ntercourse between teachers and their pupils, this
mutual exchange of confidence on one side and of sympathy on the other,
is a source of good and a source of pleasure, which neither you nor we,
my young friend, can afford to forego; and if in the expression of this
thought I have indulged in a rather unseemly use of the first person
singular, it is not because I would claim for myself anything peculiar
in this matter, but because, from my years and my position, I can
perhaps, better than my associates, afford to speak out thus the inward
promptings of the heart. We _all_ give you the right hand of fellowship,
and trust it will not be many weeks, or days even, before you shall feel
that you have here a home as well as a school, friends as well as
teachers.

2. A very common feeling at the beginning of a course of study, is a
feeling of discouragement. Nearly all the studies are new, and you enter
upon each with fresh eagerness. Now, it is in the nature of every study
while it is new, to seem boundless. Under the guiding hand of a skilful
teacher, its limits and capabilities are stretched out in one direction
and another, interminable vistas spread out in the distance, and
portentous difficulties rise up before the imagination, until the mind
is bewildered.

There is not one, of the formidable lists of studies before you, that
might not of itself, so great are its capabilities, occupy your whole
time. When you find yourself called to grapple at once with four or five
such studies, to measure yourself with competitors, many of whom have
had opportunities of preparation greatly superior to your own, and in
the presence of teachers to whom the whole subject is as familiar and as
plain as the alphabet, and when, in addition, the methods of recitation
are for the most part new and strange, you are very apt to become
discouraged, to feel that you shall never learn to recite in the manner
required, that you can never master the difficulties before you. This
feeling arises most frequently in the best class of minds, those most
conscientious in regard to duty and most capable of comprehending the
full length and breadth and depth of a subject. The shallow and the
trifling are never troubled with the kind of difficulties now under
consideration.

I address myself to you, my young friend, because I know you have come
here with an earnest purpose, with a mind acute enough to see something
of the vast work before you, and I say to