MUSCATINE COUNTY, IOWA SCHOOL NEWS

     The nineteenth Commencement of the Muscatine High School, was celebrated at the Opera House last evening, before the same brilliant assembly and with the same popular spirit which have marked these exercises on every recurring anniversary. Notwithstanding a temperature which made life a question of endurance, the gallery and floor saw no seat unoccupied, and standing room was at a premium wherever a foot could find a place. Besides the lovely raiments and bright colors of fashion, the room was otherwise relieved and beautified by the multitude of flower-baskets and bouquets which bloomed wherever a friend of a graduate was seen, and the house was full of them.

     After a voluntary from Elshoff's orchestra, the curtain rose and introduced Principal Huff and the sixteen young lady and gentleman graduates to the audience. It was certainly as "presentable" a class in numbers and character as ever distinguished a high school commencement, and the five masters were visible in the crescent who had been induced to pursue the thorough course of the school, added to the compliments which may justly be paid to Principal Huff and his associates.

     Prayer was offered by the chaplain, Rev. H. E. Wing, which was a grateful offering of praise to the infinite patron of schools enfranchisement from ignorance and a solemn invocation for God's blessing to follow the class who began their life's career from that evening. The class retired and:

THE SALUTATORIAN

     DREW MUSSER appeared and delivered the cordial creating of the occasion. Getting to his theme, "Our Western Highway," the young orator drew a picture of the "Father of Waters" coursing through a continent ere the solitude was broken by man's advent. So impressive was his solitary and majestic reign as to force the question, was the door to this vast storehouse to be sealed forever? Then De Soto was sketched gazing upon the impressive scene, followed by the Jesuit Fathers on their lone voyage of discovery. Finally the fires of the American Revolution lighted up the grand area of the country and it's illimitable stream, and the far-seeing statesmanship of the Fathers soon consummated the cession from France of Louisiana and its territory embracing the western shore of the river. Rising in the bosom of the northern forests it finds it's way through the Savannahs, of the South, bearing on it's ocean-like current the commerce of the Garden of the World. In an eloquent peroration the speaker compared it with the castled Rhine and the palisaded Hudson and bestowed upon it the regal humors of "Father of Waters."

FLORENCE HENDERSON

     called upon her audience to consider that "Life without Learning is Death." The world is the school-house of the great, a place of action for all who would be among the "survivor of the fittest." But culture without grace is demoralizing. Neither the understanding nor the human hand can accomplish the enduring, unless a quickening and immortal purpose inspire the performance. Adaptability--study--practice, are the inexorable law and course of success. Fitness of temperament and genius, the application of intelligent and patient thought, and the infusion of all with energy and industry are the secret of man's loftiest triumphs. Something of all this is necessary to man's existence. One can not stand still and live. A man traveling in a cold country will perish, without deliberate forethought and effort. So in traveling to old age, the members of mind and body need constant friction to maintain life and progress. The idle brain is an excellent workshop of Satan, whose purpose is death. The orator illustrated her subject with lessons from Virgil Bacon and others, concluding with a view of the imperious relation of her text to immortal life.

DELLA C. APPEL

     "All Precious Things are Slow of Growth," was the theme of this young lady's essay. The aspirations of nature are attended with days and nights of weary toil. All grand effects are the results of sacrifices, denials and constant effort. The crystallization of the diamond, ruby and sapphire required the constructing power of ages. For centuries the germ of religious freedom was nestling in the bosom of humanity before it bloomed forth in the fall flowers of the Reformation. How the Greece theorist traveled the coast and from Court to Court before finding a Ferdinand and Isabella. Newton pondered for years before he discovered his great law in the apple's fall. Franklin flew his kite from boyhood to middle-age ere he could extract the lightning from the clouds. The world wants strong reasoners and strong thinkers. Too many super-structures are reared in this busy age on narrow and ephemeral foundations, but a better era is perceptibly dawning when substance is being preferred to show, the real to the sham, and the world is learning the great lesson that, "All Precious Things are Slow of Growth."

