"That is all right," said a practical-minded man, with a dash of American humor in him, in the course of a conversation along this line; "that is all right, and I think so, too," said he; "but where does 'the old man' come in? What about the father?" And the question is as sane as it is pat. Don't you neglect the father. He feeds you. He clothes you. He is schooling you. It is to his brain and hand, and the wisdom and skill of them, that you are indebted for the college education you are going to get.

And by these tokens your father is a man, and a whole lot of a man at that.

You will realize how much of a man he is if you will think what you would be up against if you had to support yourself, and then another person more expensive than yourself, and in addition several other persons more expensive than yourself—not only support them, but supply their whims and humor their caprices; for it must be said of us Americans that we really do not need more than half what we think we positively must have.

Think, I say, young man, of having to do all that, and having to keep on doing it to-day and to-morrow, this month and next month, and all year and every year as long as you live. If, in your mind, you feel yourself equal to that, tell me, do you not feel in your mind that you have in you the makings of a man indeed—a tremendous man?

Very well. That is what your father not only imagines, but does. So he is decidedly entitled to your respect. You owe him gratitude, too, of a very definite, tangible kind—the sort of gratitude you can weigh in scales and count up in cash-book.

Now we come to the point of definite benefit for you in all of this; for, mind you, this paper is for your own selfish interests. Even when I am advising the beatitudes of life, I am doing it from the view-point of your practical well-being.

Think, then, of the incalculable advantage of having at your beck and call a friend who has proved that he knows the highways and byways of the world by having successfully found his way around among them.

Think of the value of having such a guide for your daily counselor. Think of how the worth of such a man's directions to you is multiplied infinitely by the fact that he cares more for your success than for any other one thing in the world. When you have thought over all these things, you will begin to have some faint understanding not only of what you owe your father, but of his practical helpfulness to you.

A father is an opportunity—a young man's first opportunity in life, and the greatest opportunity he will ever have. That father has made lots of mistakes, no doubt; but you will never make the mistakes he made if you will listen to him. He has made many successes, perhaps; but his successes are only the acorns to the oaks of your deeds, if you will but take his words as seed for your future enterprises.

And let me tell you this: Nothing makes a better impression upon the world that is watching you—watching you very cunningly, young man—as to be on good terms with your father. I have known more than one young man to be discredited in business because it was generally understood that he "could not get along with the old man."

You see, the world thinks that it is the boy's fault when there is friction between father and son—and ordinarily the world is right. Sometimes, of course, the world itself "cannot get along with father"; in such cases it does not blame the son for not getting along with him either. But that is not your situation, you who read this paper.

"How does —— get along with his father?" was asked of a certain young man of great distinction in letters. "Oh, they are great friends!" was the answer. "Friends through duty or comradery?" persisted the querist. "Comradery, affection, affinity. They are the greatest chums in the world," was the answer.

I wish I could give you the name of that man. It is known in every civilized country. No wonder he became the great power into which he has developed. His whole life is a blessing and a benediction to all with whom he comes in contact—parents, wife, children, countrymen, the world. No wonder his brain is canny with resourceful wisdom; no wonder that good red human blood pours at full tide through artery and vein.

The man I have in mind, and whom I am describing, is a great man, and his father before him was a great man too. His success has been monumental. Yet his is no candy manhood. His is no smooth conduct. He is "neither sugar nor salt, nor somebody's honey," to get down (or up) to the picturesque phrase of the common household.

He is the sort of man who would confound sharp practises of the crafty; or "call the bluff" of financial gamester; or walk unconcerned where physical danger calls for nerve of steel and lion's heart; or fling at affected fop rapier sentences that cut deep through the very quick of his pretenses.

I cite this example merely to show you that you lose nothing of independence or daring, or any of those qualities which young men so prize (and properly prize), by being on terms of intellectual and heart partnership with your father.

Don't tell us that he won't let you be on such terms with him. Show yourself willing and worth while, and your father would rather spend his extra hours with you than at the theater. But you have got to show yourself worth while. No whining willingness, no soft and pretended desire, no affected making up to "the governor," will answer at all.

You have got to "make good" with the American father, young man.

He has "been through the mill," until the softness is pretty well ground out and little remains but the granite-like muscle of manhood. He is a pretty stern proposition; and if there is anything he won't stand it is pretense, make-believe. But show yourself worthy of him and willing for his comradeship, and you have begun life with the best, readiest, bravest partner you will ever have.

From all of this you have yourself deduced the fact that you do not "know more than the old folks." If you have not, go ahead and deduce it right now; for you do not know more than they do. They have lived so much longer than you have that the accretion of daily experience has given them a variety of information beside which your book knowledge is a sort of wooden learning, lifeless and artificial.

The very fact that they have had you for a child and brought you along safely thus far is proof enough of this. You have no right to challenge the knowledge or judgment of either of your parents until you demonstrate that you can do as well or better than they. And that will be some years yet, will it not? No, decidedly, don't "get too smart for father."

Even if you really do know more than they, don't let either of the old folks see that you think so. That attitude on your part is almost indecent. Be grateful also. How singular that where young men have everything to be thankful for, they are so seldom grateful.

When parents surround them with every comfort, and make what are luxuries to the millions necessities to their children; when the youth is furnished clothes made by the tailor, and money to spend as he will, and special schools and the most expensive university; when he is given vacations at seashore, in mountains, on lake, or abroad, instead of at good hard work, as the sons of the people must spend their vacations; when a year or two of travel follows his day of easy graduation; when all is his that thought, and love, and gold can give, do we not frequently find the young man unappreciative of, and ungrateful for, these blessings?

Such a man usually takes it for granted that he ought to have all these things, and a good deal more; that they are his as a matter of course, and no thanks due to those who gave them; that they are not much, after all, compared with what some other fellow with a richer father, and a mother still more doting, has and spends. "Give a boy too much money to spend and he won't do anything else." There are some exceptions to this, notable and splendid exceptions, but they are so few that they prove the rule.

On the other hand, it is generally true that young fellows who, in comparison with the class just described, have nothing to be thankful for; who must earn their own bread and "help support the family"; who "work their way through college," and during vacations put in a good year's labor to get the money for the next college year; who, the day after graduation, thin as a wolf and as hardy, must start right in then and there to earn that very day's meals and that very night's resting-place—such men, as a usual thing, develop the glorious qualities of gratitude, consideration, and deference.

There is "no place like home" to such men, "be it ever so humble." They look upon life as a wonderful and splendid thing, for which they are indebted to father and mother. Their manhood's morning is very beautiful to them; but its light is not one-hundredth part as beautiful as the radiance which beams upon them from the eyes of one dear woman whom they call mother—a woman wrinkled and worn and wan, perhaps, but to such sons exquisitely lovely, with something in her beauty not quite of this earth.

I don't quite understand the psychology of this phenomenon, and never knew any one who did understand it; but every one of the scores of observers with whom I have talked upon this subject have noted the same fact—the too frequent ingratitude and lack of appreciation of young fellows who have everything to be grateful for, and the fine appreciation of life shown by young men who, in comparison, have nothing to be grateful for.

Perhaps it is a lack of thought, a want of analysis. If that is so in your case, young man, get to thinking. Instead of comparing yourself with some other man who has more things than you, compare yourself with one who has fewer things than you; or, better still, with one who hasn't anything at all. Then you will have a measure for the debt you owe to the two beings who have given and are giving you all you have or will have for a great many years to come.

And this other thing, too: When you begin to be grateful for these things, by going through some such intellectual process as I have indicated, you will get so much more pleasure out of them than you did before that you will hardly be able to realize that you are the same man.

Indeed, you will not be the same man—you will be another man, a bigger-hearted, saner-minded, gentler, and manlier man. You will begin to be the kind of a man you would like to be if you sat down by yourself and went to work to make yourself over again. And what a wonder you would be if you could make yourself over! Yes, no doubt!

This final word: The day must come when you must leave the old home. When that hour arrives, do not try to tarry. Go right out into the world. Do not go mournfully. Give the little mother a smile of courage, a word of cheer, that will be her guaranty that her boy is going to be a "grand success," and then—make good!

You will hardly get away from the old home gate when you will stumble over an obstacle and fall down. Don't turn back to the old home to be comforted and helped. Get up, brush the dust off, forget your bruises, and go ahead. Go ahead, and look where you are going.

A man who cannot get up when he is knocked down is of no use in the world.

Let the messages that you send back to the old home be joyful—full of faith. No matter how hard a time you are having, don't let "the folks at home" know it. Besides, you are not having such a hard time, after all. Hundreds of thousands of other men who have become splendidly successful had a great deal harder time than you are having or ever dreamed of having. Resolve to live up to what the home which reared you expects of you, and work like mad on that resolve, and you will find that you are becoming all that "the folks at home" expected of you, and a great deal more.

