The Young Man and the World
by Albert J. Beveridge · English · Gutenberg #17110 · 490,061 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Young Man and the World
Author: Albert J. Beveridge
Release date: November 20, 2005 [eBook #17110]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD ***
Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Jeannie Howse and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
_The_ YOUNG MAN _and_
THE WORLD
By
Albert J. Beveridge
D. Appleton and Company
New York
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published October, 1905_
PREFACE
The chapters of this volume were, originally, papers published in _The
Saturday Evening Post_ of Philadelphia. The first paper on "The Young
Man and the World," which gives the title to the book, was written, at
the request of the editor of that magazine, as an addition to a series
of articles upon the Philippines and statesmen of contemporaneous
eminence.
This paper called for another, and each in its turn called for the one
that followed it. And so the series grew from day to day, largely out
of the suggestions of its readers--a sort of collaboration. A
considerable correspondence resulted, and requests were made that the
articles be collected in permanent form. This is the genesis of this
book. I hope it will do some good.
While addressed more directly to young men, these papers were yet
written for men on both sides the hill and on the crest thereof. I
would draw maturity and youth closer together. I would have the
sympathy between them ever fresh and vital. I would have them
understand one another and thus profit each by the strength of the
other.
The manner in which these papers were written created certain
repetitions. After careful consideration I have concluded to let them
remain. They are upon subjects of vital concern. Where it is necessary
to remember, it is better to be wearied than to forget. And these
papers were meant to be helpful. They are merely plain talks as of
friends conferring together.
ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE.
INDIANAPOLIS, _May 1, 1905._
CONTENTS
PAGE
I.--THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD 1
II.--THE OLD HOME 54
III.--THE COLLEGE? 83
1. The Young Man who Goes.
2. The Young Man who Cannot Go.
IV.--THE NEW HOME 152
V.--THE YOUNG LAWYER AND HIS BEGINNINGS 186
VI.--PUBLIC SPEAKING 217
VII.--THE YOUNG MAN AND THE PULPIT 246
VIII.--GREAT THINGS YET TO BE DONE 278
IX.--NEGATIVE FUNDAMENTALS 310
X.--THE YOUNG MAN AND THE NATION 334
XI.--THE WORLD AND THE YOUNG MAN 366
XII.--THE YOUNG MAN'S SECOND WIND; OR, FACING
THE WORLD AT FIFTY 387
THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD
I
THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD
Be honest with the world and the world will be honest with you. This
is the fundamental truth of all real prosperity and happiness. For the
purposes of every man's daily affairs, all other maxims are to this
central verity as the branches of a tree to its rooted trunk.
The world will be honest with you whether you are honest with it or
not. You cannot trick it--remember that. If you try it, the world will
punish you when it discovers your fraud. But be honest with the world
from nobler motives than prudence.
Prudence will not make you _be_ honest--it will only make you _act_
honest. And you must be honest.
I do not mean that lowest form of honesty which bids you keep your
hands clean of another's goods or money; I do not mean that you shall
not be a "grafter," to use the foul and sinister word which certain
base practices have recently compelled us to coin. Of course you will
be honest in a money sense.
But that is only the beginning; you must go farther in your dealings
with the world. You must be intellectually honest. Do not pretend to
be what you are not--no affectations, no simulations, no falsehoods
either of speech or thought, of conduct or attitude. Let truth abide
in the very heart of you.
"I take no stock in that man; he poses his face, he attitudinizes his
features. The man who tries to impress me by his countenance is
constitutionally false," said the editor of a powerful publication, in
commenting on a certain personage then somewhat in the public eye.
You see how important honesty is even in facial expression. I
emphasize this veracity of character because it is elemental. You may
have all the gifts and graces but if you have not this essential you
are bankrupt. Be honest to the bone. Be clean of blood as well as of
tongue.
Never try to create a deeper impression than Nature creates for you,
and that means never attempt to create any impression at all. For
example, never try to look wise. Many a front of gravity and weight
conceals an intellectual desolation. In Moscow you will find the exact
external counterpart of Tolstoi. It is said that it is difficult to
distinguish the philosopher from his double. Yet this duplicate in
appearance of the greatest of living writers is a cab driver without
even the brightness of the jehu.
Be what you are, therefore, and no more; yes, and no less--which is
equally important. In a word, start right. Be honest with yourself,
too. If you have started wrong, go back and start over again. But
don't change more than once. Some men never finish because they are
always beginning. Be careful how you choose and then stick to your
second choice. A poor claim steadily worked may be better than a good
one half developed. The man who makes too many starts seldom makes
anything else.
But don't pretend that you have a thousand dollars in bank when you
hold in your hands the statement of your overdraft. Face your account
with Nature like a man. For Nature is a generous, though remorseless,
financier, delivering you your just due and exacting the uttermost of
your debt. Also Nature renders you a daily accounting.
And, at the very beginning, Nature writes upon the tablet of your
inner consciousness an inventory of your strengths and of your
weaknesses, and lists there those tasks which you are best fitted to
perform--those tasks which Nature _meant_ you to perform. For Nature
put you here to _do something_; you were not born to be an ornament.
First, then, learn your limitations. Take time enough to think out
just what you _cannot_ do. This process of elimination will soon
reduce life's possibilities for you to a few things. Of these things
select the one which is nearest you, and, having selected it, put all
other loves from you.
It is a business maxim in my profession that "law is a jealous
mistress." It is very true, but it is not more true than it is that
every other calling in life is a jealous mistress. To every man _his_
task is the hardest, _his_ situation the most difficult.
By finding out one's limitations is not meant, of course, what society
will permit you to do, or what men will permit you to do, but what
Nature will permit you to do. You have no other master than Nature.
Nature's limitations only are the bounds of your success. So far as
your success is concerned, no man, no set of men, no society, not even
all the world of humanity, is your master; but Nature is. "We cannot,"
says Emerson, "bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal
with persons."
"_Poeta nascitur, non fit_," is just as applicable to lawyers and
mechanics and engineers as to poets. More failures have been caused by
the old idea that a man may make himself what he will, than by any
single half-truth that has crept into our common speech and belief. A
man may make himself what he will within the limitations Nature has
set about him.
"When I was born,
From all the seas of strength
Fate filled a chalice,
Saying, This be thy portion, child,"
declares the Persian sage. But all that Hafiz means by that is that a
Paderewski shall not attempt blacksmithing, or a Rothschild try
cartooning or sculpture or watchmaking, or any man undertake that for
which Nature has not fitted him.
Do we not see instances every day of men made unhappy for life, and
their powers lost to the world by trying to do that for which they
have no aptitude? Parents obeying the attractive theory that any boy
can make himself what he pleases decide upon some ambitious career for
him without considering his natural abilities and efficiencies.
Usually some calling of clamorous conspicuity is selected.
Twenty years ago the law was the favorite avenue upon which fond
parents would thus set the feet of their offspring; the law, they
thought, would enable him better to "make his mark"--that is, to
parade up and down before the public eye and fill the public ear with
declamation. Even yet that profession has clientless members,
miserable in their hearts over their self-consciousness that they are
not lawyers and never can be lawyers, who would have been useful,
prosperous, and happy if they could have been permitted to be
architects or merchants or farmers or doctors or soldiers or sculptors
or editors or what not.
One of the cleverest of our present-day writers of fiction started out
to be a lawyer. But he could not keep his pen from paper nor restrain
that mysterious instrument from tracing sketches of character and
drawing pictures of human situations. Very well! He had the courage to
obey the call of his preferences; and to-day, instead of being an
unskillful attorney, he is noted and notable in the present-hour world
of letters.
Anthony Hope in England is another illustration precisely in point. On
the other hand, Erskine, who was intended by his parents for the army,
was destined by Nature for the bar. This master-advocate of all the
history of English jurisprudence felt it in his blood that he _must_
practise law; and so his sword rusted while he studied Blackstone.
Finally, he deserted the field for the forum, there to become the most
illustrious barrister the United Kingdom has produced.
I therefore emphasize the importance of finding out what you can _do_
best rather than what either you or your parents _wish_ you could do
best. For it seems to me that this is getting very close to the truth
of life. The thoughtless commonplace that "every boy may be President"
has worked mischief, sown unhappiness, and robbed humanity of useful
workers.
Every boy cannot be President, and, what is more, every boy ought not
to be. Let Edison remain in his laboratory and enrich mankind with his
wizard wisdom. England would have lost her great explorer if Drake had
tried to write plays; while Shakespeare would doubtless have been
sea-sick on the decks of the Golden Hind. Let Verdi compose, and charm
the universal heart with his witcheries of sound; let Cavour keep to
his statesmanship, that a dismembered people may again be made one.
Every man to his calling. "Let the shoemaker stick to his last," said
Appelles.
Ito might have led the Japanese armies to defeat--Oyama led them to
victory. But Ito created modern Japan, wrote its constitution and
introduced those methods which made Oyama's successes possible. Each
man succeeded because he chose to do what Nature fitted him to do.
Of course you may be fitted for more than one thing. Cæsar could have
equaled if not surpassed Cicero in mere oratory had he not preferred
to find, in war and government, a fame more enduring. But, if you try
all things for which you may be equipped by Nature, you will so
scatter your energies through the delta of your aptitudes that your
very wealth and variety of gifts neutralizes them all. No. Pick out
one of the things you can do well and let the others go. A tree is
pruned on the same principle. Stick to one thing. Beware of your
versatilities.
Your life's work chosen give wing to your imagination. Behold yourself
preeminent in your field of effort. Dream of yourself as the best
civil engineer of your time, or the soundest banker or ablest
merchant. If you are a farmer fancy yourself the master of all the
secrets science is daily discovering in this most engaging of
occupations; picture yourself as the man who has accomplished most in
the realm of agriculture.
Set for yourself the ideal of perfection in your calling--being sure
that it is Nature's calling. Then let your dreams become beliefs; let
your imaginings develop into faith. Complete the process by resolving
to make that belief come true. Then go ahead and _make it come true_.
Keep your resolution bright. Never let it rust. Burnish it with
work--untiring, unhasting, unyielding work.
Work--that is the magic word. In these four letters all possibilities
are wrapped up. "Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened
unto you." Or let us paraphrase the sacred page and say--Work and you
will win. Work to your ideal. If you never reach it--and who can
achieve perfection?--you surely will approach it.
Do not be impatient of your progress. If, to your own measurement,
you seem to be moving slowly, remember that, to the observation of
your fellow men, you are making substantial and satisfactory advance
and, to the eye of your rivals, you are proceeding with unreasonable
speed.
Don't pay any attention to how _fast_ you are getting on but _go ahead
and get on_. Keep working. And work with all your might. How wise the
Bible is: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
And keep on doing it--persist--persist--persist. Again the Bible:
"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before
kings." Do not fear hard knocks. They are no sign that you will not
finally win the battle. Indeed, ability to endure in silence is one of
the best evidences that you will finally prevail.
Yes, put yourself into your work--and put all of yourself into your
work. Having done that, be content with your effort--do not fret. If
all you do yields the fruit you hope for, do not fret while that fruit
is ripening. On the other hand, if your labor comes to nothing, still
do not fret. A like fate has fallen upon uncounted millions before you
and will come to unnumbered myriads after you. If you have done your
best you have done better than the man who has done more than you but
who has not done his best.
And so, whatever the outcome, start out with this rule and keep it to
the end. For nothing wastes your powers so much as apprehension. The
hardest work, if done with common sense, is after all a tonic. But
fear lest that work will not yield you as much as you wish is a sort
of irritating cocaine of character, numbing and deadening all of your
powers and at the same time lashing your mind and nerves with the
knotted thongs of unhappiness. Besides, fretting is so trivial, so
little, so commonplace. Fail if you must, but do not be contemptible.
He who worries not only poisons the very fountains of his own strength
but arouses in the world's attitude toward him a sort of sneering
pity. So the very first thing that I have to suggest to you is that
you should _be a man_ in all your doings and throughout your whole
career.
That is it--be a man; a great, strong, willing, kindly man--calm in
the glory of a fearless heart, serene in your trust and belief in God,
the Father of the world, and so sure of the justice of His providence
that you go about your daily business free from those silly cares
which corrode and ruin manhood itself.
Be a man--that is the first and the last rule of the greatest success
in life. For the greatest success in life does not mean dollars heaped
in bank-vaults nor volumes written, nor railroads built, nor laws
devised, nor armies led. No, the greatest success is none of these.
The supreme success is character.
Pay no attention to mere spiteful criticism, but seek, as for gold and
precious stones, the chastening advice of friends. Do not be offended
if your friends say an unpleasant thing of you. And here we are at the
Bible again: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of
an enemy are deceitful."
These recurrences to what those wise old Hebrews said make one feel
that one is committing a superfluity when one attempts to say anything
along the line of practical advice, since anything that any man can
say is nothing more than a very weak dilution of the concentrated
thought of the most acute minds of the greatest business people, the
most successful material people--yes, and the most idealistic
people--who ever lived, the ancient, the mysterious, the persistent
Jews.
This is saying much for the Hebrew blood and genius; but have not
these Jews given us our moral laws, our spiritual ideals, our sacred
faith? Not only the bankers of the world are they, but the formulators
of the rules of conduct between man and man, and of that adoring
attitude which the enlightened mind should always maintain toward the
All-Father. The Jews are the universal people.
If you like ethnology, study the Jews. Study the Germans, too. What
peoples they both are--utterly unlike, yet full of the inspiration of
thoughts and deeds and persistence. Persistence--there is a word of
might it will pay you to ponder over.
Persistence--"stick-to-it-ive-ness." It is a quality better than
genius. The Germans have that quality preeminently, and other
wholesome and masterful characteristics as well. They are domestic yet
warlike, industrial yet artistic, experts in commerce yet disciples of
science. Study the Germans!
Though you must not fear criticism, do not disregard it. You may find
a suggestion in it, and thus your enemy will become your counselor.
But applause! Fly from the desire for it as from pestilence. It will
weaken you infinitely. And to a strong man achievement is the only
applause of value--the making of his point.
Many years ago I heard this story of Bismarck. If it is not true, it
ought to be. And if it is not true specifically, it is true
abstractly. He had just returned from one of his notable diplomatic
victories at the beginning of his career; great crowds had assembled
for a speech.
Bismarck heard it all, but smoked and drank his beer and gave no sign.
His secretary rushed in with excitement, and said:
"You must go out and acknowledge the applause of the people, and make
a speech."
"And why," said Bismarck; "why do they want me to speak; why are they
applauding me?"
"Because of your great success in these negotiations," said the
secretary.
"Humph!" said Bismarck, "suppose I had failed?" and turned back to his
smoking and his beer.
Bismarck, you see, was too great for applause.
I have quoted the Bible so frequently that it suggests remarks upon
one of the great influences of life--the influence of books. Like
every other power, this should be exercised with judgment. Let us
indulge no immoderate expectations of the results of mere reading.
Reading is, at best, only second-hand information and inspiration. It
is not the number of books a man has read that makes him available in
the world of business.
What the world wants is power; how to get that is the question.
Books are one source of power; but, necessarily, books are artificial.
That is why we cannot dispense with teachers in our schools,
professors in our colleges, preachers in our pulpits, orators on the
political platform. There is no real way of teaching but by word of
mouth. There is no real instruction but experience.
You see that the German universities have come back to the lecture
method exclusively--or did they ever depart from it? And they know
what they are about, those profound old German scholars. They have
created scientific scholarship. They have made what we once thought
history absurd, and have rewritten the story of the world.
But all this is _obiter dicta_. The point is that they know the value
of books as a source of power and learning, and they know their
limitations, too. So does the public. Public speaking will never
decline. It is Nature's method of instruction. You will listen with
profit to a speech which you cannot drive your mind to read.
It would seem, therefore, that the largest wisdom dictates
conservatism in mere reading. Read, of course, and deeply, widely,
thoroughly. But let Discrimination select your books. Choose these
intellectual companions as carefully as you pick your personal
comrades. Read only "tonic books," as Goethe calls them. Yes, read,
and abundantly--but don't stop there. Don't imagine that books, of
themselves, will make you wise. Reading, alone, will not render you
effective.
Mingle with the people--I mean the common people. Talk with them. Do
not talk _to_ them but talk _with_ them, and get them to talk with
you. Who that has had the experience would exchange the wit and wisdom
of the "hands" at the "threshings," during the half hour of rest after
eating, for the studied smartness of the salon or even the
conversation of the learned? But think not to get this by going out to
them and saying, "Talk up now." The farm-hand, the railroad laborer,
the working man of every kind, does not wear his heart on his sleeve.
Mark the idioms in Shakespeare. He spoke the words and uttered the
thoughts of hostlers as well as of kings. Observe the common language
in the Bible. It is curious to note the number of the pithy
expressions daily appearing among us which are repetitions of what the
people were saying in the time of Isaiah.
All who love Robert Burns have their affection for him rooted in the
human quality of him; and Burns's oneness with the rest of us is
revealed by the earthiness of his words. They smell of home. They have
the fragrance of trees and soil. We know that they were not coined by
Burns the genius, but repeated from the mouths of plain men and women
by Burns the reporter. It is so with all literature that lives.
Mingle with the people, therefore; be one of them. Who are you that
you should not be one of them? Who is any one that he should not be
one of the people? Their common thought is necessarily higher and
better than the thought of any man. This is mathematical.
And the people, too, are young, eternally young. They are the source
of all power, not politically speaking now, but ethnically, even
commercially, speaking. The successful manager of any business will
tell you that he takes as careful an inventory of public opinion as he
does of the material items of his merchandise. A capable merchant told
me that he makes it a point to mingle with the crowds.
"Not," said he, "to hear what they have to say, for you catch only a
scrap or a sentence here and there; but to go up against them. Somehow
or other you get their drift that way. Anyhow I am conscious that this
helps me to understand what the people need and want. There is such a
thing as commercial instinct; and contact with the people keeps this
fresh and true."
We have come to that state of enlightenment where the people want to
know not only that they are getting the best goods or best service,
but that the business which supplies either is run all right. Who can
doubt that in the universal mind there is a question as to the moral
element in American business?
This is nothing but the composite conscience of the American people
demanding that American business shall not only be conducted ably, but
also that it shall be conducted honestly. It is a force which you must
take into account. It will be a glorious asset for you if you will pay
enough attention to it to understand it.
But you must mingle with the people yourself in order to comprehend
this source of power. Do not sit alone in your room and read about the
people; that is no way to learn about them.
Remember that no workable constitution was ever written exclusively by
scholars. Recall the ordinance for the government of Carolina devised
by the philosopher Locke. It failed; yet it reads well. Time and again
theorists with highest purpose and broadest book wisdom have
formulated laws for the good of mankind which would not work.
Most statutes that live and operate have had their origins among men
of the soil as well as men of the study. The point I am making is that
learning and accomplishments will do no good if you do not connect
them with the people.
Is not this why so many reformers retire disappointed--men and women
of finest excellencies of purpose and practical and fruitful
thought--they have insisted in projecting their reforms from office or
parlor upon the masses without knowing those masses? It is as
impossible for the wisest man to be a statesman by confining himself
to his study and his weighty volumes and his careful abstract
thinking, as it is to be a chemist by reading about chemistry.
