Speaking to Mr. Brown!

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 August 1928, Page 9

Speaking to Mr. Brown!

Sir Janies Barrie and the Rhodes Scholars

■HjA IB JAMES BARRIE was the principal speaker at < -’ ie annua l dinner of the Rhodes Trustees at Oxford, and in proposing the toast of the Rhodes Scholars delivered himself of some happy and sound advice to the young men from overseas. In his customary whimsical fashion he singled out a fictitious “William K. Brown” as the recipient. Sir James said that he was asked to bear in mind chiefly those whose three years here and in Europe generally had just come, or were coming, to an end. Exit W. K. B. “A kindly soul,” he continued, “once divided books into two kinds—those that one likes to read and those that

are very able. You young Rhodes scholars are surrounded to-night by people who are very able. But it is you wo want tn read—you, the unwritten ones.

"Now fhnt the stage direction is, nlas. ’Exit William K. Brown’ —that fascinating fellow, yourself (your interest in whom passes the love of Woman) —what is to happen Io you next ” “Ah, Mr. Brown, how we wish we could guide you through the paper hoop: but we know as little as yourselves what is being spun lot you.

A Little Speck “Yet the beginning of all you are to be already lies inside you—a little speck that is to grow, while you sleep, while you are awake, and that in the fullness of time, according to whether you control it or it controls you, is to be the making of you, or to destroy you. “I can just remember,” continued Sir James, “days in a little Scottish town,’ the only place 1 know that beats Oxford—l don’t mean in games—where weavers of all ages trudged on their shanks to distant St. Andrews or Aberdeen in quest of college bursaries. “If they returned victorious they reappeared by day, but if they failed they hung about the outskirts till nightfall and then stole to their homes. “Early next morning you heard them at their looms again, teeth set, waiting for next year. “Dour times—dogged students—no Cecil Rhodes. But that speck under control.

“ ‘Lives of great men all remind us, We can’t make our lives sublime.’ But thiy may bring us nearer to it. “‘And departing leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time.’ I don’t know that you should rollick in anticipation of that. Those footprints, even if you achieve them, what will happen to them in the end? “They will be carefully sliced off, and sold at Christie’s. “On my soul, Brown, I believe you would be wiser, if it does not incommode you .too much, to stop short of greatness. “The one place where the immortals are never seen is n’t the top table.

“One hopes that, you are leaving Oxford feeling, as the old saying has it, that red blood boils in your veins, that you hear a thousand nightingales and could eat all the elephants in Hindustan and pick your teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, That’s the spirit. “Ddn’t forget Oxford and the ciashings with us and foreign nationalities, on which Mr. Rhodes set so much store; Oxford, where you once sat out a dance with the evening star. “The toast is the Rhodes Scholars, with thoughts of the great—shall we say Elizabethan, who brings them here.”