It is said that there was not an unmarried man above twenty-one years of age among them. Very generally the same thing was true of "The Fathers" who founded this republic. Indeed, all great constructive periods and peoples have lived in harmony with the laws of Nature. It has been the races of marrying men that have made the heroic epochs in human history. The point is that the man who is not enough of a man to make a home, need not be counted. He is a "negligible quantity," as the scientists put it.

So if your arm is not strong enough to protect a wife, and your shoulders are not broad enough to carry aloft your children in a sort of grand gladness, you are really not worth while. For it will take a man with veins and arteries swollen with masculine blood pumped by a great, big, strong heart, working as easily and joyfully as a Corliss engine; with thews of steel wire and step as light as a tiger's and masterful as an old-time warrior's; with brain so fertile and vision so clear that he fears not the future, and knows that what to weaker ones seem dangers are in reality nothing but shadows—it will take this kind of a man to make any "career" that is going to be made.

Very well. Such a man will be searching for his mate and finding her, planning a home and building it before he is twenty-five; and the man who does not, is either too weak or too selfish to do it. In either case you need not fear him. "He will never set the world afire."

I am assuming that you are man enough to be a man—not a mere machine of selfishness on the one hand, or an anemic imitation of masculinity on the other hand. I am assuming that you think—and, what is more important, feel—that Nature knows what she is about; that "God is not mocked"; and that therefore you propose to live in harmony with universal law.

Therefore, I am assuming that you have established, or will establish, the new home in place of the old home. I am assuming that you will do this before there is a gray hair in your head or a wrinkle under your eye. These new homes which young Americans are building will be the sources of all the power and righteousness of this Republic to-morrow, just as the lack of them will be the source of such weakness as our future develops.

Within these new homes which young Americans are to build, the altar must be raised again on which the sacred fire of American ideals must be kept burning, just as it was kept burning in the old homes which these young Americans have left. And precisely to the extent that these new homes are not erected will American ideals pale, and finally perish.

It is a question, you see, which travels quite to the horizon of our vision and beyond it, and which searches the very heart of our national purity and power. No wonder that Bismarck considered the perpetuation of the German home, with its elemental and joyous productivity, as the source of all imperial puissance on the one hand, and the purpose and end of all statesmanship on the other hand.

It would be far better for America if our public men were more interested in these simple, vital, elemental matters than in "great problems of statesmanship," many of which, on analysis, are found to be imaginary and supposititious. Yes, and it would be better for the country if our literary men would describe the healthful life of the Nation's plain people, than tell unsavory stories of artificial careers and abnormal affections, and all that sort of thing.

They would sell more books, too. I never yet heard that anybody got tired of "The Cotter's Saturday Night." I think it quite likely that the Book of Ruth will outlast all the short stories that will be written during the present decade. Yes, decidedly, our public men, and our writers, too, ought to "get down to earth." There is where the people live. The people walk upon the brown soil and the green grass. They dwell beneath the apple-blossoms. How fine a thing it is that our American President is preaching the doctrine of the American home so forcefully that he impresses the Nation and the world with these basic truths of living and of life.

It is a good deal more important that the institution of the American home shall not decay, than that the Panama Canal be built or our foreign trade increase. So, in considering the young man and the new home, we are dealing with an immediate and permanent and an absolutely vital question, not only from the view-point of the young man himself, but from that of the Nation as well.

Of course nobody means that young men should hurl themselves into matrimony. The fact that it is advisable for you to learn to swim does not mean that you should jump into the first stream you come to, with your clothes and shoes on. Undoubtedly you ought first to get "settled"; that is, you ought to prepare for what you are going to do in life and begin the doing of it. Don't take this step while you are in college. If you mean to be a lawyer, you ought to get your legal education and open your office; if a business man, you should "get started"; if an artizan, you should acquire your trade, etc. But it is inadvisable to wait longer.

It is not necessary for you to "build up a practise" in the profession, or make a lot of money in business, or secure unusual wages as a skilled laborer. Begin at the beginning, and live your lives together, win your successes together, share your hardships together, and let your fortune, good or ill, be of your joint making. It will help you, too, in a business way.

Everybody else is, or was, situated nearly as you are, and there is a sort of fellow-feeling in the hearts of other men and women who once had to "hoe the same row" you are hoeing; and it is among these men and women you must win your success. It is largely through their favor and confidence that you will get on at all. If you are making a new home you are in harmony with the world about you, and the very earth itself exhales a vital and sustaining sympathy.

It is not at all necessary that you should be able to provide as good a house and the furnishings thereof as that from which your wife comes. Nobody expects you to be as successful in the very beginning of your life as her father was at the close of his. Least of all does she herself expect it. And even if this were possible, it is not from such continuous luxury that the best character is made. The absolute necessity to economize compels the ordinary young American couple to learn the value of things—the value of a dollar and the value of life.

They learn to "know how it comes," again to employ one of the wise sayings of the common people. And the numberless experiences of their first few years of comparative hardship are the very things necessary to bring out in them sweetness, self-sacrifice, and uplifting hardihood of character. In these sharp experiences, too, there is greatest happiness. How many hundreds of times have you heard men and women say of their early married years, "Those were the happiest days of my life."

As a matter of good business on the one hand, and of sheer felicity on the other hand, make the ideals of this new home of yours as high as you possibly can. Don't make them so high that neither you nor any other human being can live up to them, of course; but if you can put them a notch beyond those even of the exalted standard of the old home, by all means do it. Do it, that is, if you can live up to them.

It is remarkable what individual power grows out of clean living. It is profitable also. The mere business value of a reputation for a high quality of home life will be one of the best assets that you can accumulate. "They are attending strictly to business and will make their mark," said a wise old banker to a group of friends in discussing a fine type of young business man, and the equally fine type of the young American woman who was his wife.

I do not know whether that young man was borrowing money for his business from that particular bank or not, but I do know that he could borrow it if he wanted it. And one reason why his credit was established with the money-wise old financier was the ideal home life which he and his wife were leading.

For, mark you, they were not "living beyond their means." That was the first thing. That is one of the best rules you can follow. Who has not known of the premature withering of young business men and lawyers (yes, and sometimes men not so young, alas!) who have suddenly blossomed out with houses and clothes and horses, and a lot of other things which their business or practise ought not reasonably to stand.

On the other hand, do not begin your life as a miser. Do not let the new home proclaim by its barrenness that it is the abode of a poor young man asking sympathy and aid of his friends. "Yes, rent a piano, by all means. Do not economize on your wife and your home," advised an old Methodist preacher noted for his horse-sense. And he was right.

After all, what is the purpose and end of all your labor? If it is not that very home, I do not know what it is. Put on a little more steam, therefore, and earn enough extra to buy a picture. And get a good one while you are at it. It will not break you up to buy a really good etching. A fine "print" is infinitely better than a poor painting. Anything is better than a poor painting. If she has good taste, your wife will make the walls of that new home most attractive with an astonishingly small amount of money.