The laboratory, the test-tube, the actual contact with the real
materials and forces in nature, are essential to the scientist of
matter. This is much more true of the art of government. No man ever
lived so wise that association with the millions would not enrich his
wisdom mightily. And thus, page after page, we might go on pointing
out the value of contact with the people, whom, after all, it ought to
be your highest purpose to serve in some way.
For in all your doings never forget that, build you ever so cunningly,
young man, you have builded in vain if the work of your hands has not
helped humanity. Every occupation, trade, business, employment has its
reason in service of the people.
Grocery man, harness-maker, carpenter; doctor, lawyer, or railway man;
farmer, miner, or journalist; actor on the stage, teacher in the
school-room, preacher in the pulpit--all your effort is for the
service of the people, the ministering to their needs, the
enlightenment of their minds, the uplifting of their souls. And I
insist, therefore, that you shall know with the knowledge of kinship
this humanity with whom you are to work and _for_ whom you are to
work.
Spend some time with Nature, too. The people and Nature--they alone
contain the elemental forces. They alone are unartificial,
unexhausted. You will be surprised at the strength you will get from a
day in the woods. I do not mean physical strength alone, but mental
vigor and spiritual insight.
The old fable of Antæus is so true that it is almost literally true.
Every time he touched the earth when thrown, that common mother of us
all gave him new strength; and, rising, he came to the combat as fresh
as when he began.
Learn to know the trees; make friends with them. I know that this
counsel will appear far-fetched if you have never cultivated the
companionship of the woods. But try it, and keep on trying it, and you
will find that there is such a thing as making friends with the trees.
They will come to have a sort of personality for you.
No doubt this is all in your mind. No matter, it is good for you. It
makes you more natural; that means that you are more simple, kindly,
and truthful. What is more soothing and restorative than to stand
quite still in field or forest and listen to the thousand mingled
sounds that make up that wondrous melody which Nature is always
playing on the numberless strings of her golden harp. Learn the peace
which that music brings to you.
In short, cultivate Nature, get close to Nature. Try to get Nature to
give you what she has for you as earnestly as you try to get what you
want in business; and your days and nights will be glorified with a
beauty and strength the existence of which you would have denied
before you experienced their blessings.
But, of course, you must work for the benefits you get from Nature,
just as you must work for everything worth having. You cannot quit
your office and say, "Now I shall take a ten-minutes' walk in the park
and commune with Nature." Nature is not to be courted in any such way.
She does not fling her favors at your feet--not until you have won her
utterly. Then all of the wealth and power which Nature has for those
who love her are yours in a profuse and exhaustless opulence.
There is nothing so important for a young man, especially a young
American, as to resolve not to wear himself out nervously and
physically. Take stated vacations, therefore. I should advise every
young man who expects to run a long race to resolve, _after he has
established himself_, that he will take one, and, if possible, two
months' period of absolute vacation every year. Let him make this a
part of his business, just as he makes sleeping a part of his business
every day.
What matter if another lawyer gets the case that would have come to
you, or another real-estate dealer secures the corner lot on which you
have had your eye, or another operator makes the profitable deal which
would have given you fame and fortune?
_You_ have obtained and preserved that which they most probably have
lost. _You_ have made an investment in Youth. You have purchased
power. You have taken stock in length of years. You have equipped
yourself with new nerves, a rested heart, a refreshed brain, a hearty
stomach, and a sane mind in a sound body.
And you have done more than all this: You have restored your
perspective. You have corrected your vision, so that you see things in
their just proportion. One reason why men waste energy so prodigally
is that their intense pursuit of their business makes them lose all
sense of the proportion of things. That which is of little consequence
appears, to the distorted vision, of immense importance; and as much
energy is wasted in trifles as should be expended on great affairs.
This process keeps up until really first-class men are reduced to very
small men.
Let a man go each year to the everlasting mountains; to the solitude
of the ancient forests; to the eternal ocean with its manifestation of
power and repose. Let him sit by its solemn shore listening to it sing
that song which for a million years before our civilization was
thought of it had been singing, and which for a million years after
our civilization has become merely a line in history it will continue
to sing, and he will realize how unimportant are the things which only
a few weeks before seemed to him of such vast moment. Perhaps the
words of the old Khayyam will come to him:
"And fear not lest Existence, closing your
Account and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour."
Or,
"When You and I behind the Veil are passed,
Oh! but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the sea's self should heed a pebble cast."
Then you will come back to your work and see things in their proper
dimensions. You will expend your energy on things that require it, and
you will smile at the things that do not deserve your attention, and
pass them by. You will substitute duty for ambition, and you will go
your way with sanity for perhaps ten months. Then you will need again
the elemental lesson of the forest, the mountain, or the sea.
I do not mean that you shall take a vacation until you have deserved
it. What right have you to rest before you have labored--before you
have earned a thread that clothes you or a mouthful that nourishes
you. There are men whose whole lives are a vacation. These words are
not for them. From my viewpoint, such men might as well be dead. The
men upon whom I am urging the wisdom of taking periods for
recuperation are those who have been pulling with the team and keeping
their traces taut. And I assume that you who read are one of these
worth-while men. Very well! I want you to last a long time.
On this subject, many is the talk I have had with friends who are
business men. "Well," my business friend has said, "I just cannot get
away this summer. Next summer I will go away, but I cannot go away
this summer. You see, I have a 'deal' which I am about to close; it
demands my personal attention. It would be treason to my business to
leave this summer."
Yes, quite true, no doubt. But so has Nature a "deal" on with this
same business man; and it will be treason to Nature if he does not go
away and let Nature's ministers attend him. If he has got to be false
to his business or to Nature, he had better be false to the former. It
is a fine thing to be true to one's business. But be sure that you are
_really_ true to your business; and that means that, first of all, you
shall look to your health. Your _business_ demands that. Good health
is good "business."
I knew a business man who was so true to his business that he was
unfaithful to himself. The machinery of his superb mind had been
running at highest speed for ten months. It needed a rest--oil on the
heated bearings, a reburnishing of the soiled steel, a rest from the
high tension. He would have given just such care to an automobile, or
an engine, or any inanimate mechanism. He would have given much
greater care to his horse.
But did he give it to himself? No. He had a "deal" on of large
proportions; that "deal" must be consummated before attending to the
mind and body that put it through. So the lever was pulled back
another notch; the machine was driven to its highest burst of speed
and power, and the "deal" was a success.
Mark now what followed. The next day this splendid man did not feel
very well--a headache. And on the following day there was an eternal
end to all his "deals." I do not call that good business. Therefore,
my friend, the sea, the mountains, the forests; therefore Nature, with
her medicine for body and mind and soul.
"Turn yourself out to pasture," said a wise old country doctor to an
exhausted city man. Certainly, that's the thing to do--"turn yourself
out to pasture."
Singular advice for young men, you will say, this counseling of
restraint, calmness, and the husbanding of his powers. Yes; but I
would prevent you from exhausting yourself. No nervous prostration at
forty; no arrested development at fifty; no mental vacuity at
fifty-five. Too many Americans cease to count after middle life. They
have wasted their ammunition and are sent to the rear--there is no
longer use for them on the firing-line. Youth is so strong that it
wastes power like a millionaire of vitality. But you will need all
this dissipated energy later on--every ounce of it.
And so, while I would have you labor to the last limit of your
strength while you are about your work, I would also have you regain
the strength thus consumed. I would have you let Nature fill up your
empty batteries. Hence the suggestion of vacations, a level mind, and
books of serenity.
While you _do_ work, pour your full strength into every blow; but
having done your best do not spoil it by lying awake over it. No
half-heartedness in your task, however. If you try to save yourself
while you are about your business--if you "try to do things easy"--you
will neither work well nor rest well nor do anything else well.
I know there are those who cannot, for long, quit work--those who "have
their noses to the grindstone," to borrow one of those picture-sentences
of the people. In the far off end to which evolution tends, civilization
will doubtless reach the point where every human being may have his
solid month of play, repose, and recuperation--though this cannot be, of
course, while nation competes with nation. A universal industrial
agreement alone can compass that happy end. And do we not here
perceive, afar off, one of the vast and glorious tasks for the statesmen
of the future?
Meanwhile, if every man may not have an entire season of holiday, he
may have every day his hour of fun and rest. For every man that, at
least, is possible. And, too, he whom necessity drives hardest
owns--absolutely owns--for himself one day in seven. Not so bad after
all, is it? Not the ideal condition, but still quite tolerable.
Fifty-two days in three hundred and sixty-five, nearly two months in
the year, already given every man by the usage of our Christian
civilization for the purpose of "rest from all his work"; and with
divine example encouraging and instructing him in its use.
A man can get along on these two months distributed at the intervals
of one in every seven days. He can get along, that is, if he really
rests--really gives himself up to the sane joy of normal repose. The
humblest toiler, even in our greatest cities, can find physical
renewal and soul's upliftment in forest, at river's side, or on the
shore of lake or ocean--thanks to rapid transit and cheap fares.
So let us not get to pitying ourselves--we are pretty well
circumstanced for the alternation of work and play, even in our state
of partial development. It is for us to use the opportunity already
afforded us; and, speaking by and large, ought we not to deserve more
by using, without waste or worse than waste, what we already have? Is
there not sound philosophy in the legend which Mr. Lewis tells us was
inscribed on the headboard of Jack King, deceased: "Life ain't in
holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well"?
My suggestion of one or two months' outing in addition to our
fifty-two Sundays and several holidays is to those who have poured out
in brain-work and nervous strain more than the system can possibly
replenish except by a period devoted exclusively to the manufacture of
force to replace that which has been unnaturally expended. There are
men who toil night and day. Mostly they are young men establishing
their business or getting their "start."
I know many young men who work twelve and even fourteen hours every
day, and keep it up the year round. One of the greatest merchants of
my acquaintance worked from five o'clock in the morning until twelve
and one o'clock at night, and then slept in his little store. He was
just building up his business. We all know men who literally will not
stop work while awake, and when their task is near them. Such men must
go away from their business and let Nature work on them awhile.
Have your doctor look you over every six months, no matter how well
you feel--or oftener, if he thinks best. Have your regular physician.
Pick out a good one, and, especially, a man congenial to yourself.
Make him your friend as well as medical adviser. The true doctor is a
marvelous person.
How astonishing the accurate knowledge of the accomplished physician!
How miracle-like the dainty and beneficent skill of the modern
surgeon. The peculiar ability of a great diagnostician amounts to
divination. And he, whom Nature has fitted for this noble profession,
is endowed with a sympathy for you and an intuitive understanding of
you very much akin to the peculiar sixth sense of woman--that strange
power by which she "knows and understands."
Consult your doctor, therefore. Be careful of medicines he does not
prescribe. The most innocent drug is a veiled force, a compound of
hidden powers--the system a delicate intricacy whose condition may be
different every day. The neurosis of our American life is seducing
too many of our best and busiest men to the use of chemicals,
mixtures, nostrums, pick-me-ups, etc., which make nerves and brain
utter brave falsehoods of a strength that is not theirs.
Your doctor won't let you do this--he will stay your unconsciously
suicidal hand. If your machinery is out of order, he will tell you so,
and do what is necessary to repair it. He will comfort and reassure
you, too, and administer to the mind a medicine as potent as powder or
liquid. But you will get no false sympathy from him. If you have
nothing the matter with you, yet think you have, your doctor will take
you by the collar of your coat, stand you on your feet, and bid you be
a man. So don't dose yourself. Be a faithful guardian of the treasures
Nature gave you.
Returning now to reading: You are not to neglect books. They must be
read. If you are a professional man they must be more than read; they
must be studied, absorbed, made a part of your intellectual being. I
am not despising the accumulated learning of the past. Matthew Arnold,
in his "Literature and Dogma," quite makes this point. What I am
speaking of is miscellaneous reading.
After a while one wearies of the endless repetition, the "damnable
iteration" contained in the great mass of books. You will finally come
to care greatly for the Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns. Compared with
these most others are "twice-told tales" indeed. Of course one must
read the great scientific productions. They are an addition to
positive knowledge, and are a thing quite apart from ordinary
literature.
My recommendation of the Bible is not alone because of its spiritual
or religious influences; I am advising it from the material and even
the business view-point. By far the keenest wisdom in literature is in
the Bible, and is put in terms so apt and condensed, too, that their
very brevity proves its inspiration--_is_ an inspiration to you.
Carry the Bible with you, if for nothing else than as a matter of
literary relaxation. The tellers of the Bible stories tell the stories
and stop. "He builded him a city"--"he smote the Philistines"--"he
took her to his mother's tent." You are not wearied to death by the
details. Go into any audience addressed by a public speaker, and you
will perceive that his hearers' interest depends on whether he is
getting to the point. "Well, why doesn't he get to the point," is the
common expression in public assemblages. The Bible "gets to the
point."
And it has something for everybody. If you are a politician, or even a
statesman, no matter how astute you are, you can read with profit
several times a year the career of David, one of the cleverest
politicians and greatest statesmen who ever lived. If you are a
business man, the proverbs of Solomon will tone you up like
mountain-air.
A young woman should read Ruth. A man of practical life, a great man,
but purely a man of the world, once said to me: "If I could enact one
statute for all the young women of America, it would be that each of
them should read the book of Ruth once a month." But the limits and
purpose of this paper do not permit a dissertation on the Bible.
Shakespeare, of course, you cannot get along without. I shall say no
more about him here; for if anything at all is said about Shakespeare
(or the Bible), it ought to take up an entire paper at least. "Don't
read anybody's commentaries on Shakespeare--don't read mine; read
_Shakespeare_," was the final advice of Richard Grant White, one of
the ripest of the world's commentators on this universal poet.
From the Bible and Shakespeare roads lead down among books but little
lower in elevation and outlook. Of these the essays of Emerson furnish
a noble example; and the poems of the Concord philosopher are the
wisdom of the ancients stated in terms of Americanism. I would have
every young man spend half an hour over each page of our American
Thinker's essays on Character, Manners, Power, and Self-reliance.
Indeed, wherever you turn, among the pages of our Sage, you find no
desert place, but always a very forest of thought, tumultuous and
vibrant with fancy and suggestion, sweet and wholesome with living
truth and all helpfulness. You can form no better habit than to read a
page or two of Emerson every night.
Take Emerson as an example; read books of that sort--books that are
kin to the Bible and Shakespeare. There is no excuse for your
poisoning your time with idle books or low books or transient
books--moth volumes that flutter an instant in the light and in an
instant die. For the great books are entertaining. If you want
excitement, Plutarch's Lives furnish you thrilling-narrative fiction
cannot surpass--and undying inspiration besides.
The great novels, too, have in them all the blood and battle-ax the
stoutest nerve can crave, all the incidents of love, self-sacrifice,
and gentle invention the tenderest heart can need. Yes, certainly:
Read books that come to stay--the kind of books you would like to be
as a man.
The Rubaiyat would deserve mention but for the danger of
misunderstanding its message. Rightly read Omar Khayyam's lesson is
serenity and poise and that power and happiness which come from these.
The disciple of the tent-maker is not apt to lose his bearings. He no
longer regards to-day as eternity, no longer looks at the world and
the universe from himself as a center. Reject the Persian poet's
apotheosis of wine, absorb his philosophy of calmness, and you will do
your duty regardless of consequences. And that is the chief thing, is
it not?
Do your duty, have the courage of your thought, and walk off with the
old fatalist's verse soothing your soul and brain, and let the
disturbed ones clamor. The clamor will cease in time and turn to
applause. And whether it does or not is a matter of absolutely no
importance if you have done right.
There is nothing which will more conserve the nervous forces of any
serious-minded young man, nothing which will give him so much of that
composure of mind and necessary concentration of powers, as the
resolution to do his best and let it go at that, whether the world
applaud, or laugh, or rage. Be true to your deed, whatever it may have
been, and if the deed was true, the end must necessarily be
satisfactory.
Burns, of course, we must read. We must have him to keep the milk of
human kindness flowing in our veins--to keep sweet and sincere and
loving. The good that you get from Burns cannot be analyzed. You
cannot say, "I have read Burns, and find in him of wisdom so many
grains, of humor so many grains, of beauty of expression so many
grains," and so forth and so on to the end.
It is the general effect of Burns that is so valuable, so
indispensable. Read a little bit of Burns every day, and you will find
it very hard to be unkind; you are conscious that you are more human.
A mellow and delightful sympathy for your fellow man--aye, and for all
living things--warms your heart. And this human quality is more
valuable than all the riches of all the lords of wealth.
At all cost keep your capacity for human sympathy.
The sharp, hard processes of our strictly business civilization tend
to regulate even our sympathies into a system. It is as if we should
say each day, "I have time to-day for five minutes of human sympathy,"
and promptly push the button of our stop-watch when the second-hand
shows that the time has expired. Burns is the best corrective of this
that I know--the best, that is, outside of the Bible itself.
Indeed the more one thinks about it the clearer it is that we might
throw away all other books but the Bible, and still have all our
mental and moral needs ministered to by those who through all time
have thought and felt most highly; for the Bible is the record of the
loftiest of all human expression, not to mention its divine origin.
Put your Bible, your Shakespeare, your Burns in your bundle when you
go for a journey, and you are intellectually and spiritually equipped.
Let a man have the courage of his thought--I repeat it. Courage is
where we fail, not intellect. We hear much about intellect, about
"brains," as the rather coarse expression is. It is not that which is
needed; it is courage.
Enter into conversation the next time you are at the club, or in a
hotel, or restaurant, or wherever you meet men in intellectual
hospitality, on almost any subject you may choose, you will be amazed
at the information, the original thought, the keen analysis, even the
constructive ideas of most of the men there.
One of the most fertile minds I have ever known is nothing but an
unsuccessful lawyer in a country town; yet his intellect is as
tropical, and as accurate, too, as was Napoleon's, or Gould's.
How is it that all these people do not achieve the successes to which
their mere thinking entitles them? I say, to which their mere
_thinking_ entitles them, because--I say it again--if you will put
them beside the great masters of affairs you will find that they have
as many ideas as have these captains of business. My young friend, it
is simply because they have not courage and constancy. Long ago I
catalogued the qualities that make up character, in relative
importance, as follows:
First: Sincerity; fidelity, the ability to be true--true to friends,
true to ideas, true to ideals, true to your task, true to the truth
Who shall deny that the martyrs Nero burned did not experience joys in
the consuming flame more delicate and sweet than ever thrilled epicure
or lover?
Second (and well-nigh first): Courage--the godlike quality that dreads
not; the unanalyzable thing in man that makes him execute his
conception--no matter how insane or absurd it may appear to others--if
it appears rational to him, and then stride ahead to his next great
deed, regardless of the gossips.
Third: Reserve--the power to hold one's forces in check, as a general
disposes his army in an engagement on which the fate of an empire or
of the world may depend. This power of reserve involves silence. Talk
all you please, but keep your large conceptions to yourself till the
hour to strike arrives, and then strike with all your might.