Go back to the old home as often as you can; but be sure that you go back with words of cheer and a story of things done. "The folks at home"—especially the mother—will want to hear all about it. There may be wars whose high-leaping flames illumine all the heavens; there may be political campaigns on hand where issues of fate are thrilling the nerves of the millions; there may be strange tidings from the council-board of the nations; there may be catastrophes and glories, scourges and blessings, famine or opulence; but any and all of these are of no interest to the mother, compared with what you will have to tell her of your own puny little deeds.

They are not puny deeds to her; they are quite the most considerable performances given in all the universe of men. For you did them, you know, and that is enough. To his mother every man is a hero.

So let your tale to her be boldly told and lovingly. And be sure that it is a narrative of purity, things honorable and of good report. Return to the habit of your youth, and at her knees establish again the old confessional. And then, with your secrets handed over to her and safely locked in her heart, with her hand of blessing on your head, and her smile of confidence, pride, and approval glorifying her face, resolve to again go out into the world where your place is, and be worthy of this new baptism of manhood you have again received in the sanctuary of the old home.

These are all simple things, commonplace things, things easy to do. They have nothing extraordinary about them. And yet, if you will do them, the world will back you as a winner against men who are a great deal smarter than you are, but who with all their smartness are not smart enough to do these plain and kindly things.



III

THE COLLEGE?

1. The Young Man who Goes

Collis P. Huntington was a notable practical success. He was wise with the hard wisdom of the world, and he had the genius of the great captain for choosing men. No business general ever selected his lieutenants with more accurate judgment. His opinion on men and affairs was always worth while. And he thought young men who meant to do anything except in the learned professions wasted time by going to college.

So when, searching for my final answer to the question this moment being asked by so many young Americans, "Shall I go to college," I answer in the affirmative, I do so admitting that a negative answer has been given by men whose opinions are entitled to the greatest possible respect.

I admit, too, that nearly every city—yes, almost every town—contains conspicuous illustrations of men who learned how to "get there" by attending the school of hard knocks. Certainly some of the most distinguished business careers in New York have been made by young men who never saw a college.

You find the same thing in every town. I have a man in mind whose performances in business have been as solid as they are astonishing. Twenty years ago he was a street-car conductor; to-day he controls large properties in which he is himself a heavy owner; and a dozen graduates of the high-class universities of Europe and America beg the crums that fall from the table of his affairs.

In his Phi Beta Kappa Address Wendell Phillips cleverly argues that the reformers of the world, and most of those whose memories are the beloved and cherished treasures of the race, were men whose vitality had not been reduced by college training, and whose kinship with the people and oneness with the soil had not been divorced by the artificial refinement of a college life. But Phillips was bitter—even fanatical—on this subject; and was, in himself, a living denial of his own doctrine.

Remember, then, you who for any reason have not had those years of mental discipline called "a college education," that this does not excuse you from doing great work in the world. Do not whine, and declare that you could have done so much better if you had "only had a chance to go to college." You can be a success if you will, college or no college. At least three of those famous masters of business which Chicago, the commercial capital of the continent, has given to the world, and whose legitimate operations in tangible merchandizing are so vast that they are almost weird, had no college education, and very little education of any kind.

I think, indeed, that very few of America's kings of trade ever attended college. There are the masters of railroad management, too. Few of them have been college men, although the college man is now appearing among them—witness President Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania System, a real Napoleon of railroading, who, I hear, is a graduate of the German universities and of American polytechnic schools.

Burns did not go to college. Neither did Shakespeare.

Some of our greatest lawyers "read law" in the unrefined but honest and strengthening environment of the old-time law office. Lincoln was not a college man; neither was Washington. So do not excuse yourself to your family and the world upon the ground that you never had a college education. That is not the reason why you fail.

You can succeed—I repeat it—college or no college; all you have to do in the latter case is to put on a little more steam. And remember that some of the world's sages of the practical have closed their life's wisdom with the deliberate opinion that a college education is a waste of time, and an over-refinement of body and of mind.

You see, I am trying to take into account every possible view of this weighty question; for I know how desperate a matter it is to hundreds of thousands of my young countrymen. I know how earnestly they are searching for an answer; how hard it will be for hosts of them to obey an affirmative answer; how intense is the desire of the great majority of young Americans to decide this question wisely. For most of them have no time to lose, little money to spend and none to waste, no energy to spare, and yet are inspired with high resolve to make the best and most of life. And I know how devoutly they pray that, in deciding, they may choose the better part.

Still, with all this in mind, my advice is this: Go to college. Go to the best possible college for you. Patiently hold on through the sternest discipline you can stand, until the course is completed. It will not be fatal to your success if you do not go; but you will be better prepared to meet the world if you do go. I do not mean that your mind will be stored with much more knowledge that will be useful to you if you go through college than if you do not go through college.

Probably the man who keeps at work at the business he is going to follow through life, during the years when other men are studying in college, acquires more information that will be "useful" to him in his practical career. But the college man who has not thrown away his college life comes from the training of his alma mater with a mind as highly disciplined as are the wrist and eye of the skilled swordsman.

Nobody contends that a college adds an ounce of brain power. But if college opportunities are not wasted, such mind as the student does have is developed up to the highest possible point of efficiency. The college man who has not scorned his work will understand any given situation a great deal quicker than his brother who, with equal ability, has not had the training of the university.

A man who has been instructed in boxing is more than a match for a stronger and braver man unskilled in what is called the "manly art." That is your college and non-college man over again with muscle substituted for brain.

Five years ago I saw the soldiers of Japan going through the most careful training. They were taught how to march, how to charge, how to do everything. I shall never forget the bayonet exercises which an officer and myself chanced upon. They were conducted with all the ferocity of a real fight; no point was neglected.

With all their fatalism and the utter fearlessness thereof, the Japanese could not have bested the Russians if to their courage and devotion they had not added years of painstaking drill, which an American soldier would have considered an unnecessary hardship. Very well. A college education is precisely that kind of a preparation for the warfare of life.

But mind you, these Japanese soldiers and their officers were in earnest. They meant to show the world that, small as they are in stature and recent as their adoption of modern methods has been, they nevertheless would try to be the highest type of soldier that ever marched to a battle-field. If you go to college, young man, you have got to be in earnest, too. You have got to say to yourself, "I am going to make more out of what is in me than any man with like ability ever did before." You cannot dawdle—remember that.

Imagine every day, and every hour of every day, that you are in the real world and in the real conflicts thereof, instead of in college with its practise conflicts, and handle yourself precisely as you would if your whole career depended upon each task set for you. If you mean to go to college for the principal purpose of idling around, wearing a small cap and good clothes, and being the adoration of your mother and your sisters on your vacation, you had a good deal better be at work at some gainful occupation. College is not helping you if that is what you are doing. It is hurting you.

Go to college, therefore, say I; but go to college for business. Those drill years are the most important ones of your life.

Be in earnest, therefore. I know I have said that before; yes, and I am going to say it again. For if you are not going to be in earnest, quit—get out. Resolve to get absolutely everything there is to be had out of your college experience, and then get it. Get it, I say, for that is what you will have to do. Nobody is going to give it to you.

The spirit with which you enter college is just as important as going to college at all. It is more important. For if a man has the spirit that will get for him all that a college education has to give, it will also make him triumph in a contest with the world, even if he does not get his college education. It will only be a little harder for him, that is all.

But if a man has not that mingled will and wish for a college education flaming through his young veins that makes him capable of any sacrifice to get through college, I do not see what good a college education will do him—no, nor any other kind of an education. The quicker such a man is compelled to make his own living without help from any source, the better for him.

So if you mean business, but have not decided whether it is better for you to go to college or not to go to college, settle the question to-day by deciding to go to college. Then pick your college. That is as important a matter as choosing your occupation in life. One college is not as good as another for you. A score of colleges may be equally excellent in the ability of their faculties, in the perfection of their equipment.

But each has its own atmosphere and traditions; each has its personality, if you may apply such a word to an institution. And you want to select the place where your mental roots will strike in the earth most readily, and take from the intellectual soil surrounding you the greatest possible amount of mental force and vigor.

Take plenty of time to find out which, out of a score of colleges, is the best one for you. Study their "catalogues"; talk to men who have been to these various institutions; read every reputable article you can find about them. Keep this up long enough, and you will become conscious of an unreasoned knowledge that such and such an institution is not the place for you to go. Finally, write to the president or other proper officer of the colleges you are thinking of attending.

You will get some sort of an answer from each of them; but if it is only three lines, that answer will breathe something of the spirit of the institution. Of course the great universities will answer you very formally, or perhaps not at all. Their attitude is the impersonal one. They say to the world, and to the youth thereof: "Here we are. We are perfectly prepared. We have on hand a complete stock of education. Take it, or leave it. It is not of the slightest concern to us."

I have no quarrel with that attitude. These institutions are going on the assumption that you already have character and purpose; that you already know what you are about. They are ready for you if you are ready for them. And if you are not ready for them, if you are only a rich person or a mere stroller along the highways of life, what is that to them? Why should it be anything to them? Why should it be anything to anybody? The world is busy, young man; you have got to make yourself worth while if it pays any attention to you.

