortune. And he who lives his life aright will best be able to answer the question which comes solemnly sounding down the ages in the words of Him who spake as never man spake, "Is not the ' life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" It has been well said by a scholarly American, Richard Grant White, that Education is not the getting of knowledge, but of discipline, development; and it is not for the knowledge we obtain at school or college that ' we pass our early years in study. The mere acquaintance with facts that We then painfully acquire, we could make in our maturer years, in a tenth part of the time that we give to our education. To the demand why W should study Latin and Greek which are dead languages, in preference to French and German which are now spoken and which will be of some practical?that means money-getting?use to us, the answer is that the value "loseiooi tftninioc no mAonc <vf education lies in the verv fact that WA Vi?OK>IVMi VV1?&MV? MW ...vw..w v. J. __r they are deed; and that their structure is so unlike that of the Englist language, that to dismember their sentences and extract from them theii meaning is such an exercise of perception, judgment, and memory, sucti a training in thought and in the use of our own language, as can be found in no other study or mental exercise. F do notde cry the study of the modern languages. No; I urge you to learn French or German, or both. You will find it much easier worl than learning Greek or Latin, for in all modern languages the sequence of thought is very similar. But while as a means of intellectual training - and service they have not the educating power of the dead languages, thej open up for you new and inviting fields of literature. Continue Studies. Another obligation, as I conceive it, which rests on men and women of good education, is that they should continue their work as students aftei leaving school or college or university;-that they should be lovers of books and seekers after knowledge as long as life lasts. In vain have you come ;to your. High School, in vain have you toiled for years within the famil i?r rl?RR rooms: in vain have vou "scorned delights and lived laborious * ' ' \ * days" and burnt the midnight oil in your solitary chambers, if when yov leave these well-known scenes you turn your back also upon your book; and your studies. Should you go hence to college or university, it will be creditable to you to have gained your degree; the parchment of your diploma should be more precious in your sight than the title deeds of ar estate; but unworthy of your alma mater you should surely be if youi Strongest claim to scholarship is set forth in that diploma. The traditions of the South, the tendencies and tastes of Southern life And society, even from Colonial days, have always been on the side of lib ?ral culture. Revere those traditions; strive to strengthen those tenden ties; cultivate that taste; so that in the future as in days gone by, classic ' . x r 5i?&isrSi.. " . - Jcal culture, liberal education, the old curriculum, may find in these South. ) ern States a congenial abiding place. i Our Mother Tongue. Let us now consider a very important pressing obligation, which our ' educated men and women, should do their utmost to fulfil, as a debt and ' duty they owe to their country and the ancient race they belong to, the ! obligation, I mean, to preserve in its purity, simplicity and beauty our ' English language^ our dear mother-tongue, the most precious inheritance 1 . we derive from our ancestors. Language, said Dr. Johnson, is the pedigree ' of nations. It is the great,, sometimes the only connecting link between ' the present and the remotest past. It stretches back far beyond all writ- 1 ten records, a far more ancient monument than any writing it contains. ' Language is the amber in which man's noblest and most precious thoughts 1 have been safely embedded and preserved. Great cities have perished, ' k:nedoms have sunk into oblivion, and mighty empires have suffered ship- 1 I wreck, while their language, laden with its priceless freight, has eaiely crossed the gulfs of time. Language is the armory of the human mind, 1 iand contains the trophies of it? past victories and the weapons of its fu- ! | ture conquests. It is mightier in every way than the best of the .works 1 | that may have been composed in it. The Iliad of Homer is great, yet ' not so great in strength or power or ^eauty as the Greek language. Mil- 1 ton's Paradise Lo?t is a noble possession for a people to have inherited, 1 1 jbut our English tongue is a nobler heritage still. _ > Of all languages, ancient or modern, the English language, in its ' jstructure and its vocabulary, is the simplest and most logical. In its struc. j ture it is not hampered and burdened by hard and fast rules of grammar. ; ' 11t has been called?and justly called?a "grammarless tongue." True, the I Yankee Quaker, Lindley Muurray, tried to force it into a strait jacket of I fV.o rntoc nf frvammar that e-overn the Latin and Greek lnguages, with all ! ! their complicated and perplexing