Excerpt from Address Delivered at the 24th Annual Commencement of Wellesley College: June 23, 1902 In this reaction, when you have shufled ofi the coil of your last college days and find yourself face to face with a new life or with the return to an old one, you are prone to ask, What has it all been for? Am I fitter for the life I must live than if I had been living it four years already College has been fascinating, no doubt; but many fascinating things do not pay. I have opened several doors to knowledge, and have learned that, work as hard and as long as I may, I can never see the thousandth part of that to which a single one of them may lead; I have formed friendships that will last; I have won something with which I would not part for money and without which I can no more imagine myself than I can conceive myself annihilated. These college years have become an inextricable part of me; yet am I, after all, happier and better than if I had never tasted their sweetness had never caught glimpses of ideals that in every-day life may be my rebuke and my despair In a small degree you feel as men and women feel when they wake to the truth that their elders have moved on that they themselves are now the older generation to whom the younger turns for counsel; that other people will lean on them, and that the days when they may lean on other people are gone and gone forever. When we say What is it for let us first take care to recognize, as college people should, many things for which a life is worth living besides what is com monly called practical. Lowell reminds us that the question What is it good for would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.