Making sure always that the college of your choice is well equipped, select the one where you will feel the most at home. Other things being equal, go where there are the most men in whose blood burns the fire which is racing through your veins. Go to the college in whose atmosphere you will find most of the ozone of earnestness. It may well be that you will find this thing in one of the smaller colleges, of which there are so many and such excellent ones scattered all over the Nation.

Certainly these little colleges have this advantage: their students are usually very poor boys, who have to struggle and deny themselves to go to college at all—young men whose determination to do their part in the world is so great that hunger is a small price to pay for that preparation which they think a college education gives them; men whose resolve to "make something of themselves," as the common saying goes, is so irresistible that they simply cannot endure to stay away from college.

Such men have hard muscles, made strong and tense by youthful toil; great lungs, expanded by plow in field or ax in forest; nerves of steel, tempered by days of labor in open air and nights of dreamless slumber, which these hypnotics of Nature always induce. These men have strong, firm mouths; clear, honest eyes, that look you straight and fair; and a mental and moral constitution which fit these physical manifestations of it.

And these are just the kind of men among whom you ought to spend your college life, if you are one of the same kind—and perhaps much more if you are not.

Fellows like these believe in the honor of men, the virtue of women, the sacredness of home, and that the American people have a mission in the world marked out for them by the Ruler of the Universe—though this is not a fair distinction since all Americans believe in these high, sweet things of life and destiny. It is a faith common to all Americans and monopolized by no class.

But you know what kind of a man you are, and therefore you will find out, if you search with care, what college is the best for you. I insist upon the importance of this selection. It is a real, practical problem. You will never have a more important task set you in class-room, or even throughout your entire life, than to select the college which is going to do you the most good. So go about it with all the care that you would plan a campaign if you were a general in the field, or conduct an experiment if you were a scientist in the laboratory.

This one word of definite helpfulness on this subject: Do not choose any particular college because you want to be known as a Yale man, a Harvard man, a Princeton man, or any other kind of man. Remember that the world cares less than the snap of its fingers what particular college man you are.

What the world cares about it that you should be a man—a real man.

It won't help you a bit in the business of your life to have it known that you graduated from any particular college or university. If you are in politics, it won't give you a vote; if a manufacturer, it will not add a brick to your plant; if a merchant, it will not sell a dollar's worth of your goods.

Nobody cares what college you went to. Nobody cares whether you went to college at all.

But everybody cares whether you are a real force among men; and everybody cares more and more as it becomes clearer and clearer that you are not only a force, but a trained, disciplined force. That is why you ought to go to college—to be a trained, disciplined force. But how and where you got your power—the world of men and women is far too interested in itself to be interested in that.

When you do finally go to college, take care of yourself like a man. I am told that there are men in college who have valets to attend them, their rooms, and their clothes. Think of that! Don't do anything like that, even if you are a hundred times a millionaire. Of course you won't—you who read this—because not one out of ten thousand young Americans can afford to have a valet in college—thank heaven!

Don't do any of the many things which belong to that life of self-indulgence of which the keeping of a valet in college is a flaring illustration. Don't let kind friends litter up your room with a lot of cushions, and such stuff. The world for which you are preparing is no "cushiony" place, let me tell you; and if you let luxury relax your nerves and soften your brain tissues and make your muscles mushy, a similar mental and moral condition will develop. And then, when you go out into real life, you will find some sturdy young barbarian, with a Spartan training and a merciless heart, elbowing you clear off the earth.

For, mark you, these strong, fearless, masterful young giants, who are every day maturing among the common people of America, ask no quarter and give none; and it is such fellows you must go up against. And when you do go up against them there will be no appealing to father and mother to help you. Father and mother cannot help you. Nobody can help you but yourself. You will find that the cushion business, and the mandolin business, and all that sort of thing, do not go in real life.

Consider West Point and Annapolis. My understanding is that the men whom the Nation is training there for the skilled defense of the Republic, and who therefore must be developed into the very highest types of effective manhood, are taught to clean and polish their own shoes, make their own beds, care for their own guns, and do everything else for themselves. Do you think that is a good training for our generals and admirals? Of course you do.

Well, then, do you imagine that you are going to have an easier time in your business or profession than the officers in our army and navy? Don't you believe it for a minute. You are not going to have an easier time than they. You are going to have a great deal harder time. And by "hard time" I do not mean an unhappy time. Unhappy time! What greater joy can there be for a man than the sheer felicity of doing real work in the world?

While I am on this subject I might as well say another thing: Do not think that you have got to smoke in order to be or look like a college man. A pipe in the mouth of a youth does not make him look like a college man, or any other kind of man. It merely makes him look absurd, that is all. And if there is ever a time on earth when you do not need the stimulus of tobacco, it is while you are in college.

Tobacco is a wonderful vegetable. It is, I believe, the only substance in the world which is at the same time a stimulant and a narcotic, a heart excitant and a nerve sedative. Very well. You are too young yet to need a heart stimulant, too young to need anything to quiet your nerves.

If at your tender age your nerves are so inflamed that they must be soothed, and if at the very sunrise of your life your heart is so feeble that it must be forced with any stimulant, you had better quit college. College is no place for you if you are such a decadent; yes, and you will find the world a good deal harder place than college.

Cut out tobacco, therefore. For a young fellow in college it is a ridiculous affectation—nothing more. Why? Because you do not need tobacco; that is why. At least you do not need it yet. The time may come when you will find tobacco helpful, but it will not be until you have been a long while out of college. As to whether tobacco is good for a man at any stage of life the doctors disagree, and "where doctors disagree, who shall decide?"

Ruskin says that no really immortal work has been done in the world since tobacco was introduced; but we know that this is not true. I would not be understood as having a prejudice for or against the weed. Whether a full-grown man shall use it or not is something for himself to decide. Personally I liked it so well that I made up my mind a long time ago to give it up altogether.

But there is absolutely no excuse for a man young enough to still be in college to use it at all. And it does not look right. For a boy to use tobacco has something contemptible about it. I will not argue whether this is justified or not. That is the way most people feel about it. Whether their feeling is a prejudice or not, there is no use of your needlessly offending their prejudice. And this is to be taken into account. For you want to succeed, do you not? Very well. You cannot mount a ladder of air; you must rise on the solid stepping-stones of the people's deserved regard.

And, of course, you will not disgrace yourself by drinking. There is absolutely nothing in it. If you have your fling at it you will learn how surely Intoxication's apples of gold turn to the bitterest ashes in the eating. But when you do find how fruitless of everything but regrets dissipation is, be honest with yourself and quit it. Be honest with the mother who is at home praying for you, and quit it. But this is weak advice. Be honest with that mother who is at home praying for you, and never begin it. That's the thing—never begin it!

In a word, be a man; and you will be very little of a man, very little indeed, if you have got to resort to tobacco and liquor to add to your blood and conduct that touch of devilishness which you may think is a necessary part of manliness. Indeed, between fifteen and thirty years of age your veins will be quite full enough of the untamed and desperate. I do not object in the least to this wild mustang period in a man's life.

Is a fellow to have no fun? you will say. Of course, have all the fun you want; the more the better. But if you need stimulants and tobacco to key you up to the capacity for fun, you are a solemn person indeed—"solemn as cholera morbus" to appropriate an American newspaper's description of one of our public men. What I mean is that you shall do nothing that will destroy your effectiveness. Play, sports, fun, do not do that; they increase your effectiveness. Go in for athletics all you please; but do not forget that that is not why you are going to college.

Nobody cares how mad are the pranks you play. Take the curb and snaffle off of the humors of your blood whenever you please; that is all right. I never took much stock in the outcry against hazing. We cannot change our sex, or the nature and habits of it. A young man is a male animal after all, and those who object to his rioting like a young bull are in a perpetual quarrel with Nature.

One thing I must warn you against, and warn you supremely: the critical habit of mind which somehow or other a college education does seem to produce. This is especially true of the great universities of our East. Nobody admires those splendid institutions more than I do—the Nation is proud of them, and ought to be. The world of learning admires them, and with reason. Neither the English, Scotch, nor German universities surpass them.

But has not every one of us many times heard their graduates declare that a mischief had been done them while in those universities by the cultivation of a sneering attitude toward everybody—especially toward every other young man—whom they see doing anything actual, positive, or constructive. One of the best of these men—a man with a superb mind highly trained—said to me on this very subject:

"I confess that I came out of college with my initiative atrophied. I was afraid to do anything. I was afraid I would make a mistake if I did anything; afraid I was not well enough equipped to do the things that suggested themselves; afraid that if I did try to do anything everybody would criticize what I did; afraid that my old college mates would laugh at me.