machinery of. moods and tenses of verbs, '! cases of nouns and pronouns, and their genders, numbers and persons, 1! yith prepositions and active verbs governing nouns and pronouns in the obj active case; Oh, those rules of'grammar! How they have vexed the souls 1 i of generations in our schoolrooms. It is absurd and ridiculous to subject ! I the simple English language to the tyranny of the Latin o^ Greek grami mar. These dead languages have hundreds of inflections and endings to (indicate moods or tenses, gender, number and person; our English language has only about half a dozen. For example, in what is called the Conjugation of verbs, regular and irregular, even in French?which is a jdaughter of Latin?there are 2J65 different endings; in Latin there are many more than that; and in the Greek language there must be in all ten !to fifteen thousand changes of form in the Greek verbs:?in our English [language there are only four or five. This s'm'plicity is seen also in the vocabulary. In- our English, our Anglo-Saxon speech, the most of our words are words of one syllable, j Many of Shakespeare's finest lines sand most beautiful passages consist en. jtirely, or almost wholly of words of one syllable. Tennyson's In Memoriam ireads almost like an exercise in words of one syllable. The same slmplicj ity and literary beauty we see in our English Bible, and Bunyan's Pilk orrim'c Prntrrpw nnri indeed in all our writers of noetry or prose. i j Is our language in danger of losing that wholesome and homebred 1' quality of simplicity and the use of words of one -or two syllables, simple ! Anglo-Saxon words? I fear that at this time and in this country we are !! drifting in that direction. . j | Phoretic Spelling. I Perhaps the most important duty we owe to our mother tongue is to [ (protect it from the attacks of those misguided people who are ceaseless in i their efforts to change the spelling of the words in our vocabulary. From j the days of Noah Webster down to our own time their mischievous work jhas been going on, and, 1 am sorry to say, witn too mucn success. |j ?We have the fanatical advocates of Phonetic Spelling, who claim that . all words should be spelt according as they are sounded. I can conceive of |no method that would so effectually deface and barbarize our English lan. jguage, no scheme that woukid go so far to empty it of all the hoarded wit, hy'sdom, poetry and history which it contains, as this absurd, unscholarly, and unnatural scheme of the Phonetic Spelling enthusiasts. They forget that i J a wprd has two existences,?as a sponken word lend a written word. A i word ?xisits as truly for the eye as for the ear among a civilized people, i Words: have an ancestry, and a very ancient and noble one in many cases, 1 and they bear on their faces the clear marks of their birth and parentage. Phonetic spelling would ruthlessly deface and remove those marks.. It - would then be impossible to tell whether a word came to us from our An5 glo.Saxon forefathers, or had a Hebrew, Greek or Latin, or Norman> French origin. Our language, instead of being as now fossil poetry and , I fossil h; story, would be degraded to the level of the sound language of the . anthropoid apes. Human speech is something better than the sounds emitted by chimpanzees or gorillas. ' J We admit that it is ne easy matter to learn to spell correctly many . II of our words. But it is well worth the trouble. It would seem, for example, 11 that the ending, ough, should always be sounded in the same way and not differ as it does in rough, though, through, bough. But there is inter- < 1 esting historical reason to account for this. Simplified Spelling. ' It is pleasant to note that of late the Phonetic Spellers have not been j so clamorous as formerly They seem, however, to be making common ' cause with another misguided and unscholarly sSct who are mischievously intermeddling with the spelling of our words, advocating what they call simplified spelling. They are organized as an association, a numerous body ' fired with fanatical zeal to make the spelling lesson easier for the American school children. Nor do they lack in money, for my multi-millionaire 1 'brother Scot Andrew Carnegie, well-meaning but not well-educated, gave 1 I the Simplified Spelling Association $250,000. This enabled them to, em. ploy and send forth throughout the whole country well trained speakers J as the apostles of Simplified Spelling. It is no wtfnder that they convert 'led many by their vigorous propaganda. We see tne enect 01 xne'.r misjChievour, work ii many newspapers and magazines?notably in that week- 1 I ly publication that has millions of readers, "The Literary Digest." j This inter-meddling with correct spelling is'no new thing. It began 1 iin this country more than a hundred years ago; and the sad truth is that ] lit had its origin in the bitter animosity against England which then fired j 1 {the hearts of many Americans. The anti-English feeling, naturally engen. ] k! dered by the War of the Revolution, had almost changed ta friendship < when the war of 1812 revived it and