and plainsmen when passions were aroused and blows had already been
struck. I have seen such a man put down, single-handed, by word of his
fearless authority, fights among a score of woodmen who had known
nothing but the rank vigor of their unruled male lives.
The man whose will and character has been tempered by this holy fire
takes on something of the suppleness, hardness, and firmness of steel,
of which a delicate blade will cut the grosser iron of which that
blade itself was a part before it was subjected to the refining
process that made it steel.
Some time ago I was privileged to read the letters that one of our
naval heroes had, when a young man, despatched home to his mother
during our civil war. He participated in two or three of our most
desperate fights. All of these letters showed him to have been--and,
what is better, to have remained--a "mother's own boy" as long as she
lived.
He never sailed far enough away to weaken that potent and sacred
power. It reached around the world. The years did not diminish it.
When her hair of brown had turned to white, he found that the
influence which to his boyhood and youth had been so delightful became
to his manhood uplifting and glorious.
And yet no buccaneer that rioted afloat with Morgan had courage more
ferocious. Yes, and, on the other hand, no Bayard "without fear and
without reproach"; no Sydney who, when dying, handed his canteen to a
wounded comrade that he might moisten his lips, while Sydney's own
were crackling with fever, was ever more tender or considerate.
What was it the expiring Nelson said when his decks ran blood, and
crimson victory placed upon his whitening brow laurels of triumph,
whose leaves were mingled with cypress? "Kiss me, Hardy," was what he
said. Strange words, were they not, for a scene of carnage? Yes, but
words which touched the hearts of the English people.
They showed that upon the mind of England's greatest captain of the
sea the tender influence of the old mother, and the old home in
distant England, survived all the variableness of his character, all
the supreme efforts of his career, and that a gentleness and an
almost womanly yearning for affection were the qualities that ruled
the soul of the most desperate ocean fighter the world had seen since
Drake. They showed that the heart of the sternest warrior may be
beautiful with the humanities. How does the old song go?--"The bravest
are the tenderest"--that is it.
So fear not that mother's influence will weaken you. It will do
nothing of the kind. It will strengthen you. It will make you want to
fight only for something worth fighting for. But when you fight for
that, it will make you fight to the death. And what is the use of
fighting at all unless it be to the death. A brawl is not conflict,
bravado is not bravery.
I know there is another side to this question. It has been recently
stated by a resourceful Oriental. He said that the influence of women
on the Occidental man is effeminizing our civilization. He declared
that the mother gives the boy his first training, teaches him to talk,
etc., which is natural and therefore right and proper.
But then, said our Asiatic critic, we give our boys to women
school-teachers, who educate them until they are ready for college,
and then, as soon as they are ready for college, they begin to "call
on the young women," and generally frequent the society of the softer
sex until the time arrives for them to marry.
So that, according to this Oriental, we are under the direct influence
of woman from the cradle to the grave; and he points out that
gradually (imperceptibly, perhaps, to our own eyes) an effeminizing
process occurs in mind and character. As a result of this, he
maintains, our men increasingly fear hardships and seek to avoid them;
and life and even personal appearance are given a value which is
absurd, considering the inevitableness of death in any event, the
perfectly unthinkable number of myriads of human beings who exist,
have existed, and will exist hereafter.
This philosopher of the East, therefore, claims that we will in the
end be no match at all for the Orientals, and that the yellow race,
which has been merely resting while we Caucasians have been having our
brief innings, is now to the bat again. And there was a lot more to
the same effect.
This is of course the Asiatic way of looking at things. There may be
something in what he says about the continuity of female influence
softening our Western civilization. Certainly the present war shows
that the Japanese women, who were only yesterday altogether Oriental
in habits and ideals, have produced a race of strong men, so far as
physical daring and hardihood is concerned. The influence of women on
these men ceased with childhood--even then it was a Spartan influence.
More than this, the Japanese generals and statesmen, nearly all of
whom are above sixty, were the product of Japanese civilization before
modern ideas had even been sown in the Island Empire. Oyama and
Kuroki, Ito and Katsura, and all the rest, are the offspring of purely
Asiatic conditions, uninfluenced in the slightest degree by Western
thought or custom; and yet the state of society which brought forth
these men is unfamiliar to American and European peoples.
But even if what this Oriental assailant of our customs terms the
overcharge of femininity in Occidental society does mellow us, it does
not follow that it weakens us. Anyhow it does not affect what I say
about the influence of the mother upon the purposes and "principles"
of young men. And, in any event, our Western civilization constitutes
those human conditions in which you, young man, must spend your life,
and you must be in harmony with it if you are going to accomplish
anything.
Don't try to be an Oriental in the midst of Occidental surroundings.
The yellow theory and the white theory of life must fight for the
mastery, and the one which is nearest the truth will prevail.