It is the new home you and she are making, remember that. Very well; you cannot make it in a flat. "Apartments" cannot by any magic be converted into a home. For the purposes of a home, better a separate dwelling with dry-goods box for table and camp-stools for chairs than tapestried walls, mosaic floors, and all luxuriousness in those modern structures where human beings hive.

These buildings have their indispensable uses, but home-making is not one of them. "Apartments" are not cheaper for you and easier for her than a house to yourselves—no, not if you got the finest apartments for nothing, not even if you were paid to live in gilded rooms. For the making of a home is priceless. And that cannot be done in flats or hotels or other walled and roofed herding places. Every man would like to have a picture of "the house he was born in"; but who would choose a hotel for a birthplace? Boniface himself would not "admire" (to use one of our Westernisms) to have you select his hostelry for that purpose.

Of course you will spend all of your extra time at home. That is what home is for. Live in your home; do not merely eat and sleep there. It is not a boarding-house, remember that. Books are there, and music and a human sympathy and a marvelous care for you, under whose influence alone the soul of a young man grows into real grandeur, power, and beauty. And be sure that you let each day have its play-hour.

"I would not care to live," said one of the very ablest and most eminent members of the American Catholic priesthood—"I would not care to live," said he, "if I could not have my play-hour, music, and flowers. They are God's gifts and my necessity. Every young man who has a home commits a crime if he does not each day bring one hour of joy into his household."

The man who said that is not only brilliant and wise, but one of the most exalted souls it has ever been my fortune to know. And his words have good sense in them, have they not? Make that good sense yours, then. Make a play-hour each day for yourself and wife and children. I say children, for I assume, of course, that when you are making a new home you are making a home indeed.

Very well. The absence of children is either unfortunate or immoral. A purposely childless marriage is no marriage at all; it is merely an arrangement. Robert Louis Stevenson calls it "a friendship recognized by the police." A house undisturbed and unglorified by the wailings and laughter of little ones is not a home—it is a habitation.

There is in children a certain immortality for you. Most of us believe in life after death; and that belief is a priceless possession of every human being who has it. But even the man who has not this faith beholds his own immortality in his children. "Why of course I am immortal," said a scientist who believed that death ends all. "Of course I am immortal," said he, "there goes my reincarnation"; and he pointed to his little son, glorious with the promise of an exhaustless vitality.

There is no doubt at all that association with infancy and youth puts back the clock of time for each of us. Besides all this, it is the natural life, and that is the only thing worth while. The "simple life" is all right, and the "strenuous life" excellent. The "artistic life" is charming, no doubt, and all the other kinds of "lives" have their places, I suppose. I am interested in all of them. But I am much more interested in the natural life. That alone is truthful. And, after all, only the truthful is important.

Get into the habit of happiness. It is positively amazing how you can turn every little incident into a sunbeam. And, mark you, it is quite as easy to take the other course. But what a coward a man is who releases in his home all the pent-up irritability and disappointment of the day.

There is no sense in it, either. It does not make you less black of spirit to fill your home with gloom. You ought not to do it, even from the view-point of good health. If you eat your meal in a sour silence which almost curdles the cream and scares your wife half to death, you do not and cannot digest your food. If you have had a hard day, say to yourself, "Well, that was a hard day. Now for some rest and some fun."

Get into the habit of being happy, I tell you. You can do it. Practise saying to yourself, when you waken in the morning, "Everything is all right," and keep on saying it. You will be surprised to find how nearly "all right" the mere saying of it at the beginning of the day will really make everything, after all. This is true of business as well as of the new home. Prophets of gloom are never popular, and ought not to be.

Then, too, a quiet cheeriness of heart makes you treat your fellow man better; and this is important in your dealings with other human male animals. They will make it unpleasant for you if you don't. But it is far more important in your new home than it is out in the world of men. That is what the new home is for—to exercise and multiply the beauties of character and conduct.

Returning again to the view-point of business wisdom, you cannot treat your wife too well, as a mere matter of policy—though you will never treat her well, nor anybody else, from that low motive. I am merely calling the attention of your commercial mind to the fact that there are actually dollars and cents in a reputation for chivalrous bearing in your new home.

You know yourself how you feel toward a man of whom everybody says, "He is good to his wife." Everybody wants to help that kind of a fellow. If he is a strong man, his community glories in his strength and increases it by their admiration and support. If he is not a strong man, everybody wishes that he were, and tries in a thousand ways, which a general kindly disposition toward him suggests, to supply his deficiencies.

And this is no jug-handled rule either. The same thing is true of the wife. When her acquaintances declare of any woman, "She is lovely in her home," they have placed upon her brow the crown of their ultimate tribute and regard. It depends upon both, of course, whether these domestic beatitudes will exist in the new home.

Undoubtedly, however, it depends upon the young man more than the young woman. He is a man—and that is everything. And being a man, he should have a large and kindly forbearance, a sort of soothing strength and calming serenity. And to all this the rule of smile and cheeriness is helpful, if not essential.

When I was a boy in the logging-camps, I read in some stray newspaper an article about the influence which the pleasant countenance exercises over groups of men. The idea was that men work willingly under the control of a strong man who is strong enough to carry in his daily look the suggestion of a smile. It worked splendidly. It has never been satisfactorily explained why it is next to impossible for a man "to be down on his luck" if he will only keep the corners of his mouth turned up. Perhaps it is the mental effort of forcing this mechanism of a smile which brings a really happy state of mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



V

THE YOUNG LAWYER AND HIS BEGINNINGS

It used to be a part of the creed of a certain denomination that a man should not be admitted to the ministry who had not received his "call." It was necessary that he should hear the Voice speaking with his tongue, and saying, "Woe is unto me, if I preach not the Gospel."

This is true of the profession of law. So, at the beginning of your beginnings, do not begin at all unless you see a certainty of misery if you do not. Unless you are convinced that you would rather work, toil, nay, slave for years to secure recognition in the law, than to be honored and enriched in some other occupation, do not enter this profession of supreme ardor.

And above all things, do not enter it if you expect to practise law principally for the purpose of making money. It is not a money-making profession. The same effort, acumen, and enthusiasm expended in almost any other occupation will bring you financial returns tremendously out of proportion to your most successful compensation in the law, measured by mere money. The money-making conception of our profession is not only erroneous, but ruinous; for you must remember, to begin with, that you are practising the science of justice.

If possible, get a thorough college education before you touch a law book. If you can get a college education, do not "read law" while you are at college. If you go to college, do not take what is known as the "scientific" course, or "physical" course. Take the classical course. Next to geometry and logarithms and the Bible, the best discipline preparatory to making you a lawyer is the translation of Latin. Latin is the most logical language the world has ever seen, or is likely ever to see.

