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THE CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS
An Address at the Cambridge Union, May 26, 1910
Mr. President and gentlemen, it is a very great pleasure for me to be
here to-day and to address you and to wear what the Secretary[10] has
called the gilded trappings which show that I am one of the youngest
living graduates of Cambridge. Something in the nature of a tract was
handed to me before I came up here. It was an issue of the _Gownsman_
[holding up, amid laughter, a copy of an undergraduate publication]
with a poem portraying the poet's natural anxiety lest I should preach
at him. Allow me to interpose an anecdote taken from your own hunting
field. A one-time Master of Foxhounds strongly objected to the
presence of a rather near-sighted and very hard-riding friend who at
times insisted on riding in the middle of the pack; and on one
occasion he earnestly addressed him as follows: "Mr. So and So, would
you mind looking at those two dogs, Ploughboy and Melody. They are
very valuable, and I really wish you would not jump on them." To which
his friend replied, with great courtesy: "My dear sir, I should be
delighted to oblige you, but unfortunately I have left my glasses at
home, and I am afraid they must take their chance.
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