In politics they call some men "rubber shoes"; such men continue long,
but they never achieve highly. Do not try to cultivate this quality if
Nature has been so kind as not to endow you with it. It is not a
masterful quality. Have the courage not only of your convictions--that
is not so hard--but _have the courage of your conceptions_. But do not
simulate courage if you have it not. False courage is worse than
cowardice--it is falsehood and cowardice combined.
Reserve also includes the power to wait; and that is almost as crucial
a test of greatness as courage itself. Many a battle has been lost by
over-eagerness. There was the greatness of Fate itself in the order of
the American officer of the Revolution who said, "Wait, men, until you
see the whites of their eyes."
Time is a young man's greatest ally. That is why youth holds the
whip-hand of the world. That is why youth can afford to dare. It is
also why age does not dare to dare. With youth, to-morrow is merely an
accession of power; but with age--ah, well, with age, as Omar says,
"To-morrow I may be
Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years."
Fourth: The fourth quality in character, the lowest one in the list,
is Intellect. Not that it is not so valuable as the others, but it is
so abundant, and, without the others, so useless. What is it we hear
the strong-handed Philistines say in the market-place? "Brains are
cheap"; that is what we hear them say. And they say truly. Many years
ago I became acquainted with a millionaire who had acquired his
wealth by building things, raising cattle, erecting factories--not by
shuffling the cards of trade.
His grammar is defective, but his elemental vitality will do you as
much good as a walk in the fresh air after the poisoned and steaming
atmosphere of a crowded room. "How have I succeeded?" said he, in
answer to a question one day. "Oh, by just having the nerve to decide
upon a plan, and then by hiring these brainy fellows to do my work. I
can get the services of the ablest lawyer in this city for a crumb of
the loaf I realize from his thought and industry. The secret of
success? Why, sir, it is will, that is all--will, nerve, 'sand.'"
Let me enlarge on the first great quality of character. Sincerity,
truthfulness--write these on the tablets of your heart; get them into
your blood. This is something that you can cultivate. One of the keen
lawyers of my town whom we elected as judge of our court, and who is
full of the fresh and living wisdom of the people, said this one day:
"A man can cultivate honesty--there is no doubt about that; but a man
who is born honest has a great advantage."
So if you have any taint of the blood which you discover inclines you
toward guile, insincerity, and untruthfulness fortify yourself by the
reflection that _insincerity is a losing game_. Put it on the low
ground of self-interest, and be truthful, be "square."
The old saying that "honesty is the best policy" has lost its original
force by much repetition. And it does not go far enough, either. I am
speaking of more than mere mercantile honesty; I am speaking of
political sincerity, of intellectual sincerity. Never attempt to fool
anybody. We live at such a rate of speed, our perceptions have become
so abnormally sensitive and acute, that it is next to impossible to
deceive any one; and he who attempts it is usually the only one
deceived.
If, then, a man can mount upon this humble stepping-stone of low
personal interest to sincerity for the sake of his own advantage, he
will, after a while, be able to climb higher, to the exalted plane of
truthfulness for the sake of truth; and then he will behold the
beatitudes of righteous living, and experience the joys which putting
oneself in harmony with the order of the universe and the on-going of
events never fails to bring. As a great scientist puts it, "Establish
your polarity, young man, and sleep soundly at night."
And courage: A successful manufacturer said to me one day, in
explaining his own success: _"I never let my idea get cold._ That, I
think, is why I have succeeded. When a great business deal came to my
mind, I did not waste my energy inquiring about whether I could do it.
I did not waste time and strength regretting that I was not stronger.
I did not destroy my force by doubting my own conception. I went at
it. I did it. I spent all my energy on execution after I had once
conceived it. Did I not make mistakes following such a plan? Why, of
course I made mistakes; and God protect me from the man who never made
a mistake!
"But acting by that method alone," said he, "is the way I achieved all
my triumphs. I do not pursue that course now, because I am getting
old, and I am in very poor health. Age and ill health make me doubt;
so I have not made any large business success for several years. I
should say that the reason why so many men who are really capable
intellectually fail, is because they are infidels to their own
thought, traitors to their own conception.
"If I could concentrate all the advice of my life into one thing,"
declared this strong wise man, in concluding his comments on failure
and success, "it would be for those young men who expect to do
something constructive to have faith in their idea, and act upon it
before it gets cold. There is a tremendous force in the enthusiasm of
your freshly formed plan. You have contributed largely to the defeat
of your scheme when you have permitted yourself to doubt it."
It was only the other day that the newspapers were full of an
extraordinary achievement of one of the American magicians of
business; and the papers said that the remarkable thing about it was
that the plan flashed upon him in a single evening, as he was leaving
for a long vacation. He acted upon it instantly, and devoted his
fortune, reputation, almost life, to its consummation. He succeeded.
If he had taken six months to have thought over it, his conception
would have been abandoned.
While this man's plan came on him in an evening, a study of his life
shows that, unconsciously to himself, it had been growing for a long
series of years. It flowered out all at once, like the night-blooming
cereus. Cæsar decided to cross the Rubicon on the instant? Yes, but we
cannot doubt that this imperial resolution had been formed the day
when in the Forum, as Macaulay describes it, Cæsar said that the
future Dictator of Rome might be Pompey, or Crassus, or still
somebody else whom nobody was thinking of (that somebody else being
himself, of course).
And, indeed, Cæsar would at that time have been the last that any
Roman would have selected as the master of the world. He was young. He
was small. He seemed almost frail. He was an unspeakable egotist. He
was fastidious in his dress. I have read that he even used perfumes.
And how could the common eye discern, through all of these externals
of frippery, the lion heart, the eagle vision, and the mind of
conquest and empire?
There is a very great danger in the examples just cited. These men
were geniuses, and they are not to be imitated except as their methods
may be applicable to the common man. This paper is for common men--for
people like ourselves. There _are_ geniuses; but their high-wrought
lives, tornado activity, and methods of lightning are not for us. All
the world's real leaders, whether in the fields of thought or action,
whether in the council-chamber of the statesman, on the battle-field
of the warrior, in the study of the writer, or in the laboratory of
the scientist--all have been men of genius. No mediocre man ever was a
great leader in the historic sense.
With our habit of looking at to-day as though it were eternity, we
consider men "leaders," and use the adjectives "great," "splendid,"
etc., as applied to them, when historically these men will hardly be
discernible.
But all the figures large enough to fill history's perspective always
have been and always will be geniuses--men in whom the energy, the
thought, the imagination, the power of hundreds of men are
concentrated. Let us not deceive ourselves, and reap misery and
disappointment by thinking that we can, by any effort, equal them.
Alexander, Cæsar, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, Washington, Darwin,
Goethe, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Pasteur, Edison, Plato, Rhodes, Ito,
Diaz, Peter the Great--we cannot explain these phenomena of human
intellect and character except by the word genius.
All our toil and patience and everything cannot seat us in the high
places of these princes of Nature. "Who, by taking thought, can add a
cubit to his stature?" (The Bible again, you see; we cannot get away
from the Bible.)
But these men never knew that they were geniuses. They would have
known it undoubtedly if they had stopped to think about it. But they
were too busy with their task. A genius never thinks about his powers,
any more than an eagle is concerned about the method of his royal
flight from the mountain crag. But for us, of the common mass of men,
only those methods of genius are applicable which are within our
reach. Mostly for us are the slow and toilsome--the sure, if
gradual--processes of patient labor and infinite pains.
So do not let the thought that you are a genius abide with you for a
moment--the main traveled roads for us ordinary mortals! The beaten
paths are not so far wrong, after all; and at their end is certain,
even perhaps distinguished, if not startling and historic, success.
And, besides, epoch-makers are not needed until an epoch needs to be
made.
Do not worry about greatness, therefore. If greatness is for you,
God's call will surely come to you. If it does not--well, the
archeologists uncovered Nippur the other day, with its palaces and
courts and abodes of those who were great and mighty more than 2,500
years before Abraham.
So consider Nippur, and be patient and humble. I instanced Rhodes in
naming some of the world's monarchs of mind and will. Very well!
Yesterday all Christendom was ringing with his imperial work. He was
developing a continent; establishing the reign of law, industry, and
peace where savagery and the wilderness had held sway for a million
years.
But it was _yesterday_ that he did this. He is dead now. Already you
have half forgotten him. You see we are living a century in a minute.
Besides, if Clotho has not spun greatness into your destiny, be sure
that it does not matter. The reward of Cecil Rhodes was in the thing
he did, and not in the memory which men have of it. The man who digs a
well has precisely the same reward. The point is that you must do the
deed for the deed's sake. Do not do it because the crowd will clap
their hands. When present applause or ultimate fame become your chief
purpose in life, what are you, after all? You are a play-actor--that
is what you are. Put it from you. Be a man.
Yes, consider Nippur, and be a man. One lesson these ancient ruins
teach--the nothingness of fame, and that the only things in life worth
while are love and duty. I cannot think of any blessing so great to an
ardent young American as to learn at the very threshold of his career
of activities that duty and affection are the only things really whose
value lasts and increases--the only things that pay increasing
dividends.
In a conversation in which the same view of reading given in this
paper was set forth, a very bright and earnest woman questioned the
propriety of such advice. "For," said she, "the result of that advice
is to quiet rather than excite the activities and ambitions; it is to
retard rather than hasten intellectual acquisition; it is to check
rather than advance a young man's career."
But, granting that this be true, the very objection is itself one of
the highest merits of the advice thus criticized. For the only grave
danger before capable young Americans, and, indeed, before our Nation,
is that of hastening too much, of sweeping on too rapidly, of
straining every nerve too tensely, of living our lives with an ardor
all too fierce and hot. Don't hurry--the world will last several
millions of years longer.
What most of the young men of this country need is restraint, not
stimulant; what this Nation needs is reserve. The only serious fear I
entertain for our future is that the great rapidity of our common
lives will make us neurotic. I prefer a young man to be a little less
scintillant, than that his brilliancy should be at the expense of
exhausted nerves and enfeebled vitality.
This paper is supposed to be advice which will be practically helpful
to young men in their struggle with the world. Very well, then! From
the low view-point of self-interest, I would advise every young man to
cultivate unselfishness. Do at least one thing every day which helps
somebody else, and from which you cannot possibly harvest any profit
and advantage. Do one thing every day that cannot in any way bring you
tangible reward, directly or indirectly, now or ever.
I know of no discipline of character equal to this. After a while a
subtle change will come over your nature. You will grow into an
understanding of the practical value of the Master's words: "It is
more blessed to give than to receive." There comes to you an
acquisition of power. Your influence, by a process which escapes any
human analysis, reaches out over your associates, and, in proportion
to the magnitude of your character, over humanity.
A man cannot select a surer road to character ruin than to have a
selfish motive back of every action. To do all of your deeds, or most
of them, with the thought of the advantage they will bring you, will
result in paralysis of soul as surely as certain drugs introduced into
the nerves for a long period of time will result in physical
paralysis. I do not think that there can be a more valuable suggestion
made to a young man facing the world and desiring to increase his
powers than to practise unselfishness.
What is it we say of certain men: "Oh, he is for himself." It is a
Cain-like label. Never let it be pinned on your coat. In politics,
note how the power of some leader dissolves when his followers find
out that it is all for him and none for them. And in business we are
all on our guard against the man who wants the whole thing, and will
take it if he is not watched. Even when selfishness succeeds, it never
satisfies. It is like the drunkard's thirst.
No, no, young man, put selfishness from you. It is not even the method
of business profit. After all, we are living for happiness, are we
not? Very well. Try to make some one else happy, and experience a
felicity more delicate and exalted than you ever imagined in your
fondest dreams of joy. By all means practise unselfishness. "Get the
habit," as our Americanism has it. Live for somebody or something
besides yourself. Really none of us amount to enough to live for
ourselves alone. Oh, no! that game is not worth the candle, believe
me.
Finally and especially, reverence age. Be deferential to maturity.
This is the one thing in which we Americans are yet deficient. The man
who has lived a single decade longer than you, deserves your
consideration and respect. Be in no haste to displace your seniors.
Time will do that all too quickly. The finest characteristic of the
Oriental is his profound regard for all age. Follow the Asiatic in
this one thing only. Heed venerable counsels; defer to maturity's
wisdoms. There is something majestic about advancing years. Be to all
men and women older than yourself what you would like other young men
to be to your father and mother.
Be a man; that's the sum of it all--be a man. Be all that we Americans
mean by those three words.
II
THE OLD HOME
Do we not pay so much attention to mere material success that we
exclude from mind and heart other things more precious? I am anxious
that every young American should win in all the conflicts of life--win
in college, win in business, etc.; but I am even more anxious that
through all of his triumphs he should grow ever broader, sweeter, and
more kindly. After all, we are human beings. We do not want to become
mere machines of success, do we?
That is carrying our mechanical age a little too far. We want to keep
that within us which makes our victory worth having after we have won
it. What matters your mountains of wealth, or your network of
political power, or those secrets which in your laboratory you have
wrung from Nature--what matters all and everything that the world
calls "success," if the human quality has been dried up in you?
Those are fine things that St. Paul says about a man not amounting to
anything, no matter how talented and powerful he may be, if he have
not charity: "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand
all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that
I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing"; and you
will recall the remainder of his admirable comments on this subject.
Everybody points out to you what you can get out of college, and how
to get it; what you can get out of a "career," and how to get that.
But lest all of your getting turns to bitter emptiness in the end, you
must pay attention to that elemental manhood exalted by those
beautiful moralities that you get at but one place and at but one
period in this world. That period is the early time of your young
manhood before you enter college; and that place is the old home where
influences angelic have been at work upon your character.
It could not be otherwise. Home--the home that you leave or the home
you make--is the spot where most of your life is to be spent. Home was
the place of your birth; and if the angel of death is kind to you,
home will be the place of your farewell. It is to the home that you
bring life's wages, whether those wages are opulence, glory, or merely
daily bread.
It is the home which interprets the whole universe for you. And it is
the home which not only furnishes a reason for your existence, but in
itself constitutes the motive for all manly effort. Quite naturally,
therefore, the home is concerned with character more than it is with
grosser things.
The instruction which the American mother gives her son is a training
in honor rather than in success. Her passion for righteousness creeps
into the commonplaces of her daily speech. "Be a good boy" is what she
says to the little fellow each day as he starts to school. "Be a good
boy" is what she says to the youth when he leaves for college. "Be a
good boy" is still her sacred charge when, standing at the gate, she
gives him her blessing as he goes out into the world.
And, finally, "Be a good boy" is what her lips murmur when in after
years, rich perchance in achievement, honor, power, or wealth, the man
of the world returns to the old home to again get her benediction, and
have his weary soul refreshed by the beauty of her almost holy
presence.
For you never cease to be a boy to her; and her supreme wish and most
passionate prayer for you is not that you shall be a strong man, or a
rich man, or an able man--she wants you to be all these, of course,
and everything else that is fine--but chiefly she cares that you
should be a good man.
And so it is that home is the temple of ideals, the sanctuary of the
true, the beautiful, and the good. Or put it in scientific phrase, and
say: Home is the laboratory of character. The home is the place where
you get what the common people so pithily call your "bringing up." It
is there where your conception of all human relationships is formed.
It is there where it is largely determined whether you will make your
life worth the living.
Your future sits at the old fireside. The fate of the Nation abides
beneath the roof-tree. And so it is that neither college, nor
market-place, nor forum, nor editor's sanctum, nor traffic of the high
seas, nor anything that you may do, nor any environment that may
hereafter surround you, is so important to you as the old home and
your early years. Yes, and not to you only, but to the Nation also.
Nothing means so much to the Republic as the influence of the
American home upon the young manhood of the Nation.
We are about to enter upon the serious problem of the regulation of
railway rates, which is a beginning in some sort of the national
control of transportation. It is a problem whose weight and
possibilities challenge and all but confound every thoughtful and
serious mind. Every step in its solution must be taken with both
wisdom and justice.
Our relations with the Orient daily increase, and the fixedness of our
position in the Far East hourly becomes more definite. The public man
wears a scarf about his eyes who does not see that our historic
statesmanship during this century will deal with our growing mastery
of the Pacific, and the weaving backward and forward across that ocean
of our ever-multiplying relations with the East.
This paper might be entirely taken up with a statement of tangled
situations and deep problems which will require the combined
intelligence of the whole American people to solve.
Yet, for the purpose of this life, what are they all, compared with
the character of individual Americans, and therefore with the
influence of the American home upon American men in the making; for
men in the making is what the youth of our land are. Gladstone stated
a truth, wide and vital as English institutions, when he said that the
relation of the Church to the youth of Great Britain is a matter of
more concern than all the problems of the Empire put together.
All this is commonplace, you say. I say so too. Yet it is the
commonplaces, and those things alone, by which we live and move and
have our being. For example, sunlight is commonplace, and so is air.
Who was it that spoke about the damnable iteration of the seasons?
A storm is not commonplace, but how long could any of us live--how
long would any of us choose to live--were each day and night a
succession of thunder, lightning, and downpour? Good citizenship is
commonplace, whereas a murder mystery excites us thrillingly. Yet none
of us on that account would choose the society of criminals.
It is to the elemental commonplaces that I am now going to direct your
attention. The world is kept alive by its monotonies. The trouble is
that the indispensable things are so inevitable and persistent that
we take them for granted, and yield them neither gratitude nor even
attention.
Take the beauty of daylight as our illustration once more. We had it
yesterday, have it to-day, have had it ever since we were born, and
will have it until we die. Note, too, the eternal stability of the
heavens, which change not at all; and the endless pour of ocean's
currents, warming certain coasts and leaving others chill. It is the
same with the life intellectual and the life spiritual.
"What is the grandest thing in the universe?" asks Hugo. "A storm at
sea," he answers, and continues, "And what is grander than a storm at
sea?" "The unclouded heavens on a starry and moonless night." "And
what is grander than these midnight skies?" "The soul of man!" A
spectacular climax such as Hugo loved; and still, with all its
dramatic effect, the picturesque statement of a vast and mighty truth!
Very well. The home is the place where character is to be formed, and
therefore its influences on "the soul of man" are like those of the
sun on the body of man. Let us get to those commonplaces, therefore,
at which the cynic lifts his lip, but which are worth a good deal
more to you, young man, than all your achievings will be.
As to the moralities, then, yield yourself utterly to the mother. She
has an instinctive perception of righteousness as affecting your
character that no other intelligence under heaven has, and that she
does not have for any one else, not even for herself. She has her own
way, too, of getting this nourishment of the verities into your
character. It is done not so much by preaching to you, or lecturing
you, as it is by her very presence.
She carries about with her an atmosphere of sweetness and light. The
mother gives to her boy a kind of unspoken counsel. It is a very
subtle thing, like electricity in the material world, and equally as
powerful as that mysterious fluid. You get its effects by putting
yourself eagerly and lovingly under its soothing yet ennobling and
tonic influence. It is a matter hard to describe, but more real than
any other human force I know of.
So the first thing for you to do is to resolve to be "mother's own
boy," as the sneering tongue of shallowness puts it, just as long as
you possibly can. It will be the greatest luck you will ever have, if
you are able to be "mother's own boy" as long as she lives. Don't be
afraid that that will make you effeminate and soft; don't think for a
moment that it will paralyze the force and power of your growing
manhood.