KATIE B. FUNCK

     addressed her audience upon, " The Nobility of Labor." Fuller had said that men who have raised themselves from the lowest to the highest sphere had cause for pride. Some have greatness thrust upon them, but as a rule, the world reserved it's honors for it's workers. John Hunter rose to be the master surgeon of the age, from a cabinet-maker bench. Jeromy Taylor began life as a barber. Napoleon was an artillery sergeant before he was Emperor. Homer, the pagan though blind has made life brightly beautiful for the sight of others. Mathe__Be___, astronomers, farmers, have spent years of toil in solving the problems whose unveiled mysteries and resources have fled a life to a summit which pleases the skies and filled it with beauty. The orator closed with an earnest and lofty apostrophe to the nobility and blessings of labor.

WILL F. BISHOP

     "The Glory of a Young Man is his Strength," was the subject of our young Muscatine athlete. The desire of men for perfect development has existed from time immemorial. The gymnasium was popular with the sneietts. The Greeks must have been well developed to produce the matchless models of a Phidias and the exquisite harmony which united their arts, letters and physique. People of the old Bible times who lived a life obedient to nature's laws, reached their maturity at three score and ___, where modern life stands beside it's grave. The splendor of the Roman physique was truly equaled by the glory of Roman achievements. The marked decadence of modern times was noticed in the recent rejection of 4,000 out of 5,000 men recruited for the British army. The decline is the same in America. We are not the equals of our fathers. There is a law of harmony existing between man's physical, intellectual and moral being that must be obeyed if we are to reproduce the men who have given luster to the annals of Greece and Rome, and before America will rise to the greatness of those ancient commonwealths.

FANNIE GRADY

     "We Build our own Monuments," said the young orator. It is not the quantity but the quality of our work that makes reputation. Avenues are open to every art and pursuit where ample material lies ready for the monument of the earnest and diligent. Geology tells us of the patient ages required to shape the earth into it's present beauty, how rock was piled upon rock, and layer upon layer, ere there was a habitation for man stored with every resource for his happiness. Then history takes up the story and tells us of the slow growth of man to civilization, and to the heights of refinement and Christian cultivation. We find on the pages everywhere the lives of men of failure and renown, which are lessons for today. Our lives are what we voluntarily make them. Rough and unprepossessing as the material may appear in any case, there exist the possibilities for whatever may exist in the soul and will of man. Shakespeare, Angelo, Calvin, Luther, Garfield, were cited as examples of the possibilities of life to the lowest, and Plymouth Rock was brought out in relief as showing the humble beginning of the greatest Republic of history.

IDA MUNCEY

     "Going Out and Coming In," expressed the thought of this orator. There has been great progress, but room for advancement opens in every field. The speaker reviewed the march of civilization and progress in America from the landing at Plymouth Rock with it's statesmen, scholars, reformers and inventors and army of laborers at constant work in blazing the way to our personal greatness. It was all toilsomely and patiently wrought out. Few lived to enjoy the reward of their labors or to be gladdened with the prospect now filling the vision with promise and beauty. It was a story of human life. We began our pilgrimage with hope and promise of triumph; the journey ends too often in case, despair and death. Like Columbus who went out to a great victory, whose wand unveiled a new world, but who returned in chains and disgrace, how often the fair fruit of success turns to ashes in the hand as soon as it is plucked, leaving to the ardent toiler but disappointment and despair. But in all the going out and coming in, counting every seed-time and harvest, we behold the world clearly in the ascendant, even in the mistakes and defeats of man being successive helps to her progress.

ALICE L. BRAUNWARTH

     "Hope versus Memory," was the theme of this orator, who became the guide to her audience in a walk through the light and shadows of life. The Class of 1884 had been with Hope hitherto. They meet every memory tonight. The bright story of expectation gilding every step to the threshold of active time was told, and contrasted with the hour, when the Class for the first time looks backward and lingers affectionately, sadly with the past. It seems almost fanciful, but it is none the less real, that in our retrospect in history we are brought vividly and instantaneously before the hopes and memories of human life. We see Socrates in his hopes, but living among those who respected him as little as we respect the philosophers and reformers of our day. Plato dealt in the same hopes as our own, and met with the same reveries. The educated mind need have no timeliness. Into the hopes and memories of it's own life, there enter the great hopes and the rich memories of all who have made or adorned history, and in the gradual fruition of the past hopes of mankind, we find a sure guaranty that our own aspirations will soon blossom and fruit in perfect realisation.