After you get your college course, then go to a thoroughly first-class law school. After this, spend two or three years in active work in the office of some successful lawyer who has lots of practise, and who will load off on your shoulders as much work as possible.

If you cannot go to a law school, your training in the law office will do you nearly as well. You can get along without your law school, but you can never get along without your training in the law office. The way to learn to swim is to swim.

But if you cannot get a college education, do not get discouraged. It is possible that you are an Abraham Lincoln, or a John Marshall, or some person like that; and if you are you will succeed anyhow. Even if you are not so highly gifted you can win in the law without a college education if you are naturally a lawyer and will work hard enough. If you have to choose between a law school and a college education, take the latter. But the training afforded by a clerkship in an active lawyer's office is more helpful than either.

If you can be so fortunate as to get the firm or attorney with whom you are studying to let you draft pleadings, take depositions, examine witnesses, make arguments to court and jury, get out transcripts for appeal, write briefs, petitions, motions, and all the rest of that careful and painstaking work which makes the daily life of the lawyer, you will equip yourself for actual practise better than in any other way I know of.

The firm will gladly let you do this work if you show yourself competent. But this does not mean that you are merely to sit around the office and say "bright things." There is nothing in "bright things"—there is everything in good judgment and downright hard work.

In active practise never forget that you are a sworn officer of justice quite as much as is the judge on the bench. It is impossible for you to put your ideals of your profession too high or to attach yourself to them too firmly. I am no admirer of the acidulous character of John Adams (not that he was not both great and good, however, for he was—but he was too sour), yet he announced a great thing, and lived up to it, when he declared that he was practising law for the purposes of justice first and a living afterward. (But, then, John Adams announced many great things; and what he announced he lived up to. He was supremely honest.)

"Never take a case," said Horace Mann, "unless you believe your client is right and his cause is just." On the contrary, Lord Brougham declared that "the conscientious lawyer must be at the service of the criminal as well as of the state." And this great lawyer proceeds to argue with characteristic ability that it is as much the duty of the lawyer to work for the cause he knows to be wrong as for the cause he knows to be right.

Briefly, the reason is that it is the very essence of justice that every man shall have his day in court; that the attorney is but the trained and educated mouthpiece of his client; and that to refuse the cause of a client in which the attorney does not believe is to relegate all the controversies to the judge in the first instance, which, of course, would render the administration of practical justice impossible.

This is the prevailing practise of our profession, and it is a serious thing to question its correctness. Its ethics are as wide as they are ingenious, and when one beholds them through the medium of the great Englishman's wonderful argument they seem radiant with aggressive truth. Nevertheless, I am almost of opinion that Horace Mann was right. It is certain that in his beginnings the young lawyer ought to lean to that view.

If you consider it your duty to take any side of any case that offers, right or wrong, it is no far cry to considering it your duty to make the cause you have espoused a good one before the court. And when that conception has shot its cancerous roots and filaments through your brain and conscience, the suggestion to your unscrupulous client of facts that do not exist, and all the alluring infamies of sharp practise, are possible.

It is said that burglary exercises such a fascination that, once the delirium of its danger is tasted, a man can never put that fatal wine away. An old and distinguished lawyer once told me that one of the most brilliant young lawyers he ever knew said to him, at the conclusion of a legal duel in which he had resorted to the sharpest practise and won, "That was the most delicious experience of my life."

Yes, and it was the most fatal. He became, and is, an attorney of uncommon resource, ability, and success, with many cases and heavy fees; nevertheless his life is a failure, for his profession and even his clients know him for a dealer in tricks. Senator McDonald, an ideal lawyer in the ethics, learning, and practise of his profession, told me that one of the justices of the Supreme Court once said to him of a certain great corporation lawyer of acknowledged power and almost unrivaled learning:

"Mr. —— would be the greatest lawyer in the world if he were not a scoundrel. As it is, I brace myself to resist him every time he appears before me." One of the ablest Circuit Court judges of the Federal bench said almost precisely the same thing to me of the same man.

So you perceive it does not pay to be understood to be capable, or even great, in the wrong. In time it means ruin; and therefore I think, on the whole, that it would be wise for you never to take a cause which, after you have a full statement from your client, you believe to be wrong.

Many of the most excellent men of our profession will dissent from this view. Their argument is usually that of Lord Brougham, summarized above. Also they will declare that a lawyer may be quite wrong in his first impression that his client has not the right of an impending controversy. They will cite you instances where they have entered into the conduct of a case with much doubt in their hearts as to the rightfulness of their client's position; but that this doubt became an affirmative certainty before they were half through with it—they knew their client was right.

The answer to this is that any man can work himself into an enthusiastic belief in almost anything if he goes upon the theory that the thing is true, and gives all his energy and ability to proving its truthfulness to others and to himself. This is peculiarly the case with the most sincere and genuine men. I repeat, therefore, that upon a point so vital, and about which there are such sharp differences of opinion by equally good and wise men, it is better for you to incline to the stricter view of legal ethics.

So if you believe your client to be in the wrong, frankly tell him so; show him why; induce him to compromise and to settle, if he ought. If he will not because he is obstinate, he will probably lose his case anyhow, and of course blame his lawyer for the loss. So that if you do not have that case you have lost nothing. On the other hand, you have gained. The client will say: "If I had followed his advice I should not have had the expense and humiliation of defeat."

In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the honest client will respect you for your position. If the client persists in his course because he is a scoundrel, then, doubly, you cannot afford to take his unjust case. After a few years of such practise you will have acquired a moral influence with court, jury, and people which will be, even from a money point of view, the most valuable item in your equipment. Public confidence is the young man's best asset. And you will be surprised to find how little you will lose, in the way of fees, by this course.

Of course there is a large class of cases in which the correct application of the law is very doubtful, with lines of decisions on both sides; as, for example, in cases of the distribution of funds of an insolvent corporation, constitutional questions, and the relative equities of conflicting interests. These are fair examples of controversies where a lawyer may rightfully and righteously accept a retainer upon any of half-a-dozen sides. But in the ordinary course of practise perhaps it is better to stick to Horace Mann rather than to Lord Brougham, and reject employment in a case you believe to be wrong.

While the law is not a money-making profession, either in theory or practise, the young lawyer should begin by charging every cent his services are worth. It is not only degrading, but reveals a base attitude of mind and character, to charge a little fee in the beginning as a bait for a bigger one in future cases. Maintain the dignity of your effort.

I am assuming that Nature began the work of making you a lawyer before you were born; that you have been preparing yourself, with the enthusiasm of the artist and the passion of professional devotion, for the work of your great calling, by years and years of discipline and study such as no other calling requires; that, with your natural qualification and your general equipment, you are bringing to your client's particular case an industry that knows no limit in his immediate service.