I have seen one of this kind of fellows hold in awe a mob of cowboys
and plainsmen when passions were aroused and blows had already been
struck. I have seen such a man put down, single-handed, by word of his
fearless authority, fights among a score of woodmen who had known
nothing but the rank vigor of their unruled male lives.
The man whose will and character has been tempered by this holy fire
takes on something of the suppleness, hardness, and firmness of steel,
of which a delicate blade will cut the grosser iron of which that
blade itself was a part before it was subjected to the refining
process that made it steel.
Some time ago I was privileged to read the letters that one of our
naval heroes had, when a young man, despatched home to his mother
during our civil war. He participated in two or three of our most
desperate fights. All of these letters showed him to have been--and,
what is better, to have remained--a "mother's own boy" as long as she
lived.
He never sailed far enough away to weaken that potent and sacred
power. It reached around the world. The years did not diminish it.
When her hair of brown had turned to white, he found that the
influence which to his boyhood and youth had been so delightful became
to his manhood uplifting and glorious.
And yet no buccaneer that rioted afloat with Morgan had courage more
ferocious. Yes, and, on the other hand, no Bayard "without fear and
without reproach"; no Sydney who, when dying, handed his canteen to a
wounded comrade that he might moisten his lips, while Sydney's own
were crackling with fever, was ever more tender or considerate.
What was it the expiring Nelson said when his decks ran blood, and
crimson victory placed upon his whitening brow laurels of triumph,
whose leaves were mingled with cypress? "Kiss me, Hardy," was what he
said. Strange words, were they not, for a scene of carnage? Yes, but
words which touched the hearts of the English people.
They showed that upon the mind of England's greatest captain of the
sea the tender influence of the old mother, and the old home in
distant England, survived all the variableness of his character, all
the supreme efforts of his career, and that a gentleness and an
almost womanly yearning for affection were the qualities that ruled
the soul of the most desperate ocean fighter the world had seen since
Drake. They showed that the heart of the sternest warrior may be
beautiful with the humanities. How does the old song go?--"The bravest
are the tenderest"--that is it.
So fear not that mother's influence will weaken you. It will do
nothing of the kind. It will strengthen you. It will make you want to
fight only for something worth fighting for. But when you fight for
that, it will make you fight to the death. And what is the use of
fighting at all unless it be to the death. A brawl is not conflict,
bravado is not bravery.
I know there is another side to this question. It has been recently
stated by a resourceful Oriental. He said that the influence of women
on the Occidental man is effeminizing our civilization. He declared
that the mother gives the boy his first training, teaches him to talk,
etc., which is natural and therefore right and proper.
But then, said our Asiatic critic, we give our boys to women
school-teachers, who educate them until they are ready for college,
and then, as soon as they are ready for college, they begin to "call
on the young women," and generally frequent the society of the softer
sex until the time arrives for them to marry.
So that, according to this Oriental, we are under the direct influence
of woman from the cradle to the grave; and he points out that
gradually (imperceptibly, perhaps, to our own eyes) an effeminizing
process occurs in mind and character. As a result of this, he
maintains, our men increasingly fear hardships and seek to avoid them;
and life and even personal appearance are given a value which is
absurd, considering the inevitableness of death in any event, the
perfectly unthinkable number of myriads of human beings who exist,
have existed, and will exist hereafter.
This philosopher of the East, therefore, claims that we will in the
end be no match at all for the Orientals, and that the yellow race,
which has been merely resting while we Caucasians have been having our
brief innings, is now to the bat again. And there was a lot more to
the same effect.
This is of course the Asiatic way of looking at things. There may be
something in what he says about the continuity of female influence
softening our Western civilization. Certainly the present war shows
that the Japanese women, who were only yesterday altogether Oriental
in habits and ideals, have produced a race of strong men, so far as
physical daring and hardihood is concerned. The influence of women on
these men ceased with childhood--even then it was a Spartan influence.
More than this, the Japanese generals and statesmen, nearly all of
whom are above sixty, were the product of Japanese civilization before
modern ideas had even been sown in the Island Empire. Oyama and
Kuroki, Ito and Katsura, and all the rest, are the offspring of purely
Asiatic conditions, uninfluenced in the slightest degree by Western
thought or custom; and yet the state of society which brought forth
these men is unfamiliar to American and European peoples.
But even if what this Oriental assailant of our customs terms the
overcharge of femininity in Occidental society does mellow us, it does
not follow that it weakens us. Anyhow it does not affect what I say
about the influence of the mother upon the purposes and "principles"
of young men. And, in any event, our Western civilization constitutes
those human conditions in which you, young man, must spend your life,
and you must be in harmony with it if you are going to accomplish
anything.
Don't try to be an Oriental in the midst of Occidental surroundings.
The yellow theory and the white theory of life must fight for the
mastery, and the one which is nearest the truth will prevail.
Meanwhile, stick to your own race and the ideals of it. I do not mean
that you should ignore any true thing you may learn from the East.
Welcome knowledge from every source. Light is light, no matter whence
it comes.
And this brings back to us the little mother and the old home. If she
wishes it, be her companion. In any event, make her your confidant.
For a young man there is no source of safety and wisdom so abundant,
pure, and unfailing as the making his mother his confessor. Tell her
everything. I mean just that, tell her literally everything.
Do not fear her reproof. Chemistry has no miracle a fraction as
wonderful as the patience and forgiveness of a mother for the
exasperations of her son. There is not a thing which you ought to do,
the telling of which to your mother will prevent your doing. And her
counsel to you will be golden upon those purely personal matters which
you could tell no one else, and which no one else could understand or
sympathize with.
Remember that she has the wisdom of instinct--a wisdom peculiarly
worldly and practical in its applicability to real things and real
situations. The advice of a wife in business affairs has this same
peculiarly valuable quality, quite beyond the strength of her or his
intellect or the reach of her abstract understanding.
It is the instinct to preserve the home nest which makes the business
advice of the wife to the husband so priceless; and it is this same
instinct exercising itself in another form--seeking to preserve the
offspring--which gives such shrewdness and depth to the counsel of
mother to son.
This making your mother your confessor will not only keep you out of
trouble, and give you light and direction along lines where you
otherwise will be as blind as a young puppy, but it is good for you in
a far more important way--a far profounder way. I have always been
impressed with the wonderful understanding of human nature and the
needs of it which the institution of the confessional in the Catholic
Church reveals. "No man liveth to himself alone."
For the ordinary human being there is no such thing as a secret.
The ordinary man who is compelled to keep everything to himself gets
morbid and suspicious. He broods over what he thinks he must not utter
to others. Not daring to talk with friends, he converses with himself.
Thus his sympathies narrow, and his vision grows not only feeble but
false. He gets the proportion of things sadly confused. It is not only
a relief, but a real benefit to most men and women to be able to
unburden their souls to some other human being whom they know to be
faithful.
And if this be the intellectual need, strong as nature itself, of
grown-up men and women, it is plain that the young man, whose
character is forming, requires the same thing a great deal more. Very
well. Your mother is the confessor, young man, whom Nature has given
you for this beautiful and saving purpose. Do not eat your heart out,
therefore, but frankly tell her your hopes, desires, offenses, plans.
Confide in her your good deeds and your bad. And she, who would give
her life for you, and count it the happiest thing she ever did if it
would only help you, will give you the very gold of wisdom, refined
and superrefined by the fires of that love which burn nowhere else in
the universe save in a mother's heart.
Of course I am talking now of the ordinary American mother, who is a
mother in all that the term implies. We all know that there are women
who have children without understanding at all--yes, or even caring at
all--what motherhood means; without understanding or caring what their
duties to their children mean.
As is always the case with the abnormal, these unfortunate types are
found at the social extremes; in the so-called "depths" and the
so-called "heights." There are women too vicious to make good mothers
and women too vain to make good mothers. But these are not numerous.
The mother this paper is dealing with is that angel in human form that
the ordinary American man knew in the old home when he was a boy; and
whether she be intellectual or not, educated or not, such mothers have
shaped the characters that have made the American people the noblest
force for good in all the world.
In her work, her prayers, her daily life, you will find the sources of
all that is self-sacrificing, prudent, patriotic, brave, and uplifting
in American character. It is the influence of the American mother that
has made the American Republic what it is; and it is in her heart
that our national ideals dwell.
"That is all right," said a practical-minded man, with a dash of
American humor in him, in the course of a conversation along this
line; "that is all right, and I think so, too," said he; "but where
does 'the old man' come in? What about the father?" And the question
is as sane as it is pat. Don't you neglect the father. He feeds you.
He clothes you. He is schooling you. It is to his brain and hand, and
the wisdom and skill of them, that you are indebted for the college
education you are going to get.
And by these tokens your father is a _man_, and a whole lot of a man
at that.
You will realize how much of a man he is if you will think what you
would be up against if you had to support yourself, and then another
person more expensive than yourself, and in addition several other
persons more expensive than yourself--not only support them, but
supply their whims and humor their caprices; for it must be said of us
Americans that we really do not need more than half what we think we
positively must have.
Think, I say, young man, of having to do all that, and having to keep
on doing it to-day and to-morrow, this month and next month, and all
year and every year as long as you live. If, in your mind, you feel
yourself equal to that, tell me, do you not feel in your mind that you
have in you the makings of a man indeed--a tremendous man?
Very well. That is what your father not only imagines, but _does_. So
he is decidedly entitled to your respect. You owe him gratitude, too,
of a very definite, tangible kind--the sort of gratitude you can weigh
in scales and count up in cash-book.
Now we come to the point of definite benefit for you in all of this;
for, mind you, this paper is for your own selfish interests. Even when
I am advising the beatitudes of life, I am doing it from the
view-point of your practical well-being.
Think, then, of the incalculable advantage of having at your beck and
call a friend who has proved that he knows the highways and byways of
the world by having successfully found his way around among them.
Think of the value of having such a guide for your daily counselor.
Think of how the worth of such a man's directions to you is multiplied
infinitely by the fact that he cares more for your success than for
any other one thing in the world. When you have thought over all
these things, you will begin to have some faint understanding not only
of what you owe your father, but of his practical helpfulness to you.
A father is an opportunity--a young man's first opportunity in life,
and the greatest opportunity he will ever have. That father has made
lots of mistakes, no doubt; but you will never make the mistakes he
made if you will listen to him. He has made many successes, perhaps;
but his successes are only the acorns to the oaks of your deeds, if
you will but take his words as seed for your future enterprises.
And let me tell you this: Nothing makes a better impression upon the
world that is watching you--watching you very cunningly, young man--as
to be on good terms with your father. I have known more than one young
man to be discredited in business because it was generally understood
that he "could not get along with the old man."
You see, the world thinks that it is the boy's fault when there is
friction between father and son--and ordinarily the world is right.
Sometimes, of course, the world itself "cannot get along with father";
in such cases it does not blame the son for not getting along with
him either. But that is not your situation, you who read this paper.
"How does ---- get along with his father?" was asked of a certain
young man of great distinction in letters. "Oh, they are great
friends!" was the answer. "Friends through duty or comradery?"
persisted the querist. "Comradery, affection, affinity. They are the
greatest chums in the world," was the answer.
I wish I could give you the name of that man. It is known in every
civilized country. No wonder he became the great power into which he
has developed. His whole life is a blessing and a benediction to all
with whom he comes in contact--parents, wife, children, countrymen,
the world. No wonder his brain is canny with resourceful wisdom; no
wonder that good red human blood pours at full tide through artery and
vein.
The man I have in mind, and whom I am describing, is a great man, and
his father before him was a great man too. His success has been
monumental. Yet his is no candy manhood. His is no smooth conduct. He
is "neither sugar nor salt, nor somebody's honey," to get down (or up)
to the picturesque phrase of the common household.
He is the sort of man who would confound sharp practises of the
crafty; or "call the bluff" of financial gamester; or walk unconcerned
where physical danger calls for nerve of steel and lion's heart; or
fling at affected fop rapier sentences that cut deep through the very
quick of his pretenses.
I cite this example merely to show you that you lose nothing of
independence or daring, or any of those qualities which young men so
prize (and properly prize), by being on terms of intellectual and
heart partnership with your father.
Don't tell us that he won't let you be on such terms with him. Show
yourself willing and worth while, and your father would rather spend
his extra hours with you than at the theater. But you have got to show
yourself worth while. No whining willingness, no soft and pretended
desire, no affected making up to "the governor," will answer at all.
You have got to "make good" with the American father, young man.
He has "been through the mill," until the softness is pretty well
ground out and little remains but the granite-like muscle of manhood.
He is a pretty stern proposition; and if there is anything he won't
stand it is pretense, make-believe. But show yourself worthy of him
and willing for his comradeship, and you have begun life with the
best, readiest, bravest partner you will ever have.
From all of this you have yourself deduced the fact that you do not
"know more than the old folks." If you have not, go ahead and deduce
it right now; for you do _not_ know more than they do. They have lived
so much longer than you have that the accretion of daily experience
has given them a variety of information beside which your book
knowledge is a sort of wooden learning, lifeless and artificial.
The very fact that they have had you for a child and brought you along
safely thus far is proof enough of this. You have no right to
challenge the knowledge or judgment of either of your parents until
you demonstrate that you can do as well or better than they. And that
will be some years yet, will it not? No, decidedly, don't "get too
smart for father."
Even if you really do know more than they, don't let either of the old
folks see that you think so. That attitude on your part is almost
indecent. Be grateful also. How singular that where young men have
everything to be thankful for, they are so seldom grateful.
When parents surround them with every comfort, and make what are
luxuries to the millions necessities to their children; when the youth
is furnished clothes made by the tailor, and money to spend as he
will, and special schools and the most expensive university; when he
is given vacations at seashore, in mountains, on lake, or abroad,
instead of at good hard work, as the sons of the people must spend
their vacations; when a year or two of travel follows his day of easy
graduation; when all is his that thought, and love, and gold can give,
do we not frequently find the young man unappreciative of, and
ungrateful for, these blessings?
Such a man usually takes it for granted that he ought to have all
these things, and a good deal more; that they are his as a matter of
course, and no thanks due to those who gave them; that they are not
much, after all, compared with what some other fellow with a richer
father, and a mother still more doting, has and spends. "Give a boy
too much money to spend and he won't do anything else." There are some
exceptions to this, notable and splendid exceptions, but they are so
few that they prove the rule.
On the other hand, it is generally true that young fellows who, in
comparison with the class just described, have nothing to be thankful
for; who must earn their own bread and "help support the family"; who
"work their way through college," and during vacations put in a good
year's labor to get the money for the next college year; who, the day
after graduation, thin as a wolf and as hardy, must start right in
then and there to earn that very day's meals and that very night's
resting-place--such men, as a usual thing, develop the glorious
qualities of gratitude, consideration, and deference.
There is "no place like home" to such men, "be it ever so humble."
They look upon life as a wonderful and splendid thing, for which they
are indebted to father and mother. Their manhood's morning is very
beautiful to them; but its light is not one-hundredth part as
beautiful as the radiance which beams upon them from the eyes of one
dear woman whom they call mother--a woman wrinkled and worn and wan,
perhaps, but to such sons exquisitely lovely, with something in her
beauty not quite of this earth.
I don't quite understand the psychology of this phenomenon, and never
knew any one who did understand it; but every one of the scores of
observers with whom I have talked upon this subject have noted the
same fact--the too frequent ingratitude and lack of appreciation of
young fellows who have everything to be grateful for, and the fine
appreciation of life shown by young men who, in comparison, have
nothing to be grateful for.
Perhaps it is a lack of thought, a want of analysis. If that is so in
your case, young man, get to thinking. Instead of comparing yourself
with some other man who has more things than you, compare yourself
with one who has fewer things than you; or, better still, with one who
hasn't anything at all. Then you will have a measure for the debt you
owe to the two beings who have given and are giving you all you have
or will have for a great many years to come.
And this other thing, too: When you begin to be grateful for these
things, by going through some such intellectual process as I have
indicated, you will get so much more pleasure out of them than you did
before that you will hardly be able to realize that you are the same
man.
Indeed, you will not be the same man--you will be another man, a
bigger-hearted, saner-minded, gentler, and manlier man. You will begin
to be the kind of a man you would like to be if you sat down by
yourself and went to work to make yourself over again. And what a
wonder you would be if you could make yourself over! Yes, no doubt!
This final word: The day must come when you must leave the old home.
When that hour arrives, do not try to tarry. Go right out into the
world. Do not go mournfully. Give the little mother a smile of
courage, a word of cheer, that will be her guaranty that her boy is
going to be a "grand success," and then--_make good!_
You will hardly get away from the old home gate when you will stumble
over an obstacle and fall down. Don't turn back to the old home to be
comforted and helped. Get up, brush the dust off, forget your bruises,
and go ahead. Go ahead, and look where you are going.
A man who cannot get up when he is knocked down is of no use in the
world.
Let the messages that you send back to the old home be joyful--full of
faith. No matter how hard a time you are having, don't let "the folks
at home" know it. Besides, you are not having such a hard time, after
all. Hundreds of thousands of other men who have become splendidly
successful had a great deal harder time than you are having or ever
dreamed of having. Resolve to live up to what the home which reared
you expects of you, and work like mad on that resolve, and you will
find that you are becoming all that "the folks at home" expected of
you, and a great deal more.
Go back to the old home as often as you can; but be sure that you go
back with words of cheer and a story of things done. "The folks at
home"--especially the mother--will want to hear all about it. There
may be wars whose high-leaping flames illumine all the heavens; there
may be political campaigns on hand where issues of fate are thrilling
the nerves of the millions; there may be strange tidings from the
council-board of the nations; there may be catastrophes and glories,
scourges and blessings, famine or opulence; but any and all of these
are of no interest to the mother, compared with what _you_ will have
to tell her of _your_ own puny little deeds.
They are not puny deeds to her; they are quite the most considerable
performances given in all the universe of men. For _you_ did them,
you know, and that is enough. To his mother every man is a hero.
So let your tale to her be boldly told and lovingly. And be sure that
it is a narrative of purity, things honorable and of good report.
Return to the habit of your youth, and at her knees establish again
the old confessional. And then, with your secrets handed over to her
and safely locked in her heart, with her hand of blessing on your
head, and her smile of confidence, pride, and approval glorifying her
face, resolve to again go out into the world where your place is, and
be worthy of this new baptism of manhood you have again received in
the sanctuary of the old home.
These are all simple things, commonplace things, things easy to do.
They have nothing extraordinary about them. And yet, if you will do
them, the world will back you as a winner against men who are a great
deal smarter than you are, but who with all their smartness are not
smart enough to do these plain and kindly things.
III
THE COLLEGE?
_1. The Young Man who Goes_
Collis P. Huntington was a notable practical success. He was wise with
the hard wisdom of the world, and he had the genius of the great
captain for choosing men. No business general ever selected his
lieutenants with more accurate judgment. His opinion on men and
affairs was always worth while. And he thought young men who meant to
do anything except in the learned professions wasted time by going to
college.
