Page 7 - 1913 May - To Dragma

"The Truth Against the World"

MARY E. CHASE, Gamma 1909

N this great brown-raftered room where I sit
there is a great stone fire-place, so huge that
birchen sticks do not satisfy it, for it demands
great oak logs for food. It is formed of great
slabs of rough lime-stone, and in the one great
stone above the black andirons there is carved

an old Welsh motto. "Welsh", you ask? Yes, Welsh, for
this is a Welsh community, a Welsh household, a school
founded on sturdy Welsh principle, and in the year and more
that I have been here, I have found more than one charac-
teristic of the great King Arthur among these people, who
reverence him and honor him as their countryman.
C I do not give the motto in Welsh. Neither you nor I
could pronounce it if we would; but I translate it as it stands
among carven oak leaves and mistletoe berries,—"The Truth
Against the World!"

G, In all this year no five words have appealed to me as
these five, and with all the memories I shall carry away with
me none will be so dear as the one of that big brown-raftered
room on winter afternoons with the flames from the oak logs
rushing up the huge chimney, but pausing long enough to touch
with soft light the Welsh letters of the old Druidic motto.
C T o preserve with perfeet sweetness one's conscience in
the midst of all that may be sordid and untruthful; to hold
unflinchingly to all that is noble and fair, even in the little
every day transactions, one with the other; to adhere to one s
duty of the moment, no matter what may be the temptation;
to trample underfoot everything that is low, and to hold high,
untainted and unstained the ideals of our lives; to press for-
ward undaunted with faith and trust; to reverence the voice
of God; these are parts of our truth against the world.
CX, W e hear much of Faith, much of Trust, much of Love.
If we are true, shall we not fill all of these?
CL I do not mean to give a sermon, but I do wish that we in
our fraternity, our sisterhood, might not only realize, for we
realize now, but live the great truth of this old motto, "rejoic-
ing in the truth."—this "Truth Against the World."