This being true, tell him frankly that you propose to give him the best that is in you (and that best is your very life—no less—for you write "victory" at the end of every one of your cases with your heart's blood; or "defeat," if you do not win), and that for this best which is in you you will charge the highest professional fee justified by your services and the magnitude and difficulty of his case.

At the same time, never turn a poor client away from your office door because that client comes with no gold in his hand. When a lawyer is too busy to give counsel without fee and without charge to a poor man or woman, that lawyer has too much business. I know—we all know—of very eminent lawyers constantly engaged in causes involving large interests, who nevertheless find leisure, many times each year, to serve by advice and counsel, and sometimes even by the active conduct of cases, numbers of the children of poverty, and to serve them without a penny of compensation.

Be very careful of the class of business you accept at first. I knew a young lawyer who had just opened his office, and within a month, by one of those accidents that occur to every attorney, he was offered a case on a contingent fee in which the probability of considerable reward amounted almost to a certainty.

He needed the money—was nearly penniless. He was newly married, had no clients and few acquaintances; but it was not the quality of practise to which he wished to devote his career. He courteously declined the case as though he had been a millionaire, and directed his would-be client to an attorney who would care for it properly.

Out of that case the latter attorney, by a compromise, in two weeks made fifteen hundred dollars. Nevertheless, the young man was right, and acted with a far-seeing wisdom as rare as the courage which accompanied it. Of course, I assume that you are going into the profession for the purpose of becoming a lawyer, and not a mere conductor of legal strifes. If you are, you must deny yourself.

Self-denial is the price of strength, as any college athlete will tell you. Self-denial is the road to wealth, as any banker will tell you. Self-denial is the method of all excellencies, as all human experience will tell you. But this is moralizing.

I do not mean that you should decline small cases. By no means. Take a five-dollar case, and work with the same sincerity that you would on a fifty-thousand-dollar case. "Despise not the day of small things." In selecting your business, I refer to the quality, and not the magnitude, of cases. Again, again, and still again, this counsel: Care for your small case with the same painstaking labor you bestow upon a large one.

Never lose sight of the fact that your greatest reward is not your fee, but the doing of a perfect piece of work. The same fervor and ideality should govern your labors in a lawsuit that inspire and control the great artist and inventor. A distinguished sculptor said to me one evening:

"I wish the matter of compensation could be wiped out of my consideration. I must give it attention for obvious reasons, but it is the matter of least moment to me, and has absolutely no influence upon my work."

It is no wonder that that man achieved an immortal renown at thirty-seven. Doctor Barker, the recent occupant of the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Chicago, recently elected to an even more notable position in the Johns Hopkins University, who has won for himself a permanent place in the high seats of his profession by his work on neurology, was in a company one evening. Said one of his admirers:

"Why don't you go into practise? You could easily make a great fortune before you are forty."

Listen to the answer: "Money does not interest me."

We all remember Agassiz's famous reply to a proposition to deliver one lecture for a large fee: "I must decline, gentlemen; I have no time to make money." That was why he was Agassiz.

Quite as lofty ideals should inspire the work of those who make their vows to the greatest of all sciences, the science of justice, and the greatest of all arts, the art of adjusting the rights of men. No lawyer can become great who does not resolve, at the beginning of each case, to make his conduct of it a perfect piece of work, regardless of compensation.

John M. Butler, the partner of Senator McDonald, and one of the best lawyers the Central Western states ever produced, was so careful of pleadings and briefs that he would not endure a blurred or broken letter, and bad punctuation was a source of real irritation to him. Many times have I, as his clerk, required his printer to take out an indistinct letter. It was Mr. Butler's ideal to achieve perfection as nearly as possible.

The most perfect legal argument I ever heard occupied less than an hour. Not a word was wasted. Not a single digression weakened the force of the reasoning. Not a decision was read from. It was assumed that the learned judges before whom the cause was being heard knew something of the law and the decisions themselves.

You see the same thing in its highest form in Marshall's decisions. I once advised a class of law students to commit to memory half a dozen of Marshall's greatest opinions. After years of reflection I think I shall stand by that advice.

In making an argument before a court or jury, remember that the most important thing is the statement of your case. A case properly stated is a case nearly won. Beware of digression. It calls attention from your main idea. It is a fault, too, which is well-nigh universal. I advise every young lawyer, as a practise in accurate thought, to demonstrate a theorem of geometry every morning.

There is no such remorseless logic as that of logarithms. It will produce a habit of definiteness, directness, and concentration invaluable to you. The young gallants of a century ago used to practise fencing for an hour each morning. Why should not you do the same thing in intellectual fencing—you, the devotee of the noblest swordsmanship known to man, the swordsmanship of the law?

Do not waste too much time quoting precedents to a court; it produces weariness rather than conviction on the part of the judge, who himself is a daily maker of decisions and knows their value. He knows the stifling mass of precedents, and sighs under them. It is rare that more than two cases should be cited in oral argument on any given point. Those cases ought to be the most controlling you can find—not necessarily the latest. They should be cases decided upon reason rather than upon authority. Your true judge likes to syllogize.

Do not, however, go into a court without having thoroughly reviewed and mastered all the precedents bearing on every phase of your proposition. It requires desperate labor to do this and will shorten your life; but such is the hard fate of the profession you choose, and such is the condition of our absurd system of multiplying reports.

Do not be what is known as a "case lawyer"—an attorney who does not know the law as a science, but merely looks up precedents and texts concerning a particular case. You may prevail in your "lawsuit," but you will not be a lawyer. Stick close to the elemental Blackstone. You can never get along without Blackstone. Do not read a condensed edition of that great commentator; it is like reading expurgated Shakespeare.

I understand that one of the Justices of the Supreme Court still reads Blackstone once each year. This may be a fable, but I hope it is not. You cannot do a better thing. Thirty minutes each day will give you Blackstone from cover to cover in less than a year, with many holidays. Few modern "text-books" are of permanent value. Pomeroy's "Equity Jurisprudence" is an exception.

But, of course, I cannot give here a list of those books which should be your daily food; any really educated lawyer will mention them to you. The great mass of text-books are nothing more than digests. But don't miss the introduction to Stephens' "Pleading," and also the introduction to Stephens' "Digest of the Law of Evidence." Both are classics and give you the reason and the spirit of our law in fascinating form.

Let your reading in the law be mainly upon the general principles of the common law. The study of the civil law will also be helpful—although English jurisprudence developed of and by itself with only moderate help from the Romans. Reading statutes is unprofitable. You should never answer a question or proceed in a case on the presumption that you remember the statute. The rule of Sir Edwin Coke ought to be your rule.