So when, searching for my final answer to the question this moment
being asked by so many young Americans, "Shall I go to college," I
answer in the affirmative, I do so admitting that a negative answer
has been given by men whose opinions are entitled to the greatest
possible respect.
I admit, too, that nearly every city--yes, almost every town--contains
conspicuous illustrations of men who learned how to "get there" by
attending the school of hard knocks. Certainly some of the most
distinguished business careers in New York have been made by young men
who never saw a college.
You find the same thing in every town. I have a man in mind whose
performances in business have been as solid as they are astonishing.
Twenty years ago he was a street-car conductor; to-day he controls
large properties in which he is himself a heavy owner; and a dozen
graduates of the high-class universities of Europe and America beg the
crums that fall from the table of his affairs.
In his Phi Beta Kappa Address Wendell Phillips cleverly argues that
the reformers of the world, and most of those whose memories are the
beloved and cherished treasures of the race, were men whose vitality
had not been reduced by college training, and whose kinship with the
people and oneness with the soil had not been divorced by the
artificial refinement of a college life. But Phillips was bitter--even
fanatical--on this subject; and was, in himself, a living denial of
his own doctrine.
Remember, then, you who for any reason have not had those years of
mental discipline called "a college education," that this does not
excuse you from doing great work in the world. Do not whine, and
declare that you could have done so much better if you had "only had
a chance to go to college." You can be a success if you will, college
or no college. At least three of those famous masters of business
which Chicago, the commercial capital of the continent, has given to
the world, and whose legitimate operations in tangible merchandizing
are so vast that they are almost weird, had no college education, and
very little education of any kind.
I think, indeed, that very few of America's kings of trade ever
attended college. There are the masters of railroad management, too.
Few of them have been college men, although the college man is now
appearing among them--witness President Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania
System, a real Napoleon of railroading, who, I hear, is a graduate of
the German universities and of American polytechnic schools.
Burns did not go to college. Neither did Shakespeare.
Some of our greatest lawyers "read law" in the unrefined but honest
and strengthening environment of the old-time law office. Lincoln was
not a college man; neither was Washington. So do not excuse yourself
to your family and the world upon the ground that you never had a
college education. That is not the reason why you fail.
You can succeed--I repeat it--college or no college; all you have to
do in the latter case is to put on a little more steam. And remember
that some of the world's sages of the practical have closed their
life's wisdom with the deliberate opinion that a college education is
a waste of time, and an over-refinement of body and of mind.
You see, I am trying to take into account every possible view of this
weighty question; for I know how desperate a matter it is to hundreds
of thousands of my young countrymen. I know how earnestly they are
searching for an answer; how hard it will be for hosts of them to obey
an affirmative answer; how intense is the desire of the great majority
of young Americans to decide this question wisely. For most of them
have no time to lose, little money to spend and none to waste, no
energy to spare, and yet are inspired with high resolve to make the
best and most of life. And I know how devoutly they pray that, in
deciding, they may choose the better part.
Still, with all this in mind, my advice is this: Go to college. Go to
the best possible college for _you_. Patiently hold on through the
sternest discipline you can stand, until the course is completed. It
will not be fatal to your success if you do not go; but you will be
better prepared to meet the world if you do go. I do not mean that
your mind will be stored with much more knowledge that will be useful
to you if you go through college than if you do not go through
college.
Probably the man who keeps at work at the business he is going to
follow through life, during the years when other men are studying in
college, acquires more information that will be "useful" to him in his
practical career. But the college man who has not thrown away his
college life comes from the training of his alma mater with a mind as
highly disciplined as are the wrist and eye of the skilled swordsman.
Nobody contends that a college adds an ounce of brain power. But if
college opportunities are not wasted, such mind as the student does
have is developed up to the highest possible point of efficiency. The
college man who has not scorned his work will understand any given
situation a great deal quicker than his brother who, with equal
ability, has not had the training of the university.
A man who has been instructed in boxing is more than a match for a
stronger and braver man unskilled in what is called the "manly art."
That is your college and non-college man over again with muscle
substituted for brain.
Five years ago I saw the soldiers of Japan going through the most
careful training. They were taught how to march, how to charge, how to
do everything. I shall never forget the bayonet exercises which an
officer and myself chanced upon. They were conducted with all the
ferocity of a real fight; no point was neglected.
With all their fatalism and the utter fearlessness thereof, the
Japanese could not have bested the Russians if to their courage and
devotion they had not added years of painstaking drill, which an
American soldier would have considered an unnecessary hardship. Very
well. A college education is precisely that kind of a preparation for
the warfare of life.
But mind you, these Japanese soldiers and their officers were in
earnest. They meant to show the world that, small as they are in
stature and recent as their adoption of modern methods has been, they
nevertheless would try to be the highest type of soldier that ever
marched to a battle-field. If you go to college, young man, you have
got to be in earnest, too. You have got to say to yourself, "I am
going to make more out of what is in me than any man with like ability
ever did before." You cannot dawdle--remember that.
Imagine every day, and every hour of every day, that you are in the
real world and in the real conflicts thereof, instead of in college
with its practise conflicts, and handle yourself precisely as you
would if your whole career depended upon each task set for you. If you
mean to go to college for the principal purpose of idling around,
wearing a small cap and good clothes, and being the adoration of your
mother and your sisters on your vacation, you had a good deal better
be at work at some gainful occupation. College is not helping you if
that is what you are doing. It is hurting you.
Go to college, therefore, say I; but go to college for business. Those
drill years are the most important ones of your life.
Be in earnest, therefore. I know I have said that before; yes, and I
am going to say it again. For if you are not going to be in earnest,
quit--get out. Resolve to get absolutely everything there is to be had
out of your college experience, and then _get it_. _Get it_, I say,
for that is what you will have to do. Nobody is going to give it to
you.
The spirit with which you enter college is just as important as going
to college at all. It is more important. For if a man has the spirit
that will get for him all that a college education has to give, it
will also make him triumph in a contest with the world, even if he
does not get his college education. It will only be a little harder
for him, that is all.
But if a man has not that mingled will and wish for a college
education flaming through his young veins that makes him capable of
any sacrifice to get through college, I do not see what good a college
education will do him--no, nor any other kind of an education. The
quicker such a man is compelled to make his own living without help
from any source, the better for him.
So if you mean business, but have not decided whether it is better for
you to go to college or not to go to college, settle the question
to-day by deciding to go to college. Then pick your college. That is
as important a matter as choosing your occupation in life. One college
is not as good as another for _you_. A score of colleges may be
equally excellent in the ability of their faculties, in the
perfection of their equipment.
But each has its own atmosphere and traditions; each has its
personality, if you may apply such a word to an institution. And you
want to select the place where your mental roots will strike in the
earth most readily, and take from the intellectual soil surrounding
you the greatest possible amount of mental force and vigor.
Take plenty of time to find out which, out of a score of colleges, is
the best one for you. Study their "catalogues"; talk to men who have
been to these various institutions; read every reputable article you
can find about them. Keep this up long enough, and you will become
conscious of an unreasoned knowledge that such and such an institution
is not the place for _you_ to go. Finally, write to the president or
other proper officer of the colleges you are thinking of attending.
You will get some sort of an answer from each of them; but if it is
only three lines, that answer will breathe something of the spirit of
the institution. Of course the great universities will answer you very
formally, or perhaps not at all. Their attitude is the impersonal one.
They say to the world, and to the youth thereof: "Here we are. We are
perfectly prepared. We have on hand a complete stock of education.
Take it, or leave it. It is not of the slightest concern to us."
I have no quarrel with that attitude. These institutions are going on
the assumption that you already have character and purpose; that you
already know what you are about. They are ready for you if you are
ready for them. And if you are not ready for them, if you are only a
rich person or a mere stroller along the highways of life, what is
that to them? Why should it be anything to them? Why should it be
anything to anybody? The world is busy, young man; you have got to
make yourself worth while if it pays any attention to you.
Making sure always that the college of your choice is well equipped,
select the one where you will feel the most at home. Other things
being equal, go where there are the most men in whose blood burns the
fire which is racing through your veins. Go to the college in whose
atmosphere you will find most of the ozone of earnestness. It may well
be that you will find this thing in one of the smaller colleges, of
which there are so many and such excellent ones scattered all over the
Nation.
Certainly these little colleges have this advantage: their students
are usually very poor boys, who have to struggle and deny themselves
to go to college at all--young men whose determination to do their
part in the world is so great that hunger is a small price to pay for
that preparation which they think a college education gives them; men
whose resolve to "make something of themselves," as the common saying
goes, is so irresistible that they simply cannot endure to stay away
from college.
Such men have hard muscles, made strong and tense by youthful toil;
great lungs, expanded by plow in field or ax in forest; nerves of
steel, tempered by days of labor in open air and nights of dreamless
slumber, which these hypnotics of Nature always induce. These men have
strong, firm mouths; clear, honest eyes, that look you straight and
fair; and a mental and moral constitution which fit these physical
manifestations of it.
And these are just the kind of men among whom you ought to spend your
college life, if you are one of the same kind--and perhaps much more
if you are not.
Fellows like these believe in the honor of men, the virtue of women,
the sacredness of home, and that the American people have a mission
in the world marked out for them by the Ruler of the Universe--though
this is not a fair distinction since all Americans believe in these
high, sweet things of life and destiny. It is a faith common to all
Americans and monopolized by no class.
But you know what kind of a man you are, and therefore you will find
out, if you search with care, what college is the best for you. I
insist upon the importance of this selection. It is a real, practical
problem. You will never have a more important task set you in
class-room, or even throughout your entire life, than to select the
college which is going to do you the most good. So go about it with
all the care that you would plan a campaign if you were a general in
the field, or conduct an experiment if you were a scientist in the
laboratory.
This one word of definite helpfulness on this subject: Do not choose
any particular college because you want to be known as a Yale man, a
Harvard man, a Princeton man, or any other kind of man. Remember that
the world cares less than the snap of its fingers what particular
_college_ man you are.
What the world cares about it that you should _be_ a man--a real
_man_.
It won't help you a bit in the business of your life to have it known
that you graduated from any particular college or university. If you
are in politics, it won't give you a vote; if a manufacturer, it will
not add a brick to your plant; if a merchant, it will not sell a
dollar's worth of your goods.
Nobody cares what college you went to. Nobody cares whether you went
to college at all.
But everybody cares whether you are a real force among men; and
everybody cares more and more as it becomes clearer and clearer that
you are not only a force, but a trained, disciplined force. That is
why you ought to go to college--to be a trained, disciplined force.
But how and where you got your power--the world of men and women is
far too interested in itself to be interested in that.
When you do finally go to college, take care of yourself like a man. I
am told that there are men in college who have valets to attend them,
their rooms, and their clothes. Think of that! Don't do anything like
that, even if you are a hundred times a millionaire. Of course _you_
won't--you who read this--because not one out of ten thousand young
Americans can afford to have a valet in college--thank heaven!
Don't do any of the many things which belong to that life of
self-indulgence of which the keeping of a valet in college is a
flaring illustration. Don't let kind friends litter up your room with
a lot of cushions, and such stuff. The world for which you are
preparing is no "cushiony" place, let me tell you; and if you let
luxury relax your nerves and soften your brain tissues and make your
muscles mushy, a similar mental and moral condition will develop. And
then, when you go out into real life, you will find some sturdy young
barbarian, with a Spartan training and a merciless heart, elbowing you
clear off the earth.
For, mark you, these strong, fearless, masterful young giants, who are
every day maturing among the common people of America, ask no quarter
and give none; and it is such fellows you must go up against. And when
you do go up against them there will be no appealing to father and
mother to help you. Father and mother cannot help you. Nobody can help
you but yourself. You will find that the cushion business, and the
mandolin business, and all that sort of thing, do not go in real
life.
Consider West Point and Annapolis. My understanding is that the men
whom the Nation is training there for the skilled defense of the
Republic, and who therefore must be developed into the very highest
types of effective manhood, are taught to clean and polish their own
shoes, make their own beds, care for their own guns, and do everything
else for themselves. Do you think that is a good training for our
generals and admirals? Of course you do.
Well, then, do you imagine that you are going to have an easier time
in your business or profession than the officers in our army and navy?
Don't you believe it for a minute. You are not going to have an easier
time than they. You are going to have a great deal harder time. And by
"hard time" I do not mean an unhappy time. Unhappy time! What greater
joy can there be for a man than the sheer felicity of doing real work
in the world?
While I am on this subject I might as well say another thing: Do not
think that you have got to smoke in order to be or look like a college
man. A pipe in the mouth of a youth does not make him look like a
college man, or any other kind of man. It merely makes him look
absurd, that is all. And if there is ever a time on earth when you do
not need the stimulus of tobacco, it is while you are in college.
Tobacco is a wonderful vegetable. It is, I believe, the only substance
in the world which is at the same time a stimulant and a narcotic, a
heart excitant and a nerve sedative. Very well. You are too young yet
to need a heart stimulant, too young to need anything to quiet your
nerves.
If at your tender age your nerves are so inflamed that they must be
soothed, and if at the very sunrise of your life your heart is so
feeble that it must be forced with any stimulant, you had better quit
college. College is no place for you if you are such a decadent; yes,
and you will find the world a good deal harder place than college.
Cut out tobacco, therefore. For a young fellow in college it is a
ridiculous affectation--nothing more. Why? Because you do not need
tobacco; that is why. At least you do not need it yet. The time may
come when you will find tobacco helpful, but it will not be until you
have been a long while out of college. As to whether tobacco is good
for a man at any stage of life the doctors disagree, and "where
doctors disagree, who shall decide?"
Ruskin says that no really immortal work has been done in the world
since tobacco was introduced; but we know that this is not true. I
would not be understood as having a prejudice for or against the weed.
Whether a full-grown man shall use it or not is something for himself
to decide. Personally I liked it so well that I made up my mind a long
time ago to give it up altogether.
But there is absolutely no excuse for a man young enough to still be
in college to use it at all. And it does not look right. For a boy to
use tobacco has something contemptible about it. I will not argue
whether this is justified or not. That is the way most people feel
about it. Whether their feeling is a prejudice or not, there is no use
of your needlessly offending their prejudice. And this is to be taken
into account. For you want to succeed, do you not? Very well. You
cannot mount a ladder of air; you must rise on the solid
stepping-stones of the people's deserved regard.
And, of course, you will not disgrace yourself by drinking. There is
absolutely nothing in it. If you have your fling at it you will learn
how surely Intoxication's apples of gold turn to the bitterest ashes
in the eating. But when you do find how fruitless of everything but
regrets dissipation is, be honest with yourself and quit it. Be honest
with the mother who is at home praying for you, and quit it. But this
is weak advice. Be honest with that mother who is at home praying for
you, and _never begin it_. That's the thing--_never begin it!_
In a word, be a man; and you will be very little of a man, very little
indeed, if you have got to resort to tobacco and liquor to add to your
blood and conduct that touch of devilishness which you may think is a
necessary part of manliness. Indeed, between fifteen and thirty years
of age your veins will be quite full enough of the untamed and
desperate. I do not object in the least to this wild mustang period in
a man's life.
Is a fellow to have no fun? you will say. Of course, have all the fun
you want; the more the better. But if you need stimulants and tobacco
to key you up to the capacity for fun, you are a solemn person
indeed--"solemn as cholera morbus" to appropriate an American
newspaper's description of one of our public men. What I mean is that
you shall do nothing that will destroy your effectiveness. Play,
sports, fun, do not do that; they increase your effectiveness. Go in
for athletics all you please; but do not forget that that is not why
you are going to college.
Nobody cares how mad are the pranks you play. Take the curb and
snaffle off of the humors of your blood whenever you please; that is
all right. I never took much stock in the outcry against hazing. We
cannot change our sex, or the nature and habits of it. A young man is
a male animal after all, and those who object to his rioting like a
young bull are in a perpetual quarrel with Nature.
One thing I must warn you against, and warn you supremely: the
critical habit of mind which somehow or other a college education does
seem to produce. This is especially true of the great universities of
our East. Nobody admires those splendid institutions more than I
do--the Nation is proud of them, and ought to be. The world of
learning admires them, and with reason. Neither the English, Scotch,
nor German universities surpass them.
But has not every one of us many times heard their graduates declare
that a mischief had been done them while in those universities by the
cultivation of a sneering attitude toward everybody--especially toward
every other young man--whom they see doing anything actual, positive,
or constructive. One of the best of these men--a man with a superb
mind highly trained--said to me on this very subject:
"I confess that I came out of college with my initiative atrophied. I
was afraid to do anything. I was afraid I would make a mistake if I
did anything; afraid I was not well enough equipped to do the things
that suggested themselves; afraid that if I did try to do anything
everybody would criticize what I did; afraid that my old college mates
would laugh at me.
"And I confess in humility that I myself acquired the habit of
intellectual suspicion toward everybody who does try to do any real
thing. I find myself unconsciously sneering at young men who are
accomplishing things. Yes, and that is not the worst of it; I find
myself sneering at myself." That is pathos--a soul doubting, denying
itself. Pathos! yes, it is tragedy!
Confirm this confession by dropping into a club where such men gather
and hearing the talk about the ones who are doing things in the world.
You will find that until the men who _are_ doing things have actually
_done_ them, done them well, and forced hostility itself to accept
what they have done as good, honest pieces of work, the talk in these
clubs will be that of harsh criticism, sneering contempt, and prophecy
of failure. Guard against that habit night and day. You would better
become an opium-eater than to permit this paralysis of mind and soul.
Believe in things. _Believe in other young men._ When you see other
young men trying to do things in business, politics, art, the
professions, believe in the honesty of their purpose and their ability
to do well what they have started out to do. Assume that they will
succeed until they prove that they cannot. Do not discourage them. Do
not sneer at them. That will only weaken yourself. Believe in other
young men, and you will soon find yourself believing in yourself.
That is the most important thing of all: Belief in yourself. Have
faith in yourself though the whole universe jeers. "Trust thyself;
every heart vibrates to that iron string," is the sentence from
Emerson we used to write endlessly in our copy-books when we went to
school. And what a glorious motto for Americans it is!
Remember that the high places, now filled by men whom the years are
aging, must by and by be filled by men now young. Be in no haste
then--the years are your allies. Time will dispose of your rivals.
Just believe in yourself, and work and wait and dare--_and keep on_
working, waiting, daring. _Never let up; and never doubt your ultimate
success._ Think of Columbus, Drake, Magellan--the story of every
master-mariner has in it food for your necessary egotism.
Do not underestimate your strength. There are things you would like to
do; very well, sail in and do them. Do not be afraid of making a
mistake. Do not be afraid that you will fail. Suppose you do fail.
Millions have failed before you. I am repeating this thought and I
wish it would bear repetition on every page.
But never admit to yourself that you have failed. Try it again. You
will win next time, sure! "If at first you don't succeed, try, try
again." How much sense there is in these common maxims of the common
people, proverbs not written by any one man, but axioms that spring
out of the combined intelligence of the millions, meditating through
the centuries. The sayings of the people are always simple and wise.