"And I confess in humility that I myself acquired the habit of intellectual suspicion toward everybody who does try to do any real thing. I find myself unconsciously sneering at young men who are accomplishing things. Yes, and that is not the worst of it; I find myself sneering at myself." That is pathos—a soul doubting, denying itself. Pathos! yes, it is tragedy!

Confirm this confession by dropping into a club where such men gather and hearing the talk about the ones who are doing things in the world. You will find that until the men who are doing things have actually done them, done them well, and forced hostility itself to accept what they have done as good, honest pieces of work, the talk in these clubs will be that of harsh criticism, sneering contempt, and prophecy of failure. Guard against that habit night and day. You would better become an opium-eater than to permit this paralysis of mind and soul.

Believe in things. Believe in other young men. When you see other young men trying to do things in business, politics, art, the professions, believe in the honesty of their purpose and their ability to do well what they have started out to do. Assume that they will succeed until they prove that they cannot. Do not discourage them. Do not sneer at them. That will only weaken yourself. Believe in other young men, and you will soon find yourself believing in yourself.

That is the most important thing of all: Belief in yourself. Have faith in yourself though the whole universe jeers. "Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string," is the sentence from Emerson we used to write endlessly in our copy-books when we went to school. And what a glorious motto for Americans it is!

Remember that the high places, now filled by men whom the years are aging, must by and by be filled by men now young. Be in no haste then—the years are your allies. Time will dispose of your rivals. Just believe in yourself, and work and wait and dare—and keep on working, waiting, daring. Never let up; and never doubt your ultimate success. Think of Columbus, Drake, Magellan—the story of every master-mariner has in it food for your necessary egotism.

Do not underestimate your strength. There are things you would like to do; very well, sail in and do them. Do not be afraid of making a mistake. Do not be afraid that you will fail. Suppose you do fail. Millions have failed before you. I am repeating this thought and I wish it would bear repetition on every page.

But never admit to yourself that you have failed. Try it again. You will win next time, sure! "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." How much sense there is in these common maxims of the common people, proverbs not written by any one man, but axioms that spring out of the combined intelligence of the millions, meditating through the centuries. The sayings of the people are always simple and wise.

What a fine thing it was that Grant said at Shiloh. The first day closed in disaster. The enemy had all but driven the Union Army into the river. Not a great distance from the banks of the stream they will point out to you the tree under which Grant stood, cigar clinched between his teeth, directing the disposition of his forces. Some one reported to him a fresh disaster.

With the calmness of the certainty that nobody could defeat him, so the story runs, Grant replied, "Never mind; I will lick them to-morrow." Very like Caesar, was it not? "I came, I saw, I conquered." Or that other audacity of the great Roman, when the ship was actually sinking: "Fear not," said he; "fear not, you carry Caesar and his fortunes."

In the same battle it is credibly reported that Grant rode to an important position held by a large number of his troops under one of his most trusted generals. "What have you been doing?" asked Grant. "Fighting," answered the commander in charge of that position, equally laconic. For a while Grant surveyed the field, and, turning, was about to ride away. "But what shall I do now, General?" asked his subordinate. "Keep on fighting," answered Grant.

Do not get into the habit of feeling that you are not sufficiently well equipped. This comes of a very honest intellectual process—the understanding, as we get more knowledge, of how very little we really know; as we get more skill, of how very unskilled we really are; the feeling that, high as our training is, there is some one else more highly trained. Of course there is; but if that is any excuse why you should do nothing—because there is some person who can do it better—you will never do anything; and then what will happen when all of the other fellows who "could do it better" die?

You will by that time be too old to do anything at all. So sail in yourself, and pat on the back every other young fellow that sails in. If you learn the law, for example, understand that the way to acquire the art of practising law is to practise it, and not merely watch somebody else practise it. Suppose every young man with a scientific mind had declined to make any experiment because there were abler scientists than he: how many Pasteurs and Finsens and Marconis and Edisons and Bells would the world have had? And I might go on for an hour with similar illustrations.

So go ahead and try to do things you would like to do—things Nature has fitted you to do. Believe that you can do these things. For you can, you know. You will be amazed at your own powers. If you do not believe in yourself, how do you expect the world to believe in you? The world has no time to pet and coddle you, remember that. So get the habit of faith in yourself and your fellow men. Cultivate a noble intellectual generosity. It is a fine tonic for mind and soul—a fine tonic even for the body.

The doctors say that envy, malice, jealousy, produce a distinctly depressing effect upon the nervous system. And some go so far as to say that if intense enough these states of mind actually poison the secretions. Don't, therefore, let these hyena passions abide with you. Be generous. Have faith. Make mistakes or achieve success; fail or win; but do things. Share the common lot. Be hearty. Be whole-souled. Be a man. Never doubt for a moment that

"God's in his heaven; All's well with the world."

This paper has been devoted to your mental and moral attitude toward your college and your college life, rather than to what particular things you will study there; for the way you look at your college and the life you lead there—the spirit with which you enter upon these golden years—is the main thing. The studies themselves are the methods by which you apply that spirit and purpose.

But most young men with whom I have talked want to know what "courses" to take, what "studies" to specialize upon. No general counsel can be given which will be very valuable to you upon this point. But I will venture this: Do not choose entirely by yourself what things you will study in college, or what "courses" you will "elect."

You are so apt to pick the things that are easiest for you, and not the things that are best for you. Even the strongest-willed men quite unconsciously select those things that will mean the least work. You do not think you are selecting certain courses or studies for this reason, and perhaps you are not; but then, again, perhaps you are, and you cannot yourself determine that.

Therefore I suggest that you advise with four or five of the ablest and most successful men you know. Let two of these be educators, and the others professional or business men. Try to get them to interest themselves enough in you to take the time to think the whole subject over very carefully as applied to your particular case, and to take further time to talk it over thoroughly with you. Then take the consensus of their opinion, unless your own view is decided, clear, and emphatic.

When you have such an opinion of your own, such a command coming from the sources of your own mentality, obey that, in choosing your studies and course, rather than the counsel of any other man or number of men. Yes, obey that voice in making such a choice, and in making every choice throughout your whole life; for it is the voice of your real self—that inward counselor which never fails those who are fortunate enough to have it.

Of course, what you study ought to be influenced by what you intend to do in life. For example, the career of civil engineer requires a special kind of preparation. So do the various occupations and professions. But no matter what particular thing you intend to do through life, it is the belief of most men who have given this subject any thought that a young man ought to take a complete general college course, and supplement this by special preparation for the particular work to which he intends to devote his life.

But there is one thing to which the attention of young Americans should be directed as influencing their college life. Our country is no longer isolated. We can no longer be called a provincial people. We are decidedly a very intimate part of the world. Our relations with other peoples grow closer and closer, and they will keep on growing closer as the years pass by. A thousand Americans travel over sea to-day where one went abroad fifty years ago. Our foreign commerce is now greater in a single year than it used to be in an entire decade—yes, and quite recently, too, so swift our increase.

Other countries are several times nearer to us than they were even in the last generation. It took Emerson almost a month to cross the Atlantic. Now you go over in a week. You can send a cablegram to any country in the world and have it delivered, translated into the language of the person to whom it is sent, a great deal quicker than the dawn can travel. Invention has made snail-like the speed of light.

What does all this mean? It means that in our relations we have become cosmopolitan. Therefore we Americans ought to know other languages than our own. Charles Sumner said that if he had to go through college again he would study nothing but modern languages and history. Of course I do not presume to advise you who are reading this paper to do that, although it is precisely what I should do if I were going through college again. But I do advise you to do this: Acquire at least two languages in addition to your own—French and German.

Indeed, you ought to have three languages besides your own—French, German, and Spanish. For, consider! Here is Mexico, our next-door neighbor—its people speak Spanish; Cuba, a kind of national ward of ours—its people speak Spanish. The people of our possessions in the Pacific speak Spanish; of Porto Rico, Spanish; of the Central and South American "Republics"—with all of whom we are destined, in spite of ourselves, to have relations of ever-increasing intimacy—all speak Spanish.

And French? You can travel all over Europe intelligently if you speak French. And German—the language that is going to make a good race with English itself as the commercial language of the world is German. For example, you can go all through commercial Russia without a guide if you speak German. You can get along in any port of the Orient if you speak German. So you can if you speak English, it is true. And think of how many millions of excellent people in our own country are still German-speaking (although our German citizens are so splendidly patriotic that they acquire English just as soon as they possibly can).

But the point is, that your usefulness in every direction will be increased by a knowledge of the languages. The other things that you study in college you will largely forget, anyhow; and, besides, you study them principally for the mental discipline in them. But if you get a language, and get it correctly, thoroughly, you can find enough use for it to keep brushed up on it. And of course you can read it all the time, whether you have a chance to talk it or not.

It is impossible to use words sufficiently emphatic in urging the study of history. You cannot get too much history in college and out of it. Sir William Hamilton was right—history is the study of studies. The man who occupies the chair of history in any college ought to be not only an able man, he ought to be a great man. If ever you find such a professor, make yourself agreeable to him, absorb him, possess yourself of him.

