aging, must by and by be filled by men now young. Be in no haste
then--the years are your allies. Time will dispose of your rivals.
Just believe in yourself, and work and wait and dare--_and keep on_
working, waiting, daring. _Never let up; and never doubt your ultimate
success._ Think of Columbus, Drake, Magellan--the story of every
master-mariner has in it food for your necessary egotism.
Do not underestimate your strength. There are things you would like to
do; very well, sail in and do them. Do not be afraid of making a
mistake. Do not be afraid that you will fail. Suppose you do fail.
Millions have failed before you. I am repeating this thought and I
wish it would bear repetition on every page.
But never admit to yourself that you have failed. Try it again. You
will win next time, sure! "If at first you don't succeed, try, try
again." How much sense there is in these common maxims of the common
people, proverbs not written by any one man, but axioms that spring
out of the combined intelligence of the millions, meditating through
the centuries. The sayings of the people are always simple and wise.
What a fine thing it was that Grant said at Shiloh. The first day
closed in disaster. The enemy had all but driven the Union Army into
the river. Not a great distance from the banks of the stream they will
point out to you the tree under which Grant stood, cigar clinched
between his teeth, directing the disposition of his forces. Some one
reported to him a fresh disaster.
With the calmness of the certainty that nobody could defeat _him_, so
the story runs, Grant replied, "Never mind; I will lick them
to-morrow." Very like Cæsar, was it not? "_I_ came, _I_ saw, _I_
conquered." Or that other audacity of the great Roman, when the ship
was actually sinking: "Fear not," said he; "fear not, you carry
_Cæsar_ and _his_ fortunes."
In the same battle it is credibly reported that Grant rode to an
important position held by a large number of his troops under one of
his most trusted generals. "What have you been doing?" asked Grant.
"Fighting," answered the commander in charge of that position, equally
laconic. For a while Grant surveyed the field, and, turning, was about
to ride away. "But what shall I do now, General?" asked his
subordinate. "Keep on fighting," answered Grant.
Do not get into the habit of feeling that you are not sufficiently
well equipped. This comes of a very honest intellectual process--the
understanding, as we get more knowledge, of how very little we really
know; as we get more skill, of how very unskilled we really are; the
feeling that, high as our training is, there is some one else more
highly trained. Of course there is; but if that is any excuse why you
should do nothing--because there is some person who can do it
better--you will never do anything; and then what will happen when all
of the other fellows who "could do it better" die?
You will by that time be too old to do anything at all. So sail in
yourself, and pat on the back every other young fellow that sails in.
If you learn the law, for example, understand that the way to acquire
the art of _practising_ law is to _practise_ it, and not merely watch
somebody else practise it. Suppose every young man with a scientific
mind had declined to make any experiment because there were abler
scientists than he: how many Pasteurs and Finsens and Marconis and
Edisons and Bells would the world have had? And I might go on for an
hour with similar illustrations.
So go ahead and try to do things you would _like_ to do--things Nature
has fitted you to do. Believe that you can do these things. For you
_can_, you know. You will be amazed at your own powers. If you do not
believe in yourself, how do you expect the world to believe in you?
The world has no time to pet and coddle you, remember that. So get the
habit of faith in yourself and your fellow men. Cultivate a noble
intellectual generosity. It is a fine tonic for mind and soul--a fine
tonic even for the body.
The doctors say that envy, malice, jealousy, produce a distinctly
depressing effect upon the nervous system. And some go so far as to
say that if intense enough these states of mind actually poison the
secretions. Don't, therefore, let these hyena passions abide with you.
Be generous. Have faith. Make mistakes or achieve success; fail or
win; but do things. Share the common lot. Be hearty. Be whole-souled.
Be a man. Never doubt for a moment that
"God's in his heaven;
All's well with the world."
This paper has been devoted to your mental and moral attitude toward
your college and your college life, rather than to what particular
things you will study there; for the way you look at your college and
the life you lead there--the spirit with which you enter upon these
golden years--is the main thing. The studies themselves are the
methods by which you apply that spirit and purpose.
