speaker in the Legislature of South Carolina. At twenty-eight Edward
Everett Hale had found a place in the hearts and minds of the people, and
at twenty-nine John Jay, youngest member of the Continental Congress, was
chosen to draw up the address to the British Nation.

These illustrious ones, who before their thirtieth year had written their
names on the immortal banner of their country, are only a few which adorn
the pages of our early history. Others of like purport might be added
indefinitely both from the early and the later life of our country. And
there has been no time when the young man played so important a role in
human affairs as he does to-day in the dawn of the twentieth century,
when the heart and the mind, philanthropy and literature, virtue and
truth, science and art, capital and labor are the principal factors in the
world's progress. To refer to but a single instance in this period of our
national life, there is no greater statesman and patriot than our beloved
President, Theodore Roosevelt,--a young man to whom we are proud to point
as a true type of American greatness and American manhood. Assuming
control of the Nation at such a critical moment in her history, when so
many dangerous rocks lay in her course, tremendous, indeed, was the
responsibility thrust upon him. But by his inherent principle of rule, his
unquenchable patriotism, his indomitable purpose, and the imperiousness of
his will, founded on a rich scholarship and a broad policy, he has spelled
triumph out of difficulty, and his name will go down in twentieth-century
history an example of illustrious young manhood.

The young man is emphatically the _ruling element_ in politics to-day. It
is estimated that a sufficient number of young men come of age every four
years to control the issue of the Presidential election. Constituting
about one-half of the present voting population, they hold far more than
the balance of political power. It was Goethe who said that the destiny of