Newspapers / Mars Hill University Student … / May 4, 1940, edition 1 / Page 3
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THE HILLTOP, MARS HILL COLLEGE, MARS HILL, NORTH CAROLINA Page Three Youth Is The Time For Study, Says Berger > doubt of histoi the Ver; e one bi conditio hting foi Upon the suggestion of Presi dent Blackwell, the entire speech of Mr. Henry Berger is published in order that each student might have a copy of the address, which the Hilltop staff deems the work of a master. letermin^ DOVER V T for gain %g hustle and bustle of ermanyl handing in term bant ship ds of loc(P often forget our sports and tohmpus. With a worried of somei a hurried step we rush "ces. The j can’t seem to find ^®^^cts or time to complete otal of T ion she game? tions ofl°^ question! ;oo much.'lance even the sporting i war a offer a puzzling ques- to bea*have track meets, tennis ed gov® and baseball games— is was s^uld be attended? I beg )le werefcused; I have to see a econow* eln of ,, ,.?^y contest the boys are s able toi^. , . •’ ^ir best and trying to do icovery, an the fellow that came Id depres hem. No sport on the Yirjsc! llll' ^ lacking in the spirit it ’ ^®^^^^[Win. To find a sporting ^ ® ® 'Without spirit on this er was ’ like finding the pro- 323 as ® needle in the haystack.” nditions I which e VersaiP winning the games—or that want no moral victories, fe have to put in Coach le cause ^ er whicli® ^ shut-out game. •ol, and tl' Boo! doctrineu^^gjj.j. booed the referee he prsse.gbaii game, hooted the S. To Bl'jf a line judge at a ten- day co", and razzed the boys at lamed o*meet, then you haven’t ise of h®^t. When spring fever ar. The V that is) gets us and we policy tHwn to one of the best le world helds in the state, it is 1 as is s!\ral that we have a keen ;he waff pride. d the »*|J)rsehide whips over the ® jtid in the continuous ^ players, our cares tries ^^es sail away like the ball ' 0-1,1-Tr r'ooo,,” missed. President Blackwell, Ladies and Gentlemen of the college staff, Junior and Senior Students: To be quite candid, I am some what puzzled over the invitation to address you to-day, being de ficient in almost all necessary qualifications to do so. But that French arbiter of the elegancies of a bygone age, Louis XIV—^who is slowly coming back into his own after a good deal of malign ing by Republican Socialists over the past two or three generation —Louis XIV once said that the truest politeness of a guest con sists in following the bidding of his host. So were it doubtless best for me to comply, heedless of misgivings on the outcome. A difficulty there is at the out set, though—how to talk to the younger members among you without imparting some advice, how to refrain from speaking on educational matters, enough of which, surely, you have in your sessions here. So would I seek refuge in travel and customs of foreign lands, steering clear of Baedekers and Bradshaws, con fining myself to strictly personal experience, that touchstone of all abiding knowledge. To think on it, that may also have been at the bottom of your invitation. ®®'^j.jghty Casey’ ations United Swan Song lan theifl'eing our swan song for from t'’* we feel under obligation e the f'*' congratulate every tariff to bf all the athletic teams almost • accomplishments: First, untries *were clean fighters, jolly, ly their the character and hen the -t it takes to make a real ning to the work of the paying ’ ■was splendid. These led gre»*^^ sterling character foreign '^ad led the boys to vic- ’f wallSi *ause of their association age, ^ because of adoption®^ played the game well, o tariff been justly com- r marW**^°^ their efforts in these which rictivities. nditionS'ie season is not over! ^.♦^ack meet, a tennis match, iJ^-ball game between term . ir? oV rs ” -fjd exams, and come down Bu^he cause of all this chat- ——-;^^ing or losing, the boys ,1playing hard. You ’ f a certain player who is il?” of the game to you, ‘®*’® ^ P (to the team) just an- of that gang of real form our baseball. se He^J/ho ■> 01 ^^d tennis teams. Have you he your support? Don’t in R. H weather man get you— !rendl®> , surincr. Finish this ath- spring. Hall) ^ pon with a crowd. insurer! saying on the essential imperma nence of things. As all life dies away, human, animal, vegetal, and mineral, and all things whatso ever in this world, so what we set infinite importance on, he thought, is of little or no con sequence really. Thus should we ever remain unmoved in the midst of seeming distress, this the shadow, not the substance, and ever offer up a calm, cheerful countenance to all things. That it is they would remind her of! If they all wept with her, her great grief would become the more un bearable—maybe she might com mit some rash act upon herself.” Manners Differ Knowledge Defined Knowledge indeed, and the pur suit thereof, is largely what we would seek for in travel. We say so, anyway, when following in the wake of Ulysses of old, he that saw so many cities and customs. Yet Confucius, the Sage of that East largely the