Aside from the rudimentary training, it ought to take at least ten years to make a good doctor, or a good lawyer, or a good electrician, or a good preacher. Four of these years ought to be spent in college; and four in the professional school; and the other two ought to be spent in picking up a practical or working knowledge of the calling—whatever it may be. The young doctor obtains this practical knowledge in hospitals and in practice among the poor. The electrician obtains it by entering some large electrical industry or manufactory, in which a thoroughly practical knowledge of mechanical engineering and electricity can be secured. It is true that some men have become distinguished in these callings without this long preparation of which I have spoken; yet it is, also, true that they would have been better off—they would have been more likely to have become eminent—if they had taken the longer course. College is a little world which every one, other things being equal, ought to enter and pass through before launching in the great world.
Boys and girls, I wonder how many of you have heard of Samuel C. Armstrong—General Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute in Virginia? General Armstrong was one of the best men who ever lived, and he was the friend of all mankind. His special services were rendered in behalf of Indians and Negroes—the weaker races. You ought to go to Hampton Institute sometimes and see that place, and go over to the little cemetery in one corner of the grounds and stand uncovered by the side of General Armstrong’s grave. He died in 1892.
You ought to get the story of his life and read it. It will bear to you a thrilling message; for to read that book is to enter the presence of a man of magnificent courage and indomitable faith.
A general at twenty-six, with a brilliant war record behind him, the quality of his courage had been already proved; but the future was to test it far more severely. The responsibility for the experiment at Hampton was a terrible one, presenting problems which no nation had been called upon to solve before. He had to face isolation, ignorance, indifference, misrepresentation. At the best, after he had conquered prejudice and won friends for the work, he had to spend half his time begging for money, for he had to raise by personal efforts from fifty thousand to eighty thousand dollars annually for the current expenses. Yet in all that time and under all his burdens no one ever saw him discouraged. He used to explain his position by a story which he called his “rule of conduct.”