"I should," said Coke, "feel that I ought to be put out of my profession if I could not answer a question in the common law without referring to the books. I should feel that I ought to be put out of my profession if I would answer a question in the statute law without referring to the statute."

Do not confine yourself to law-books. A man who does so is like the farmer who persists in planting the same soil with the same crop; exhaustion, barrenness, and unprofitableness are the results in each case. Read generously, widely. It is impossible for a man to be a great lawyer, so far as the learning of his profession is concerned, who has not saturated himself with the Bible. He may be a great practitioner, but not a great lawyer. It illuminates all our law—is the source of much of it. There is no more curious and fascinating study than a comparison of the ordinances of the Hebrews with what we think our modern statutes.

Read deeply in science. Read widely the great novelists. They are scientists of human nature, and you are dealing with human nature in your profession. Read profoundly in history. A comprehensive knowledge of history is absolutely indispensable to an understanding of our Constitution. The Federalist, the constitutional debates, and all the discussions that preceded and accompanied the adoption of our organic law are bewilderingly full of historical references. If you were to study every decision on constitutional questions made by every court in this country, you could not understand the Constitution.

You must go back to the roots of it. Trace out the growth of our institutions in Holland. Work out the modifications by these upon institutions adopted from England. Follow the indigenous development of both of these from the old Crown Charters, and finally up to the Constitution itself.

Then take Bancroft's "History of the United States"; then that great monument of intellectual achievement in the realm of historical criticism, Von Holtz's "Constitutional History of the United States." Books like Douglass Campbell's remarkable production, Fisher's convincing yet novel essay, and other like serious and original works, too numerous to properly mention here, are helpful.

Nothing is more disgusting to an informed court than to hear a surface argument on constitutional law by an advocate who thinks he has mastered that tremendous subject by studying all the decisions upon any given point.

You will say this is a heavy task I am assigning you. It is, indeed. But have you not chosen the profession of the law? And, if so, do you dare to be less than a lawyer? How dare you not shoulder your glorious burden with patience, fortitude, and determination? Do not be as if you were to enlist as a soldier, and end as a camp-follower.

I am told that the leader of the American bar has a standing order with his booksellers to send him every new book of approved merit in all the departments of literature. The result is that when he comes before the court his mind is fresh and sparkling with clear ideas and varied knowledge poured into his brain from every mountain-peak of inspiration in all the world of human thought. He brings to the service of his client not only a study of his case and an understanding of the grand science of the law, but the vivifying, vitalizing power of all the great minds in all the realms of intellect.

If you say you have no time for all this, the answer is: If that is true, you have no time to be a great lawyer. You have the time, if you will use it. A little less lingering at the club, an economy of hours here and there—this will give you time, and to spare. Of course if you would rather "loaf" than be great, if you hunger rather after the flesh-pots than the lawyer's wreaths, this advice is not for you.

Do not use intoxicants. Even beware of coffee; it is one of the most powerful nerve and brain stimulants. The coffee habit is as easily formed, and as remorseless, as the alcohol habit. After a while, if excessively used, it produces its sure result; your faculties have been sharpened by this intellectual emery-wheel until the edges begin to crumble. Your mind becomes dull; you pass your hand wearily over your eyes; you don't know what is the matter with you and say so. Overwork, over-stimulation, and the worry these produce are what is the matter with you.

There are lawyers in every town who day by day and year by year find that they have to work harder to understand a case or master a precedent than they did the year before. Whereas formerly they could get the point of a precedent by reading it over once, they must now read it over four or five times. You usually find them the victims of ceaseless toil without rest, of that destroying fretfulness which brain-fag brings, and of some flogger of exhausted nerves, such as coffee in excess.

Do not work late at night. It is a fictitious clearness of mind that comes to the midnight toiler. This also grows into a habit. Conform to Nature. Go to bed early. Get up early, and do your fine and original work in the morning. It will be hard for you to form the habit, but after you have done it you will be amazed at the comparatively immense nervous power you possess in the morning hours.

In trying a case before a jury, never be trivial. Do not bandy gibes, no matter how witty you may know yourself to be in repartee. The jury, and even the court, may laugh, but they are not impressed, and you have not helped your case; and you are there to win your case. As in your argument, so in your examination of witnesses, keep to the point.

In arguing a case, no matter what its nature, before a court or jury, never rage or rave. Get to the point. Speak with great earnestness, but not with violence or volume of sound. Remember that even the most terrible emotions of the human heart in their most intense expression are comparatively quiet. Be earnest. Be sincere. Be the master of your case, and the result must be satisfactory.

It sometimes becomes necessary for an attorney to assert his rights and privileges to the judge himself. Do not shrink from it. It is your duty to your client, your profession, and the cause of justice. Never cringe to a court. Never cringe to any one. He will despise you for it, and properly so. Remember the dignity of your profession. Erskine, in his first case, rebuked a prejudiced and perhaps an unjust judge with such vigor that England rang with it.

Cultivate lucidity of style. You will do that at some risk at first. When a young lawyer is extremely clear, he is apt to be regarded as not deep. Abstruseness in expression is very frequently regarded as an indication of profundity. Nevertheless, persist in a clear and simple style. Make the statement of your case and the argument in support of your propositions so lucid and plain that the judge or jury will say: "Why, of course, that is so. What is the use of the young man stating that?"

The study of Abraham Lincoln's speeches will be very helpful. Two or three of Roscoe Conkling's arguments after he left the Senate are models of perspicuity. Mr. Potter's argument in the legal tender cases is a model—it is Euclid stated in terms of the law. Webster's arguments you will study, of course. Blackstone is one of the clearest writers who ever illustrated the great science to which you and I are devoted. Perhaps as great a logician as ever lived was the Apostle Paul; read him as a master of logical utterance.

Never be ponderous; never be florid. At the same time, never be dry. Be clear; be pointed; be luminous. I remember having heard both sides of a case argued before an eminent Federal Judge. One of the lawyers made a long, turgid, "profound"—and musty—argument; proceeding like a draft-horse from mile-post to mile-post, until the alert mind of the judge was almost frantic with impatience.

The lawyer on the other side is one of the most eminent members of our profession. He is as lithe as a panther, physically and mentally, sharp as a serpent's tooth, as lucid as the atmosphere on a cloudless day, and yet as suggestive as a hickory-wood fire in the old home fireplace on a wintry night. He paced the floor in impatience while Mr. Turgidity blew the clouds of dust from precedent after precedent.

When it came his time to reply, he did so with a clearness and wealth of expression, an appropriateness of illustration, and a simplicity of reasoning that made one feel that the other man had committed an impertinence in presenting his side at all. Of course he won his case.

Respect yourself. A man may lose his money, his reputation—may even lose everything; and yet he has not lost everything if he retains his self-respect. Be a gentleman at the outset of your career and forever. Do not move among men like a beggar for favors. Do not wear poor clothes. Apparel yourself like a gentleman.

