You have just been admitted to the privileges of this institution, and
are about to enter here upon a course of study. The occasion is one
eminently suited for serious reflection. At the close of a school career
it is difficult not to reflect. Thoughts upon one's course will, at such
a time, force themselves upon us. But then it is too late. The good we
might have achieved, is beyond our grasp, and its contemplation is
profitable only as a legitimate topic of contrition. How much wiser and
more profitable to anticipate the serious judgment which sooner or later
we must pass upon our actions, and so to shape our conduct in advance,
that the retrospect, when it comes, may be a source of joy and
congratulation, rather than of shame and repentance. How much wiser to
direct our bark to some definite and well selected channel, than to
float at random along the current of events, the sport of every idle
wave. Men are divided into two classes,--those who control their own
destiny, doing what they mean to do, living according to a plan which
they prefer and prepare, and those who are controlled by circumstances,
who have a vague purpose of doing something or being somebody in the
world, but leave the means to chance. The season of youth generally
determines to which of these classes you will ultimately belong. It is
here, at school, that you decide whether, when you come to man's estate,
you will be a governing man, or whether you will be a mere aimless
driveller. Those who at the beginning of a course in school make to
themselves a distinct aim, towards which day after day they work their
course, undiscouraged by defeat, unseduced by ease or the temptation of
a temporary pleasure, not only win the immediate objects of pursuit, but
gain for themselves those habits of aiming, of perseverance, of
self-control, which will make them hereafter controlling and governing
men. Those, on the contrary, who enter upon an academic career with an
indefinite purpose of studying after a fashion, whenever it is not too
hot, or too cold, or the lessons are not too hard, or there is nothing
special going on to distract the attention, or who are content to swim
along lazily with the multitude, trusting to the good-nature of the
teacher, to an occasional deception, or to the general chapter of
accidents, for escape from censure, and for such an amount of
proficiency as on the whole will pass muster with friends or the
public,--depend upon it, such youths are doomed, inevitably doomed, all
their days, to be nobodies, or worse.
Let me, then, my young friend, as preliminary to your entering upon the
duties before you, call to your mind some of those things, which, as an
intelligent and responsible being, you should deliberately aim to follow
or to avoid while in this school. In the counsels which I am going to
give you, I shall make no attempt to say what is new or striking. My aim
will be rather to recall to your memory some few of those familiar
maxims, in which you have been, I dare say, often instructed elsewhere.
1. First of all, remember that men always, by a necessary law, fall
below the point at which they aim. You well understand that if a
projectile be hurled in the direct line of any elevated object, the
force of gravity will cause the projectile to deflect from the line of
direction, and this deflection and curvature will be great in proportion
to the distance of the object to be reached. Hence, in gunnery, the
skilful marksman invariably takes aim above the point which he expects
to hit. At certain distances, he will aim 45 deg. above the horizon at
what is really but 30 deg. above it. So, in moral subjects, there is
unfortunately a native and universal tendency downwards, which deflects
us out of the line in which good resolutions would propel us. You aim to
be distinguished, and you turn out only meritorious. You aim to be
meritorious, and you fall into the multitude. You are content with being
of the multitude, and you fall out of your class entirely. So also, as
in physical projectiles, the extent of your departure from the right
line is measured by the distance of the objects at which you aim. You
resolve to avoid absolutely and entirely certain practices for a day or
a week, and you can perhaps keep very close to the mark. But who can
hold himself up to an exact fulfilment of his intentions for a whole
term? I do not wish to discourage you. The drift of my argument is, not
that you should make no aim, but that you should fix your aim _high_,
and that you should then keep yourself up to your good resolutions, as
long and as closely as you possibly can.
2. In the next place, remember that no excellence is ever attained
without self-denial. Wisdom's ways are indeed ways of pleasantness. The
satisfaction of having done well and nobly is of a certain ravishing
kind, far surpassing other enjoyments. But to obtain this high and
satisfying pleasure, many minor and incompatible pleasures must be
foregone. You cannot have the pleasure of being a first-rate scholar,
and at the same time have your full swing of fun. I am not opposed to
fun. I like it myself. No one enjoys it more. Nor do I think the
exercise and enjoyment of it incompatible with the highest scholastic
excellence. But there is a place for all things, and school is not the
place for fun. If you enjoy in moderation out of school the relaxation
and refreshment which jokes, wit, and pleasantry give, you will be all
the more likely to grapple successfully with the serious employments
which await you here. Still do not forget that your employments here are
serious. Study is a sober business. If you would acquire really useful
knowledge, you must be willing to work. You must make up your mind to
say "no" to the thousand opportunities and temptations to frivolous
behavior that will beset you in school. You must not be content with
being studious and orderly merely when the eye of authority is upon you.