Meanwhile, stick to your own race and the ideals of it. I do not mean
that you should ignore any true thing you may learn from the East.
Welcome knowledge from every source. Light is light, no matter whence
it comes.
And this brings back to us the little mother and the old home. If she
wishes it, be her companion. In any event, make her your confidant.
For a young man there is no source of safety and wisdom so abundant,
pure, and unfailing as the making his mother his confessor. Tell her
everything. I mean just that, tell her literally everything.
Do not fear her reproof. Chemistry has no miracle a fraction as
wonderful as the patience and forgiveness of a mother for the
exasperations of her son. There is not a thing which you ought to do,
the telling of which to your mother will prevent your doing. And her
counsel to you will be golden upon those purely personal matters which
you could tell no one else, and which no one else could understand or
sympathize with.
Remember that she has the wisdom of instinct--a wisdom peculiarly
worldly and practical in its applicability to real things and real
situations. The advice of a wife in business affairs has this same
peculiarly valuable quality, quite beyond the strength of her or his
intellect or the reach of her abstract understanding.
It is the instinct to preserve the home nest which makes the business
advice of the wife to the husband so priceless; and it is this same
instinct exercising itself in another form--seeking to preserve the
offspring--which gives such shrewdness and depth to the counsel of
mother to son.
This making your mother your confessor will not only keep you out of
trouble, and give you light and direction along lines where you
otherwise will be as blind as a young puppy, but it is good for you in
a far more important way--a far profounder way. I have always been
impressed with the wonderful understanding of human nature and the
needs of it which the institution of the confessional in the Catholic
Church reveals. "No man liveth to himself alone."
For the ordinary human being there is no such thing as a secret.
The ordinary man who is compelled to keep everything to himself gets
morbid and suspicious. He broods over what he thinks he must not utter
to others. Not daring to talk with friends, he converses with himself.
Thus his sympathies narrow, and his vision grows not only feeble but
false. He gets the proportion of things sadly confused. It is not only
a relief, but a real benefit to most men and women to be able to
unburden their souls to some other human being whom they know to be
faithful.
And if this be the intellectual need, strong as nature itself, of
grown-up men and women, it is plain that the young man, whose
character is forming, requires the same thing a great deal more. Very
well. Your mother is the confessor, young man, whom Nature has given
you for this beautiful and saving purpose. Do not eat your heart out,
therefore, but frankly tell her your hopes, desires, offenses, plans.
Confide in her your good deeds and your bad. And she, who would give
her life for you, and count it the happiest thing she ever did if it
would only help you, will give you the very gold of wisdom, refined
and superrefined by the fires of that love which burn nowhere else in
the universe save in a mother's heart.
Of course I am talking now of the ordinary American mother, who is a
mother in all that the term implies. We all know that there are women
who have children without understanding at all--yes, or even caring at
all--what motherhood means; without understanding or caring what their
duties to their children mean.
As is always the case with the abnormal, these unfortunate types are
found at the social extremes; in the so-called "depths" and the
so-called "heights." There are women too vicious to make good mothers
and women too vain to make good mothers. But these are not numerous.
The mother this paper is dealing with is that angel in human form that
the ordinary American man knew in the old home when he was a boy; and
whether she be intellectual or not, educated or not, such mothers have
shaped the characters that have made the American people the noblest
force for good in all the world.
In her work, her prayers, her daily life, you will find the sources of
all that is self-sacrificing, prudent, patriotic, brave, and uplifting
in American character. It is the influence of the American mother that
has made the American Republic what it is; and it is in her heart
that our national ideals dwell.
"That is all right," said a practical-minded man, with a dash of
American humor in him, in the course of a conversation along this
line; "that is all right, and I think so, too," said he; "but where
does 'the old man' come in? What about the father?" And the question
is as sane as it is pat. Don't you neglect the father. He feeds you.
He clothes you. He is schooling you. It is to his brain and hand, and
the wisdom and skill of them, that you are indebted for the college
education you are going to get.
And by these tokens your father is a _man_, and a whole lot of a man
at that.
You will realize how much of a man he is if you will think what you
would be up against if you had to support yourself, and then another
person more expensive than yourself, and in addition several other
persons more expensive than yourself--not only support them, but
supply their whims and humor their caprices; for it must be said of us
Americans that we really do not need more than half what we think we
positively must have.
Think, I say, young man, of having to do all that, and having to keep
on doing it to-day and to-morrow, this month and next month, and all
year and every year as long as you live. If, in your mind, you feel
yourself equal to that, tell me, do you not feel in your mind that you
have in you the makings of a man indeed--a tremendous man?
Very well. That is what your father not only imagines, but _does_. So
he is decidedly entitled to your respect. You owe him gratitude, too,
of a very definite, tangible kind--the sort of gratitude you can weigh
in scales and count up in cash-book.
