"To-morrow I may beMyself with yesterday's seven thousand years."
"To-morrow I may beMyself 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 acquiredhis 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 thatinsincerity 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 manufacturersaid 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 youngmen 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 mightbe 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. Therearegeniuses; 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 wasyesterdaythat 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 ofhis 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 usneurotic. 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 backof 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 meanspractise 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.
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 asthe 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 ofindividual 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 soinevitable 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 gooddeal 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 weakenthat 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 almostwomanly 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," andgenerally 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 altogetherOriental 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 theAmerican 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 aman, 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-dayand 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, butdoes. 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 onething 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 himeither. 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 ifthere 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 donotknow 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. Howsingular 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 andsplendid 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 "thefolks 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 whatyouwill have to tell her ofyourown puny little deeds.
They are not puny deeds to her; they are quite the most considerable performancesgiven in all the universe of men. Foryoudid 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.