This is to be simply an eye-servant and a hypocrite. To have a little
pleasantry in the school-room, to perpetrate or to join in some witty
practical joke, may seem to you comparatively harmless. So it would be
but for its expense. You buy it at the cost of benefits which no money
can measure, and no future time can replace. There are seasons of the
year when the farmer may indulge in relaxation,--may go abroad on
excursions of pleasure, or may saunter away the time in comparative
idleness at home. But in the few precious weeks of seedtime, every day,
every hour is of moment. This is your seedtime. Every hour of
school-time that you waste in trifling is an injury and a loss to your
future. Remember, then, that you cannot reach high excellence in school,
or that pure and noble enjoyment, which is its exceeding great reward,
without self-denial. Resolve, therefore, here and now, steadfastly,
immovably, to say "no" to everything in school, no matter how innocent
in itself, which shall interfere with the progress of study for a single
moment. If you make such a fixed resolution, and live up to it, you will
soon be surprised to find how easy and pleasant the discipline of school
has become.
3. Among the mischievous fallacies of young persons at school, I know
none that work more to their own disadvantage than the opinion that a
particular teacher is prejudiced against them. Against this feeling it
seems impossible to reason. When once scholars have it fairly in their
heads that a certain teacher is partial, in whatever relates to their
standing, I have been almost forced to the conclusion that it is best
not to attempt reasoning with them. Under such feelings, indeed, by a
singular freak of human nature, scholars are often driven to do, in
sheer bravado or defiance, the very things which they imagine to be
unjustly imputed to them. Allow me, my young friend, to ask you candidly
and in all seriousness to turn this matter over in your own mind. What
adequate motive can you imagine for a teacher's marking you otherwise
than impartially? Every teacher has an interest in having as many high
marks and as few demerits under his signature as possible. It is not to
his credit that he should be unable to maintain order without blackening
his roll with bad marks. A class roll filled with 0's is not the kind of
evidence a teacher covets as to his skill in teaching. Notice the
intercourse between the teachers and those scholars who are admitted on
all hands to be strictly and conscientiously correct in their behavior.
See what a pleasure it affords the instructor to have to deal with such
pupils. See what a satisfaction the teacher experiences when, at the
close of the day, there is not a demerit mark on his book. Judge, then,
whether it is not likely to be a self-denial and a cross to him, when a
sense of duty compels him to do otherwise. Be slow, therefore, to impute
bad marks to injustice, or ill nature. No man of course is infallible,
and teachers make mistakes as well as other people. But the temptations
to do intentional wrong are, in this case, all the other way.
4. Closely connected with the habit just mentioned is the disposition to
neglect particular branches of study. From disliking a teacher, the
transition is easy to a dislike for his department. Others again,
without any personal feeling in the case, think that they have a natural
fitness for one class of studies, and an equally natural _un_-fitness
for another class. So they content themselves with proficiency in that
in which they already excel, and neglect that in which they are
deficient, and which therefore they find difficult. Is this wise? The
branches which you find difficult, are precisely those in which you need
an instructor. Besides, the object of education is to develop equally
and harmoniously all your faculties. If the memory, the reasoning
faculty, the imagination, or any one power of the mind, is active far
beyond the other powers, that surely is no reason for giving additional
stimulus and growth in that direction. On the contrary, bend your main
energies towards bringing forward your other faculties to an equal
development. If you have a natural or acquired preference for
mathematics, and a dislike for languages, the former study will take
care of itself: bend all your energies to the latter. So, if languages
are your choice, and mathematical study your aversion, take hold of the
odious task with steady and sturdy endeavor, and you will soon convert
it into a pleasure. The same is true of grammar, of geography, of
history, of composition, of rhetoric, of mental and moral science, of
elocution,--of every branch. If you are wise, you will give your chief
attention in school to those branches for which you feel the least
inclination, and in which you find it most difficult to excel. You
should do so, because, in the first place, this failure and
disinclination, in nine cases out of ten, grow out of defective
training heretofore, and not from any defect in your mental
constitution; and, secondly, if your natural constitution should be, as
in some cases it is, one-sided and exceptional, your aim should be to
correct and cure, not to aggravate, the defects of nature. This advice,
you will observe, relates to your course in school, not to your choice
of a profession in life. When your career in school is finished, and you
are about to select a profession, follow by all means the bent of your
genius. Do that for which you have the greatest natural or acquired
aptitude. But here, the case is different. Your aim in school is to
develop your powers,--to grow into an accomplished and capable man,--to
acquire complete command of all the mental resources God has given you.
