Paris, June 6.
M. Clemenceau has been spending half an hour on a task of what the French term eternal recommencement. In unveiling a monument at the old college at Nantes, now named after him, where he studied from 1852 to 1858, he delivered a speech in which he summed up the philosophy. of existence for the benefit of the pupils. He may not have succeeded any better than other teachers in making boys realize what awaits them when they leave school. What he had to say about life can be better appreciated by the larger audience of those who know it. "I was delighted when I left school," he said, although I had not been especially unhappy there, and I discovered later on that the small annoyances I had encountered were largely due to my own fault. You will make the same discovery, especially if you succeed in realizing that life is a succession of duties and struggles—a struggle for the right to found a amily and keep it going, a struggle for the right to love those around us and a struggle of courage, nobility and generosity. I did not know all this at the time. I thought life was a beautiful garden and that all I had to do was to walk in and be greeted by amiable people saying nice things. When I entered life, I was "no worse tempered than the average, but I soon found out that there were more hard knocks to be got than to be given when you are no longer in the shelter of your home and are in a crowd of competitors who get ahead of you without asking your permission."
Later on, M. Clemenceau said, "T wonder if you look upon me in the light of an old owl nailed up on the door of a barn to frighten the little birds? As the old owl can still flap his wings and remember that he is the bird of wisdora, let him tell you one or two things: It is very fine to leave one's family and friends and go out to face the enemy, but there are other kinds-of courage. The schoolboy who masters. tiresome lessons so that he will learn to be a man shows courage. Look at your own fathers. They labour, they meet with setbacks, they have misfortunes and try to make up for them, and they go on toiling, kut nobody thinks of erecting monuments to them. There is no need to teach you a soldier's courage, because you have it in the blood, as your fathers and brothers have shown. You must cultivate the kind of courage that is never celebrated by ceremonies.
"Your masters have a thankless task in trying to put knowledge in-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.