What a fine thing it was that Grant said at Shiloh. The first day
closed in disaster. The enemy had all but driven the Union Army into
the river. Not a great distance from the banks of the stream they will
point out to you the tree under which Grant stood, cigar clinched
between his teeth, directing the disposition of his forces. Some one
reported to him a fresh disaster.
With the calmness of the certainty that nobody could defeat _him_, so
the story runs, Grant replied, "Never mind; I will lick them
to-morrow." Very like Cæsar, was it not? "_I_ came, _I_ saw, _I_
conquered." Or that other audacity of the great Roman, when the ship
was actually sinking: "Fear not," said he; "fear not, you carry
_Cæsar_ and _his_ fortunes."
In the same battle it is credibly reported that Grant rode to an
important position held by a large number of his troops under one of
his most trusted generals. "What have you been doing?" asked Grant.
"Fighting," answered the commander in charge of that position, equally
laconic. For a while Grant surveyed the field, and, turning, was about
to ride away. "But what shall I do now, General?" asked his
subordinate. "Keep on fighting," answered Grant.
Do not get into the habit of feeling that you are not sufficiently
well equipped. This comes of a very honest intellectual process--the
understanding, as we get more knowledge, of how very little we really
know; as we get more skill, of how very unskilled we really are; the
feeling that, high as our training is, there is some one else more
highly trained. Of course there is; but if that is any excuse why you
should do nothing--because there is some person who can do it
better--you will never do anything; and then what will happen when all
of the other fellows who "could do it better" die?
You will by that time be too old to do anything at all. So sail in
yourself, and pat on the back every other young fellow that sails in.
If you learn the law, for example, understand that the way to acquire
the art of _practising_ law is to _practise_ it, and not merely watch
somebody else practise it. Suppose every young man with a scientific
mind had declined to make any experiment because there were abler
scientists than he: how many Pasteurs and Finsens and Marconis and
Edisons and Bells would the world have had? And I might go on for an
hour with similar illustrations.
So go ahead and try to do things you would _like_ to do--things Nature
has fitted you to do. Believe that you can do these things. For you
_can_, you know. You will be amazed at your own powers. If you do not
believe in yourself, how do you expect the world to believe in you?
The world has no time to pet and coddle you, remember that. So get the
habit of faith in yourself and your fellow men. Cultivate a noble
intellectual generosity. It is a fine tonic for mind and soul--a fine
tonic even for the body.
The doctors say that envy, malice, jealousy, produce a distinctly
depressing effect upon the nervous system. And some go so far as to
say that if intense enough these states of mind actually poison the
secretions. Don't, therefore, let these hyena passions abide with you.
Be generous. Have faith. Make mistakes or achieve success; fail or
win; but do things. Share the common lot. Be hearty. Be whole-souled.
Be a man. Never doubt for a moment that
"God's in his heaven;
All's well with the world."
This paper has been devoted to your mental and moral attitude toward
your college and your college life, rather than to what particular
things you will study there; for the way you look at your college and
the life you lead there--the spirit with which you enter upon these
golden years--is the main thing. The studies themselves are the
methods by which you apply that spirit and purpose.
But most young men with whom I have talked want to know what "courses"
to take, what "studies" to specialize upon. No general counsel can be
given which will be very valuable to you upon this point. But I will
venture this: Do not choose entirely by yourself what things you will
study in college, or what "courses" you will "elect."
You are so apt to pick the things that are easiest for you, and not
the things that are best for you. Even the strongest-willed men quite
unconsciously select those things that will mean the least work. You
do not think you are selecting certain courses or studies for this
reason, and perhaps you are not; but then, again, perhaps you are, and
you cannot yourself determine that.
Therefore I suggest that you advise with four or five of the ablest
and most successful men you know. Let two of these be educators, and
the others professional or business men. Try to get them to interest
themselves enough in you to take the time to think the whole subject
over very carefully as applied to your particular case, and to take
further time to talk it over thoroughly with you. Then take the
consensus of their opinion, unless your own view is decided, clear,
and emphatic.
When you have such an opinion of your own, such a command coming from
the sources of your own mentality, obey that, in choosing your studies
and course, rather than the counsel of any other man or number of men.
Yes, obey that voice in making such a choice, and in making every
choice throughout your whole life; for it is the voice of your real
self--that inward counselor which never fails those who are fortunate
enough to have it.
Of course, what you study ought to be influenced by what you intend to
do in life. For example, the career of civil engineer requires a
special kind of preparation. So do the various occupations and
professions. But no matter what particular thing you intend to do
through life, it is the belief of most men who have given this subject
any thought that a young man ought to take a complete general college
course, and supplement this by special preparation for the particular
work to which he intends to devote his life.
But there is one thing to which the attention of young Americans
should be directed as influencing their college life. Our country is
no longer isolated. We can no longer be called a provincial people. We
are decidedly a very intimate part of the world. Our relations with
other peoples grow closer and closer, and they will keep on growing
closer as the years pass by. A thousand Americans travel over sea
to-day where one went abroad fifty years ago. Our foreign commerce is
now greater in a single year than it used to be in an entire
decade--yes, and quite recently, too, so swift our increase.
Other countries are several times nearer to us than they were even in
the last generation. It took Emerson almost a month to cross the
Atlantic. Now you go over in a week. You can send a cablegram to any
country in the world and have it delivered, translated into the
language of the person to whom it is sent, a great deal quicker than
the dawn can travel. Invention has made snail-like the speed of light.
What does all this mean? It means that in our relations we have become
cosmopolitan. Therefore we Americans ought to know other languages
than our own. Charles Sumner said that if he had to go through college
again he would study nothing but modern languages and history. Of
course I do not presume to advise you who are reading this paper to do
that, although it is precisely what I should do if I were going
through college again. But I do advise you to do this: Acquire at
least two languages in addition to your own--French and German.
Indeed, you ought to have three languages besides your own--French,
German, and Spanish. For, consider! Here is Mexico, our next-door
neighbor--its people speak Spanish; Cuba, a kind of national ward of
ours--its people speak Spanish. The people of our possessions in the
Pacific speak Spanish; of Porto Rico, Spanish; of the Central and
South American "Republics"--with all of whom we are destined, in spite
of ourselves, to have relations of ever-increasing intimacy--all speak
Spanish.
And French? You can travel all over Europe intelligently if you speak
French. And German--the language that is going to make a good race
with English itself as the commercial language of the world is German.
For example, you can go all through _commercial_ Russia without a
guide if you speak German. You can get along in any port of the
Orient if you speak German. So you can if you speak English, it is
true. And think of how many millions of excellent people in our own
country are still German-speaking (although our German citizens are so
splendidly patriotic that they acquire English just as soon as they
possibly can).
But the point is, that your usefulness in every direction will be
increased by a knowledge of the languages. The other things that you
study in college you will largely forget, anyhow; and, besides, you
study them principally for the mental discipline in them. But if you
get a language, and get it correctly, thoroughly, you can find enough
use for it to keep brushed up on it. And of course you can read it all
the time, whether you have a chance to talk it or not.
It is impossible to use words sufficiently emphatic in urging the
study of history. _You cannot get too much history in college and out
of it._ Sir William Hamilton was right--history is the study of
studies. The man who occupies the chair of history in any college
ought to be not only an able man, he ought to be a great man. If ever
you find such a professor, make yourself agreeable to him, absorb him,
possess yourself of him.
This final word: Mingle with your fellow students. Talk with people,
with real people; those who are living real lives, doing real things
under normal and natural conditions. Do all this in order that you may
keep human; for you must not get the habit of keeping to your room and
believing that all wisdom is confined to books. It is not. All wisdom
is not confined to any one place. Some of it is in books, and some of
it is in trees and the earth and the stars.
But so far as _you_ are concerned most of it is in human touch with
your fellows; for it is _men_ with whom you must work. It is _men_ who
are to employ you. It is _men_ whom in your turn you are to employ. It
is the world of _men_ which in the end you are to serve. And it is
that you may serve it well that you are going to college at all, is it
not?
Be _one_ of these _men_, therefore; and be sure that while you are
being one of them, you are one indeed. Be a man in college and out,
and clear down to the end. Be a man--that is the sum of all counsel.
_2. The Young Man who Cannot Go_
But what of the young man who stands without the college gates? What
of him upon whom Fate has locked the doors of this arsenal of power
and life's equipment? "Why does not some one give counsel and
encouragement to the boy who, for any one of a thousand reasons,
cannot take four years or four months from his life of continuous toil
in order to go to college?" asked a young man full of the vitality of
purpose, but to whom even the education of our high schools was an
absolute impossibility.
After all, for most of our eighty millions, the college is practically
beyond their reach. Even among those young men who have the nerve,
ability, and ambition to "work their way through college," there are
tens of thousands who cannot do even that, no matter if they were
willing for four years to toil at sawbuck, live on gruel, and dress in
overalls and hickory shirt.
I have in mind now a spirited young American of this class whose
father died when his son was still a boy, and on whose shoulders,
therefore, fell the duty of "supporting mother" and helping the girls,
even before his young manhood had begun. For that young man, college
or university might just as well be Jupiter, or Saturn, or Arcturus.
Very well. What of this young man? What of the myriads of young
Americans like him? What hope does our complex industrial
civilization, which every day grows more intense, hold out to these
children of hard circumstances, whose muscles daily strain at the
windlasses of necessary duty?
I repeat the question, and multiply the forms in which I put it. It is
so pressingly important. It concerns the most abundant and valuable
material with which free institutions work--the neglected man, he whom
fortune overlooks. It is a strange weakness of human nature that makes
everybody interested in the man at the top, and nobody interested in
the man at the bottom. Yet it is the man at the bottom upon whom our
Republican institutions are established. It is the man at the bottom
whom Science tells us will, by the irresistible processes of nature,
produce the highest types after a while.
The young Bonaparte proved himself a very wizard of human nature when
he exclaimed: "Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in
his knapsack." And did not the Master, with a wisdom wholly divine,
choose as the seed-bearers of our faith throughout the world the
neglected men? Only one of the apostles was what we would term to-day
a "college man"--St. Luke, the physician. What said the Teacher, "The
stone which was rejected to the builder, has become the chief of the
corner."
Yes--the neglected man is the important man. We do not think so day by
day, we idle observers of our Vanity Fair, we curbstone watchers of
the street parade. We think it is the conspicuous man who counts. Our
attention is mostly for him who wears the epaulettes of prominence and
favorable condition. Therefore most articles, papers, and volumes on
young men consider only that lucky favorite-of-fortune-for-the-hour,
the college man.
But this paper is addressed to the neglected man. I would have speech
with those young men with stout heart, true intention, and good
ability, who labor outside those college walls to which they look with
longing, but may not enter.
"Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack."
Ah, yes! Very well. But what was a soldier of France in Napoleon's
time to a young American to-day? If Joubert, from an ignorant private
who could not write his name, became one of the greatest generals of
the world's greatest commander, what may you not become! Joubert did
it by deserving. Use the same method, you. There is no magic but
merit.
First, then, do not let the conditions that keep you out of college
discourage you. If such a little thing as that depresses you, it is
proof that you are not the character who would have succeeded if you
had a lifetime of college education. If you are discouraged because
you cannot go to college, what will happen to you when life hereafter
presents to you much harder situations? Remember that every strong man
who prevails in the merciless contest with events, faces conditions
which to weaker men seem inaccessible--are inaccessible.
But it is the scaling of these heights, or the tunneling through them,
or the blasting of them out of their way and out of existence, which
makes these strong men strong. It is the overcoming of these obstacles
day after day and year after year, as long as life lasts, which gives
these mighty ones much of their power.
What is it you so admire in men whom you think fortunate--what is it
but their mastery of adversity after adversity? What is that which you
call success but victory over untoward events? Do not, then, let your
resolution be softened by the hard luck that keeps you out of college.
If that bends you, you are not a Damascus blade of tempered steel; you
are a sword of lead, heavy, dull, and yielding.
Next to Collis P. Huntington, the railroad man of the last generation,
whose ability rose to genius, was President Scott of the Pennsylvania
System. He thought, with Mr. Huntington, that a college training was
unnecessary; and his own life demonstrated that the very ultimate of
achieving, the very crest of effort and reward may be reached by men
who know neither Greek nor Latin, nor Science as taught in schools,
nor mental philosophy as set down in books.
Colonel Scott was a messenger-boy--just such a messenger-boy as you
may see any day running errands, carrying parcels, doing the humble
duties of one who serves and waits. From a messenger-boy with bundle
in his hand, to the general of an industrial army of thousands of men,
and the directing mind planning the expenditure of scores of millions
of dollars belonging to great capitalists--such was the career of
Thomas Scott.
Very well, why should you not do as well? "Because my competitors have
college education and I have not," do you answer? But, man, Colonel
Scott had no college education. "Because the other fellows have
friends and influence and I have none," do you protest? But neither
President Scott nor most monumental successes had friends or influence
to start with. Don't excuse yourself, then. Come! Buck up! Be a man!
"I am greatly troubled," said to me the general superintendent of one of
the most extensive railroad systems in the world as we rode from Des
Moines, Iowa, to Chicago. "I am greatly troubled," said he, "to find an
assistant superintendent. There are now under me seven young engineers,
every man a graduate of a college; four of them with uncommon ability,
and all of them relatives of men heavily interested in this network of
railroads. But not one of them will do. Three nights ago all of them
happened to meet in Chicago. While there all of them went out to have
what they called 'a good time' together--drinking, etc.
"That, in itself, is enough to blacklist every man for the position of
my assistant and my successor. This road will not entrust its
operating management to a man who wilfully makes himself less than his
best every day and every night. Besides this, each of them has some
defect. One is brilliant, but not steady; another is steady, but not
resourceful--not inventive--and so forth and so on. We are looking all
over the United States for the young man who has the ability,
character, health, and habits which my assistant must have."
This general superintendent, under whose orders more than ten thousand
men daily performed their complex and delicately adjusted functions,
is fifty-five years of age. Now listen to this, you who cannot go to
college: This man started thirty-eight years ago as a freight-handler
in Chicago at one dollar per day for this same railroad company, which
was then a comparatively small and obscure line. Ah! but you say,
"That was thirty-eight years ago." Yes, and that is the trouble with
you, is it not? You want to _start in_ as superintendent of a great
system or the head of a mighty business, do you not? Very well--get
that out of your head. It cannot--it ought not--to be done.
If you are willing to work as hard as this man worked, as hard as
President Scott of the Pennsylvania System worked; if you are willing
to stay right by your job, year in, year out, through the weary
decades, instead of changing every thirty minutes; if you are willing
to wait as long as they; if you are willing to plant the seed of
success in the soil of good hard work, and then water it with good
hard work, and attend its growth with good hard work, and wait its
flowering and fruitage with patience, its flowering and fruitage will
come. Doubt it not.
For, mark you, this man at the time he told me that his System was
looking all over the United States for a young man capable of being
his assistant, had seven high-grade college men on his hands at that
very moment. He would have been more than delighted to have taken any
one of them.
Also, he would have taken a man who had not seen a college just as
quickly if he could have found such a one who knew enough about
operating a railroad, and had the qualities of leadership, the gift of
organizing ability. It did not matter to this superintendent whether
the assistant he sought had been to college or not, whether he was
rich or poor.
He cared no more about that than he cared whether the man for whom
this place was seeking was a blond or a brunette. The only question
that he was asking was, "Where is the man who is equal to the job?"
And that, my young friend, is the question which all industry is
asking in every field of human effort; that is the question your Fate
is putting to you who are anxious to do big work, "Are you equal to
the job?" If you are not, then be honest enough to step out of the
contest. Be honest enough not to envy the other young men who are
equal to the job.
Yes, be honest enough to applaud the man who is equal to the job and
who goes bravely to his task. Don't find fault with him. Don't swear
that "There is no chance for a young man any more." That's not true,
you know. And remember always that if you do all you are fitted for,
you do as well as your abler brother, and better than he if you do
your best and he does not.
A young man whom fortune had kept from college, but who is too
stout-hearted to let that discourage him, said to me the other day: "I
don't think that a college education confers, or the absence of it
prevents, success. But I do think that where there are two men of
equal health, ability, and character, that one will be chosen who has
been to college, and to this extent the college man has a better
chance." This is true for the ordinary man--the man who is willing to
put forth no more than the ordinary effort.
But you who read--you are willing to put forth extraordinary effort,
are you not? You are willing to show these favored sons of cap and
gown that you will run as fast and as far as they, with all their
training, will you not? You are willing--yes, and determined, to use
every extra hour which your college brother, _thinking he has the
advantage of you_, will probably waste.
Very well. If you do, biography (that most inspiring of all
literature) demonstrates that your reward will be as rich as the
college man's reward. Yes, richer, for the gold which your refinery
purges from the dross of your disadvantages will be doubly refined by
the fires of your intenser effort.
In 1847 two men were born who have blessed mankind with productive
work which, rich as are now its benefits to the race, will create a
new wealth of human helpfulness with each succeeding year as long as
time endures. Both these men have lived, almost to a day, the same
number of years; both of them are still alive; both of them have
labored in neighboring sections of the same field. They are alike,
too, in character, almost duplicates in ability. Here, then, is
material for a perfect comparison.
Mark, now, the parallel. One of them was a college man, the son of a
noted educator and himself a professor in the University of Boston. He
used the gifts which God gave him for that purpose, and as long as the
transmission of human speech continues among men, the name of
Alexander Graham Bell will be rightly honored by all the world.
The other of these men could no more have gone to college than he
could have crossed the Atlantic on a sheet of paper. You who read this
never had to work half so hard as this man worked when he was a boy.
Your patience will never be so taxed and tested as his patience was
and is. But who can say that your efforts and your persistence will
not be as richly rewarded according to your ability as his
ceaselessness has been repaid, if you will try as hard as he has
tried, and use every ounce of yourself as effectively as he has used
himself?
At twelve years of age he was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway.
That didn't satisfy him. The mystery of the telegraph (and what is
more mysterious?) constantly called him. The click of the instrument
was a voice from an unknown world speaking to him words far different
from those recorded in the messages that instrument was transmitting.
And so Thomas A. Edison, without a dollar or a friend, set himself to
work to master the telegraph and to explore the mysteries behind it.
Result: the duplex telegraph and the developments from that; the
phonograph, the incandescent electric light, and those numerous
inventions which, one after another, have confounded the bigotry and
ignorance of the world.
Edison and Bell, Bell and Edison, one a college man and the other a
laborer without the gates, unlike in preparation but similar in
character, devotion, and ability, and equal winners of honor and
reward at the hands of a just if doubting world.
Of course I might go on all day with illustrations like this. History
is brilliant with the names of those who have wrought gloriously
without a college training. These men, too, have succeeded in every
possible line of work. They are among the living, too, as well as
among those whose earthly careers have ended.
The men who never went to college have not only built great railroads,
but also have written immortal words; not only have they been great
editors, but also they have created vast industries, and piled
mountain high their golden fortunes; not only have they made
epoch-making discoveries in science, but they have set down in words
of music a poetry whose truth and sweetness makes nobler human
character and finer the life's work of all who read those sentences of
light.