No client worth having respects you for advertising your poverty. Do not fear that your community will not know that you are poor. They know it, and sympathize with you. But every one of our race likes to see a man "game." Therefore, dress well. Bear yourself like a man who has prosperous potentialities if not prosperous assets.

Keep your office in as perfect condition as yourself. Remember that it is your workshop. Put all your extra money into books. There is no adornment of an office equal to a library, just as there is no adornment of a mechanic's shop equal to his tools. You know what you think of a doctor when you find his office equipped with the latest appliances.

Do not permit your office to be a loafing place, even for your fellow lawyers. You cannot afford to cultivate professional courtesy at the expense of the discipline of your office. It is nothing to your client that your friends find your society so charming that they seek the felicity of your conversation even in your office. Or, rather, it is something to your client—he wants his case won and he thinks that will take all your time. And so it will.

Be very careful of the places you frequent. Remember that Pericles was never seen except upon the street leading to the Senate House. Don't imitate anybody—be yourself. Still, if you must have the stimulus of imitation, pick out a man like Pericles for your model.

Depend upon yourself; do not call into council another attorney. This is a point on which most lawyers will disagree with me. Nevertheless, if you are not competent to handle your case, you have done wrong to open an independent office. If you call in another attorney, every probability is that you will suggest all the solutions yourself and in reality win the case; but your old and distinguished associate will get all the credit. But you need all the credit for work which you really do.

See well to your evidence before you go into the trial of a cause. Be very cautious on cross-examination. It is the most powerful but most delicate and dangerous instrument known to the surgery of the law. Do not bluster, "bull-doze," or browbeat a witness; there is nothing in it. You only make the jury sympathize with the person abused. Remember that an American loves nothing so much as fair play. When on a jury, he is apt to regard you and the witness as adversaries, you the stronger and with immense advantage.

Ask few questions on cross-examination. Employ the Socratic method always. Ask only those questions the logical conclusion of which is irresistible, and stop there. Don't press the conclusion on the witness. It is your province to show that in your argument.

A timid witness, whom you know to be telling the truth, may often be confused by cross-examination and made to make a false statement; but this you have no right, as an honorable attorney, to make him do. A just judge ought to stop you if you try it. To confuse a witness whom you know to be telling the truth is not skill; it is a trick, and a very miserable trick, whose performance requires neither real ability nor learning.

Think what a tremendous intellectual effort the properly conducted lawsuit is. You must know your case; you must know your evidence; you must know each witness as a person and each item of his testimony; you must know the law applicable to your general proposition, and the general law upon its various ramifications; you must study the witnesses of the other side; and, almost more important than any of these, you must study that wonderful combination of intellect, prejudice, and passion called the jury.

When the time comes for you to address that jury you must thoroughly understand each man. This is not that you may influence him, or "play upon" him, or resort to any of the devices of the baser sort. It is that you may know how best to get the truth of your case to him. How to get your theory, your cause, before each juror should be your only concern.

Never try to be "eloquent." Never be funny. Wit may cause laughter, it never produces conviction. A joke may divert, it never persuades. It is unnecessary even to arouse a jury's sympathies. Forget everything except making the juror understand your case. The result will be that he will understand your case, and if he understands it, and it is a case you ought to win, his understanding of it means that you will win it.

Take at least one excellent legal periodical. There are four or five "law" magazines published in America, some of them very good indeed. Do not pay any attention to the digests of cases with which some of these periodicals burden their pages, except to see if there is a recent decision on some case you are trying. You cannot remember them, and the effort to do so will only confuse. But you will usually find in each number one serious and profitable article, and possibly more, on matters of real interest to the profession. Read such articles very carefully.

The methods of scientific scholarship are now invading the law, and many of these legal essays are superb pieces of work. Now and then you will find a monograph of monumental worth. Such is the remarkable introduction to Stephens' admirable work on "Pleading," to which I have already called your attention.

That author's demonstration of the value of forms, and his comparison of the Roman civil law with the English common law, is the most carefully thought out and learned piece of legal writing I can think of at this moment. It is as great as it is brief.

Take part in politics. I know that it is an ordinary saying that a lawyer should leave politics alone. It is not true. What right have you, a member of the great profession which, more than all other forces combined, has established and defended liberty, to withdraw yourself from active participation in the sacred function of self-government? You have no such right.

Of course you should not make politics your profession. That is fatal to your success in the profession of the law. It is one profession or the other, one love or the other. But take part in your party's primaries. Make yourself so wise and useful that you will be an indispensable party counselor. By all means be a "factor" in your party.

As you value life itself, do not permit yourself ever to be made a lobbyist under the guise of general employment by a corporation or any other interest concerned in legislation. It is no doubt proper for a lawyer to make a legal argument before a legislative committee in behalf of clients. Nevertheless, I advise you not to do it. It is the first step toward the disreputable form of lobbying. There is, of course, perfectly proper and even necessary lobbying. But then you are a lawyer, are you not?

We all know instances of brilliant lawyers and powerful men who have thus sold their birthrights for messes of pottage. No matter how much you need money, never accept a retainer or fee of any kind from any corporation, person, or "interest" which really does not want your active service, but in that manner is purchasing your silence.

Accept no employment except real, genuine employment for actual, tangible, and honest work. Money obtained from any other kind of employment is a loss to you in every way, even financially.

Think daily of the nobility and dignity of your profession. Remember the great men that have adorned it and established the pillars of its glory. They were gentlemen, men of learning, of breeding, of honor as delicate as a woman's blush. Be you such, or leave the profession.

Keep in mind the lords of the bar. Resolve each morning when you awake that, to the utmost of your efforts, you will strive to be one of them—in learning full and thorough, in courtesy delicate, in courage fearless, in character spotless, in all things and at all seasons the true knight of Justice.

Finally, preserve your health, preserve your health, preserve your health. Work, work, work. Cling to the loftiest ideals of your profession which your mind can conceive. Do these; keep up your nerve; never despair; and success is certain, distinction probable, and greatness possible, according to your natural abilities.



VI

PUBLIC SPEAKING

"And the common people heard him gladly," for "he taught them as one having authority." These sentences reveal the very heart of effective speaking. Considered from the human view-point alone, the Son of Mary was the prince of speakers. He alone has delivered a perfect address—the Sermon on the Mount.

The two other speeches that approach it are Paul's appeal to the Athenians on Mars Hill, and the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. These have no tricks, no devices, no tinsel gilt. They do not attempt to "split the ears of the groundlings," and yet they are addressed to the commonest of the world's common people.

Imagination, reason, and that peculiar human quality in speech which defies analysis as much as the perfume of the rose, but which touches the heart and reaches the mind, are blended in each of these utterances in perfect proportion.