But most young men with whom I have talked want to know what "courses"
to take, what "studies" to specialize upon. No general counsel can be
given which will be very valuable to you upon this point. But I will
venture this: Do not choose entirely by yourself what things you will
study in college, or what "courses" you will "elect."
You are so apt to pick the things that are easiest for you, and not
the things that are best for you. Even the strongest-willed men quite
unconsciously select those things that will mean the least work. You
do not think you are selecting certain courses or studies for this
reason, and perhaps you are not; but then, again, perhaps you are, and
you cannot yourself determine that.
Therefore I suggest that you advise with four or five of the ablest
and most successful men you know. Let two of these be educators, and
the others professional or business men. Try to get them to interest
themselves enough in you to take the time to think the whole subject
over very carefully as applied to your particular case, and to take
further time to talk it over thoroughly with you. Then take the
consensus of their opinion, unless your own view is decided, clear,
and emphatic.
When you have such an opinion of your own, such a command coming from
the sources of your own mentality, obey that, in choosing your studies
and course, rather than the counsel of any other man or number of men.
Yes, obey that voice in making such a choice, and in making every
choice throughout your whole life; for it is the voice of your real
self--that inward counselor which never fails those who are fortunate
enough to have it.
Of course, what you study ought to be influenced by what you intend to
do in life. For example, the career of civil engineer requires a
special kind of preparation. So do the various occupations and
professions. But no matter what particular thing you intend to do
through life, it is the belief of most men who have given this subject
any thought that a young man ought to take a complete general college
course, and supplement this by special preparation for the particular
work to which he intends to devote his life.
But there is one thing to which the attention of young Americans
should be directed as influencing their college life. Our country is
no longer isolated. We can no longer be called a provincial people. We
are decidedly a very intimate part of the world. Our relations with
other peoples grow closer and closer, and they will keep on growing
closer as the years pass by. A thousand Americans travel over sea
to-day where one went abroad fifty years ago. Our foreign commerce is
now greater in a single year than it used to be in an entire
decade--yes, and quite recently, too, so swift our increase.
Other countries are several times nearer to us than they were even in
the last generation. It took Emerson almost a month to cross the
Atlantic. Now you go over in a week. You can send a cablegram to any
country in the world and have it delivered, translated into the
language of the person to whom it is sent, a great deal quicker than
the dawn can travel. Invention has made snail-like the speed of light.
What does all this mean? It means that in our relations we have become
cosmopolitan. Therefore we Americans ought to know other languages
than our own. Charles Sumner said that if he had to go through college
again he would study nothing but modern languages and history. Of
course I do not presume to advise you who are reading this paper to do
that, although it is precisely what I should do if I were going
through college again. But I do advise you to do this: Acquire at
least two languages in addition to your own--French and German.
Indeed, you ought to have three languages besides your own--French,
German, and Spanish. For, consider! Here is Mexico, our next-door
neighbor--its people speak Spanish; Cuba, a kind of national ward of
ours--its people speak Spanish. The people of our possessions in the
Pacific speak Spanish; of Porto Rico, Spanish; of the Central and
South American "Republics"--with all of whom we are destined, in spite
of ourselves, to have relations of ever-increasing intimacy--all speak
Spanish.
And French? You can travel all over Europe intelligently if you speak
French. And German--the language that is going to make a good race
with English itself as the commercial language of the world is German.
For example, you can go all through _commercial_ Russia without a
guide if you speak German. You can get along in any port of the
Orient if you speak German. So you can if you speak English, it is
true. And think of how many millions of excellent people in our own
country are still German-speaking (although our German citizens are so
splendidly patriotic that they acquire English just as soon as they
possibly can).
