IVToC

"... Who while others sleptWas 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 intellectmore 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 saidone 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 ofyou; 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 hemustmake 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 couldwin 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 youread 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 yoursoul 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 simplyhadto 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 skilledworkman. 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 financialphenomena 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 hecould notgo 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 workbetter 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 clerkshippromised 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 hewas 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 didnotget 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 positionuntil 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,ButThe 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.

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 formeand 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.' Theseearly 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 asto 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 greatindefinite 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 amongthem. 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; andthe 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 theseyoung 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 shortstories 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 lifeand 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 shouldbe 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 themso 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 prematurewithering 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 newhomeyou and she are making, remember that. Very well; you cannot makeit in a flat. "Apartments" cannot by any magic be converted into a home. For the purposes of ahome, 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 ahomeindeed.

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 unglorifiedby 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 littleincident 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 humanmale 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 islovely 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 aman—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 of a smile which brings a really happy state of mind.

Whatever the cause, it is literally true that you cannot look blackly on the world and yourown fortunes if the lines of your face are ascending instead of drooping. This muscular state of your countenance is connected in some strange way with that mysterious thing called the mind; for you will find, if you try it, that a sort of serenity of soul comes to you, and a strong confidence that "everything will come out right in the end." When we Americans are older we shall pay more attention to these things.

The Japanese neglect none of these deep psychological truths in warfare. It is said that they are taught to smile in action, and especially when they charge. Doubtless this report is true. It has at bottom the same reason that music in battle has. What could be more terrifying than the approach of an enemy determined on your death, and who looks upon your execution as so pleasant and easy a thing that he smiles about it or who regards his own possible extinction as no unhappy consummation?

Also it is interesting to note how a pleasant expression begets its like. I have observed this even in Manchuria, and other parts of China—a smile unfailingly won a return smile from children who were watching you from the fields, whereas a frown wouldinstantly becloud the little face with a kindred expression of disfavor. I am spending a good deal of time upon this item of good cheer in the new home, because I think that as long as happiness surrounds the American fireside all is well with the Republic.

There is no investment which yields such dividends as the society you will find in your home. The company, the talk, the silent sympathy of that sagacious and congenial person who is your wife yield a return in spirit, wisdom, moral tone, and pure pleasure to be found in like measure nowhere else on earth.

It is said that Charles James Fox, the most resourceful debater the British Parliament has ever seen, was so fond of his home and his wife that he would actually absent himself from Parliament for the sheer pleasure of her presence and conversation. Lord Beaconsfield, who, we are told, married for the mere purpose of ambition, afterward fell deeply in love with his wife and spent every moment he could in her society. She proved, too, to be his shrewdest counselor.

Bismarck's boundless love for his princess increased with the years; yet she was chiefly, and perhaps only, a German "hausfrau"—an ideal housewife. The German peopleparticularly loved the wife of Bismarck because of these exclusively domestic traits. Perhaps that was why he adored her more and more as the years went by. Gladstone, who was a very surly and irritable person, declared that his wife had made his life "cushiony."

Of course it is taken for granted in this paper that the young American wife is this kind of a woman—wise and gentle and good-natured—above all things good-natured. For says the Bible, "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman." But read what is written in the Book of the right kind of a woman—one "in whose tongue is the law of kindness," as the Scriptures' exquisite phraseology has it.

I don't like the tone of the common comment of the American medical profession about the neurotic condition of our American women. Our physicians are saying that there is not one American woman in a hundred who is nervously normal. The profession declares that they are excitable, irritable, peevish, and that this unfortunate state is produced by the unnatural and absurd tension they are under all the time.

Their so-called "social duties"; the minute and nerve-destroying precision of theirhousekeeping; their unnecessary overloading of themselves with tasks futile and fictitious; the determination to "appear" a little better than their neighbors, and, above all, to have their children (theironeortwochildren) particularly spick and span; the long catalogue of folly into which our high-geared, modern civilization has led our women, and through no fault of theirs—"all these," said an eminent neurologist, in talking of this absorbing topic, "are impairing the agreeableness and curtailing the usefulness of our women, and will in the end destroy our women themselves."

I hope it is not true. If it is true, we had better find the cause of it and apply the remedy, or we are a lost people; for that nation is doomed whose women have ceased to be vital, good-tempered, and home-loving.

May not the too heavy early education of young girls have something to do with this later desperation of their nerves? Is not the blood taken from vital centers where Nature meant it to go for the upbuilding of womanhood and forced into the brain at a period when Nature meant that brain to be the very paradise of joyous dreams and happy imaginings? While we may thus gain a staccatosmartness, a jerky and inconsequent brilliancy, do we not lose something of the natural woman and the delicious heartiness, spontaneous wit and instinctive wisdom of her? I venture no opinion here—I merely suggest the query. Why don't the doctors begin a crusade about this? It is their business.

