t men who have given this subject
any thought that a young man ought to take a complete general college
course, and supplement this by special preparation for the particular
work to which he intends to devote his life.

But there is one thing to which the attention of young Americans
should be directed as influencing their college life. Our country is
no longer isolated. We can no longer be called a provincial people. We
are decidedly a very intimate part of the world. Our relations with
other peoples grow closer and closer, and they will keep on growing
closer as the years pass by. A thousand Americans travel over sea
to-day where one went abroad fifty years ago. Our foreign commerce is
now greater in a single year than it used to be in an entire
decade--yes, and quite recently, too, so swift our increase.

Other countries are several times nearer to us than they were even in
the last generation. It took Emerson almost a month to cross the
Atlantic. Now you go over in a week. You can send a cablegram to any
country in the world and have it delivered, translated into the
language of the person to whom it is sent, a great deal quicker than
the dawn can travel. Invention has made snail-like the speed of light.

What does all this mean? It means that in our relations we have become
cosmopolitan. Therefore we Americans ought to know other languages
than our own. Charles Sumner said that if he had to go through college
again he would study nothing but modern languages and history. Of
course I do not presume to advise you who are reading this paper to do
that, although it is precisely what I should do if I were going
through college again. But I do advise you to do this: Acquire at
least two languages in addition to your own--French and German.

Indeed, you ought to have three languages besides your own--French,
German, and Spanish. For, consider! Here is Mexico, our next-door
neighbor--its people speak Spanish; Cuba, a kind of national ward of
ours--its people speak Spanish. The people of our possessions in the
Pacific speak Spanish; of Porto Rico, Spanish; of the Central and
South American "Republics"--with all of whom we are destined, in spite
of ourselves, to have relations of ever-increasing intimacy--all speak
Spanish.

And French? You can travel all over Europe intelligently if you speak
French. And German--the language that is going to make a good race
with English itself as the commercial language of the world i