Now we come to the point of definite benefit for you in all of this;
for, mind you, this paper is for your own selfish interests. Even when
I am advising the beatitudes of life, I am doing it from the
view-point of your practical well-being.
Think, then, of the incalculable advantage of having at your beck and
call a friend who has proved that he knows the highways and byways of
the world by having successfully found his way around among them.
Think of the value of having such a guide for your daily counselor.
Think of how the worth of such a man's directions to you is multiplied
infinitely by the fact that he cares more for your success than for
any other one thing in the world. When you have thought over all
these things, you will begin to have some faint understanding not only
of what you owe your father, but of his practical helpfulness to you.
A father is an opportunity--a young man's first opportunity in life,
and the greatest opportunity he will ever have. That father has made
lots of mistakes, no doubt; but you will never make the mistakes he
made if you will listen to him. He has made many successes, perhaps;
but his successes are only the acorns to the oaks of your deeds, if
you will but take his words as seed for your future enterprises.
And let me tell you this: Nothing makes a better impression upon the
world that is watching you--watching you very cunningly, young man--as
to be on good terms with your father. I have known more than one young
man to be discredited in business because it was generally understood
that he "could not get along with the old man."
You see, the world thinks that it is the boy's fault when there is
friction between father and son--and ordinarily the world is right.
Sometimes, of course, the world itself "cannot get along with father";
in such cases it does not blame the son for not getting along with
him either. But that is not your situation, you who read this paper.
"How does ---- get along with his father?" was asked of a certain
young man of great distinction in letters. "Oh, they are great
friends!" was the answer. "Friends through duty or comradery?"
persisted the querist. "Comradery, affection, affinity. They are the
greatest chums in the world," was the answer.
I wish I could give you the name of that man. It is known in every
civilized country. No wonder he became the great power into which he
has developed. His whole life is a blessing and a benediction to all
with whom he comes in contact--parents, wife, children, countrymen,
the world. No wonder his brain is canny with resourceful wisdom; no
wonder that good red human blood pours at full tide through artery and
vein.
The man I have in mind, and whom I am describing, is a great man, and
his father before him was a great man too. His success has been
monumental. Yet his is no candy manhood. His is no smooth conduct. He
is "neither sugar nor salt, nor somebody's honey," to get down (or up)
to the picturesque phrase of the common household.
He is the sort of man who would confound sharp practises of the
crafty; or "call the bluff" of financial gamester; or walk unconcerned
where physical danger calls for nerve of steel and lion's heart; or
fling at affected fop rapier sentences that cut deep through the very
quick of his pretenses.
I cite this example merely to show you that you lose nothing of
independence or daring, or any of those qualities which young men so
prize (and properly prize), by being on terms of intellectual and
heart partnership with your father.
Don't tell us that he won't let you be on such terms with him. Show
yourself willing and worth while, and your father would rather spend
his extra hours with you than at the theater. But you have got to show
yourself worth while. No whining willingness, no soft and pretended
desire, no affected making up to "the governor," will answer at all.
You have got to "make good" with the American father, young man.
He has "been through the mill," until the softness is pretty well
ground out and little remains but the granite-like muscle of manhood.
He is a pretty stern proposition; and if there is anything he won't
stand it is pretense, make-believe. But show yourself worthy of him
and willing for his comradeship, and you have begun life with the
best, readiest, bravest partner you will ever have.
From all of this you have yourself deduced the fact that you do not
"know more than the old folks." If you have not, go ahead and deduce
it right now; for you do _not_ know more than they do. They have lived
so much longer than you have that the accretion of daily experience
has given them a variety of information beside which your book
knowledge is a sort of wooden learning, lifeless and artificial.
The very fact that they have had you for a child and brought you along
safely thus far is proof enough of this. You have no right to
challenge the knowledge or judgment of either of your parents until
you demonstrate that you can do as well or better than they. And that
will be some years yet, will it not? No, decidedly, don't "get too
smart for father."
Even if you really do know more than they, don't let either of the old
folks see that you think so. That attitude on your part is almost
indecent. Be grateful also. How singular that where young men have
everything to be thankful for, they are so seldom grateful.
When parents surround them with every comfort, and make what are
luxuries to the millions necessities to their children; when the youth
is furnished clothes made by the tailor, and money to spend as he
will, and special schools and the most expensive university; when he
is given vacations at seashore, in mountains, on lake, or abroad,
instead of at good hard work, as the sons of the people must spend
their vacations; when a year or two of travel follows his day of easy
graduation; when all is his that thought, and love, and gold can give,
do we not frequently find the young man unappreciative of, and
ungrateful for, these blessings?
