_Concerning His Education and His Profession_
My Dear Nephew:--I have considered your request from all sides, and have
resolved to disappoint you. This seems to me the kindest thing I can do
under the circumstances.
You have gone through two years of college life, and I am sure you are
not an ignoramus. Most of the great men of the world's history have
enjoyed no fuller educational advantages. To lend you money to finish
the college course, would be to help you to start life at the age of
twenty-two under the burden of debt. If you are determined to finish a
college course, and feel that only by so doing will you equip yourself
for the duties of life, I would advise you to drop out for a year and
teach, or go into any kind of work which will enable you to earn enough
to proceed with your studies. However hard and however disappointing
this advice seems to you, I know it suggests a course which will do more
for your character than all the money I could lend you.
Aside from the fact that you would begin life with a debt, is the
possibility of your contracting the debt habit.
One man in a thousand who borrows money to help himself along in early
life is benefited by it.
The other 999 are harmed.
To do anything on another's money is to lean on the shoulder of another
instead of walking upright. It is not good calisthenic exercise.
A few years ago I would have acceded to your request.
But each year I live I realize more and more that lending money is the
last method to be used in helping people to better themselves. In almost
every case where I have lent money, I have lived to regret it. Not
because I lost my money (which has usually been the fact), but because
I lost respect for my friends.
I remember the case of a young newspaper man and author, who came to me
for the loan of five dollars. I had never seen him before, but I knew
his brother, a brilliant playwright, in a social way.
The young man told me he had met with a series of disasters on the
voyage to New York, and was stranded there absolutely penniless,
although money would come at almost any hour from his brother.
Besides this, he showed me letters from editors who had taken work which
would be paid for on publication.
"I do not know any one here," the young man said, "and to-day, when I
used my last twenty-five cents, I thought of you in desperation.
"Your acquaintance with my brother would serve as an introduction, I
felt, and I was confident you would realize my straits when I told you
my errand."
Of course I lent the young man five dollars. "I am sure it must be a
great humiliation for you to ask for this," I said, "and I am certain
you will repay it, though many former experiences have made me question
the memory of friends and strangers to whom I have been of similar
assistance."
One week later the young man called to tell me he had not been able to
do more than keep himself sustained at lunch-counters since he called,
but hoped soon to obtain a position on a daily newspaper.
That was ten years ago. The young man sat in an orchestra chair the
other night at the theatre directly in front of me, and his attire was
faultlessly up to date. From the costume of his companion, I should
judge their carriage waited outside.
The young man did not seem to recognize me, and no doubt the incident I
mention has escaped his memory.
In all probability I was but one of a score of people who helped him
with small loans. Had the young man had been forced to appeal to the
society organized in every city for aiding the deserving poor, by being
sent disappointed from my door, the ordeal would have so hurt his pride,
that he might not have become the professional borrower he undoubtedly
is.
I could relate innumerable cases of a similar nature. One man, who was a
fashionable teacher of French among the millionaires of New York for
several seasons, appealed to me at a time of year when all his patrons
were out of the city for a loan to enable him to give his wife medical
treatment.
He was to repay it in the autumn. Instead, he came to me then with a
much more distressing story of immediate need and seeming proof of money
coming to him in a few months. To my chagrin, the loan I advanced was
employed in giving a feast to friends at his daughter's wedding, after
which he obliterated himself from my vision.
Financial aid lent a woman who soon afterward circled Europe, brought no
reimbursement. Her handsomely engraved card, with the "Russell Square
Hotel, London," as address, reached me instead of the interest money
which perhaps paid the engraver.
Money lent a young man to start a small business, was used for his
wedding expenses, and an interval of five years brings no word from him.
Poor and despicable beings indeed, become the victims of the borrowing
habit. It is the shattered faith in humanity, and the heart hurts that I
regret, rather than the loss of what can be replaced. I tell you these
incidents that you may realize how I have come to regard money-lending,
as a species of unkindness to a friend or relative.
It is only one step removed from giving a sick or overtaxed man or woman
a morphine powder.
Sleep and rest ensue, but ten to one the habit is formed for life.
The happy experiences of my life in money-lending, have been two
instances where I offered loans which were not asked, and which proved
to be bridges over the chasm of temporary misfortune, to the success
awaiting a worthy woman and man. The really deserving rarely ask for
loans.
