Another thing you should learn this year is to get into touch with the best people there are in the world. You should learn to associate with the best students in the institution. Take them as models, and say that you are going to improve from month to month, and from year to year, until you are as good as they are, or better. You cannot reach these things all at once, but I hope that each one of you will make up his mind or her mind that from to-night, throughout the year and throughout life, there is going to be a hard striving on your part toward reaching the best results. If you do this, when you get ready to leave this institution, you will find that it has been worth your while to have spent your time here.
The subject on which I am going to speak to you for a few minutes to-night, "The Gospel of Service," may not, when you first hear it, strike a very responsive chord in your hearts and minds, but I assure you I have nothing but the very highest and best interest of the race at heart when I select this subject to talk about.
The word "service" has too often been misunderstood, and on this account it has in too many cases carried with it a meaning which indicates degradation. Every individual serves another in some capacity, or should do so. Christ said that he who would become the greatest of all must become the servant of all; that is, He meant that in proportion as one renders service he becomes great. The President of the United States is a servant of the people, because he serves them; the Governor of Alabama is a servant, because he renders service to the people of the State; the greatest merchant in Montgomery is a servant, because he renders service to his customers; the school teacher is a servant, because it is his duty to serve the best interests of his pupils; the cook is a servant, because it is her duty to serve those for whom she works; the housemaid is a servant, because it is her duty to care for the property intrusted to her in the best manner in which she is able.
In one way or another, every individual who amounts to anything is a servant. The man or the woman who is not a servant is one who accomplishes nothing. It is very often true that a race, like an individual, does not appreciate the opportunities that are spread out before it until those opportunities have disappeared. Before us, as a race in the South to-day, there is a vast field for service and usefulness which is still in our hands, but which I fear will not be ours to the same extent very much longer unless we change our ideas of service, and put new life, put new dignity and intelligence into it.