Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

638 HENRY BAIRD FAVILL
urging upon you as a general proposition to have interests,
really definite, consistent interests, that you may reasonably
and honestly call intellectual interests, in some subject
or other outside your business.
The other day, in talking with a friend about various
public activities in which we had been engaged together, he
said, with some feeling of discouragement: "There is nothing
difficult about this matter if you can get the ear of honest
men." He was referring to municipal affairs, to a number
of situations that are important. To that I would like
especially to call your attention.
The obligation that rests upon all men who are in dignified
employment, men of respectable connections, of elevated
business ethics, is to take part in their community
life. Do you do it? Some of you, I know, do it tremendously.
Many of 3^ou would if you just knew how. I
venture to say, however, that in the minds of this splendid
body of men here to-night there is not the conviction regarding
this ethical relation to community affairs that there
should be. Think that over. Let me say with all the emphasis
I can that every unit of good that you can confer
on the community by participating in its affairs will be returned
to you in personal reward tenfold through the interest
that will come to you from an intelligent understanding
of the needs of your community.
We live in a wonderful country, under a wonderful
government, complex, ramified, intangible, and rather loosely
knit. None of us knows definitely much about affairs
outside his business — particularly the social and political
affairs around him. In the light of the turmoil which now
exists in the world; with the internal trepidation every one
of us feels as to what is coming next; with the serious
thought that a large percentage of the men here to-night
may never meet again if things should go from bad to worse
during the next two or three years — with this in mind I
ask you, gentlemen, to earnestly answer to yourselves the