A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as helpless. - Theodore Roosevelt

I was amused, by the way, at one bit of native nomenclature in connection with the Goanese. Many of the Goanese are now as dark as most of the other Indians; but they are descended in the male line from the early Portuguese adventurers and conquerors, who were the first white men ever seen by the natives of this coast. Accordingly to this day some of the natives speak even of the dark-skinned descendants of the subjects of King Henry the Navigator as “the whites,” designating the Europeans specifically as English, Germans, or the like; just as in out-of-the-way nooks in the far Northwest one of our own red men will occasionally be found who still speaks of Americans and Englishmen as “Boston men” and “King George’s men.

Justice Bowling in his speech has described the excellent fourth degree of your order, of how in it you dwell upon duties rather than rights, upon the great duties of patriotism and of national spirit. It is a fine thing to have a society that holds up such a standard of duty. I ask you to make a special effort to deal with Americanization, the fusing into one nation, a nation necessarily different from all other nations, of all who come to our shores. Pay heed to the three principal essentials: (i) the need of a common language, with a minimum amount of illiteracy; (2) the need of a common civil standard, similar ideals, beliefs, and customs symbolized by the oath of allegiance to America; and (3) the need of a high standard of living, of reasonable equality of opportunity and of social and industrial justice. In every great crisis in our history, in the Revolution and in the Civil War, and in the lesser crises, like the Spanish war, all factions and races have been forgotten in the common spirit of Americanism. Protestant and Catholic, men of English or of French, of Irish or of German, descent have joined with a single-minded purpose to secure for the country what only can be achieved by the resultant union of all patriotic citizens. You of this organization have done a great service by your insistence that citizens should pay heed first of all to their duties. Hitherto undue prominence has been given to the question of rights. Your organization is a splendid engine for giving to the stranger within our gates a high conception of American citizenship. Strive for unity. We suffer at present from a lack of leadership in these matters.

I am no advocate of senseless and excessive cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard, at his lessons — in the first place, for the sake of what he will learn, and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness, slackness, indifference in studying, are almost certain to mean inability to get on in other walks of life.