Among the fathers who established this Government, the greatest never
went to college. Hamilton was not a college man. Washington, to this
day the first of Americans, never even attended school after he was
sixteen years old. Of the great founders of modern journalism--the
four extraordinary men whom their profession to this day refers to as
the great journalists--only one was a college graduate--Raymond, who
established the New York _Times_. Charles A. Dana, who made the New
York _Sun_ the most quoted newspaper of his generation, was not a
college graduate. William Cullen Bryant, who gave to the New York
_Evening Post_ a peculiar distinction and preeminence, went to college
only one year.
Samuel Bowles, who founded the Springfield _Republican_ and made its
influence felt for righteousness throughout the Nation, attended a
private institution for a while. James Gordon Bennett, the editor
whose resourceful mind sent Stanley to the heart of African jungles to
find Livingstone, was never a college student.
Horace Greeley, that amazing mind and character, who created the New
York _Tribune_, and who, through it, for many years exercised more
power over public opinion than any other single influence in the
Republic, never went to college; and Greeley's famous saying, "Of all
horned cattle, deliver me from the college graduate," remained for a
quarter of a century a standing maxim in the editorial rooms of all
the big newspapers of the country.
Stevenson, who invented the steam-engine, was not a college man. He
was the son of a fireman in one of the English collieries. As a boy,
he was himself a laborer in the mines. Undoubtedly the greatest
engineer America has yet produced was Captain Eades, whose fame was
world wide; yet this Indiana boy, who constructed the jetties of the
Mississippi, built the ship railroad across the Isthmus of Panama and
other like wonders, never had a day's instruction in any higher
institution of learning than the common schools of Dearborn County.
Ericsson, who invented the _Monitor_, and whose creative genius
revolutionized naval warfare, was a Swedish immigrant. Robert Fulton,
who invented the steamboat, never went to college.
And take literature: John Bunyan was not only uneducated, but actually
ignorant. If Milton went to college, I repeat that Shakespeare had no
other alma mater than the university of human nature, and that Robert
Burns was not a college man. Our own Washington Irving never saw the
inside of any higher institution of learning. I have already noted
that the author of "Thanatopsis" went to college for only a single
year.
Among the writers, Lew Wallace, soldier, diplomat, and author, was
self-educated. John Stuart Mill, who is distinguished as a
philosopher, is innocent of a college training. James Whitcomb Riley,
our American Burns, is not a "college man." Hugh Miller, the
Scotchman, whose fame as a geologist is known to all the world of
science, did not go to college.
Take statesmanship. Henry Clay wrested his education from books,
experience, and downright hard thinking; and we Americans still like
to tell of the immortal Lincoln poring over the pages of his few and
hard-won volumes before the glare of the wood-fire on the hearth, or
the uncertain light of the tallow dip. Benjamin Franklin got his
education in a print-shop.
In American productive industry, the most conspicuous name,
undoubtedly, is that of Andrew Carnegie; yet this great ironmaster,
and master of gold as well, who has written as vigorously as he has
wrought, was a Scotch immigrant. George Peabody, the philanthropist,
never was inside a college as a student. He was a clerk when he was
eleven years old.
At least three of the most astonishing though legitimate business
successes which have been made in the last decade in New York were
made by men not yet forty-five years old, none of whom had any other
education than our common schools. I am not sure, but I will hazard
the guess that a majority of the great business men of Chicago never
saw a college.
These illustrations occur to the mind as I write, and without special
selection. Doubtless, the entire space of this paper might be occupied
by nothing more than the names of men who have blessed the race and
become historic successes in every possible department of human
industry, none of whom ever saw the inside of either college or
university.
But all of these do not prove that you ought not to go to college if
you can. Certainly you ought to go to college if it is possible. But
the lives of these men do prove that no matter how hard the conditions
that you think surround you, success is yours in spite of them, _if
you are willing to pay the price of success_--if you are willing to
work and wait; if you are willing to be patient, to keep sweet, to
maintain fresh and strong your faith in God, your fellow men, and in
yourself.
The life of any one of the men whom I have mentioned is not only an
inspiration but an instruction to you who, like these men, cannot go
to college. Consider, for example, how Samuel B. Raymond established
the New York _Times_. He wrote his own editorials; he did his own
reporting; he set his own type; he distributed his own papers. That
was the beginning.
One of the most successful merchants that I know opened a little store
in the midst of large and pretentious mercantile establishments. He
bought his own goods; he was his own clerk; he swept and dusted his
own storeroom, and polished his own show-cases. He was up at five in
the morning, and he worked to twelve and one at night, and then slept
on the counter. That was less than thirty years ago. To-day he is at
the head of the largest department store in one of the considerable
cities of this country, _and he owns his store_.
This is an illustration so common that every country town, as well as
London, Paris, and New York, can show examples like it. And, mark you,
most of these men were weighted down with responsibilities as great as
yours can possibly be, and hindered by obstacles as numerous and
difficult as those which you have confronting you.
Yet they succeeded brilliantly. The world rewarded them as richly as
any graduate of any university who went to his life's work from the
very head of his class. For you know this, don't you, that the world
hands down success to any man who pays the price. Very well, the price
is not a college education. The price is effectiveness, and the
college is valuable only as it helps you to be effective.
Here is a true picture of our earthly work and its rewards: Behind a
counter stands the salesman, Fortune, with just but merciless scales.
On the shelves this Merchant of Destiny has both failure and success,
in measure large and small. Every man steps up to this counter and
purchases what he receives and receives what he purchases. And when he
buys success he pays for it in the crimson coin of his life's blood.
This is a sinister illustration, I know, but it is the truth, and the
truth is what you are after, is it not? You can do about what you will
within the compass of your abilities; but you accomplish all your
achievings with heart-beats. This is a rule which has no exceptions,
and applies with equal force to the man who goes to college and to him
who cannot go. What is that that some poet says about the successful
man:
"... Who while others slept
Was climbing upward through the night."
So do not let the fact that you cannot go to college excuse yourself
to yourself for being a failure. Do not say, "I have no chance because
I am not a college man," and blame the world for its injustice. What
Cassius exclaimed to Brutus is exactly applicable to you:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
So do not whine as to your hard fate; do not go to pitying yourself.
No whimper should come from a masculine throat.
A man who does either of these things thereby proves that he ought not
to succeed--and he will not succeed. Indeed, how do you know that
these fires of misfortune through which you are passing are not heat
designed by Fate to temper the steel of your real character. Certainly
that ought to be true if you have the stuff in you. And if you have
not the stuff in you, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, and
all the universities of Germany cannot lift you an inch above your
normal level. "You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" is our
pithy and brutally truthful folk-saying.
"What do you raise on these shaly hills?" I asked one time of that
ideal American statesman, Senator Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut.
"Manhood," answered this great New Englander, and then he went on to
point out the seemingly contradictory facts that a poor soil
universally produces stern and upright character, solid and productive
ability, and dauntless courage.
The very effort required to live in these ungenerous surroundings, the
absolute necessity to make every blow tell, to preserve every fragment
of value; the perpetual exercise of the inventive faculty, thus making
the intellect more productive by the continuous and creative use of
it--all these develop those powers of mind and heart which through all
history have distinguished the inhabitants of such countries as
Switzerland and New England. "And so," said Connecticut's great
senator, "these rocky hills produce manhood."
Apply this to your own circumstance, you who cannot go to college
because you must "support the family," or have inherited a debt which
your honor compels you to pay, or any one of those unhappy conditions
which fortune has laid on your young shoulders.
Most men with wealth, friends, and influence accept them as a matter
of course. Not many young men who are happily situated at the
beginning, employ the opportunities which are at their hand. They
don't understand their value. Having "influence" to help them, they
usually rely on this artificial aid--seldom upon themselves. Having
friends, they depend upon these allies rather than upon the ordered,
drilled, disciplined troops of their own powers and capabilities.
Having money, they do not see as vividly the necessity of toiling to
make more.
"What's the use of my working; father did enough of that for our
family," wittily said one of these young men. Having the training of
the best universities very much as they have their food and clothing,
these men are too apt to be blind to the greater skill this equipment
gives them, and thus to neglect the using of it.
And so, young man--you who cannot go to college, you who are without
friends and "influence"--your brother born with a silver spoon in his
mouth, and trained by tutors, finished by professors, and clothed with
all the "advantages," has not such a great start of you after all. For
you are without friends to begin with. You have not inherited comrades
and kindred hearts. You have inherited aloneness and solitude.
Very well, you must depend on yourself, then. If you have the right
kind of stuff in you, you will make every ohm of your force do
something for you. You will see to it that there is no wasted energy.
You will economize every instant of your time, for you will
understand, in the wise language of the common people, that "time is
money"; and that is something, mind you, which the heir of wealth with
whom you are competing does not understand at all. You know what an
advantage your competitor, who is a college man, has of you; and this
knowledge of yours, coupled with your college competitor's possible
lack of it, turns his advantage over you into your advantage over him.
It is like a man who has a dozen shots for his rifle against another
who has a hundred. The first will make every shot bring down his game,
because he knows he _must_ make every shot tell; he cannot waste a
cartridge. But he of abundant ammunition fires without certain aim,
and so wastes his treasure of shells until for the actual purposes of
fruitful marksmanship he has not as many cartridges left as the man
who started with fewer. Also his aim is not so accurate.
Or use an illustration taken from the earth. I well remember when a
boy upon the fat alluvium of the Illinois prairie, how recklessly the
farmers then exhausted the resources of their fields. So opulent was
the black soil that little care was taken save to sow the seed and
crudely cultivate it; and the simple prudences, such as rotation of
crops, differential fertilizing, and the like, would have been laughed
at by the farmer, heedless in the richness of his acres.
But the German farmer on his sandy soil could take no such risks.
Every vestige of fertility that skill, science, and economy could win
from the reluctant German field was secured. The German farmer had to
woo his land like a lover. And so the unyielding fields of Germany
returned richer harvests thirty years ago than a like area of the
prodigally vital silt of the Mississippi Valley.
So what you have got to do, young man who cannot go to college, is to
develop yourself with the most vigorous care. Take your reading, for
example. Choose your books with an eye single to their helpfulness.
Let all your reading be for the strengthening of your understanding,
the increase of your knowledge.
Your more fortunate competitor who has gone to college will, perhaps,
not be doing this. He will probably be "resting his mind" with an
ephemeral novel or the discursive hop-skip-and-jump reading of current
periodicals. Thus he will day by day be weakening his strength,
diminishing his resources. At the very same time you, by the other
method, will hourly be adding to your powers, daily accumulating
useful material.
And when you read, make what you read yours. Think about it. Absorb
it. Make it a part of your mental being. Far more important than this,
make every thought you read in books, every fact which the author
furnishes you, the seed for new thoughts of your own. Remember that no
fact in the universe stands by itself, but that every fact is related
to every other fact. Trace out the connection of truth with truth, and
you will soon confront that most amazing and important of all truths,
the correlation of all force, all thought, all matter.
And thus, too will your mind acquire a trained and systematic strength
which is the chief purpose of all the training which college and
university give. For, mind you, the principal purpose of going to
college is not to acquire knowledge. That is only secondary. The chief
reason for a college education is the making of a trained mind and the
building of a sound character.
These suggestions as to reading apply to everything else: to men,
business, society, life. Because you must compete with the college
men, you cannot be careless with books--in the selection of books, or
in the use of them. For the same reason, you cannot be indifferent
with men and your relationship with them. If other men are loose and
inaccurate in reading the character of their fellows, most certainly
you cannot be.
If the men who have battalions of friends to start with become
negligent of their associations, welcoming all fish that come to their
net, and frogs, too, you dare not take the risk of a dissolute
companionship, or any other companionship that will weaken the daily
discipline of yourself, or lower you in the esteem of the people.
Thus you become a careful student of human nature. And never forget
that he who has mastered this, the most abstruse of sciences, has a
better equipment for practical success than all the abstract learning
from the days of Socrates till now could give him.
Conscious from day to day of your limited resources, and understanding
by the severe tuition of your daily life that the world now demands
effectiveness, you will nurture your physical and nervous powers where
the rich young man with a college training is apt to waste his. He may
smoke, but you dare not. You cannot afford it, for one thing.
For another thing, it is a long race that you are running before you
reach the point from which your fellow runner starts; so you have got
to save your wind. You need all your nerve. You have got to keep
"clean to the bone," as Jack London expresses it.
You have got to take thought of the morrow. You have got to do all
those things which your employer, and all observers of you, will,
consciously or unconsciously, approve; and refrain from doing anything
that your employer, or his wife, or the world, or anybody who is
watching you, will disapprove of, even subconsciously.
Thus your profound understanding that effectiveness is what counts
will cut out every questionable habit, every association of idleness
and sloth. No social club for you; that institution is for the man of
dollars and of Greek. No evenings with gay parties for you; you must
use those precious hours for reading, planning, sleep.
You cannot dally with brilliant indirectness; you must make every man
and woman understand that you are goldenly sincere, forcefully
earnest, earnestly honest, high of intention, sound of purpose, direct
of method. Out of all these you will finally wring everything which
the college is designed to give: skilled intellect, mind equipped with
systematized knowledge, simple, earnest, upright character.
And to crown it all, you will discover in this hard discipline of your
faculties and of your soul a happiness whose steady felicity is
unknown to the lounger of the club or the frequenter of the ballroom.
For remember this--you who in your heart cherish a secret envy of
those other young men whom you believe, by reason of family, wealth,
or any favorable circumstance, are getting more of the joy of living
than you get--remember this, that this world knows only one higher
degree of happiness than that which comes from discipline, only one
pleasure nobler than the pleasure of achieving.
Let me close with two illustrations within my own personal
observation. In one of the most charming inland cities of the United
States, or of the world, for that matter, I met some fifteen years ago
a young man of German parentage. His father was poor. The son simply
_had_ to help support the family by his daily work. He never got
nearer college than in his dreams.
He knew something of printing, and was employed by a vigorous new
house at an humble salary. By processes such as I have analyzed above,
he made himself the best man in technical work in the firm's employ.
The next step was to demonstrate his ability as a manager and
financier as well as a skilled workman. There was a nut to crack, was
it not? But see, now, how simply he broke the shell of that problem.
With some other sound young men of like quality, he established a
building and loan association, one of those banks of the people which
flourished in those days. He had no capital behind him. His
acquaintance was small. Never mind, he made acquaintances among people
of his own class. So did his fellow directors. Those common people
from which this young man sprang furnished from their earnings the
necessary money.
The little institution was conducted with all our American dash, with
all his German caution. Of course it prospered. How could it help
prospering? While other building and loan associations undertook
alluring but hazardous experiments, this little concern rejected them
with all the calm and haughty disfavor of the most conservative old
bank.
After a while people began to take notice of this small institution.
Its depositors were satisfied, its customers pleased. One day the
attorney of this association, also a young man, called his fellow
directors together, and resigned, upon the ground that he thought the
movement of gold abroad and other financial phenomena indicated a
panic within the next two or three years.
Did this dismay the young German-American? Not much. "This is just
what I am looking for," said he. "I have been able to manage this
institution in prosperous times; now if I can only have a chance to
close it up so that no man loses a dollar, when big banks around me
are falling, I will accomplish all I have started to accomplish."
Sure enough, the panic of 1893 arrived, and the young man's
opportunity came. Bank after bank went down; old institutions whose
venerable names had been their sufficient guarantee collapsed in a
day. Most building and loan associations, taking advantage of certain
provisions of the law, and of their charters, refused to pay their
depositors on demand. The men and women who had put their money in
found that they could not "withdraw" for some time, and then only at a
loss.
But not so with the model experiment of my young friend, by which he
proposed to demonstrate his ability to organize, manage, and support a
difficult business, and to properly handle complex financial
questions. He closed his institution up amid the appreciation and
praise of everybody who knew about it.
In the mean time he had worked a little harder than ever for the firm
that employed him. He took part in politics, too. His acquaintance
grew slowly but steadily, and then with ever-increasing rapidity, as
each new-made friend enthusiastically described him to others.
It soon got on the tongues of the people that even in his politics
this young man didn't drink, smoke, nor swear. More marvelous than
all, it was said that he was even religious. And the saying was true.
During all these years when he had no time for anything else, he also
had no time to stay away from Sunday-school and church. He had certain
convictions and spoke them out.
He had no time for "society"; not a moment for parties; not an hour
for the clubs. But he did have time for one girl, and for her he did
not have time enough. All this was not so very long ago. To-day this
young man is a member of the firm for which he began as a common
workman, and which has since grown to be one of the largest concerns
of its kind in the entire country. Successful banks have made him a
director. On all hands his judgment is sought and taken by old and
able men in business, politics, and finance.
And to crown all these achievings, he has builded him a home where all
the righteous joys abound, and over which presides the "girl he went
to see" in the hard days of his beginnings, when he had no time for
"society" except that which he found in her presence. As he was then,
so he is now--"clean to the bone," strong, upright, faithful, joyous
in the unsullied happiness of the manly living of a manly life.
Very well, I tell you over again that this man did not go to college
because he _could not_ go to college; that he had no opportunities, no
friends, few acquaintances. But he did have right principles, good
health, and an understanding that every drop of his blood must be
wrought into a deed, every minute of his time compounded into power.
And this young man is not yet forty years of age.
I will venture to say that his example can be repeated in every town
in the United States, in every city of the Republic. Certainly I
personally know of a score of such successes in my own home city. I
personally know of many such examples in other States. You ask for the
inspiration of example, young man who cannot go to college. Look
around you--they are on every hand.
Can you not find them in your own town? Or, if you live on a farm, do
you not see them in your own county? I personally know of country boys
who started out as farm hands at sixteen dollars per month and board,
who to-day own the farms on which they were employed, and yet who are
not now much past middle life. They have done it by the simple rules
that are as old as human industry.
Come, then, don't mope. Sleep eight hours. Then three hours for your
meals, and a chance for your stomach to begin digesting them after you
have eaten them. That makes eleven hours, and leaves you thirteen
hours remaining. Take one of these for getting to and from your
business. _Then work the other twelve._ Every highly successful man
whom I know worked even longer during the years of his beginnings.
What, no recreation? say you. Certainly I say recreation, and I say
pleasure, too. But remember that you have got to overcome the college
man's advantage over you--and that can only be done by hard work. But
what of that? For a young man like you, full of that boundless vigor
of youth, what higher pleasure can there be than the doing of your
work better than anybody else does the same kind of work?
And what finer happiness can there be than the certainty that such a
life as that will make realities of your dreams? For sure it is that
this is the road by which you can walk to unfailing success, even over
the bodies of your rivals who, with greater "advantages" than yours,
neglect them and fall upon the steep ascent up which, with harder
muscles, steadier nerves, and stouter heart, you climb with ease,
gaining strength with every step you take instead of losing power as
you advance, as did your flabbier fibered competitor.
Now for the other illustration: Three years ago a certain young man
came to me from New York, the son of a friend who occupied a
Government position. He was studying law. He was "quivering" with
ambition. But his lungs were getting weak. Would it be possible to get
him a place on some ranch for six or eight months? Yes, it was
possible. An acquaintance was glad to take him.
