of her sense of responsibility both to herself and her kind.  She gives of herself and her means as a gracious discharge of obligation to the less fortunate, but never as charity.  She feels herself bound up in the interests of humanity and would do her full part in helping to make life more worth while.  Her touch has the gift of healing and her tongue distills kindness.  Her obligations to the human family are privileges to be esteemed and enjoyed and not bur-dens to be endured and reviled.  And she thinks of her superintendent and teachers with gratitude for their part in the process of developing her into what she is, and what she may yet become.

Only such as the defiant, wicked, and rebellious Cain can ask the question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The man who feels no responsibility for the character and good name of the community of which he is a member is a spiritual outcast and will become a social pariah if he persists in maintaining his attitude of indifference.  For, after all, responsibility amounts to a spiritual attitude.  If the man feels no responsibility to his community he will begrudge it the taxes he pays, the improvements he is required to make, and will be irked by every advance that makes for civic betterment.  To him the church and school will seem excrescences and superfluities, nor would he grieve to see them obliterated.  His exodus would prove a distinct boon to the community.  He may have a noble physique, good mentality, much knowledge, and large wealth, and yet, with all these things in his favor, he is nevertheless a liability for the single reason that he lacks a sense of responsibility.  Could his teachers have foreseen his present attitude no efforts, on their part, would have seemed too great if only they could have forestalled his misfortune.  And it is for the teachers to determine whether the boy of today shall become a duplicate of the man here portrayed.

Every man who lives under a democratic form of government has the opportunity before him each day to raise or lower the level of democracy.  When the night comes on, if he reflects upon the matter, he must become conscious that he has done either the one or the other.  Either democracy is a better thing for humanity because of his day’s work and influence, or it is a worse thing.  This is a responsibility that he can neither shift nor shirk.  It is fastened upon him with or against his will.  It rests with him to determine whether he would have every other man and every boy in the land select him as their model and follow his example to the last detail.  He alone can decide whether he would have all men indulge in the practices that constitute his daily life, consort with his companions, hold his views on all subjects, read only the books that engage his interest, duplicate his thoughts, aspirations, impulses, and language, and become, each one, his other self.  Every boy who now sits in the school must answer these questions for himself sooner or later, nor can he hope to evade them.  Happy is that boy, therefore, whose teacher has the foresight and the wisdom to train him into such a sense of responsibility as will enable him to answer them in such a way that the future will bring to him no pang of remorse.