Merlin’s Owl | Lapham’s Quarterly

A charge to graduates.

Owl sitting on a book, etching by Frans Everbag, c. 1900. Rijksmuseum . Most graduation advice—whether given in boom times or moments of crisis—depicts a future replete with untrammeled ground and endless unknowns. And if you take a look at commencement addresses from the past, you’ll see a glimpse of what people in power told privileged young people to believe in and sketches of what the future could be, which we can now consider next to the reality of what came next. Lapham’s Quarterly is revisiting the history of giving advice to graduates and others in the process of acquiring knowledge or

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