subject of this informal talk, had it otherwise, some 23 centuries ago. “The seek er after knowledge retires to the mountains,” he taught; “the mer chant in quest of gain travels over distant seas.” Immense then yet in his importance as an edu cator, Confucius is perhaps the one teacher who has given us the most practical definition of knowl edge, by the way. May it be said in all due humility, more master ful than that of Socrates? Did not the latter say he had learned to know he knew nothing? And as against this, Confucius, a con temporary almost in his Analech, said, “To know you know when you do know; and when you know not, to know that you know not— that surely, constitutes knowl edge.” Incident in Japan But return we to our story. This speaker hadn’t been a week in Japan when he witnessed a street car accident. A little child had been killed at a crossing. Kneeling on the ground beside it, the remains of her child on a blood-stained cloth, a distracted mother was the picture of silent despair. Many among the bystand ers stood by smiling. Our traveller looked on aghast. That was thirty years ago, and he then first obeyed blindly the impulse of the moment. “How can you so be have?” he cried to the interpreter by his side. “Is it not evident to you that this mother is suffering untold misery? How dare you smile at her agony?” Whereat the smiling interpreter turning grave: “We smile to remind her of the Enlightened One’s, the Buddha’s, Baseball Schedule May 4—Milligan—Here. May 6—Hiwassee—Here. May 7—Hiwassee—Here. May 10—Textile Institute— Here. May 15—Textile Institute— Here. patched is, we hold, of small in terest to the post office on our side. What comes uppermost on our envelopes is but the matter of greatest moment to the actual mailing of the letter. Thus, ‘U. S. A.’ With that U. S. A. mailbag our interest ceases. And so on, all along the line. We conceive ‘North Carolina’ alone to be of interest on the ship’s arrival at San Francisco or Seattle, (Ashe ville) only when North Carolina is finally reached. To Asheville’s post office the street or section of distribution comes surely next. And finally, Mr. Smith’s family name, his Christian name last.” Again, some few weeks later, that wayfarer made merry over the Japanese custom of men going ahead of their women, these following demurely some five or more yards behind. “What pre sumption!” he cried; “what self- conceit! Is not that woman every whit the equal of them she is made to follow, nay, his superior in many things? Why then should she follow? You still have much to learn in your treatment of womankind!” The guide bowed and admitted “So, indeed, would it appear. We often see your honour able Western women sit in the first place, the men coming after them. To us, however, that first place is the one of danger, which befits not the physically weak, but the strong. Down to our fathers’ days it was dangerous to venture abroad at night, and even by day time in secluded spots, without proper precaution. Therefore also did our men keep in the van; our women come after them in the safety of the men’s lead.” Customs Differ Toleration Needed The moral of it all was obvious, and remains. There are more ways than one of doing most things, nor is it an easy matter to de termine with finality and success which were the best. Too, should all due allowance ever be made for ways other than our own— which seems homely enough. But were it followed, we would not have had our unforgiving wars of religion in the past, nor would we be engaged in our present day equally unforgiving ideological war in Europe. One more reminiscence before ending. It was months before that self same wayfarer had acquired, with much painstaking study, some smattering of reading, not purely of Chinese ideographs, though,— these so intricate at times that an early 17th century Jesuit mission ary sailing down the river from Osaka to the sea had described them to a younger companion, be tween two hymns, as, “An in vention of the Devil designed to confuse the minds of the faith ful.” Of course could not that to us impossible script be read in such short time, but the simple Kalakama, or diphthong tokens used for telegrams among other things, the invention of latter-day Japanese bonzes. So would our traveller wax eloquent over the addressing of postal envelopes. You had best be given local equivalents here — “Fancy,” he made merry, “just fancy address ing your postal matter as—start ing from the beginning in order of transcription, to “U. S. A., North Carolina, Asheville, Patton Avenue 21, Smith, Tom, Mister!” Could anything more perversely crazy than this systematic start at the end to finish up with the beginning, be conceived? Who in the name of goodness could possibly locate Tom Smith in all that fumble? Again would that Japanese spokesman bow low, and say “The honourable addressee of the message sought to be dis- Lions Have Heavy Sports Schedule Baseball, Tennis, And Track men Are On The Trot Youth Learns Easily Our voyager had worked a couple of years