FRANK H. KINCAID

     spoke of "Divine Adaptations." What is the power that fixes the condition of man? We call it Nature, but what is Nature? Are we then the accident of circumstances. There is no such thing as accident. Everything comes from law, or the violation of law. The creation of our planet resulted from a long line of "accidents." Was is mere chance that produced those mighty upheavals and convulsions of nature written in the history of the earth? To a contemporaneous observer they would appear as such, but to the retrospective student on every one of the grand series of activities and spasms and cataclysms exhibited in the birth and formation of the earth, there is plainly written the law of design, and all over this chaotic story is clearly visible the plan of the Divine author of the universe--Is it chance that manufactures ores and constant minerals, --chance that runs the currents of the air, and sets the courses of the stars? These questions answer themselves, and in the intricate and involved circumstances of human history as well as in the chaotic activities and extraordinary evolutions of the natural world, is to be distinctly traced to the law of "Divine adaptation."

MADIE BROOMHALL

     "The Spirit of Progress," was the subject which led this young orator into a historical disquisition marked by much spiritual insight into the leading causes of civilization. History was followed from the primitive sources of man's first feeble advancements, and what Mrs. J. Ellen Foster would call the "accretions of time" were carefully credited and the demonstration was clearly worked out that in the Divine Providence nothing is lost, and that our present ripe civilization with it's glorious fruits of civil and religious liberty, is the accumulation and sum of every word spoken and act done, however humbly and lowly, for the glory of God and the brotherhood of man.

EMMA G. PARKINS

     "The Age of Homespun," as treated by this orator was full of poetry. The curtain rose upon human life in the Orient, and forever since, the mystic hand of Providence has stretched forth out of the splendors of the setting sun beckoning man westward. The history of the world was in a large measure the history of pioneer life, hewing it's way through Europe, peopling the British Isles, swimming the Atlantic, lighting it's altars in the savage wilds of the Atlantic Coast, and whose axe and rifle, and sparks from log-cabin chimneys have marked the march of our empire over a continent. The husband built the cabin but the wife made the home, and by the glowing coals of the log-cabin fireside, the orator drew a picture of the noble traits and virtues of the private heroes of history, humble in their sphere, the kings and queens of homespun.

STELLA L. ECKEL

     discussed,"The Mission of the Few." A small sect of East Indiana had impressed the world with their philosophy, the insignificant territory of Greece had dominated by her taste, and from the little peninsula of Italy had gone forth the arms that had conquered the world. This secret of progression and empire still remains in the hands of the few, the development of leadership comes from the onward movement of the many. Without the momentum and sympathy of the mass, few individuals would be projected forward into prominence and command. Though New England leads the country in morals and culture, it was an enlightened people who made it possible for the lights of American literature to exist. Time is not measured by moments but by events; nor space by distance but by objects. History is the story of the few, who however had the patient labor of the invisible many for their fulcrum and lever. It is for everyone to say whether he shall make a part of the anvil or be of the few who do the striking, whether of the mould, or of the artificers who do the shaping of the events of life.

FELIX W. DORAN

     treated of the "Limit of Navigation." For many years sailors kept near shore. The pillars of Hercules set a limit to the adventuresome Phoenicians. But by and by, they began " peering through pillars," the sky lifted, the ocean spread out invitingly, the Garden of Hesperides seemed outlined in the glories of the setting sun, and the gates swung open at last- to a crank, one Christopher Columbus. He had difficulty getting a crew, and he encountered mutinies, but America was sighted, the expected dragons did not come aboard, a continent rose out of the sea and tonight we are gathered in a hall situated in nearly the center of a Republic of 50 million of free men. But great Polar regions remain unexplored and questions of moment to science and humanity are still to be solved. There had been the same reluctance observed in mental navigation. A few venture forth upon their little ocean of self-satisfaction. They go out in their little theories and hypothesis, and are glad to return to safety. There are grand voyages waiting for a Columbus. The sun, what is it? We have lightning, but no one to tell us what it is. What is electricity? And the ingenious and inquisitive orator drew many an illustration to prove that there was still a lamentable limit to navigation.

