And, now, my friends, you enter the circle of educated men and women. Your personal influence will be felt in school room and in pulpit. Your directing intelligence will count in law, and medicine, and business; as able and devoted men and women, you by your examples will steady the nerves of a staggering people and make the word Negro more than a reproach. Delicate indecision, hesitant virtue, carping discontent, bric-a-brac culture--these ill become stalwart men and robust women. By all the honorable traditions of the noble family into which you are now adopted, you are pledged not to pick your way daintily in the soft places of the earth; you are pledged to make your lives real, useful, constructive. Remember--_noblesse oblige_! TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Spaced out text is surrounded by underscores: _gesperrt_. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.