The keen, practical sense of women in purely business affairs has been noted in other papers, and the causes of it. The young man who neglects this helpfulness simply throws away wisdom. Not to counsel with your wife on business matters that affect your mutual fortune is sheer stupidity. Also, it is morally wrong. From the very nature of her she is more interested than you in strengthening the walls of your new home, in making your joint experiment in the living of life a beautiful success. Her words are the counsel of instinct, and therefore of Nature. And Nature is wise.

Of course there are some things you cannot tell her. If you are a lawyer, or a doctor, you are dishonorable if you tell your wife or any other human being any secret of client or patient. Not that she is not to be trusted—for she is. She will carry to her grave any secret that affects you. But the disclosures ofclient or patient are notyoursecrets. If they were, she would be entitled to know them—ought to know them. But no woman of sense will permit you to tell her any professional confidences. Don't expect her to be helpful to you in your profession or occupation except by counsel.

Of course there is the great and inestimable help that comes from the mere fact that she is your wife. After all, that is the very greatest help any woman can be to any man. The care of home, the upbringing of children, the strengthening of a husband's character here and there, the detection of those thousand little vices of manner and speech and thought which develop in every man—in short, the living of a natural woman's life—is the only method of real helpfulness of a woman to a man. And it is a priceless helpfulness.

Particularly is this true of political life and career. A man who must be lifted to distinction by his wife's apron-strings, does not deserve distinction. In the end, he does not get it—the apron-strings usually break, and they ought to break. It may be stated as a general truth that a man is never helped by the active participation of the wife in his political affairs.

There are notable exceptions, just as there are to every rule. But as a generalization this statement is accurate. Men resent that kind of thing in politics. They want a man who aspires to anything to be worthy of that thing on his own account. They want their leader to be a leader; and no leader is "managed" in politics by his wife. They are right about it, too. But whether they are right or wrong, that is the way they feel.

So the only help which a woman can be to a man in politics is just to be a wife in all that that term implies. And what greater help than that could there be? She who impresses the American millions with the fact that she is the ideal wife and mother has made the strongest, subtlest appeal to the nation. But she cannot do this by "mixing up in politics," by trying to plan and manage her husband's campaigns, and so forth. For the people's instinct is unerring. We Americans are a home-making and a home-loving people; and as a people we adore the American wife and mother—the maker and keeper of the American home.

So you attend to your politics or your business and let your wife attend to hers; and she will be happy and glad to make your homethe exclusive scene of her activities if you will only be man enough to do a man's full part in the world and leave no room for a woman of spirit to see that you are not doing a man's full part, and, therefore, to try to help you out.

I sometimes think that the propaganda that woman is the equal of man, and that it is all right for her to take on man's work in business and the professions, is due not so much to an abnormal development in her character as it is to a decadence in our manhood. At least I have always observed that the wife of a really masterful man finds her greatest happiness in being merely his wife, and never attempts to take any of his tasks upon her. And why should she assume his labor? Her natural work in the world is as much harder than his as it is nobler and finer.

Speaking of politics, I have always thought men, young and old, ought to consult their wives and families about how they cast their ballot. What right has any man to vote as he individually thinks best? He is the head of the family, it is true, but he is only one of the family, after all. This Republic is not made up of individuals; it is made up of families. Its unit is not the boarding-house, but the home.

The Senate of the United States is the greatest forum of free debate on earth; but the counsel of the American fireside is far more powerful. Wife and children have a vital interest in every ballot deposited by father and husband—an interest as definite and tangible as his own. Every voter, therefore, ought to discuss with wife and children, with parents, brothers, and sisters, all public questions, and vote according to the composite family conviction.

No greater method of public safety can be imagined than for the American family to "size up" the American public man, and then have the voters of that family sustain or reject him at the polls, according to the verdict of the household. If such were the rule, only those men who are of the people when they are first placed in public office, and who keep close to the people ever after, would be elected to anything.

Such a method, too, would insure a steadier current of national policy, subject to fewer variations. There would not be so many fads to deflect sound and sane statesmanship. So by all means, young man, begin your career as a citizen by making your wife a partner in every vote you cast.

Nobody denies that men and women should have equality of privilege and equality of rights; but equality of duties and similarity of work is absurd. The contrary idea was beautifully satirized in the now famous toast:

"Here's to our women: God bless them! Once our superiors, now our equals."

The truth is that it is impossible to compare men and women. They are not the same beings. They have different characteristics, different methods, different capacities, and different view-points of life. Each supplements the other. Doubtless the woman has the choicer lot. Surely this is true abstractly speaking. Suppose we should all stand disembodied souls, or rather unembodied souls, on the edge of the forming universe; and suppose that, to these abstract intelligences, the Creator should say:

"I am forming the universe. I am creating a wonderful place called Earth. I am going to clothe you each in human form, marvelously and beautifully made, the highest work of my hands. Some of you shall be men. To these men I will give the task of labor in the fields, of warfare with wild beasts. It shall be your duty to subdue wildernesses, and to construct and defend a dwelling-place for this other onewhom I am going to make a woman. Therefore I shall give you men large bones to deal strong blows, and a heavy skull to withstand the like. I shall give you courage and physical power and audacity and daring.