This final word: Mingle with your fellow students. Talk with people, with real people; those who are living real lives, doing real things under normal and natural conditions. Do all this in order that you may keep human; for you must not get the habit of keeping to your room and believing that all wisdom is confined to books. It is not. All wisdom is not confined to any one place. Some of it is in books, and some of it is in trees and the earth and the stars.

But so far as you are concerned most of it is in human touch with your fellows; for it is men with whom you must work. It is men who are to employ you. It is men whom in your turn you are to employ. It is the world of men which in the end you are to serve. And it is that you may serve it well that you are going to college at all, is it not?

Be one of these men, therefore; and be sure that while you are being one of them, you are one indeed. Be a man in college and out, and clear down to the end. Be a man—that is the sum of all counsel.

2. The Young Man who Cannot Go

But what of the young man who stands without the college gates? What of him upon whom Fate has locked the doors of this arsenal of power and life's equipment? "Why does not some one give counsel and encouragement to the boy who, for any one of a thousand reasons, cannot take four years or four months from his life of continuous toil in order to go to college?" asked a young man full of the vitality of purpose, but to whom even the education of our high schools was an absolute impossibility.

After all, for most of our eighty millions, the college is practically beyond their reach. Even among those young men who have the nerve, ability, and ambition to "work their way through college," there are tens of thousands who cannot do even that, no matter if they were willing for four years to toil at sawbuck, live on gruel, and dress in overalls and hickory shirt.

I have in mind now a spirited young American of this class whose father died when his son was still a boy, and on whose shoulders, therefore, fell the duty of "supporting mother" and helping the girls, even before his young manhood had begun. For that young man, college or university might just as well be Jupiter, or Saturn, or Arcturus.

Very well. What of this young man? What of the myriads of young Americans like him? What hope does our complex industrial civilization, which every day grows more intense, hold out to these children of hard circumstances, whose muscles daily strain at the windlasses of necessary duty?

I repeat the question, and multiply the forms in which I put it. It is so pressingly important. It concerns the most abundant and valuable material with which free institutions work—the neglected man, he whom fortune overlooks. It is a strange weakness of human nature that makes everybody interested in the man at the top, and nobody interested in the man at the bottom. Yet it is the man at the bottom upon whom our Republican institutions are established. It is the man at the bottom whom Science tells us will, by the irresistible processes of nature, produce the highest types after a while.

The young Bonaparte proved himself a very wizard of human nature when he exclaimed: "Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack." And did not the Master, with a wisdom wholly divine, choose as the seed-bearers of our faith throughout the world the neglected men? Only one of the apostles was what we would term to-day a "college man"—St. Luke, the physician. What said the Teacher, "The stone which was rejected to the builder, has become the chief of the corner."

Yes—the neglected man is the important man. We do not think so day by day, we idle observers of our Vanity Fair, we curbstone watchers of the street parade. We think it is the conspicuous man who counts. Our attention is mostly for him who wears the epaulettes of prominence and favorable condition. Therefore most articles, papers, and volumes on young men consider only that lucky favorite-of-fortune-for-the-hour, the college man.

But this paper is addressed to the neglected man. I would have speech with those young men with stout heart, true intention, and good ability, who labor outside those college walls to which they look with longing, but may not enter.

"Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack." Ah, yes! Very well. But what was a soldier of France in Napoleon's time to a young American to-day? If Joubert, from an ignorant private who could not write his name, became one of the greatest generals of the world's greatest commander, what may you not become! Joubert did it by deserving. Use the same method, you. There is no magic but merit.

First, then, do not let the conditions that keep you out of college discourage you. If such a little thing as that depresses you, it is proof that you are not the character who would have succeeded if you had a lifetime of college education. If you are discouraged because you cannot go to college, what will happen to you when life hereafter presents to you much harder situations? Remember that every strong man who prevails in the merciless contest with events, faces conditions which to weaker men seem inaccessible—are inaccessible.

But it is the scaling of these heights, or the tunneling through them, or the blasting of them out of their way and out of existence, which makes these strong men strong. It is the overcoming of these obstacles day after day and year after year, as long as life lasts, which gives these mighty ones much of their power.

What is it you so admire in men whom you think fortunate—what is it but their mastery of adversity after adversity? What is that which you call success but victory over untoward events? Do not, then, let your resolution be softened by the hard luck that keeps you out of college. If that bends you, you are not a Damascus blade of tempered steel; you are a sword of lead, heavy, dull, and yielding.

Next to Collis P. Huntington, the railroad man of the last generation, whose ability rose to genius, was President Scott of the Pennsylvania System. He thought, with Mr. Huntington, that a college training was unnecessary; and his own life demonstrated that the very ultimate of achieving, the very crest of effort and reward may be reached by men who know neither Greek nor Latin, nor Science as taught in schools, nor mental philosophy as set down in books.

Colonel Scott was a messenger-boy—just such a messenger-boy as you may see any day running errands, carrying parcels, doing the humble duties of one who serves and waits. From a messenger-boy with bundle in his hand, to the general of an industrial army of thousands of men, and the directing mind planning the expenditure of scores of millions of dollars belonging to great capitalists—such was the career of Thomas Scott.

Very well, why should you not do as well? "Because my competitors have college education and I have not," do you answer? But, man, Colonel Scott had no college education. "Because the other fellows have friends and influence and I have none," do you protest? But neither President Scott nor most monumental successes had friends or influence to start with. Don't excuse yourself, then. Come! Buck up! Be a man!

"I am greatly troubled," said to me the general superintendent of one of the most extensive railroad systems in the world as we rode from Des Moines, Iowa, to Chicago. "I am greatly troubled," said he, "to find an assistant superintendent. There are now under me seven young engineers, every man a graduate of a college; four of them with uncommon ability, and all of them relatives of men heavily interested in this network of railroads. But not one of them will do. Three nights ago all of them happened to meet in Chicago. While there all of them went out to have what they called 'a good time' together—drinking, etc.

"That, in itself, is enough to blacklist every man for the position of my assistant and my successor. This road will not entrust its operating management to a man who wilfully makes himself less than his best every day and every night. Besides this, each of them has some defect. One is brilliant, but not steady; another is steady, but not resourceful—not inventive—and so forth and so on. We are looking all over the United States for the young man who has the ability, character, health, and habits which my assistant must have."

This general superintendent, under whose orders more than ten thousand men daily performed their complex and delicately adjusted functions, is fifty-five years of age. Now listen to this, you who cannot go to college: This man started thirty-eight years ago as a freight-handler in Chicago at one dollar per day for this same railroad company, which was then a comparatively small and obscure line. Ah! but you say, "That was thirty-eight years ago." Yes, and that is the trouble with you, is it not? You want to start in as superintendent of a great system or the head of a mighty business, do you not? Very well—get that out of your head. It cannot—it ought not—to be done.

If you are willing to work as hard as this man worked, as hard as President Scott of the Pennsylvania System worked; if you are willing to stay right by your job, year in, year out, through the weary decades, instead of changing every thirty minutes; if you are willing to wait as long as they; if you are willing to plant the seed of success in the soil of good hard work, and then water it with good hard work, and attend its growth with good hard work, and wait its flowering and fruitage with patience, its flowering and fruitage will come. Doubt it not.

For, mark you, this man at the time he told me that his System was looking all over the United States for a young man capable of being his assistant, had seven high-grade college men on his hands at that very moment. He would have been more than delighted to have taken any one of them.

Also, he would have taken a man who had not seen a college just as quickly if he could have found such a one who knew enough about operating a railroad, and had the qualities of leadership, the gift of organizing ability. It did not matter to this superintendent whether the assistant he sought had been to college or not, whether he was rich or poor.

He cared no more about that than he cared whether the man for whom this place was seeking was a blond or a brunette. The only question that he was asking was, "Where is the man who is equal to the job?"

And that, my young friend, is the question which all industry is asking in every field of human effort; that is the question your Fate is putting to you who are anxious to do big work, "Are you equal to the job?" If you are not, then be honest enough to step out of the contest. Be honest enough not to envy the other young men who are equal to the job.

Yes, be honest enough to applaud the man who is equal to the job and who goes bravely to his task. Don't find fault with him. Don't swear that "There is no chance for a young man any more." That's not true, you know. And remember always that if you do all you are fitted for, you do as well as your abler brother, and better than he if you do your best and he does not.

A young man whom fortune had kept from college, but who is too stout-hearted to let that discourage him, said to me the other day: "I don't think that a college education confers, or the absence of it prevents, success. But I do think that where there are two men of equal health, ability, and character, that one will be chosen who has been to college, and to this extent the college man has a better chance." This is true for the ordinary man—the man who is willing to put forth no more than the ordinary effort.

But you who read—you are willing to put forth extraordinary effort, are you not? You are willing to show these favored sons of cap and gown that you will run as fast and as far as they, with all their training, will you not? You are willing—yes, and determined, to use every extra hour which your college brother, thinking he has the advantage of you, will probably waste.