But the point is, that your usefulness in every direction will be
increased by a knowledge of the languages. The other things that you
study in college you will largely forget, anyhow; and, besides, you
study them principally for the mental discipline in them. But if you
get a language, and get it correctly, thoroughly, you can find enough
use for it to keep brushed up on it. And of course you can read it all
the time, whether you have a chance to talk it or not.
It is impossible to use words sufficiently emphatic in urging the
study of history. _You cannot get too much history in college and out
of it._ Sir William Hamilton was right--history is the study of
studies. The man who occupies the chair of history in any college
ought to be not only an able man, he ought to be a great man. If ever
you find such a professor, make yourself agreeable to him, absorb him,
possess yourself of him.
This final word: Mingle with your fellow students. Talk with people,
with real people; those who are living real lives, doing real things
under normal and natural conditions. Do all this in order that you may
keep human; for you must not get the habit of keeping to your room and
believing that all wisdom is confined to books. It is not. All wisdom
is not confined to any one place. Some of it is in books, and some of
it is in trees and the earth and the stars.
But so far as _you_ are concerned most of it is in human touch with
your fellows; for it is _men_ with whom you must work. It is _men_ who
are to employ you. It is _men_ whom in your turn you are to employ. It
is the world of _men_ which in the end you are to serve. And it is
that you may serve it well that you are going to college at all, is it
not?
Be _one_ of these _men_, therefore; and be sure that while you are
being one of them, you are one indeed. Be a man in college and out,
and clear down to the end. Be a man--that is the sum of all counsel.
_2. The Young Man who Cannot Go_
But what of the young man who stands without the college gates? What
of him upon whom Fate has locked the doors of this arsenal of power
and life's equipment? "Why does not some one give counsel and
encouragement to the boy who, for any one of a thousand reasons,
cannot take four years or four months from his life of continuous toil
in order to go to college?" asked a young man full of the vitality of
purpose, but to whom even the education of our high schools was an
absolute impossibility.
After all, for most of our eighty millions, the college is practically
beyond their reach. Even among those young men who have the nerve,
ability, and ambition to "work their way through college," there are
tens of thousands who cannot do even that, no matter if they were
willing for four years to toil at sawbuck, live on gruel, and dress in
overalls and hickory shirt.
I have in mind now a spirited young American of this class whose
father died when his son was still a boy, and on whose shoulders,
therefore, fell the duty of "supporting mother" and helping the girls,
even before his young manhood had begun. For that young man, college
or university might just as well be Jupiter, or Saturn, or Arcturus.
Very well. What of this young man? What of the myriads of young
Americans like him? What hope does our complex industrial
civilization, which every day grows more intense, hold out to these
children of hard circumstances, whose muscles daily strain at the
windlasses of necessary duty?
I repeat the question, and multiply the forms in which I put it. It is
so pressingly important. It concerns the most abundant and valuable
material with which free institutions work--the neglected man, he whom
fortune overlooks. It is a strange weakness of human nature that makes
everybody interested in the man at the top, and nobody interested in
the man at the bottom. Yet it is the man at the bottom upon whom our
Republican institutions are established. It is the man at the bottom
whom Science tells us will, by the irresistible processes of nature,
produce the highest types after a while.
The young Bonaparte proved himself a very wizard of human nature when
he exclaimed: "Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in
his knapsack." And did not the Master, with a wisdom wholly divine,
choose as the seed-bearers of our faith throughout the world the
neglected men? Only one of the apostles was what we would term to-day
a "college man"--St. Luke, the physician. What said the Teacher, "The
stone which was rejected to the builder, has become the chief of the
corner."
Yes--the neglected man is the important man. We do not think so day by
day, we idle observers of our Vanity Fair, we curbstone watchers of
the street parade. We think it is the conspicuous man who counts. Our
attention is mostly for him who wears the epaulettes of prominence and
favorable condition. Therefore most articles, papers, and volumes on
young men consider only that lucky favorite-of-fortune-for-the-hour,
the college man.