But, above all, each of these model speeches which the world has thus far produced teaches. They instruct. And, in doing this, they assert. The men who spoke them did not weaken them by suggesting a doubt of what they said. This is common to all great speeches.

Not one immortal utterance can be produced which contains such expressions as, "I may be wrong," or, "In my humble opinion," or, "In my judgment." The great speakers, in their highest moments, have always been so charged with aggressive conviction that they have announced their conclusions as ultimate truths. They have spoken as persons "having authority," and therefore "the common people have heard them gladly."

All of this means that the two indispensable requisites of speaking are, first, to have something to say, and, second, to say it as though you mean it. Of course one cannot have something really to say—a lesson to teach, a message to deliver—every fifteen minutes. Very well, then; until one does have something to say, let one hold one's peace.

Carlyle's idea is correct. He thought that no man has the right to speak until what he has to say is so ripe with meaning, and the season for his saying it is so compelling, that what he says will result in a deed—a thing accomplished now or afterwhile. In the prophetic old Scotchman's iron philosophy there was no room for anything but deeds.

If such instruction is needed; if a great movement requires the forming and constructive word to interpret it and give it direction; if a movement in a wrong direction needs halting and turning to its proper course; if a cause needs pleading; if a law needs interpretation; if anything really needs to be said—the occasion for the orator, in the large sense of that word, has arrived. Therefore when he speaks "the common people will hear him gladly"; they will hear him because he teaches, and does it "as one having authority."

Whenever a speaker fails to make his audience forget voice, gesture, and even the speaker himself; whenever he fails to make the listeners conscious only of the living truth he utters, he has failed in his speech itself, which then has no other reason for having been delivered than a play or any other form of entertainment.

Very few of the great orators have had loud voices, or, if they did have them, they did not employ them. I am told that Wendell Phillips always spoke in a conversational tone, and yet he was able to make an audience of many thousands hear distinctly; and Phillips was one of the greatest speakers America has produced.

It is probable that no man ever lived who had a more sensuous effect upon his hearers than Ingersoll. In a literal and a physical sense he charmed them. I never heard him talk in a loud voice. There was no "bell-like" quality. It was not an "organ-like" voice.

The greatest feat of modern speech, in its immediate effect, was Henry Ward Beecher's speech to the Liverpool mob. A gentleman who heard that speech told me that, notwithstanding the pandemonium that reigned around him, Beecher did not shout, nor speak at the top of his voice, a single time during that terrible four hours.

It is true that AEschines spoke of Demosthenes' delivery of his "Oration on the Crown" as having the ferocity of a wild beast. I do not see how that can be, however, because Demosthenes selected Isaeus as his teacher for the reason that Isaeus was "business-like" in method.

This, however, is common to the voices of nearly all great speakers; they have a peculiar power of penetration that carries them much farther than the shout and halloo of the loudest-voiced person. They have, too, a singularly touching and tender quality, which, in a sensuous way, captivates and holds the hearers. James Whitcomb Riley has this quality in his voice when reciting. Edwin Booth had it. All great actors have it. Every true orator has it. It touches you strangely, thrills you, affects you much as music does.

It is a remarkable thing that there is neither wit nor humor in any of the immortal speeches that have fallen from the lips of man. To find a joke in Webster would be an offense. The only things which Ingersoll wrote that will live are his oration at his brother's grave and his famous "The Past Rises before Me like a Dream." But in neither of these productions of this genius of jesters is there a single trace of wit.

There is not a funny sally in all Burke's speeches. Lincoln's Gettysburg address, his first and second inaugurals, his speech beginning the Douglas campaign, and his Cooper Union address in New York, are perhaps the only utterances of his that will endure.

Yet this greatest of story-tellers since AEsop did not deface one of these great deliverances with story or any form of humor.

The reason for this is found in the whole tendency of human thought and feeling—in the whole melancholy history of the race—where tears and grief, the hard seriousness of life and the terrible and speedy certainty of our common fate of suffering and of death, make somber the master-cord of existence. And the great orator must reflect the deeper soul of his hearers.

So all the immortal things are serious, even sad.

It is so with speech—I mean the speech that affects the convictions and understanding of men. I am excluding now that form of speech which belongs to the same class, though not of so high an order, as the theatrical exhibition.

Excepting only Lincoln, the Middle West has produced no greater man than Oliver P. Morton; and few men in our history have had greater power upon an audience both in the immediate and permanent effect of his speeches than did Indiana's great Senator. It is related of him that while a very young man he made a speech so rich in humor and scintillant of wit that it attracted the attention of the whole commonwealth.

Morton, however, was not pleased or flattered. He was alarmed. He feared that what he knew to be his weighty abilities would be held lightly by his fellow citizens. From that time on this Cromwell of the forum never "told a story" or attempted to amuse his hearers in any way.

Of course, if your mental armory is naturally heavily stocked with the various forms of fun, you are not to be blamed for employing the weapons with which Nature has equipped you and which Nature has peculiarly fitted you to use—although Morton deliberately let them rust. But, generally speaking, it is a distinct descent from the high plane of your address to excite the laughter of your audience. When you do so, you confess that you are not able to hold the attention of your hearers by the sustained and unbroken strength of your argument. You admit that you are either so dull in your thought or indifferent in your convictions that you know you are wearying your auditors and must rest them by some mental diversion.

Where there is an earnestness of thought (and earnestness is only another name for seriousness) there will always be the same quality in manner—an impressiveness in bearing and delivery. This is inconsistent with merriment of delivery, which robs speech of a certain weight and intrinsic worth. It is also inconsistent with the voice of storm and the hurricane manner.

And men in deadly earnest do not talk loudly. It has been my fortune to see men angry and aroused to the point of killing; they were intense, but quiet. I have also seen that bravado and drunken boisterousness which thought it imitated, and meant to imitate, genuine rage; it was always strident and violent, never dangerous, never sincere. The same thing is true in speech.

There have only been two or three roarers in effective oratory—Mirabeau, by all accounts (though anything can be forgiven a man who can make such speeches as the great Frenchman made), and Demosthenes, if AEschines is to be believed, which I think he is not to be in this particular. He was only excusing his own defeat, and he had to attribute it to delivery. (I think any unprejudiced mind will agree that AEschines made the better argument.) All the other great speakers have, even in their most intense passages, and in situations where life and death were involved, been comparatively quiet so far as mere volume of sound is concerned.

I remember, as if it were yesterday, the first great speaker I ever heard. It was Robert G. Ingersoll, delivering a lecture in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1884. He had an audience which would have inspired eloquence in almost any breast. He came on the stage alone, and was very carefully, even elegantly attired, to the smallest item of his grooming.

