Valedictory to 1956

GENTLEMEN OF THE GRADUATING CLASS: May I greet you as we stand on this threshold of your leaving by saying first what is most in my heart as a returned traveler - it is wonderful to go, but it is more wonderful to return. I hope it may always be so as between you and all that is Dartmouth.

The point has been reached in this phase of what is called your educa- tion where although there is much left to be done, and much to be learned, there is not much left to be said. You how know that life has never made complete sense to any thoughtful person and yet that it makes too much sense to be left either to chance or to fools. Hence education.

Mixed in with all the perplexity and imperfection are moments of truth and of beauty and of love. Hopefully out of all the work, fun and all else that is college you have had some experience in creating such moments for yourself. They are the great liberating moments which by the grace of God are put within the reach of men. To know these possibilities is to be lib- erally educated; to create and enlarge them for oneself is to live the good life however or wherever one does his share of the work.

The burden of an educated man is that he has a little better idea of what is possible and the unique burden of the liberally educated man is that he is sensitive to these possibilities in all the dimensions of life.

May the joy of this burden always be yours and thereby you always re- main both a son of Dartmouth and a loyal servant of her purpose.

And now, men of Dartmouth, the word is "so long," for in the Dart- mouth fellowship there is no parting.