"The woman's mission shall be different.It shall be for her to create and preserve human happiness.She shall do this in the dwelling-place which the man constructs for her, and which will be called home. There shall she bind up his wounds and give him rest and comfort. I will give into her keeping also the making of the race, and thus the control of the destiny of the world. And so this woman shall be given delicate bones and a deft touch and voice of music and eye of peace and heart of tenderness and mind of beautiful wisdom."

Does this comparison not make it clear that woman has by far a more exalted mission than man? But the mission of both man and woman is sufficiently grand and noble if each performs it, and within its limitations is content.

Have plenty of friends. Cultivate them. You cultivate your business. You cultivate vegetables. But friends are more precious than either business or vegetables. Cultivate friends, therefore. Call on them and letthem call on you. And do it in the good old-fashioned, hearty, American way.

But be sure you make your friends for the sake of the relation itself. Do not misuse that sacred relation for your personal advantage. Do not make friends for the purposes of success. Make friends for the purposes of friendship. Be true to them, therefore. Don't neglect them when they can no longer serve you. And serve you them. And let your service to your friends be a glad service, a service which is its own reward.

He who seeks another's friendship because he needs it in his politics or business, will throw that friendship away like a worn-out glove when his ends have been accomplished. Make friends and nourish friendship because friends and friendships are life itself. Remember that you do not live in order to achieve success; you achieve success in order to live.

It is the twentieth century you are living in—don't forget that. Keep up, therefore; keep abreast of things. Keep in the current of the world's thought and feeling. Newspapers are literally indispensable to you; and you should take two of them—the morning paper and the evening paper. Get up fifteen minutes earlier in the morning, so that youmay have time to look over the morning paper carefully.

Do not read it idly. Read it with discrimination. And do not read it without discussing it with your little family. The war in Manchuria, the character of a public man, the policy of an administration, the state of the Nation's business—all these are mental food which you need as much as you need your breakfast. One thoroughly up-to-date magazine also is helpful. Build you a library also. You do not want the new home to be a mere physical habitation. You want it to be a home for the mind as well as the body, do you not?

I heard of a young lawyer who put aside a little of every fee as a sinking-fund for a library. He and his wife bought books with that—not books for the office, but books for their home. He succeeded—"won out"—"won out" with his cases, which was his profession's business, and "won out" with his happiness and hers, which was his life's business.

The theater is the highest form of combined education, amusement, and repose which human intelligence has yet invented. It was so in Greece, and it is so now. The theater occasionally is good for you. But let the playyou go to see be high-grade. Inferior performances on the stage will destroy your taste as surely as will the continued propinquity of poor pictures. The same is true of music.

Music has a mysterious quality which exalts. It has been noted that soldiers gladly go to their death under its influence, who otherwise would fight unwillingly. It is a great producer of thought also. Some men can write well only under its inspiration. Educate yourselfupin it, therefore. Do not be content with the simple melodies and old songs. They will never lose their charm, and ought not; but they are not the best which music has for you.

What I am now insisting upon is a constant and careful nourishment of the mind and soul within you, so that the new home may each day be more and more the dwelling-place of beauty and the abode of real happiness. You cannot think of the old home without thinking of your mother; and you cannot think of your mother without thinking of the Bible.

A young man and a young woman who are making a new home make an irreparable mistake if they leave out the religious influence. Both ought to belong to church, and to the same church. This is a matter of prudence aswell as of righteousness; for get it into your consciousness that you must be in harmony with the people of whom you two are one. Your new home must be in accord with the millions of other homes which make up this Nation; and the American people at bottom are a religious people.

Also, you will find that nothing will please your wife so much as to resolve upon regular church attendance, and then to reduce that resolve to a habit. It is good for you, too; you feel as though you had taken a moral bath after you get home from service every Sunday.

Of course, being an American and a gentleman, you will have the American gentleman's conception of all womanhood, and his adoring reverence for the one woman who has blessed him with her life's companionship. You will cherish her, therefore, in that way which none but the American gentleman quite understands. You will be gentle with her, and watchful of her health and happiness.

You will be ever brave and kind, wise and strong, deserving that respect which she is so anxious to accord you; earning that devotion which by the very nature of her being she must bestow on you; winning that admiration which it is the crowning pride of her life toyield to you; and, finally, receiving that care which only her hands can give, and a life-long joy which, increasing with the years, is fullest and most perfect when both your heads are white and your mutual steps no longer wander from the threshold of that "new home" which you built in the beginning of your lives, and which is now the "old home" to your children, who beneath its roof "rise up and call you blessed."

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