Very well. If you do, biography (that most inspiring of all literature) demonstrates that your reward will be as rich as the college man's reward. Yes, richer, for the gold which your refinery purges from the dross of your disadvantages will be doubly refined by the fires of your intenser effort.

In 1847 two men were born who have blessed mankind with productive work which, rich as are now its benefits to the race, will create a new wealth of human helpfulness with each succeeding year as long as time endures. Both these men have lived, almost to a day, the same number of years; both of them are still alive; both of them have labored in neighboring sections of the same field. They are alike, too, in character, almost duplicates in ability. Here, then, is material for a perfect comparison.

Mark, now, the parallel. One of them was a college man, the son of a noted educator and himself a professor in the University of Boston. He used the gifts which God gave him for that purpose, and as long as the transmission of human speech continues among men, the name of Alexander Graham Bell will be rightly honored by all the world.

The other of these men could no more have gone to college than he could have crossed the Atlantic on a sheet of paper. You who read this never had to work half so hard as this man worked when he was a boy. Your patience will never be so taxed and tested as his patience was and is. But who can say that your efforts and your persistence will not be as richly rewarded according to your ability as his ceaselessness has been repaid, if you will try as hard as he has tried, and use every ounce of yourself as effectively as he has used himself?

At twelve years of age he was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway. That didn't satisfy him. The mystery of the telegraph (and what is more mysterious?) constantly called him. The click of the instrument was a voice from an unknown world speaking to him words far different from those recorded in the messages that instrument was transmitting.

And so Thomas A. Edison, without a dollar or a friend, set himself to work to master the telegraph and to explore the mysteries behind it. Result: the duplex telegraph and the developments from that; the phonograph, the incandescent electric light, and those numerous inventions which, one after another, have confounded the bigotry and ignorance of the world.

Edison and Bell, Bell and Edison, one a college man and the other a laborer without the gates, unlike in preparation but similar in character, devotion, and ability, and equal winners of honor and reward at the hands of a just if doubting world.

Of course I might go on all day with illustrations like this. History is brilliant with the names of those who have wrought gloriously without a college training. These men, too, have succeeded in every possible line of work. They are among the living, too, as well as among those whose earthly careers have ended.

The men who never went to college have not only built great railroads, but also have written immortal words; not only have they been great editors, but also they have created vast industries, and piled mountain high their golden fortunes; not only have they made epoch-making discoveries in science, but they have set down in words of music a poetry whose truth and sweetness makes nobler human character and finer the life's work of all who read those sentences of light.

Among the fathers who established this Government, the greatest never went to college. Hamilton was not a college man. Washington, to this day the first of Americans, never even attended school after he was sixteen years old. Of the great founders of modern journalism—the four extraordinary men whom their profession to this day refers to as the great journalists—only one was a college graduate—Raymond, who established the New York Times. Charles A. Dana, who made the New York Sun the most quoted newspaper of his generation, was not a college graduate. William Cullen Bryant, who gave to the New York Evening Post a peculiar distinction and preeminence, went to college only one year.

Samuel Bowles, who founded the Springfield Republican and made its influence felt for righteousness throughout the Nation, attended a private institution for a while. James Gordon Bennett, the editor whose resourceful mind sent Stanley to the heart of African jungles to find Livingstone, was never a college student.

Horace Greeley, that amazing mind and character, who created the New York Tribune, and who, through it, for many years exercised more power over public opinion than any other single influence in the Republic, never went to college; and Greeley's famous saying, "Of all horned cattle, deliver me from the college graduate," remained for a quarter of a century a standing maxim in the editorial rooms of all the big newspapers of the country.

Stevenson, who invented the steam-engine, was not a college man. He was the son of a fireman in one of the English collieries. As a boy, he was himself a laborer in the mines. Undoubtedly the greatest engineer America has yet produced was Captain Eades, whose fame was world wide; yet this Indiana boy, who constructed the jetties of the Mississippi, built the ship railroad across the Isthmus of Panama and other like wonders, never had a day's instruction in any higher institution of learning than the common schools of Dearborn County. Ericsson, who invented the Monitor, and whose creative genius revolutionized naval warfare, was a Swedish immigrant. Robert Fulton, who invented the steamboat, never went to college.

And take literature: John Bunyan was not only uneducated, but actually ignorant. If Milton went to college, I repeat that Shakespeare had no other alma mater than the university of human nature, and that Robert Burns was not a college man. Our own Washington Irving never saw the inside of any higher institution of learning. I have already noted that the author of "Thanatopsis" went to college for only a single year.

Among the writers, Lew Wallace, soldier, diplomat, and author, was self-educated. John Stuart Mill, who is distinguished as a philosopher, is innocent of a college training. James Whitcomb Riley, our American Burns, is not a "college man." Hugh Miller, the Scotchman, whose fame as a geologist is known to all the world of science, did not go to college.

Take statesmanship. Henry Clay wrested his education from books, experience, and downright hard thinking; and we Americans still like to tell of the immortal Lincoln poring over the pages of his few and hard-won volumes before the glare of the wood-fire on the hearth, or the uncertain light of the tallow dip. Benjamin Franklin got his education in a print-shop.

In American productive industry, the most conspicuous name, undoubtedly, is that of Andrew Carnegie; yet this great ironmaster, and master of gold as well, who has written as vigorously as he has wrought, was a Scotch immigrant. George Peabody, the philanthropist, never was inside a college as a student. He was a clerk when he was eleven years old.

At least three of the most astonishing though legitimate business successes which have been made in the last decade in New York were made by men not yet forty-five years old, none of whom had any other education than our common schools. I am not sure, but I will hazard the guess that a majority of the great business men of Chicago never saw a college.

These illustrations occur to the mind as I write, and without special selection. Doubtless, the entire space of this paper might be occupied by nothing more than the names of men who have blessed the race and become historic successes in every possible department of human industry, none of whom ever saw the inside of either college or university.

But all of these do not prove that you ought not to go to college if you can. Certainly you ought to go to college if it is possible. But the lives of these men do prove that no matter how hard the conditions that you think surround you, success is yours in spite of them, if you are willing to pay the price of success—if you are willing to work and wait; if you are willing to be patient, to keep sweet, to maintain fresh and strong your faith in God, your fellow men, and in yourself.

The life of any one of the men whom I have mentioned is not only an inspiration but an instruction to you who, like these men, cannot go to college. Consider, for example, how Samuel B. Raymond established the New York Times. He wrote his own editorials; he did his own reporting; he set his own type; he distributed his own papers. That was the beginning.

One of the most successful merchants that I know opened a little store in the midst of large and pretentious mercantile establishments. He bought his own goods; he was his own clerk; he swept and dusted his own storeroom, and polished his own show-cases. He was up at five in the morning, and he worked to twelve and one at night, and then slept on the counter. That was less than thirty years ago. To-day he is at the head of the largest department store in one of the considerable cities of this country, and he owns his store.

This is an illustration so common that every country town, as well as London, Paris, and New York, can show examples like it. And, mark you, most of these men were weighted down with responsibilities as great as yours can possibly be, and hindered by obstacles as numerous and difficult as those which you have confronting you.

Yet they succeeded brilliantly. The world rewarded them as richly as any graduate of any university who went to his life's work from the very head of his class. For you know this, don't you, that the world hands down success to any man who pays the price. Very well, the price is not a college education. The price is effectiveness, and the college is valuable only as it helps you to be effective.

Here is a true picture of our earthly work and its rewards: Behind a counter stands the salesman, Fortune, with just but merciless scales. On the shelves this Merchant of Destiny has both failure and success, in measure large and small. Every man steps up to this counter and purchases what he receives and receives what he purchases. And when he buys success he pays for it in the crimson coin of his life's blood.

This is a sinister illustration, I know, but it is the truth, and the truth is what you are after, is it not? You can do about what you will within the compass of your abilities; but you accomplish all your achievings with heart-beats. This is a rule which has no exceptions, and applies with equal force to the man who goes to college and to him who cannot go. What is that that some poet says about the successful man:

"... Who while others slept Was climbing upward through the night."

So do not let the fact that you cannot go to college excuse yourself to yourself for being a failure. Do not say, "I have no chance because I am not a college man," and blame the world for its injustice. What Cassius exclaimed to Brutus is exactly applicable to you:

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

So do not whine as to your hard fate; do not go to pitying yourself. No whimper should come from a masculine throat.

A man who does either of these things thereby proves that he ought not to succeed—and he will not succeed. Indeed, how do you know that these fires of misfortune through which you are passing are not heat designed by Fate to temper the steel of your real character. Certainly that ought to be true if you have the stuff in you. And if you have not the stuff in you, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, and all the universities of Germany cannot lift you an inch above your normal level. "You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" is our pithy and brutally truthful folk-saying.