5. There is a practice, common to school-life everywhere, known by the
not very dignified name of cheating. There is, I fear, among young
people generally, while at school, an erroneous and mischievous state of
opinion on this subject. Deception in regard to your lessons is not
viewed, as it should be, in the light of a serious moral delinquency. An
ingenuous youth, who would scorn to steal, and scorn to lie anywhere
else than at school, makes no scruple to deceive a teacher. Is honesty a
thing of place and time? I do not say, I would not trust at my
money-drawer the boy who has been cheating at his lessons, because a boy
may have been led into the latter delinquency by a false notion of
right, which as yet has not affected his integrity in matters of
business. But this I do say. Cheating at school blunts the moral sense;
it impairs the sense of personal honor; it breaks down the outworks of
integrity; it leads by direct and easy steps to that grosser cheating
which ends in the penitentiary.
On this subject, I once had a most painful experience. A boy left school
with as fair a character for honesty as many others against whom nothing
can be said except that they do sometimes practise deceit in regard to
their lessons. I really believed him to be an honest boy, and
recommended him as such. By means of the recommendation, he obtained in
a large store a responsible post connected with the receipt and payment
of money. His employer was pleased with his abilities, and disposed to
give him rapid promotion. After a few months, I inquired after him, and
found that he had been detected in forcing his balances! I do verily
believe, the dishonest purpose, which led to this pecuniary fraud, grew
directly out of a facility at deception acquired at school. He had
cheated his teacher; he had cheated his father; he had obtained a
fictitious average; he had gained a standing and credit in school not
justly his due; why should he not exercise the same ingenuity in
improving his pecuniary resources?
Independently of the moral effect of these deceptive practices upon your
own character, is there not in the acts themselves an inherent meanness
and baseness, from which a pure-minded youth would instinctively recoil?
Is there not something false and rotten in the prevailing sentiment on
this subject among young persons at school? When by some convenient
fiction you reach a higher standard than your merits entitle you to, is
it not so far forth at the expense of some more conscientious
competitor? And, after all, when you deceive a teacher into the belief
that you are studying when you are not, that you know a thing when you
do not know it, that you wrote a composition, or executed a drawing,
which was done by some one else,--whom do you cheat but yourself? You
may deceive the teacher, but the loss is yours.
6. If there could be such a thing as an innocent crime, I would say it
was that of talking in school. There can hardly be named a more signal
instance of an act so perfectly innocent in itself, becoming so
seriously blame-worthy purely and solely by circumstances. I believe I
express the common opinion of all who have had any experience in the
matter, when I say that three fourths of all the intentional disorder,
and at least nine tenths of all the actual interruptions to study, grow
out of the practice of unlicensed talking. And yet this is the very last
thing which young persons will admit into their serious, practical
convictions as being an evil and a wrong. They may admit that they get
bad marks by it; that it brings them into trouble; but that it is really
an evil, meriting the strictures with which the teacher visits it, is
more than they believe. What deceives them is this. They call to mind
the events of a particular hour. There was during that hour, according
to their recollection, a general attention to study, and no special
disorder; perhaps some three or four of the pupils noted for talking.
This talking, too, may have been about the lesson, or at all events was
not such as to distract very perceptibly the current of instruction.
Hence the inference that a moderate amount of talking, such as that was,
is perfectly consistent with decorum and progress.
So it is. But what is to secure this moderate amount? What right have
you to talk that is not enjoyed by your neighbor? If one may talk, so
may all; if one does it, unchecked, so will all, as you very well know.
How is the teacher to know whether you are talking about the lesson, or
about the last cricket-match?