At the end of his time he returned, still "quivering" with ambition.
He was going to make a lawyer, that's what he was going to make--the
very best lawyer that ever mastered Blackstone. He already had a
clerkship promised in one of the great legal establishments in the
metropolis. This clerkship paid him enough to live on, and gave him
the chance to do the very work which is necessary to the making of a
lawyer.
Splendid thus far. But observe the next step. In about twelve months
this young man came to me again. Would I help to get a certain man who
held a Government position paying him $150 a month promoted? This last
man's record was admirable; he deserved promotion on his own account.
But why the interest of the would-be lawyer, who was "quivering" with
ambition?
It developed that if the other fellow was promoted, this embryo
Erskine could, with the aid of influential political friends, be
appointed in his place. But why did he want this position? Well,
answered the young man, it would enable him to take his law course at
one of the law schools of the Capitol and get his degree, and all that
sort of thing. Also, it would enable him to live at home with mother,
would it not? Yes, that was a consideration, he admitted.
But did he think that that was as good a training for his profession,
and would give him the chance of a business acquaintance while he was
getting that training, as well as the clerkship in the New York office
would? Perhaps not, but, after all, he didn't get very much salary in
the New York law office. Why, how much did he get? Only twenty dollars
a week.
But was not that enough to live on at a modest boarding-house, and get
a room with bed, table, one chair, and a washstand, and buy him the
necessary clothing? Oh, yes! of course he could scratch along on it,
but it was hardly what a young man of his standing and family ought to
have.
Oh! it didn't enable him to get out into society, was that it? Well,
yes, he must admit there was something in that. Washington had social
advantages, to be sure, and $150 a month would enable him to have some
of that life which a young man was entitled to and at the very same
time be getting his legal education. _Well!_ That young man did _not_
get what he wanted.
That young man had the wrong notion of life. Of course, no man would
do anything for him. Until he changed his point of view utterly,
success was absolutely impossible for him. What that young man needed
was the experience of going back to New York and having to apply for
position after position until his shoe soles wore out, and he felt
the pangs of hunger. He needed iron in his blood, that is what he
needed. All the colleges in the world would not enable that man to do
anything worth doing until he mastered the sound principles of living
and of working.
Right before him in New York was an illustration of this. One of the
most notable successes at the bar which that city or this country has
witnessed in the last fifteen years has been made by a young man who
had neither college education, money, nor friends. He was, I am told,
a stenographer in one of New York's great legal establishments. But
that young man had done precisely what I have been pounding at over
and over again in this paper. Very well. To-day he is one among half a
dozen of the most notable lawyers in the greatest city of the greatest
nation in the world.
It is all in the using of what you have. Let me repeat again what I
have said in a previous paper--the inscription which Doc Peets
inscribed on the headboard of Jack King, whose previousness furnished
"Wolfville" with its first funeral:
"JACK KING, DECEASED.
Life ain't the holding of a good hand,
But
The playing of a poor hand well."
And this is nothing more than our frontier statement of the parable of
the talents. After all, it is not what we have, but what we make out
of what we have that counts in this world of work. And, what's more,
that is the only thing that ought to count.
IV
THE NEW HOME
Your father made the old home. Prove yourself worthy of him by making
the new home. He built the roof-tree which sheltered you. Build you a
roof-tree that may in its turn shelter others. What abnormal egotism
the attitude of him who says, "This planet, and all the uncounted
centuries of the past, were made for _me_ and nobody else, and I will
live accordingly. I will go it alone."
"I wish John had not married so young," said a woman of wealth,
fashion, and brilliant talents in speaking of her son. "Why, how old
was he?" asked her friend. "Twenty-five," said she; "he ought to have
waited ten years longer." "I think not," was the response of the
world-wise man with whom she was conversing. "If he got a good wife he
was in great luck that he did not wait longer." "No," persisted the
mother, "he ought to have taken more time 'to look around.' These
early marriages interfere with a young man's career."
This fragment of a real conversation, which is typical of numberless
others like it, reveals the false and shallow philosophy which, if it
becomes our code of national living, will make the lives of our young
people abnormal and our twentieth century civilization artificial and
neurotic. Even now too many people are thinking about a "career."
Mothers are talking about "careers" for their sons. Young men are
dreaming of their "careers."
It is assumed that a young man can "carve out his career" if his
attention is not distracted and his powers are not diminished by a
wife and children whom he must feed, clothe, and consider. The icy
selfishness of this hypothesis of life ought to be enough to reject it
without argument. Who is any man, that he should have a "career"? and
what does a "career" amount to, anyway? What is it for? Fame? Surely
not, because
"Imperious Cæsar dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,"
says Shakespeare. And Shakespeare ought to know; he is not quite three
centuries dead, and even now the world is sadly confused as to
whether he wrote Shakespeare. "Career!" Let your "career" grow out of
the right living of your life--not the living of your life grow out of
your "career." "Don't get the cart before the horse."
Is it to accomplish some good thing for humanity that you want this
"career," which is to keep you single until you are too old to be
interesting? Very well. Just what is it that you expect to do with
these self-centered and single years during which you intend so to
help the race? If you cannot tell, you are "down and out" on that
score.
And, besides, you will find that the enormous majority of men who by
their service have uplifted or enriched humanity have been men enough
to lead the natural life. They have been men who have founded homes.
And how can you better benefit mankind than by founding a home among
your fellow men, a pure, normal, sweet, and beautiful home?
That would be getting down to business. That would be doing something
definite, something "you can put your finger on." It would be "getting
down to earth," as the saying is. You would be "benefiting humanity"
sure enough and in real earnest by taking care of some actual human
being among this great indefinite mass called mankind. The making of
a home is the beginning of human usefulness.
The Boers were a splendid type of the human animal. It took all the
power of the greatest empire on earth to crush a handful of them; and
even then Great Britain was able to subdue them only at astonishing
loss of men and money, and irreparable impairment of prestige. They
were glorious fighting men, these Boers. The blood that flowed in
their veins was unadulterated Dutch--the only unconquered blood in
history; for you will remember that even Cæsar could not overcome
them, and, with the genius of the statesman-soldier that he was, he
made terms with them.
But these Boers were a good deal more than mere fighting animals; they
were perhaps the most religious people on earth. If they were mighty
creatures physically, they were also exalted beings spiritually. They
knew how to pray as well as to fight. They made their living, too, and
asked no favors. Also they builded them a state. It was a fine thing
in the English to acknowledge the high qualities of these African
Dutchmen, after the war with them was over.
It is said that there was not an unmarried man above twenty-one years
of age among them. Very generally the same thing was true of "The
Fathers" who founded this republic. Indeed, all great constructive
periods and peoples have lived in harmony with the laws of Nature. It
has been the races of marrying men that have made the heroic epochs in
human history. The point is that the man who is not enough of a man to
make a home, need not be counted. He is a "negligible quantity," as
the scientists put it.
So if your arm is not strong enough to protect a wife, and your
shoulders are not broad enough to carry aloft your children in a sort
of grand gladness, you are really not worth while. For it will take a
man with veins and arteries swollen with masculine blood pumped by a
great, big, strong heart, working as easily and joyfully as a Corliss
engine; with thews of steel wire and step as light as a tiger's and
masterful as an old-time warrior's; with brain so fertile and vision
so clear that he fears not the future, and knows that what to weaker
ones seem dangers are in reality nothing but shadows--it will take
this kind of a man to make any "career" that is going to be made.
Very well. Such a man will be searching for his mate and finding her,
planning a home and building it before he is twenty-five; and the man
who does not, is either too weak or too selfish to do it. In either
case you need not fear him. "He will never set the world afire."
I am assuming that you are man enough to be a man--not a mere machine
of selfishness on the one hand, or an anemic imitation of masculinity
on the other hand. I am assuming that you think--and, what is more
important, feel--that Nature knows what she is about; that "God is not
mocked"; and that therefore you propose to live in harmony with
universal law.
Therefore, I am assuming that you have established, or will establish,
the new home in place of the old home. I am assuming that you will do
this before there is a gray hair in your head or a wrinkle under your
eye. These new homes which young Americans are building will be the
sources of all the power and righteousness of this Republic to-morrow,
just as the lack of them will be the source of such weakness as our
future develops.
Within these new homes which young Americans are to build, the altar
must be raised again on which the sacred fire of American ideals must
be kept burning, just as it was kept burning in the old homes which
these young Americans have left. And precisely to the extent that
these new homes are not erected will American ideals pale, and finally
perish.
It is a question, you see, which travels quite to the horizon of our
vision and beyond it, and which searches the very heart of our
national purity and power. No wonder that Bismarck considered the
perpetuation of the German home, with its elemental and joyous
productivity, as the source of all imperial puissance on the one hand,
and the purpose and end of all statesmanship on the other hand.
It would be far better for America if our public men were more
interested in these simple, vital, elemental matters than in "great
problems of statesmanship," many of which, on analysis, are found to
be imaginary and supposititious. Yes, and it would be better for the
country if our literary men would describe the healthful life of the
Nation's plain people, than tell unsavory stories of artificial
careers and abnormal affections, and all that sort of thing.
They would sell more books, too. I never yet heard that anybody got
tired of "The Cotter's Saturday Night." I think it quite likely that
the Book of Ruth will outlast all the short stories that will be
written during the present decade. Yes, decidedly, our public men, and
our writers, too, ought to "get down to earth." There is where the
people live. The people walk upon the brown soil and the green grass.
They dwell beneath the apple-blossoms. How fine a thing it is that our
American President is preaching the doctrine of the American home so
forcefully that he impresses the Nation and the world with these basic
truths of living and of life.
It is a good deal more important that the institution of the American
home shall not decay, than that the Panama Canal be built or our
foreign trade increase. So, in considering the young man and the new
home, we are dealing with an immediate and permanent and an absolutely
vital question, not only from the view-point of the young man himself,
but from that of the Nation as well.
Of course nobody means that young men should hurl themselves into
matrimony. The fact that it is advisable for you to learn to swim does
not mean that you should jump into the first stream you come to, with
your clothes and shoes on. Undoubtedly you ought first to get
"settled"; that is, you ought to prepare for what you are going to do
in life and begin the doing of it. Don't take this step while you are
in college. If you mean to be a lawyer, you ought to get your legal
education and open your office; if a business man, you should "get
started"; if an artizan, you should acquire your trade, etc. But it is
inadvisable to wait longer.
It is not necessary for you to "build up a practise" in the
profession, or make a lot of money in business, or secure unusual
wages as a skilled laborer. Begin at the beginning, and live your
lives together, win your successes together, share your hardships
together, and let your fortune, good or ill, be of your joint making.
It will help you, too, in a business way.
Everybody else is, or was, situated nearly as you are, and there is a
sort of fellow-feeling in the hearts of other men and women who once
had to "hoe the same row" you are hoeing; and it is among these men
and women you must win your success. It is largely through their favor
and confidence that you will get on at all. If you are making a new
home you are in harmony with the world about you, and the very earth
itself exhales a vital and sustaining sympathy.
It is not at all necessary that you should be able to provide as good
a house and the furnishings thereof as that from which your wife
comes. Nobody expects you to be as successful in the very beginning of
your life as her father was at the close of his. Least of all does she
herself expect it. And even if this were possible, it is not from such
continuous luxury that the best character is made. The absolute
necessity to economize compels the ordinary young American couple to
learn the value of things--the value of a dollar and the value of
life.
They learn to "know how it comes," again to employ one of the wise
sayings of the common people. And the numberless experiences of their
first few years of comparative hardship are the very things necessary
to bring out in them sweetness, self-sacrifice, and uplifting
hardihood of character. In these sharp experiences, too, there is
greatest happiness. How many hundreds of times have you heard men and
women say of their early married years, "Those were the happiest days
of my life."
As a matter of good business on the one hand, and of sheer felicity on
the other hand, make the ideals of this new home of yours as high as
you possibly can. Don't make them so high that neither you nor any
other human being can live up to them, of course; but if you can put
them a notch beyond those even of the exalted standard of the old
home, by all means do it. Do it, that is, if you can live up to them.
It is remarkable what individual power grows out of clean living. It
is profitable also. The mere business value of a reputation for a high
quality of home life will be one of the best assets that you can
accumulate. "They are attending strictly to business and will make
their mark," said a wise old banker to a group of friends in
discussing a fine type of young business man, and the equally fine
type of the young American woman who was his wife.
I do not know whether that young man was borrowing money for his
business from that particular bank or not, but I do know that he could
borrow it if he wanted it. And one reason why his credit was
established with the money-wise old financier was the ideal home life
which he and his wife were leading.
For, mark you, they were not "living beyond their means." That was the
first thing. That is one of the best rules you can follow. Who has not
known of the premature withering of young business men and lawyers
(yes, and sometimes men not so young, alas!) who have suddenly
blossomed out with houses and clothes and horses, and a lot of other
things which their business or practise ought not reasonably to stand.
On the other hand, do not begin your life as a miser. Do not let the
new home proclaim by its barrenness that it is the abode of a poor
young man asking sympathy and aid of his friends. "Yes, rent a piano,
by all means. Do not economize on your wife and your home," advised an
old Methodist preacher noted for his horse-sense. And he was right.
After all, what is the purpose and end of all your labor? If it is not
that very home, I do not know what it is. Put on a little more steam,
therefore, and earn enough extra to buy a picture. And get a good one
while you are at it. It will not break you up to buy a really good
etching. A fine "print" is infinitely better than a poor painting.
Anything is better than a poor painting. If she has good taste, your
wife will make the walls of that new home most attractive with an
astonishingly small amount of money.
It is the new _home_ you and she are making, remember that. Very well;
you cannot make it in a flat. "Apartments" cannot by any magic be
converted into a home. For the purposes of a _home_, better a separate
dwelling with dry-goods box for table and camp-stools for chairs than
tapestried walls, mosaic floors, and all luxuriousness in those modern
structures where human beings hive.
These buildings have their indispensable uses, but home-making is not
one of them. "Apartments" are not cheaper for you and easier for her
than a house to yourselves--no, not if you got the finest apartments
for nothing, not even if you were paid to live in gilded rooms. For
the making of a home is priceless. And that cannot be done in flats or
hotels or other walled and roofed herding places. Every man would like
to have a picture of "the house he was born in"; but who would choose
a hotel for a birthplace? Boniface himself would not "admire" (to use
one of our Westernisms) to have you select his hostelry for that
purpose.
Of course you will spend all of your extra time at home. That is what
home is for. Live in your home; do not merely eat and sleep there. It
is not a boarding-house, remember that. Books are there, and music and
a human sympathy and a marvelous care for you, under whose influence
alone the soul of a young man grows into real grandeur, power, and
beauty. And be sure that you let each day have its play-hour.
"I would not care to live," said one of the very ablest and most
eminent members of the American Catholic priesthood--"I would not care
to live," said he, "if I could not have my play-hour, music, and
flowers. They are God's gifts and my necessity. Every young man who
has a home commits a crime if he does not each day bring one hour of
joy into his household."
The man who said that is not only brilliant and wise, but one of the
most exalted souls it has ever been my fortune to know. And his words
have good sense in them, have they not? Make that good sense yours,
then. Make a play-hour each day for yourself and wife and children. I
say children, for I assume, of course, that when you are making a new
home you are making a _home_ indeed.
Very well. The absence of children is either unfortunate or immoral. A
purposely childless marriage is no marriage at all; it is merely an
arrangement. Robert Louis Stevenson calls it "a friendship recognized
by the police." A house undisturbed and unglorified by the wailings
and laughter of little ones is not a home--it is a habitation.
There is in children a certain immortality for you. Most of us believe
in life after death; and that belief is a priceless possession of
every human being who has it. But even the man who has not this faith
beholds his own immortality in his children. "Why of course I am
immortal," said a scientist who believed that death ends all. "Of
course I am immortal," said he, "there goes my reincarnation"; and he
pointed to his little son, glorious with the promise of an exhaustless
vitality.
There is no doubt at all that association with infancy and youth puts
back the clock of time for each of us. Besides all this, it is the
natural life, and that is the only thing worth while. The "simple
life" is all right, and the "strenuous life" excellent. The "artistic
life" is charming, no doubt, and all the other kinds of "lives" have
their places, I suppose. I am interested in all of them. But I am much
more interested in the natural life. That alone is truthful. And,
after all, only the truthful is important.
Get into the habit of happiness. It is positively amazing how you can
turn every little incident into a sunbeam. And, mark you, it is quite
as easy to take the other course. But what a coward a man is who
releases in his home all the pent-up irritability and disappointment
of the day.
There is no sense in it, either. It does not make you less black of
spirit to fill your home with gloom. You ought not to do it, even from
the view-point of good health. If you eat your meal in a sour silence
which almost curdles the cream and scares your wife half to death, you
do not and cannot digest your food. If you have had a hard day, say to
yourself, "Well, that was a hard day. Now for some rest and some fun."
Get into the habit of being happy, I tell you. You can do it. Practise
saying to yourself, when you waken in the morning, "Everything is all
right," and keep on saying it. You will be surprised to find how
nearly "all right" the mere saying of it at the beginning of the day
will really make everything, after all. This is true of business as
well as of the new home. Prophets of gloom are never popular, and
ought not to be.
Then, too, a quiet cheeriness of heart makes you treat your fellow man
better; and this is important in your dealings with other human male
animals. They will make it unpleasant for you if you don't. But it is
far more important in your new home than it is out in the world of
men. That is what the new home is for--to exercise and multiply the
beauties of character and conduct.
Returning again to the view-point of business wisdom, you cannot treat
your wife too well, as a mere matter of policy--though you will never
treat her well, nor anybody else, from that low motive. I am merely
calling the attention of your commercial mind to the fact that there
are actually dollars and cents in a reputation for chivalrous bearing
in your new home.
You know yourself how you feel toward a man of whom everybody says,
"He is good to his wife." Everybody wants to help that kind of a
fellow. If he is a strong man, his community glories in his strength
and increases it by their admiration and support. If he is not a
strong man, everybody wishes that he were, and tries in a thousand
ways, which a general kindly disposition toward him suggests, to
supply his deficiencies.
And this is no jug-handled rule either. The same thing is true of the
wife. When her acquaintances declare of any woman, "She is lovely in
her home," they have placed upon her brow the crown of their ultimate
tribute and regard. It depends upon both, of course, whether these
domestic beatitudes will exist in the new home.
Undoubtedly, however, it depends upon the young man more than the
young woman. He is a _man_--and that is everything. And being a man,
he should have a large and kindly forbearance, a sort of soothing
strength and calming serenity. And to all this the rule of smile and
cheeriness is helpful, if not essential.
When I was a boy in the logging-camps, I read in some stray newspaper
an article about the influence which the pleasant countenance
exercises over groups of men. The idea was that men work willingly
under the control of a strong man who is strong enough to carry in his
daily look the suggestion of a smile. It worked splendidly. It has
never been satisfactorily explained why it is next to impossible for a
man "to be down on his luck" if he will only keep the corners of his
mouth turned up. Perhaps it is the mental effort of forcing this
mechanism
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