"What do you raise on these shaly hills?" I asked one time of that ideal American statesman, Senator Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut. "Manhood," answered this great New Englander, and then he went on to point out the seemingly contradictory facts that a poor soil universally produces stern and upright character, solid and productive ability, and dauntless courage.

The very effort required to live in these ungenerous surroundings, the absolute necessity to make every blow tell, to preserve every fragment of value; the perpetual exercise of the inventive faculty, thus making the intellect more productive by the continuous and creative use of it—all these develop those powers of mind and heart which through all history have distinguished the inhabitants of such countries as Switzerland and New England. "And so," said Connecticut's great senator, "these rocky hills produce manhood."

Apply this to your own circumstance, you who cannot go to college because you must "support the family," or have inherited a debt which your honor compels you to pay, or any one of those unhappy conditions which fortune has laid on your young shoulders.

Most men with wealth, friends, and influence accept them as a matter of course. Not many young men who are happily situated at the beginning, employ the opportunities which are at their hand. They don't understand their value. Having "influence" to help them, they usually rely on this artificial aid—seldom upon themselves. Having friends, they depend upon these allies rather than upon the ordered, drilled, disciplined troops of their own powers and capabilities. Having money, they do not see as vividly the necessity of toiling to make more.

"What's the use of my working; father did enough of that for our family," wittily said one of these young men. Having the training of the best universities very much as they have their food and clothing, these men are too apt to be blind to the greater skill this equipment gives them, and thus to neglect the using of it.

And so, young man—you who cannot go to college, you who are without friends and "influence"—your brother born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and trained by tutors, finished by professors, and clothed with all the "advantages," has not such a great start of you after all. For you are without friends to begin with. You have not inherited comrades and kindred hearts. You have inherited aloneness and solitude.

Very well, you must depend on yourself, then. If you have the right kind of stuff in you, you will make every ohm of your force do something for you. You will see to it that there is no wasted energy. You will economize every instant of your time, for you will understand, in the wise language of the common people, that "time is money"; and that is something, mind you, which the heir of wealth with whom you are competing does not understand at all. You know what an advantage your competitor, who is a college man, has of you; and this knowledge of yours, coupled with your college competitor's possible lack of it, turns his advantage over you into your advantage over him.

It is like a man who has a dozen shots for his rifle against another who has a hundred. The first will make every shot bring down his game, because he knows he must make every shot tell; he cannot waste a cartridge. But he of abundant ammunition fires without certain aim, and so wastes his treasure of shells until for the actual purposes of fruitful marksmanship he has not as many cartridges left as the man who started with fewer. Also his aim is not so accurate.

Or use an illustration taken from the earth. I well remember when a boy upon the fat alluvium of the Illinois prairie, how recklessly the farmers then exhausted the resources of their fields. So opulent was the black soil that little care was taken save to sow the seed and crudely cultivate it; and the simple prudences, such as rotation of crops, differential fertilizing, and the like, would have been laughed at by the farmer, heedless in the richness of his acres.

But the German farmer on his sandy soil could take no such risks. Every vestige of fertility that skill, science, and economy could win from the reluctant German field was secured. The German farmer had to woo his land like a lover. And so the unyielding fields of Germany returned richer harvests thirty years ago than a like area of the prodigally vital silt of the Mississippi Valley.

So what you have got to do, young man who cannot go to college, is to develop yourself with the most vigorous care. Take your reading, for example. Choose your books with an eye single to their helpfulness. Let all your reading be for the strengthening of your understanding, the increase of your knowledge.

Your more fortunate competitor who has gone to college will, perhaps, not be doing this. He will probably be "resting his mind" with an ephemeral novel or the discursive hop-skip-and-jump reading of current periodicals. Thus he will day by day be weakening his strength, diminishing his resources. At the very same time you, by the other method, will hourly be adding to your powers, daily accumulating useful material.

And when you read, make what you read yours. Think about it. Absorb it. Make it a part of your mental being. Far more important than this, make every thought you read in books, every fact which the author furnishes you, the seed for new thoughts of your own. Remember that no fact in the universe stands by itself, but that every fact is related to every other fact. Trace out the connection of truth with truth, and you will soon confront that most amazing and important of all truths, the correlation of all force, all thought, all matter.

And thus, too will your mind acquire a trained and systematic strength which is the chief purpose of all the training which college and university give. For, mind you, the principal purpose of going to college is not to acquire knowledge. That is only secondary. The chief reason for a college education is the making of a trained mind and the building of a sound character.

These suggestions as to reading apply to everything else: to men, business, society, life. Because you must compete with the college men, you cannot be careless with books—in the selection of books, or in the use of them. For the same reason, you cannot be indifferent with men and your relationship with them. If other men are loose and inaccurate in reading the character of their fellows, most certainly you cannot be.

If the men who have battalions of friends to start with become negligent of their associations, welcoming all fish that come to their net, and frogs, too, you dare not take the risk of a dissolute companionship, or any other companionship that will weaken the daily discipline of yourself, or lower you in the esteem of the people.

Thus you become a careful student of human nature. And never forget that he who has mastered this, the most abstruse of sciences, has a better equipment for practical success than all the abstract learning from the days of Socrates till now could give him.

Conscious from day to day of your limited resources, and understanding by the severe tuition of your daily life that the world now demands effectiveness, you will nurture your physical and nervous powers where the rich young man with a college training is apt to waste his. He may smoke, but you dare not. You cannot afford it, for one thing.

For another thing, it is a long race that you are running before you reach the point from which your fellow runner starts; so you have got to save your wind. You need all your nerve. You have got to keep "clean to the bone," as Jack London expresses it.

You have got to take thought of the morrow. You have got to do all those things which your employer, and all observers of you, will, consciously or unconsciously, approve; and refrain from doing anything that your employer, or his wife, or the world, or anybody who is watching you, will disapprove of, even subconsciously.

Thus your profound understanding that effectiveness is what counts will cut out every questionable habit, every association of idleness and sloth. No social club for you; that institution is for the man of dollars and of Greek. No evenings with gay parties for you; you must use those precious hours for reading, planning, sleep.

You cannot dally with brilliant indirectness; you must make every man and woman understand that you are goldenly sincere, forcefully earnest, earnestly honest, high of intention, sound of purpose, direct of method. Out of all these you will finally wring everything which the college is designed to give: skilled intellect, mind equipped with systematized knowledge, simple, earnest, upright character.

And to crown it all, you will discover in this hard discipline of your faculties and of your soul a happiness whose steady felicity is unknown to the lounger of the club or the frequenter of the ballroom. For remember this—you who in your heart cherish a secret envy of those other young men whom you believe, by reason of family, wealth, or any favorable circumstance, are getting more of the joy of living than you get—remember this, that this world knows only one higher degree of happiness than that which comes from discipline, only one pleasure nobler than the pleasure of achieving.

Let me close with two illustrations within my own personal observation. In one of the most charming inland cities of the United States, or of the world, for that matter, I met some fifteen years ago a young man of German parentage. His father was poor. The son simply had to help support the family by his daily work. He never got nearer college than in his dreams.

He knew something of printing, and was employed by a vigorous new house at an humble salary. By processes such as I have analyzed above, he made himself the best man in technical work in the firm's employ. The next step was to demonstrate his ability as a manager and financier as well as a skilled workman. There was a nut to crack, was it not? But see, now, how simply he broke the shell of that problem.

With some other sound young men of like quality, he established a building and loan association, one of those banks of the people which flourished in those days. He had no capital behind him. His acquaintance was small. Never mind, he made acquaintances among people of his own class. So did his fellow directors. Those common people from which this young man sprang furnished from their earnings the necessary money.

The little institution was conducted with all our American dash, with all his German caution. Of course it prospered. How could it help prospering? While other building and loan associations undertook alluring but hazardous experiments, this little concern rejected them with all the calm and haughty disfavor of the most conservative old bank.

After a while people began to take notice of this small institution. Its depositors were satisfied, its customers pleased. One day the attorney of this association, also a young man, called his fellow directors together, and resigned, upon the ground that he thought the movement of gold abroad and other financial phenomena indicated a panic within the next two or three years.

Did this dismay the young German-American? Not much. "This is just what I am looking for," said he. "I have been able to manage this institution in prosperous times; now if I can only have a chance to close it up so that no man loses a dollar, when big banks around me are falling, I will accomplish all I have started to accomplish."

Sure enough, the panic of 1893 arrived, and the young man's opportunity came. Bank after bank went down; old institutions whose venerable names had been their sufficient guarantee collapsed in a day. Most building and loan associations, taking advantage of certain provisions of the law, and of their charters, refused to pay their depositors on demand. The men and women who had put their money in found that they could not "withdraw" for some time, and then only at a loss.

But not so with the model experiment of my young friend, by which he proposed to demonstrate his ability to organize, manage, and support a difficult business, and to properly handle complex financial questions. He closed his institution up amid the appreciation and praise of everybody who knew about it.