This is a perfectly plain question, and I press you to an answer. There
is no practical medium between unlimited license to talk--against which
you would yourself be the first to protest--and an entire prohibition. I
put it to your conscience, whether you do not believe, were this rule
strictly and in good faith observed, that the interests of the school,
and your own interest, comfort, and honor, would be greatly promoted? Is
the inconvenience which this rule imposes so great, or your habit of
self-indulgence so strong, that you cannot, or will not, forego a slight
temporary gratification for so substantial and lasting a benefit?
7. You will avoid much of the difficulty of observing this rule, if you
give heed to the next counsel which I have now to give, and that is,
that you economize carefully your time in school. On this point some
excellent and conscientious pupils occasionally err. They are very
faithful in home preparation; very attentive at lectures; very
industrious in discharging any set duty. But they have not yet learned
the true secret of all economy, whether of time, money, or any other
good,--namely, the knowing how to use well the odds and ends. Take care
of the pence, was Franklin's motto. If you once have the secret of
occupying usefully, in studious preparation, or in wise repetition, all
those little intervals of interrupted instruction, which necessarily
occur throughout the day, you will in the first place almost insure for
yourself an entire freedom from demerit marks of every kind; you will
secondly add materially to your intellectual progress; and, lastly, you
will acquire a habit of the utmost value in every station and walk in
life; and, depend upon it, the habits you acquire at school, are of all
your acquisitions by far the most important.
8. But I would be false to my most settled convictions, were I to stop
here. I have been a teacher of the young nearly all my life, and as the
result of such a life-long professional experience, I have no conviction
more abiding than this, that the _fear of God is the beginning of
knowledge_. I believe that mental growth is just as directly the gift of
God as bodily growth; that the healthy action of the mind is as much
dependent on his good pleasure as the healthy action of the bodily
functions. God has not only made one mind superior to another, but of
two minds naturally equal, he can, at his sovereign pleasure, make one
grow and expand more rapidly than another. As he can give symmetry and
strength to your limbs, and clothe your features with beauty and grace,
so he can make you quick of apprehension, clear of discernment, ready
and tenacious to remember, delicate in your appreciation of what is
beautiful. While, therefore, you are diligent in your studies, remember
that the reward of your labor, after all, is the gift of God. You will
neglect one essential means of intellectual progress, if you neglect
prayer. I mean, not prayer in general, but specific prayer for God's
blessing on your studies; prayer that God will bless your efforts to
learn. Keep your mind, while engaged in study, in a habitual state of
expectancy, especially when grappling with intellectual difficulties, as
if inwardly looking up for help to that all-knowing Spirit, who alone,
of all beings, acts directly on our spirits. I cannot doubt that one who
studies in such a frame of mind, will advance in his intellectual
progress more rapidly for it. I have a most assured conviction that
prayer is a direct and important means of mental growth. Not only will
the fear of God restrain you from many of the usual hindrances to study,
of which I have already spoken, but a truly devout spirit is the very
best state of mind for learning, even for learning purely intellectual
truth.
There are other and higher motives, why you should cultivate,
habitually, the fear of God. Of these motives, it is not my office to
speak now. They are often pressed upon your attention. The one point to
which I direct you now, is the importance of such a state of mind to
your making the best, and surest, and noblest kind of mental growth. If
you would grow rapidly in knowledge, grow symmetrically and beautifully,
with all your faculties in harmonious preparation and dependence, fear
God. Keep your spirit in habitual intercourse and communion with that
Almighty Spirit who is the source of all knowledge and wisdom. In the
school-room, at your desk, in your recitations, and your exercises of
every kind, let the thought that the eye of a loving Father is upon you,
diffuse habitually a calm and sweet peace through your spirit, and
depend upon it, you will not find your mental vision dimmed by moving in
so pure and serene an atmosphere. There are no quickeners to knowledge
equal to love, reverence, and earnest prayer.
Let me, in conclusion, tender you my best wishes for your success in the
career now before you. That success depends, in no small degree, upon
the feeling and spirit with which you begin. Only summon up your mind to
a serious and determined resolution at the outset; aim high; do not
flinch at self-denial; rise above the unworthy suspicion that this or
that teacher is unfair to you; resist the disposition to shirk those
studies that you find disagreeable or difficult; keep clear of every
kind and degree of trickery; come straight up to a full and strict
compliance with every rule; lay your plans to occupy usefully each
golden moment of leisure; cultivate a constant sense of dependence upon
God for success in study: and your success will be as certain as is the
wish for it, which I once more, most respectfully and affectionately,
tender you.
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