These exercises ‘carry me back to early life, when I was a student of the Law School of Harvard University as you have been students in the Law School of Howard University. I cannot think of those days without fondness. They were the happiest of my life. . . . There is happiness in the acquisition of knowledge, which surpasses all common joys. The student who feels that he is making daily progress, constantly learning something new,—who sees the shadows by which he was originally surrounded gradually exchanged for an atmosphere of light,—cannot fail to be happy. His toil becomes a delight, and all that he learns is a treasure,—with this difference from gold and silver, that it cannot be lost. It is a perpetual capital at compound interest.’
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In an address to the students—colored—of Howard University, Washington, D. C., Feb. 3, 1871, Sumner said:—
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