In the mean time he had worked a little harder than ever for the firm that employed him. He took part in politics, too. His acquaintance grew slowly but steadily, and then with ever-increasing rapidity, as each new-made friend enthusiastically described him to others.

It soon got on the tongues of the people that even in his politics this young man didn't drink, smoke, nor swear. More marvelous than all, it was said that he was even religious. And the saying was true. During all these years when he had no time for anything else, he also had no time to stay away from Sunday-school and church. He had certain convictions and spoke them out.

He had no time for "society"; not a moment for parties; not an hour for the clubs. But he did have time for one girl, and for her he did not have time enough. All this was not so very long ago. To-day this young man is a member of the firm for which he began as a common workman, and which has since grown to be one of the largest concerns of its kind in the entire country. Successful banks have made him a director. On all hands his judgment is sought and taken by old and able men in business, politics, and finance.

And to crown all these achievings, he has builded him a home where all the righteous joys abound, and over which presides the "girl he went to see" in the hard days of his beginnings, when he had no time for "society" except that which he found in her presence. As he was then, so he is now—"clean to the bone," strong, upright, faithful, joyous in the unsullied happiness of the manly living of a manly life.

Very well, I tell you over again that this man did not go to college because he could not go to college; that he had no opportunities, no friends, few acquaintances. But he did have right principles, good health, and an understanding that every drop of his blood must be wrought into a deed, every minute of his time compounded into power. And this young man is not yet forty years of age.

I will venture to say that his example can be repeated in every town in the United States, in every city of the Republic. Certainly I personally know of a score of such successes in my own home city. I personally know of many such examples in other States. You ask for the inspiration of example, young man who cannot go to college. Look around you—they are on every hand.

Can you not find them in your own town? Or, if you live on a farm, do you not see them in your own county? I personally know of country boys who started out as farm hands at sixteen dollars per month and board, who to-day own the farms on which they were employed, and yet who are not now much past middle life. They have done it by the simple rules that are as old as human industry.

Come, then, don't mope. Sleep eight hours. Then three hours for your meals, and a chance for your stomach to begin digesting them after you have eaten them. That makes eleven hours, and leaves you thirteen hours remaining. Take one of these for getting to and from your business. Then work the other twelve. Every highly successful man whom I know worked even longer during the years of his beginnings.

What, no recreation? say you. Certainly I say recreation, and I say pleasure, too. But remember that you have got to overcome the college man's advantage over you—and that can only be done by hard work. But what of that? For a young man like you, full of that boundless vigor of youth, what higher pleasure can there be than the doing of your work better than anybody else does the same kind of work?

And what finer happiness can there be than the certainty that such a life as that will make realities of your dreams? For sure it is that this is the road by which you can walk to unfailing success, even over the bodies of your rivals who, with greater "advantages" than yours, neglect them and fall upon the steep ascent up which, with harder muscles, steadier nerves, and stouter heart, you climb with ease, gaining strength with every step you take instead of losing power as you advance, as did your flabbier fibered competitor.

Now for the other illustration: Three years ago a certain young man came to me from New York, the son of a friend who occupied a Government position. He was studying law. He was "quivering" with ambition. But his lungs were getting weak. Would it be possible to get him a place on some ranch for six or eight months? Yes, it was possible. An acquaintance was glad to take him.

At the end of his time he returned, still "quivering" with ambition. He was going to make a lawyer, that's what he was going to make—the very best lawyer that ever mastered Blackstone. He already had a clerkship promised in one of the great legal establishments in the metropolis. This clerkship paid him enough to live on, and gave him the chance to do the very work which is necessary to the making of a lawyer.

Splendid thus far. But observe the next step. In about twelve months this young man came to me again. Would I help to get a certain man who held a Government position paying him $150 a month promoted? This last man's record was admirable; he deserved promotion on his own account. But why the interest of the would-be lawyer, who was "quivering" with ambition?

It developed that if the other fellow was promoted, this embryo Erskine could, with the aid of influential political friends, be appointed in his place. But why did he want this position? Well, answered the young man, it would enable him to take his law course at one of the law schools of the Capitol and get his degree, and all that sort of thing. Also, it would enable him to live at home with mother, would it not? Yes, that was a consideration, he admitted.

But did he think that that was as good a training for his profession, and would give him the chance of a business acquaintance while he was getting that training, as well as the clerkship in the New York office would? Perhaps not, but, after all, he didn't get very much salary in the New York law office. Why, how much did he get? Only twenty dollars a week.

But was not that enough to live on at a modest boarding-house, and get a room with bed, table, one chair, and a washstand, and buy him the necessary clothing? Oh, yes! of course he could scratch along on it, but it was hardly what a young man of his standing and family ought to have.

Oh! it didn't enable him to get out into society, was that it? Well, yes, he must admit there was something in that. Washington had social advantages, to be sure, and $150 a month would enable him to have some of that life which a young man was entitled to and at the very same time be getting his legal education. Well! That young man did not get what he wanted.

That young man had the wrong notion of life. Of course, no man would do anything for him. Until he changed his point of view utterly, success was absolutely impossible for him. What that young man needed was the experience of going back to New York and having to apply for position after position until his shoe soles wore out, and he felt the pangs of hunger. He needed iron in his blood, that is what he needed. All the colleges in the world would not enable that man to do anything worth doing until he mastered the sound principles of living and of working.

Right before him in New York was an illustration of this. One of the most notable successes at the bar which that city or this country has witnessed in the last fifteen years has been made by a young man who had neither college education, money, nor friends. He was, I am told, a stenographer in one of New York's great legal establishments. But that young man had done precisely what I have been pounding at over and over again in this paper. Very well. To-day he is one among half a dozen of the most notable lawyers in the greatest city of the greatest nation in the world.

It is all in the using of what you have. Let me repeat again what I have said in a previous paper—the inscription which Doc Peets inscribed on the headboard of Jack King, whose previousness furnished "Wolfville" with its first funeral:

"JACK KING, DECEASED. Life ain't the holding of a good hand, But The playing of a poor hand well."

And this is nothing more than our frontier statement of the parable of the talents. After all, it is not what we have, but what we make out of what we have that counts in this world of work. And, what's more, that is the only thing that ought to count.



IV

THE NEW HOME

Your father made the old home. Prove yourself worthy of him by making the new home. He built the roof-tree which sheltered you. Build you a roof-tree that may in its turn shelter others. What abnormal egotism the attitude of him who says, "This planet, and all the uncounted centuries of the past, were made for me and nobody else, and I will live accordingly. I will go it alone."

"I wish John had not married so young," said a woman of wealth, fashion, and brilliant talents in speaking of her son. "Why, how old was he?" asked her friend. "Twenty-five," said she; "he ought to have waited ten years longer." "I think not," was the response of the world-wise man with whom she was conversing. "If he got a good wife he was in great luck that he did not wait longer." "No," persisted the mother, "he ought to have taken more time 'to look around.' These early marriages interfere with a young man's career."

This fragment of a real conversation, which is typical of numberless others like it, reveals the false and shallow philosophy which, if it becomes our code of national living, will make the lives of our young people abnormal and our twentieth century civilization artificial and neurotic. Even now too many people are thinking about a "career." Mothers are talking about "careers" for their sons. Young men are dreaming of their "careers."

It is assumed that a young man can "carve out his career" if his attention is not distracted and his powers are not diminished by a wife and children whom he must feed, clothe, and consider. The icy selfishness of this hypothesis of life ought to be enough to reject it without argument. Who is any man, that he should have a "career"? and what does a "career" amount to, anyway? What is it for? Fame? Surely not, because

"Imperious Caesar dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,"

says Shakespeare. And Shakespeare ought to know; he is not quite three centuries dead, and even now the world is sadly confused as to whether he wrote Shakespeare. "Career!" Let your "career" grow out of the right living of your life—not the living of your life grow out of your "career." "Don't get the cart before the horse."

Is it to accomplish some good thing for humanity that you want this "career," which is to keep you single until you are too old to be interesting? Very well. Just what is it that you expect to do with these self-centered and single years during which you intend so to help the race? If you cannot tell, you are "down and out" on that score.

And, besides, you will find that the enormous majority of men who by their service have uplifted or enriched humanity have been men enough to lead the natural life. They have been men who have founded homes. And how can you better benefit mankind than by founding a home among your fellow men, a pure, normal, sweet, and beautiful home?

That would be getting down to business. That would be doing something definite, something "you can put your finger on." It would be "getting down to earth," as the saying is. You would be "benefiting humanity" sure enough and in real earnest by taking care of some actual human being among this great indefinite mass called mankind. The making of a home is the beginning of human usefulness.

The Boers were a splendid type of the human animal. It took all the power of the greatest empire on earth to crush a handful of them; and even then Great Britain was able to subdue them only at astonishing loss of men and money, and irreparable impairment of prestige. They were glorious fighting men, these Boers. The blood that flowed in their veins was unadulterated Dutch—the only unconquered blood in history; for you will remember that even Caesar 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.