Such a man usually takes it for granted that he ought to have all
these things, and a good deal more; that they are his as a matter of
course, and no thanks due to those who gave them; that they are not
much, after all, compared with what some other fellow with a richer
father, and a mother still more doting, has and spends. "Give a boy
too much money to spend and he won't do anything else." There are some
exceptions to this, notable and splendid exceptions, but they are so
few that they prove the rule.
On the other hand, it is generally true that young fellows who, in
comparison with the class just described, have nothing to be thankful
for; who must earn their own bread and "help support the family"; who
"work their way through college," and during vacations put in a good
year's labor to get the money for the next college year; who, the day
after graduation, thin as a wolf and as hardy, must start right in
then and there to earn that very day's meals and that very night's
resting-place--such men, as a usual thing, develop the glorious
qualities of gratitude, consideration, and deference.
There is "no place like home" to such men, "be it ever so humble."
They look upon life as a wonderful and splendid thing, for which they
are indebted to father and mother. Their manhood's morning is very
beautiful to them; but its light is not one-hundredth part as
beautiful as the radiance which beams upon them from the eyes of one
dear woman whom they call mother--a woman wrinkled and worn and wan,
perhaps, but to such sons exquisitely lovely, with something in her
beauty not quite of this earth.
I don't quite understand the psychology of this phenomenon, and never
knew any one who did understand it; but every one of the scores of
observers with whom I have talked upon this subject have noted the
same fact--the too frequent ingratitude and lack of appreciation of
young fellows who have everything to be grateful for, and the fine
appreciation of life shown by young men who, in comparison, have
nothing to be grateful for.
Perhaps it is a lack of thought, a want of analysis. If that is so in
your case, young man, get to thinking. Instead of comparing yourself
with some other man who has more things than you, compare yourself
with one who has fewer things than you; or, better still, with one who
hasn't anything at all. Then you will have a measure for the debt you
owe to the two beings who have given and are giving you all you have
or will have for a great many years to come.
And this other thing, too: When you begin to be grateful for these
things, by going through some such intellectual process as I have
indicated, you will get so much more pleasure out of them than you did
before that you will hardly be able to realize that you are the same
man.
Indeed, you will not be the same man--you will be another man, a
bigger-hearted, saner-minded, gentler, and manlier man. You will begin
to be the kind of a man you would like to be if you sat down by
yourself and went to work to make yourself over again. And what a
wonder you would be if you could make yourself over! Yes, no doubt!
This final word: The day must come when you must leave the old home.
When that hour arrives, do not try to tarry. Go right out into the
world. Do not go mournfully. Give the little mother a smile of
courage, a word of cheer, that will be her guaranty that her boy is
going to be a "grand success," and then--_make good!_
You will hardly get away from the old home gate when you will stumble
over an obstacle and fall down. Don't turn back to the old home to be
comforted and helped. Get up, brush the dust off, forget your bruises,
and go ahead. Go ahead, and look where you are going.
A man who cannot get up when he is knocked down is of no use in the
world.
Let the messages that you send back to the old home be joyful--full of
faith. No matter how hard a time you are having, don't let "the folks
at home" know it. Besides, you are not having such a hard time, after
all. Hundreds of thousands of other men who have become splendidly
successful had a great deal harder time than you are having or ever
dreamed of having. Resolve to live up to what the home which reared
you expects of you, and work like mad on that resolve, and you will
find that you are becoming all that "the folks at home" expected of
you, and a great deal more.
Go back to the old home as often as you can; but be sure that you go
back with words of cheer and a story of things done. "The folks at
home"--especially the mother--will want to hear all about it. There
may be wars whose high-leaping flames illumine all the heavens; there
may be political campaigns on hand where issues of fate are thrilling
the nerves of the millions; there may be strange tidings from the
council-board of the nations; there may be catastrophes and glories,
scourges and blessings, famine or opulence; but any and all of these
are of no interest to the mother, compared with what _you_ will have
to tell her of _your_ own puny little deeds.
They are not puny deeds to her; they are quite the most considerable
performances given in all the universe of men. For _you_ did them,
you know, and that is enough. To his mother every man is a hero.
So let your tale to her be boldly told and lovingly. And be sure that
it is a narrative of purity, things honorable and of good report.
Return to the habit of your youth, and at her knees establish again
the old confessional. And then, with your secrets handed over to her
and safely locked in her heart, with her hand of blessing on your
head, and her smile of confidence, pride, and approval glorifying her
face, resolve to again go out into the world where your place is, and
be worthy of this new baptism of manhood you have again received in
the sanctuary of the old home.
These are all simple things, commonplace things, things easy to do.
They have nothing extraordinary about them. And yet, if you will do
them, the world will back you as a winner against men who are a great
deal smarter than you are, but who with all their smartness are not
smart enough to do these plain and kindly things.
III
THE COLLEGE?
_1. The Young Man who Goes_