Mr. Lodge's Lecture.

Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge delivered the sixth and last one of the series of lectures on the professions. His subject was the "Uses and Responsibilities of Leisure." He spoke for forty minutes in a direct and agreeable way. His apt illustrations and stories proved very entertaining to the audience.

The old Puritans believed that the man who had no regular profession was doomed to perdition. To them leisure looked like the larceny of other people's time. Mr. Quincy was one of the first gentlemen of leisure. His stories are most charming; his letters are models in their way; he stood in the fore-front of the desperately unpopular cause of Abolition; was a finished scholar, a delightful man, and a thorough patriot. How many men of business have left a better record? Yet the old Puritan prejudice had as most Puritan notions had, a principle beneath that is fundamentally right. Leisure, unemployed, is apt, as Dr. Watts has kindly pointed out to us, to be a source of harm.

When opportunity is offered, it must not be thrown away. Given leisure, what shall be done with it? Money is not valuable in itself; the necessity of earning a living is a great safeguard. It is easy to lose one's opportunity through dissipation. Far better is it to spend one's time in the pursuit of manly pastimes. But though play should make a part of every man's life, it should not make the whole of it. A third use of leisure is devotion to literary pursuits, without any result of consequence springing therefrom. Such a life gives little rest and less contentment.

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Avoid being an amateur. The essential thing is the habit of thinking and working. There is no pleasure in vacation unless work comes before and after it. Begin to acquire the habit of work, and the effort to keep it lessens. Let the man of leisure remember the debt he owes to the public for its protection of himself and his property. He can pay this debt by working in public undertakings and charities where no pay can be given. But there is room nowhere for the dabbler.

Politics is a field where earnest workers are much needed. Discard the habit of sneering at politics and politicians. A college professor once committed a murder; it would be rash to assume that all college professors are inclined to homicide. It is the duty of every man of brains and leisure to go into politics. Be in sympathy with your age and country, - your country especially. Anglomania is synonymous with a weak intelligence and an imperfect education.

Do not be negatively critical, as Harvard men are, perhaps, too prone to be. It comes at first perhaps, from self consciousness and from a fear of ridicule. Be positive in your attitude, but not dogmatic. Plunge into the stream and learn to do things yourself. Intelligence and sympathy come with experience. Learn the lesson of doing the right that lies close at hand, from the brave action of Mr. Cable in publishing his two books "The Freedman's Case in Equity," and "The Silent South." His action in defying social ostracism for the sake of what he felt was the right should be an example to us. It is by such men that the work of the world is done.