But this paper is addressed to the neglected man. I would have speech
with those young men with stout heart, true intention, and good
ability, who labor outside those college walls to which they look with
longing, but may not enter.
"Every soldier of France carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack."
Ah, yes! Very well. But what was a soldier of France in Napoleon's
time to a young American to-day? If Joubert, from an ignorant private
who could not write his name, became one of the greatest generals of
the world's greatest commander, what may you not become! Joubert did
it by deserving. Use the same method, you. There is no magic but
merit.
First, then, do not let the conditions that keep you out of college
discourage you. If such a little thing as that depresses you, it is
proof that you are not the character who would have succeeded if you
had a lifetime of college education. If you are discouraged because
you cannot go to college, what will happen to you when life hereafter
presents to you much harder situations? Remember that every strong man
who prevails in the merciless contest with events, faces conditions
which to weaker men seem inaccessible--are inaccessible.
But it is the scaling of these heights, or the tunneling through them,
or the blasting of them out of their way and out of existence, which
makes these strong men strong. It is the overcoming of these obstacles
day after day and year after year, as long as life lasts, which gives
these mighty ones much of their power.
What is it you so admire in men whom you think fortunate--what is it
but their mastery of adversity after adversity? What is that which you
call success but victory over untoward events? Do not, then, let your
resolution be softened by the hard luck that keeps you out of college.
If that bends you, you are not a Damascus blade of tempered steel; you
are a sword of lead, heavy, dull, and yielding.
Next to Collis P. Huntington, the railroad man of the last generation,
whose ability rose to genius, was President Scott of the Pennsylvania
System. He thought, with Mr. Huntington, that a college training was
unnecessary; and his own life demonstrated that the very ultimate of
achieving, the very crest of effort and reward may be reached by men
who know neither Greek nor Latin, nor Science as taught in schools,
nor mental philosophy as set down in books.
Colonel Scott was a messenger-boy--just such a messenger-boy as you
may see any day running errands, carrying parcels, doing the humble
duties of one who serves and waits. From a messenger-boy with bundle
in his hand, to the general of an industrial army of thousands of men,
and the directing mind planning the expenditure of scores of millions
of dollars belonging to great capitalists--such was the career of
Thomas Scott.
Very well, why should you not do as well? "Because my competitors have
college education and I have not," do you answer? But, man, Colonel
Scott had no college education. "Because the other fellows have
friends and influence and I have none," do you protest? But neither
President Scott nor most monumental successes had friends or influence
to start with. Don't excuse yourself, then. Come! Buck up! Be a man!
"I am greatly troubled," said to me the general superintendent of one of
the most extensive railroad systems in the world as we rode from Des
Moines, Iowa, to Chicago. "I am greatly troubled," said he, "to find an
assistant superintendent. There are now under me seven young engineers,
every man a graduate of a college; four of them with uncommon ability,
and all of them relatives of men heavily interested in this network of
railroads. But not one of them will do. Three nights ago all of them
happened to meet in Chicago. While there all of them went out to have
what they called 'a good time' together--drinking, etc.
"That, in itself, is enough to blacklist every man for the position of
my assistant and my successor. This road will not entrust its
operating management to a man who wilfully makes himself less than his
best every day and every night. Besides this, each of them has some
defect. One is brilliant, but not steady; another is steady, but not
resourceful--not inventive--and so forth and so on. We are looking all
over the United States for the young man who has the ability,
character, health, and habits which my assistant must have."
This general superintendent, under whose orders more than ten thousand
men daily performed their complex and delicately adjusted functions,
is fifty-five years of age. Now listen to this, you who cannot go to
college: This man started thirty-eight years ago as a freight-handler
in Chicago at one dollar per day for this same railroad company, which
was then a comparatively small and obscure line. Ah! but you say,
"That was thirty-eight years ago." Yes, and that is the trouble with
you, is it not? You want to _start in_ as superintendent of a great
system or the head of a mighty business, do you not? Very well--get
that out of your head. It cannot--it ought not--to be done.
