year by year, and whose advice, at last, will be of no value to his clients, for he will have lost the power to discern between right and wrong.  Show me, on the other hand, a lawyer who has spent a lifetime in the search for truth, determined to follow where it leads, and I will show you a man who has grown stronger in character day by day and whose advice constantly becomes more valuably to his client, because the power to discern the truth increases with the honest search for it.

Not only in the court-room, but in the consultation chamber also the lawyer sometimes yields to the temptation to turn his talents to a sordid use.  The schemes of spoliation that defy the officers of the law are, for the most part, inaugurated and directed by legal minds.  I was speaking on this very subject in one of the great cities of the country and at the close of the address, a prominent judge commended my criticism and declared that most of the lawyers practicing in his court were constantly selling their souls.

The lawyer’s position is scarcely less responsible than the position of the journalist; if the journalists and lawyers of the country could be brought to abstain from the practices by which the general public is overreached, it would be an easy matter to secure the remedial legislation necessary to protect the producing masses from the constant spoliation to which they are now subjected by the privileged classes.

If a man who is planning a train-robbery takes another along to hold a horse at a convenient distance, we say that the man who holds the horse is equally guilty with the man who robs the train; and the time will come when public opinion will hold as equally guilty with the plunderers of society the lawyers and journalists who assist the plunderers to escape.

I would not be forgiven if I failed to apply my theme to the work of the instructor.  The purpose of education is not merely to develop the mind; it is to prepare men and women for society’s work and for citizenship.  The ideals of the teacher, therefore, are of the first importance.  The pupil is apt to be as much influenced by what his teacher is as by what the teacher says or does.  The measure of a school cannot be gathered from an inspection of the examination papers; the conception of life which the graduate carries away must be counted in estimating the benefits conferred.  The pecuniary rewards of the teacher are usually small when compared with the rewards of business.  This may be due in part to our failure to properly appreciate the work which the teacher does, but it may be partially accounted for by the fact that the teacher derives from his work a satisfaction greater than that obtained from most other employments.