His address was in manuscript, and imperfectly committed to memory. He laid it down on a little table at the back of the stage (returning to it occasionally to refresh his memory), and then, in a very natural and matter-of-fact way, walked to the footlights, and, looking the audience frankly in the eyes, began without an instant's hesitation, and in a voice precisely as if he were talking to a friend.

But he was as dramatic at his climaxes as Edwin Booth ever was in Hamlet. His face paled, or seemed to pale; his hands clinched with a desperate energy, and the whole attitude of the man was that of one in awful wrath. Yet his voice was not raised above the common current of the evening's address—if anything, it was lower. While the mature mind cannot endure Ingersoll's rhetoric, it must be acknowledged that his manner of delivery (except when his levity made him coarse) was nearly equal to that of Wendell Phillips. Still, in his intense passages Ingersoll was almost fiercely earnest. And Plutarch tells us that Cicero's friends feared he would kill himself by bursting a blood-vessel, with such intense energy did he speak.

Both of these men had that instinctive taste of the great speaker which Shakespeare has described better than any one else in literature, when he makes Hamlet tell the players not to "mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much—your hand thus: but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it."

When I was a very young boy I saw a fist-fight which impressed me as powerfully as any lesson I ever learned at school. An overtall and powerful man, about forty years old, had become angry at a medium-sized but very compact man of about the same age. As his passion increased his violence grew, until finally he was shouting his denunciations. The little man stood quietly alert.

Finally, with a great volume of sound, the big man rushed upon the little one with arms swinging in the air, and I looked with interest and curiosity to see the smaller man either run or be demolished. He did neither. His fists were raised quickly but intensely before him, and when the big man was almost upon him, it seemed to me that his right hand did not shoot out farther than ten or twelve inches; but it did shoot out, and the result was as if the big man had been shot, sure enough.

He fell like a slaughtered ox, but rose and came on again, only again to be knocked down. This continued for three or four times, for the giant was "game"; but finally he was "thrashed to a standstill," as the expression has it.

It was a great lesson in life and a great lesson in speaking, which is only a phase of life. The victor came to the point. He did not dissipate his energies. It is so in the manner of speaking. The greatest contrast to the perfect method of Ingersoll which I ever beheld in a man of equal eminence was in the delivery of a lecture by Joseph Cook.

He came on the stage with ostentatious impressiveness. He sat some time before he was introduced, seeming vast and overpowering—a very Matterhorn of consequence. After introduction he stood with one hand thrust in the breast of his tightly buttoned frock coat, and looked tremendously all over the audience for perhaps an entire minute. Everybody was awed; he looked so great. We all said to ourselves, "What a mighty man this is!"

And when that effect had been produced upon us, the first and great point of effectiveness had been destroyed: the speaker had made us think about himself, his manner, his appearance, his personality. All the evening we had to wade through that slough, trying to follow his thought. And this reminds me of a saying of one of the most astute politicians and most capable public men of recent development:

"The surest sign that a man is not great is that he strives to look great."

I think that the best speech I ever heard for obedience to the rules of art was an address of about ten minutes by a young Salvation Army officer on the streets of Chicago. I listened with amazement. He was perhaps twenty-three years of age, with delicate, clear-cut features, sensitive mouth, and marvelously intelligent eyes. I was just passing the group as he stepped into the circle that always surrounds these noisy but sincere enthusiasts.

He took off his cap, and in a low, perfectly natural, and very sweet voice, speaking exactly as though he were having a conversation with his most confidential friend, he began: "You will admit, my friends, that human happiness is the problem of human life." And from this striking sentence he went on to another equally moving, showing, of course, that happiness could not be secured by traveling any of the usual roads, but only the straight and narrow path which the Master has marked out.

It was as simple as it was sincere. And it was as conversational as it was quiet. Before he had finished, his audience had gathered into itself every pedestrian who passed during his discourse—business man, professional man, working man, or what not.

The fight above described suggests the key to the matter as well as the manner of speaking. The American audience properly demands, above everything else, that the speaker get to the point. Our lives are so rapid; the telephone, telegraph, and all the instantaneous agencies of our neurotically swift civilization have made us so quick in seeing through propositions; a hundred years of universal education have produced a mentality so electric in its rapidity, that effective oratory has been revolutionized within a decade.

Burke would not be tolerated now. It is doubtful, even, if Webster would. The public has already tired of the lilt of Ingersoll's redundant rhetoric, pleasing as was its music. The effective speech to-day is a statement of conclusions.

The listeners, with a celerity inconceivable, sum up the argument on either side of the proposition you announce, and accept or reject it by a process of unconscious mental cerebration.

The most successful speech of to-day would be one of Emerson's essays rearranged in logical order—if such a thing were possible. Therefore, in matter, the statement is the form of address now most effective. Recall the opinion of Senator McDonald—the greatest natural lawyer I ever knew—that the best argument in a case always is the statement of the case.

In form, the sentences should be short; in language, the words should be as largely as possible Anglo-Saxon. These are the words of the people you address, therefore they are most influential with them. Also, therefore, your best method of getting Anglo-Saxon is to mingle with and talk with the common people. The next best method is to read the Bible, the King James translation of which is undoubtedly the purest fountain of English that flows in all the world of our literature.

What nonsense the repeated statement that public speaking has had its day, that the newspaper has taken its place, and all the rest of that kind of talk. Public speaking will never decline until men cease to have ears to hear. How hard it is to read a speech; how delightful to listen!

Speaking is Nature's choicest method of instruction.

It begins with mother to child; it continues with teacher to pupil; it continues still in lecturer or professor to his student (for the universities are all going back to the old oral method of instruction); and it still continues in all the forms of effective human communication.

The newspapers are a marvelous influence, but they are not everything, and they do not supply everything. For example, it is commonly supposed that they, absolutely and exclusively, mold and control public opinion. But they do not. When all has been said, the most powerful public opinion, after all, is that from-mouth-to-mouth public opinion—that living, moving opinion—which spreads from neighbor to neighbor, and has fused into it the vitality of the personality of nearly every man—yes, and woman; don't forget that—in the whole community.

And the philosophy which underlies this is what makes public speaking immortal. The Master understood this very well, and that is why He chose to speak by word of mouth rather than by writing epistles. The Saviour never wrote a single epistle—no, not even a single word. He spoke His message.

Think of a gospel announced to the world in cold type! Absurd, is it not? It may be repeated in that form, but its initial power must come from the spoken word and vital personality of its author. But Christ's addresses were not "extemporaneous." All His life He had been preparing His few sermons—lessons.

The great speakers to whom I have listened have confirmed certain conclusions upon the subject of speaking at which I arrived while in college. It seemed to me that the college method of speaking was wrong because it was irrational—that the studied gestures, the "cultivated" voice, the staccato impressiveness, were all artificial devices to attract the attention of an audience to these things, instead of to the thought of the address.