made it more bitter than ever, j ' American women would wear "nothing that came from England. So strong 1 jwas the hatred of the mother "country that Americans angrily regretted | Uhat they had to speak the English language; and some even went so ( I far as to advocate the invention of an American language to displace the j i j hated tongue, which unfortunately was called the English language. ] | It was while that anti-English enmity was at its worst that Noah -j > Webster, taking advantage of it, determined to make a dictionary,?not : s .an English dictionary, but an American dictionary. Its title when first 1 published was "An American Dictionary- of the English Language." He i i had neither the scholarship nor the literary taste required in the maker of j l a dictionary. His derivations showed his ignorance of other languages.. ] > Listen to what was said of that dictionary by a very learned American; < s (Richard Grant White.)?"It was discreditable to scholarship in this coun- i - try that such a dictionary could be imposed on our people." "It was a ] i book to laugh at and be ashamed of.': i It is proper, however, that I should warn you that these caustic criti- ] ciSms do not apply to the book that is still called "Webster's Dictionary." j s That massive volume is neither Webster's nor American. More correctly 1 it should be called "Mahn's" and "German," for tHe booK nas Deen purgea - ? *11 Webster's blundering etmology, and of nearly all of his anti-Eng- i jlish spelling; instead thereof it now consists of the scholarly work of the ( [earned Dr. Mahn of Berlin; and it is as good and trustworthy a work as any other dictionary now before the public. In his "American Dictionary of the English Language" Noah Webster ieliberately changed the spelling of thousands of English words. This he iid not with any desire to simplify the spelling. His purpose was to sub. stitute American spelling for English spelling; to brand English worde arith an American mark, so that books and papers published in this country tvould show that they were "Made in America." It may interest you to learn that Webster spelt "women" "wimmen"?a fine phonetic specimen. At first, his dictionary and the "Blue-back Spelling Book," had great /ogue. But as the years passed and antiiEnglish sentiment grew weaker, the common sense of America and the better taste of her educated classes, iiscarded nearly all of Webster's misspellings. It is greatly to be resetted, however, that a good many of our most familiar words bear the lYioTlrc n-f TVoVvcrKcr Wa a nnmarmic s>laao r\f urnr/lc online in "at" VA TT WVkJWX f II V iM* I ^ U llUIUViVUiJ VlMUs) VX IT ViU^ WitVtAit^ ? " which should end in "our," e. g. honour, colour, favour and the like. Of course you know that "honour" is the Latin honor slightly changed in spelling as it came to the English language through the Norman-French after the Norman Conquest. The letter "u" is the French mark, from honour. Why strike out the historical "u?" The spelling, of every English word should carry with it to the eye of every educated -person the pedigree and history of the language and of the former-races of mankind that used it, to distant ages in the past. The Greek, Latin, Saxon and Norman-* rencn origin 01 our r^ngusn woras s?inas reveaiea in ineir spelling, imparting a romance and beauty to the study and practice of writing and diction that should be sacred and precious to every one of the slightest refinement and taste. Only one of the words ending in "our" did Webster leave uncljjmged in spelling,?the sacred word "Saviour." His reverence for the holy name forbade it. Alas; his followers have not followed his example; we see the sacred word too frequently spelt "Savior," like any other common word. There is another less numerous list of words ending in "logue," which have been robbed of their French pedigree shown in the final "ue," and" they now appear in many books and magazines in barbarous unsihgtly guisfr as "catalog, dialog, synagog" and the like. I admire the good taste of the , lady who said she would not send her daughter to a college that issued a "catalogue" ending in "log." Then we have "centre, spectre, secptre, calibre, and theatre" changed n spelling so as to end in "er" instead of "re." This was one of Webter's most stupid blunders. The proverbial schoolboy knows that ^ the ending "er" means "one who" or "the thing that," as "speaker," one who speaks; "heater" the thing that heats. It was absurd to give us "theatre" etc., ending in "er." Besides, it has caused the vulgar pronunciation? theayter. There are many other Websterian misspellings,. but it would take too long to discuss them. v But you may a^k, what can be done to put an end to Webster's mis-, spell:ngs and to counteract the influence of the Simplified Spelling Association? My answer is that it rests with the educated class and with welleducated teachers to discourage these innovations. I am aware it will be no easy matter to correct, those abuses, to ensure correct spelling, and to improve and elevate the public taste. Sad to say ,the chief obstacle in the way of improvement is the daily and weekly pre??. 