in Greece, many years before Japan, when a youth of 18, and then learnt Greek, play ing as it were, without any suspicion of grammar or diction ary, just by hearing it spoken around him—not the classic Greek of Homer and Plato, to be sure, but what is known as mod ern Greek, the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean basin, the same more or less yet as that of our New Testament. In six months he was fluent at it; in less than twelve he had started read ing the daily papers. Thereafter, at 20, he migrated over to kindred work in Macedonia, then part of Turkey, later further afield on to Asia Minor, where he remained anothe_r few years, picking up Turkish meanwhile with equal ease, the spoken language, that is, with but little of their more com plicated Arabic script. Later Learning Hard Well, right now, after all those years, having retired long since from all active work of his erst while calling, that wanderer of bygone days is fluent still in modern Greek and Turkish, but can talk Japanese no more to all practical interests. And yet did he spend but two years only in Greece, a number more in Turkey, close on ten years in Japan, five of those ten years on business a thousand or more miles away from Tokyo and Yokohama, a business entirely officered by Japanese, the nearest white man a missionary one hundred odd miles apart. He could converse but very rarely during those five years in any language other than Japanese, running by himself a concern of several hundred men. And the reason of that pheno menon of forgetting the later acquisition wholesale, that had called for the exercise of such great pains, while remembering the earlier, this contrived with practically no effort, that reason is simple enough, as are so many things seemingly intricate: the earlier Greek could be retained with ease because acquisition of it had been timed in proper season, filling in with the learner’s re ceptive faculties of the early Local varsity sports will begin grinning down the home stretch at the beginning of next week. Only two weeks of play remain before the curtain is drawn and commencement exercises begin! The Lion baseballers took a 13-7 win over Tusculum last: Fri day only to be taken on Saturday by a 4-1 count by Milligan. To begin this week the locals dropped a 5-2 decision to Enka corporation of Asheville. Coach Roberts did the tossing for his boys and did a masterful job after being out of the game for a number of years. A game with Blue Ridge was washed out in the fourth inning with the Lions out front 2-0 on Tuesday. A trip to Brevard on Wednesday found the life-long rivals knotted at one all when a typical Carolina downpour halted the proceedings in the second stanza. One of the brightest spots in the local’s attack has been the playing of Joe McClesky, veteran outfielder-pitcher of last year’s squad. McClesky is leading the team in hitting and stolen bases. Next week Coach Roberts and his men engage five opponents over a six-day stretch, which will give them quite a busy week. Successive wins over Lees-Mc- Rae and Lincoln Memorial uni versity give Coach Fred Dicker son’s track team a .500 average. Previous losses were to Newberry and Furman. Next week the track squad meets Milligan on Monday, and on Saturday they will be hosts to the annual Southeastern junior college conference track meet. The local tennis squad is in Douglas, Ga., this week-end and competing with other southern junior colleges in the Southeastern junior college tournament, being held on the South Georgia college courts. Thus far the tennis team under the guidance of Mr. Wood has made a good record and should make a fine showing in tha tournament. twenties, that golden age of so many among you. Japanese, on the other hand, has been mastered out of season, at close upon forty, and therefore could not endure, albeit dictionaries and grammars, hours of daily ' work and the exercise of the utmost diligence and pains. Some may explain that the re tentive cells of the brain were fitted to capacity at forty, and as the season in which things could be done had passed, they could be retained permanently, for instant notice, no more. Oth ers of you may liken it all unto that grain of wheat in our un dying parable of the Sower, that fell on rocky ground, and though springing up straight away, yet could not endure for want of depth of earth, and withered away. Don’t Procrastinate Old Rabbinical teaching, that duplicated much in our New Testa ment, was most emphatic in this. “Say not I will do it tomorrow,” it taught, “for tomorrow thou mayest be no more.” And it com pared study in proper season to a clear script on clean paper, that out of season to writing on a blotting pad. So too our Old Testament Preacher, in the book we know as the Ecclesiastes,—“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be bom, (Continued on page 4)
Mars Hill University Student Newspaper
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May 4, 1940, edition 1
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