NELLIE KULP

     "Harmony and Diversity," was the rhythmic theme of this essayist, and it was treated with a grace and delicacy of thought and diction which forbade an attempted outline of it's beauty. The whole diversity of nature is harmonious and from out of it's manifold apparent discordances is produced a melody which finds it's grandest illustration in the music of the spheres. It is the variegated landscape which is relieved of mundane; the spangled firmament where one star different from another in glory that fills the soul of the observer with music like the distant chime of bells. The planets revolve in their diverse orbits and different time which alone could produce the poets music of the spheres. Looking up from our busy life to see the sun shining so full and grandly in the azure sky, and the rainbow thrust thwart the heavens, produce to our minds no in harmony in the sublime cadences of nature. And in the diversity of human life, it's different hopes and activities, it's apparently clashing interests, it's contrasting races and types and tastes and manners and fashions, the orator saw but the one great loom weaving it's multitude of hues into a fabric where each thread was harmonious to the whole.

LAURA M.EATON

     "The Island of Gold is Beyond the Mountains," was the announcement of this orator. Education may be the gateway to destruction. Devious and long are the paths leading to the students reward. A beautiful prospect lies before him, full of shade and flowers, and watered by the river of Good Principle. Leafy graves lie beyond, full of rest, but seamed with dark ravines and danger. There stretches still further on, the Plain of Labor, from whose distant lines rises the Mountain, stored with golden treasure. Genius without education is no more success than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. The law of genius is culture, which is the fruit of labor. No excellence is attainable without earnest effort. The mountain is to be ascended. The ore must be mined. There are accidental acquisitions but they leave no wealth to their possessor. The orators description of the surroundings of youth and student life, of the activities beyond and the steep ascents to success, were as charming as pages from Bunyon.

Presentation Of Diplomas

     Going outside of the usual routine, Principal Huff, at this stage, presented the Class to President Woodward of the School Board, who with a few choice words of compliment and counsel delivered to each member the High School diploma.

THE VALIDICTORIAN
EDWARD J. RITCHIE

     then appeared the longum vale of his Class. His oratorical theme was, "Having, Doing, Being." He declared with the inspired writer, that a man's love is his life, and a man's goal may be known by his character. In their various pursuits and aims we find mankind divided into three classes; those who labor to have; those who strive and dare to do; and those who aspire and live to be. The first of this class is distinguished for his labor and sacrifices for the acquisition of wealth. He is credited by the world according to his ledger account; his memories feed upon speculations lost; his hopes on ventures to come. He regards his wife as a help-meet, his children are only his heirs; the making of his will is his principal preparation of death. When this being labors in a private way, he is simply to be pitied; when he assumes the role of a monopolist, he is to be regarded as the scourge of his kind. In a literal sense, he brings nothing into the world and takes nothing out. Among the list of those who strive and dare to do, we find many of the heroes of the world, the soldiers, the inventor, the explorer, the author, who have tunneled mountains, made the world a whispering gallery for the telegraph, bridged chasms, dared polar dangers, written great works, suffered great sacrifices. But Alexander, who carried Grecian civilization into the East, died of his own debaucheries; Napoleon, who seated his family on the thrones of Europe and governed the civilized world, could not govern himself; and Carlyle, who wrote so eloquently against shams, was a tyrant to a wretched wife. We must ascend still higher to the region of those who strive to be what they would make the world, where we find our noblest models of character. The orator thought that America had furnished, three such models in the different field of arms, poetry and philosophy which could not be paralleled by the world, and named Washington, Longfellow and Emerson. Mr. Ritchie closed with his valedictory, which was a graceful farewell, gratefully spiced to School Board, teachers and patrons, closing with an affectionate adieu to the Class.

     Thus closed commencement. The exercises were interspersed with fine music from the orchestra, the orations and essays were as a rule eloquently and gracefully spoken, and each graduate was honored with hearty applause and bouquets innumerable.