F. D. HENRY

The demand of to-day and to-morrow will be for men who have had a college training, while the men who have little or no education will be compelled to fill the mediocre places in life. This fact was profoundly impressed upon my mind while yet in the grades of our common school. The per cent. of the men who have made good under adverse circumstances awoke in me dissatisfaction with my surroundings and circumstances. I resolved to attain some better station in life.

The fact that Abraham Lincoln, in spite of his physical appearance, financial condition, and many obstacles, any one of which would discourage the ordinary boy, attained the highest honors in the gift of our nation, was an inspiration to me. Marshall Field at one time was a poor boy, a clerk, in a country store, who, upon visiting Chicago, resolved to become a great merchant.

I perceived that the keynote of the greatness of such men as Lincoln and Field was not only in having an ideal, but that, never ceasing, never flinching, never faltering, they kept their ideal before them. 222 These men realized there was no victory in retreat. They were men with a mission and an aim. They had faith in the standard they were striving to attain, and consequently they were truly successful.

Because of the fact that the world has an unlimited field for the man with a college education, while the uneducated man is forced to mingle with the mass in the lower walks of life, a college education became my ideal. Circumstances were such that I had to work my way through college, if I ever attained my ideal. At first the barrier seemed insurmountable, and I allowed myself to think of a college education more as a dream than something which I might actually obtain. After coming in contact with some college men, however, I found that my dream of an ideal might become a reality. Through many discouraging difficulties somehow I clung tenaciously to my ideal, broke down every barrier that arose, and came to Simpson College.

Everything was entirely different from what I had pictured. However, my ideas are not changed so much as they are strengthened and broadened. The vital question of work while in school, which at first seemed dark and gloomy, has changed its aspect entirely. In the first p............