If you are willing to work as hard as this man worked, as hard as
President Scott of the Pennsylvania System worked; if you are willing
to stay right by your job, year in, year out, through the weary
decades, instead of changing every thirty minutes; if you are willing
to wait as long as they; if you are willing to plant the seed of
success in the soil of good hard work, and then water it with good
hard work, and attend its growth with good hard work, and wait its
flowering and fruitage with patience, its flowering and fruitage will
come. Doubt it not.
For, mark you, this man at the time he told me that his System was
looking all over the United States for a young man capable of being
his assistant, had seven high-grade college men on his hands at that
very moment. He would have been more than delighted to have taken any
one of them.
Also, he would have taken a man who had not seen a college just as
quickly if he could have found such a one who knew enough about
operating a railroad, and had the qualities of leadership, the gift of
organizing ability. It did not matter to this superintendent whether
the assistant he sought had been to college or not, whether he was
rich or poor.
He cared no more about that than he cared whether the man for whom
this place was seeking was a blond or a brunette. The only question
that he was asking was, "Where is the man who is equal to the job?"
And that, my young friend, is the question which all industry is
asking in every field of human effort; that is the question your Fate
is putting to you who are anxious to do big work, "Are you equal to
the job?" If you are not, then be honest enough to step out of the
contest. Be honest enough not to envy the other young men who are
equal to the job.
Yes, be honest enough to applaud the man who is equal to the job and
who goes bravely to his task. Don't find fault with him. Don't swear
that "There is no chance for a young man any more." That's not true,
you know. And remember always that if you do all you are fitted for,
you do as well as your abler brother, and better than he if you do
your best and he does not.
A young man whom fortune had kept from college, but who is too
stout-hearted to let that discourage him, said to me the other day: "I
don't think that a college education confers, or the absence of it
prevents, success. But I do think that where there are two men of
equal health, ability, and character, that one will be chosen who has
been to college, and to this extent the college man has a better
chance." This is true for the ordinary man--the man who is willing to
put forth no more than the ordinary effort.
But you who read--you are willing to put forth extraordinary effort,
are you not? You are willing to show these favored sons of cap and
gown that you will run as fast and as far as they, with all their
training, will you not? You are willing--yes, and determined, to use
every extra hour which your college brother, _thinking he has the
advantage of you_, will probably waste.
Very well. If you do, biography (that most inspiring of all
literature) demonstrates that your reward will be as rich as the
college man's reward. Yes, richer, for the gold which your refinery
purges from the dross of your disadvantages will be doubly refined by
the fires of your intenser effort.
In 1847 two men were born who have blessed mankind with productive
work which, rich as are now its benefits to the race, will create a
new wealth of human helpfulness with each succeeding year as long as
time endures. Both these men have lived, almost to a day, the same
number of years; both of them are still alive; both of them have
labored in neighboring sections of the same field. They are alike,
too, in character, almost duplicates in ability. Here, then, is
material for a perfect comparison.
Mark, now, the parallel. One of them was a college man, the son of a
noted educator and himself a professor in the University of Boston. He
used the gifts which God gave him for that purpose, and as long as the
transmission of human speech continues among men, the name of
Alexander Graham Bell will be rightly honored by all the world.
The other of these men could no more have gone to college than he
could have crossed the Atlantic on a sheet of paper. You who read this
never had to work half so hard as this man worked when he was a boy.
Your patience will never be so taxed and tested as his patience was
and is. But who can say that your efforts and your persistence will
not be as richly rewarded according to your ability as his
ceaselessness has been repaid, if you will try as hard as he has
tried, and use every ounce of yourself as effectively as he has used
himself?
At twelve years of age he was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway.
That didn't satisfy him. The mystery of the telegraph (and what is
more mysterious?) constantly called him. The click of the instrument
was a voice from an unknown world speaking to him words far different
from those recorded in the messages that instrument was transmitting.