Farewells.

Education In Greetings and Farewells, Anna Buckland best known as the author of The Story of English Literature, collects together speeches from various points in a school year.

 I don't know that much about her, but the introduction suggests that she herself gave them during her own career and though they were published in 1891, they're still redolent of even today's educational experience and how sometimes greetings and farewells merge. Here, for example are the opening paragraphs of an address to at a new school:

"We meet together this evening with the sense of standing upon one of those boundary-lines which separate a Past from a Future ; and such critical moments, when we seem to be "leaving those things which are behind," and "reaching forth unto those which are before," are occasions suggesting serious thought, and calling forth earnest resolutions.

"As we look around us to-night) many of you miss familiar faces ; there are others, again, who feel themselves half-bewildered among fresh scenes and unknown companions ; and all are conscious that we have entered into many new relations with one another, the issues of which lie among the uncertainties of the future. Amidst these mingled emotions, by what steadfast thought, by what high resolves, shall we brace ourselves to meet the duties and difficulties lying before us ?"

The text is laced with a multitude of religious references, well alright a lot of sermonising, but within that there's still much eloquence.