'The low-toned news, paper is too much the type of the prevailing literary influence by which the style of speech of our rising generation is moulding. So says Profes * > X * v i? j_ (ai.. sor Whitney. Anotner emment American scnoiar says xirai uie uany pre* is the chief visible corrupter of our speech." Again he says "It is chiefly ta those debauchers of thought and defilers of language?the newspapers? that we owe the verbal abominations that are creeping?nay, rushing into common use." * ? These be strong words, but they express the opinion of two Northern men of recognized scholarship. For my part I would say that the most influential teachers of English in our country today are the newspapers and the magazines. I have mentioned the Literary Digest. It goes into mik lions of American homes, making the eyes of its countless readers familiar with the misspelling oi tne csimpnnea opening scnooi, ana xney unconsciously become imitators. The mischief thus wrought is incalculable. I had a letter from a man of university education in which he spelt the word "through"?thru. I asked him to what language the ugly word belonged, since it was neither Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, German nor English. I supposed it might be one of the 20 or 30 different sounds emitted by the anthropoid apes in the African jungles. He referred me to the If terary Digest.. x It was just like Roosevelt with his impulsive nature, to be an ardent advocate of Simplified Spelling. He issued an order to the Public Printer that hereafter in all public documents the Simplified Spelling must be use<tAt the same time he sent to the Congress a. very long message on the Panama CaCnal in which he used the Simplified Spelling. Congressmen were shocked. They rebelled. They formally protested. Roosevelt then said ihat if Congress would pass a resolution against Simplified Spelling he would rescind his order to the Public Printer. A resolution was unanimously adopted, and the President rescinded the foolish order. Writing to Brander Matthews, who had remonstrated with him for yielding to Congress, he admitted that he was beaten and said that the word THRU?the m-ilv word as to which he thoucrht the sDelliner reformers were wrong?was the main cause of his "discomfiture." He added, however, that he was ^ "mighty glad he had done the thing," and that he would continue to use the simplified spelling in his private correspondence. But he didn't. Hifi published letters show that he soon resumed the old spelling. It is gratifying to know that the leading publishing houses do not adopt the Simplified Spelling, which should rather be called Stupified Spelling. It is pleasant alsq to be able to say that the South Carolina papersr that I see, The State and the Abbeville papers do not favour the bartarous spelling. * Tli*. P ronrti AciJftmV. In this as in other matters "they manage things better in France."", rhere we find the French Academy, that body of the "forty immortals,'* ill men of highest culture and eminent in literature, who exercise authority over bellet lettres and keep constant watch and guard over the French language. It was founded nearly 300 years ago, and still exists, exercising a most beneficent power. In the year 1629 seven or eight persons in Paris, fond of literature, formed themselves into a little club to meet at Vinneoe on/} lit#>rarv matters.?lust as. 40 years ago, UliC a/iUUiCi S KVW^WO HKVi w w w r w _ a literary club was formed in this town of Abbeville. Cardinal Richelieu, the all-powerful minister, heard of the little club. He himself had a noble passion for letters and fine culture. Under his fostering patronage, it be:ame a chartered public body of 40 members. For 300 years that great academy has taken care of the language and literature of France. They have worked for clearness, correctness and propriety in thinking and speak[ng and writing. They have set up proper standards, and have created a force of educated opinion which checks and 5?bukes those who fall below those standards or set them at naught. What is the result? Their diction- ary is the unquestioned authority of spelling, and meaning, and pronounciation. And hey have so beneficently influenced French literature that the French language has been preseryed in its purity,and all other nations * " ' 1 nnccocco^ Kv lonfess tnat irencn prose nas a enarm, a ukuulj, a ytixtv-.w no other. The French Academy is supreme in its power. No freaks of language are attempted in France, no fantastic spelling. Simplified Spelling would there have no support. Nor would the President of the French Republic expose his lack of education by using a mongrel, malformed word as did the President of the United States when he spoke of a state of" " ' ?*--! .V.OIa. l__ I Normalcy I Horr??co referent.?mat ini&Mmp?a ouwiuun?n?rBi?>.; Alas! Here we have no such thing as the French Academy, to act is a centre of force and authority, and as a rallying point for educated opinion. But we do have educated opinion here, although not organized. \