I can imagine with what pleasure you would take a cheque from this
letter, for the amount which would carry you through college.
Yet when you had finished your course, you would find so many things you
wanted to do, and must do, the debt would become too heavy to lift, save
by borrowing from some one else.
If not that, then you would impose upon the fact of our relationship,
and on your belief that I had plenty of means without the amount you
owed me: and so you would join the great army of good-for-nothings in
the world.
There is one thing you must always remember:
No matter how close the blood tie between two beings, even twins, each
soul comes into the world alone, and with a separate life destiny to
work out.
If I have worked out my destiny to financial independence, that does
not entitle you to a share of it. If it seems best for me to aid you, it
is not because a blood tie makes it a duty. I grow to believe there is a
sort of curse on money which is not earned, even when it is bestowed by
father, on son or daughter.
It cripples individual development. Only when money is earned is it
blest.
Regarding your future profession, I cannot agree with your idea that
because you feel no particular love for any one calling, and have a
halfway tendency toward several, that you will never be a success. Great
geniuses are often consumed with a passion for some one line of study or
employment, but there have been many great men who did not know what
they were fitted to do until accident or necessity gave them an
opportunity.
Success means simply concentration and perseverance.
Whether you decide to be a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor, or a merchant,
the one thing to do is to fix all your mental powers upon the goal you
select, and then call all the forces from within and from without, to
aid you to reach it.
It would, of course, be folly for you to select a profession which
requires special talent. No matter how you might concentrate and apply
yourself, you could never be a great poet, a great artist, or a great
musician.
You have not the creative genius.
But law, medicine, mechanics, or mercantile matters, with your good
brain and fair education, you could conquer.
You say you vacillate from one to another, like the wind which goes to
the four points of the compass in twenty-four hours.
But you are very young, and this should not discourage you.
It would be well to think the four vocations over quietly, when alone,
and sit down by yourself early in the morning asking for guidance. Then,
when you feel you have made a decision, let nothing turn you from it.
Direct all your studies and thoughts to further that decision.
Think of yourself as achieving the very highest success in your chosen
field, and work for that end.
You cannot fail.
If you desire light from without upon the best path to pursue, I would
advise you to find a good phrenologist, and have a careful reading made
of your head. Its formation and the development of its organs would
indicate in what direction lay your greatest strength, and where you
needed to be especially watchful.
But remember if your phrenologist tells you that you have a weak will,
it does not mean that you must necessarily _always_ have a weak will. It
means that you are to strengthen it, by concentration. There is a great
truth underlying phrenology, palmistry, and astrology; but it is
ridiculous to accept their verdicts as final and unchangeable, and it is
unwise to ignore the good they may do, rightly applied and understood.
I recall the fact that you were born in early June. I know enough about
the influence of the planets upon a child born at that period to assert
that you are particularly inclined to a Gemini nature--the twin nature,
which wants to do two things at one time. You want to stay in and go
out, to read a book and play tennis, to swim and sit on the sand. Later
in life, you will want to remain single and marry, and travel and remain
at home, unless you begin _now_ to select one course of the two which
are for ever presenting themselves to you, in small and large matters.
Whenever you feel yourself vacillating between two impulses, take
yourself at once in hand, decide upon the preferable course, and go
ahead. Dominate your astrological tendencies, do not be dominated by
them. Dominate your weaknesses as exhibited by your phrenological chart,
and build up the brain cells which need strengthening, and lessen the
power of the undesirable qualities by giving them no food or indulgence.
It is a great thing to understand yourself as you are, and then to go
ahead and make yourself what you desire to be.
When a carpenter starts to build a house, he knows just what tools and
what materials to work with are his. If there is a broken implement, he
replaces it with another, and if he is short of material he supplies it.
But young men set forth to make futures and fortunes, with no knowledge
of their own equipment.
They do not know their own strongest or weakest traits, and are
unprepared for the temptations and obstacles that await them.
I would advise you to call in the aid of all the occult sciences, to
help you in forming an estimate of your own higher and lower tendencies,
and in deciding for what line of occupation you were best fitted. Then,
after you have compared the statistics so gathered with your own idea of
yourself, you should proceed to make your character what you wish it to
be.
This work will be ten thousand times more profitable to you than a mere
routine of college studies, gained by running in debt.
To know yourself is far better knowledge than to know Virgil. And to
make yourself is a million times better than to have any one else make
you.