have to do either a good deal of outdoor work or a good deal of what
might be called natural outdoor play, do not need this athletic
development. In the Civil War the soldiers who came from the prairie
and the backwoods and the rugged farms where stumps still dotted the
clearings, and who had learned to ride in their infancy, to shoot
as soon as they could handle a rifle, and to camp out whenever they
got the chance, were better fitted for military work than any set
of mere school or college athletes could possibly be. Moreover, to
mis-estimate athletics is equally bad whether their importance is
magnified or minimized. The Greeks were famous athletes, and as long
as their athletic training had a normal place in their lives, it was
a good thing. But it was a very bad thing when they kept up their
athletic games while letting the stern qualities of soldiership and
statesmanship sink into disuse. Some of the boys who read this paper
will certainly sometime read the famous letters of the younger Pliny,
a Roman who wrote, with what seems to us a curiously modern touch,
in the first century of the present era. His correspondence with
the Emperor Trajan is particularly interesting; and not the least
noteworthy thing in it is the tone of contempt with which he speaks
of the Greek athletic sports, treating them as the diversions of an
unwarlike people which it was safe to encourage in order to keep the
Greeks from turning into anything formidable. So at one time the
Persian kings had to forbid polo, because soldiers neglected their
proper duties for the fascinations of the game. To-day, some good
critics have asserted that the reverses suffered by the British at the
hands of the Boers in South Africa are in part due to the fact that
the English officers and soldiers have carried to an unhealthy extreme
the sports and pastimes which would be healthy if indulged in with
moderation, and have neglected to learn as they should the business
of their profession. A soldier needs to know how to shoot and take
cover and shift for himself--not to box or play football. There is,
of course, always the risk of thus mistaking means for ends. English
fox-hunting is a first-class sport; but one of the most absurd things
in real life is to note the bated breath with which certain excellent
Englishmen, otherwise of quite healthy minds, speak of this admirable
but not over-important pastime. They tend to make it almost as much of
a fetish as, in the last century, the French and German nobles made the
chase of the stag, when they carried hunting and game-preserving to a
point which was ruinous to the national life. Fox-hunting is very good
as a pastime, but it is about as poor a business as can be followed by
any man of intelligence. Certain writers about it are fond of quoting
the anecdote of a fox-hunter who, in the days of the English Civil War,
was discovered pursuing his favorite sport just before a great battle
between the Cavaliers and the Puritans, and right between their lines
as they came together. These writers apparently consider it a merit
in this man that when his country was in a death-grapple, instead of
taking arms and hurrying to the defense of the cause he believed right,
he should placidly have gone about his usual sports. Of course, in
reality the chief serious use of fox-hunting is to encourage manliness
and vigor, and keep a man so that in time of need he can show himself
fit to take part in work or strife for his native land. When a man so
far confuses ends and means as to think that fox-hunting, or polo, or
football, or whatever else the sport may be, is to be itself taken as
the end, instead of as the mere means of preparation to do work that
counts when the time arises, when the occasion calls--why, that man had
better abandon sport altogether.
No boy can afford to neglect his work, and with a boy work, as a rule,
means study. Of course, there are occasionally brilliant successes
in life where the man has been worthless as a student when a boy. To
take these exceptions as examples would be as unsafe as it would be
to advocate blindness because some blind men have won undying honor
by triumphing over their physical infirmity and accomplishing great
results in the world. I am no advocate of senseless and excessive
cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard,
at his lessons--in the first place, for the sake of what he will
learn, and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own
character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness,
slackness, indifference in studying, are almost certain to mean
inability to get on in other walks of life. Of course, as a boy grows
older it is a good thing if he can shape his studies in the direction
toward which he has a natural bent; but whether he can do this or
not, he must put his whole heart into them. I do not believe in
mischief-doing in school hours, or in the kind of animal spirits that
results in making bad scholars; and I believe that those boys who take
part in rough, hard play outside of school will not find any need for
horse-play in school. While they study they should study just as hard
as they play football in a match game. It is wise to obey the homely
old adage, “Work while you work; play while you play.”
A boy needs both physical and moral courage. Neither can take the
place of the other. When boys become men they will find out that there
are some soldiers very brave in the field who have proved timid and
worthless as politicians, and some politicians who show an entire
readiness to take chances and assume responsibilities in civil affairs,
but who lack the fighting edge when opposed to physical danger. In each
case, with soldiers and politicians alike, there is but half a virtue.
The possession of the courage of the soldier does not excuse the lack
of courage in the statesman, and even less does the possession of the
courage of the statesman excuse shrinking on the field of battle.
Now, this is all just as true of boys. A coward who will take a blow
without returning it is a contemptible creature; but, after all, he is
hardly as contemptible as the boy who dares not stand up for what he
deems right against the sneers of his companions who are themselves
wrong. Ridicule is one of the favorite weapons of wickedness, and it is
sometimes incomprehensible how good and brave boys will be influenced
for evil by the jeers of associates who have no one quality that calls
for respect, but who affect to laugh at the very traits which ought to
be peculiarly the cause for pride.
There is no need to be a prig. There is no need for a boy to preach
about his own good conduct and virtue. If he does he will make himself
offensive and ridiculous. But there is urgent need that he should
practise decency; that he should be clean and straight, honest and
truthful, gentle and tender, as well as brave. If he can once get to
a proper understanding of things, he will have a far more hearty
contempt for the boy who has begun a course of feeble dissipation, or
who is untruthful, or mean, or dishonest, or cruel, than this boy and
his fellows can possibly, in return, feel for him. The very fact that
the boy should be manly and able to hold his own, that he should be
ashamed to submit to bullying without instant retaliation, should, in
return, make him abhor any form of bullying, cruelty, or brutality.
There are two delightful books, Thomas Hughes's “Tom Brown at Rugby,”
and Aldrich's “Story of a Bad Boy,” which I hope every boy still
reads; and I think American boys will always feel more in sympathy
with Aldrich's story, because there is in it none of the fagging, and
the bullying which goes with fagging, the account of which, and the
acceptance of which, always puzzle an American admirer of Tom Brown.
There is the same contrast between two stories of Kipling's. One,
called “Captains Courageous,” describes in the liveliest way just what
a boy should be and do. The hero is painted in the beginning as the
spoiled, over-indulged child of wealthy parents, of a type which we do
sometimes unfortunately see, and than which there exist few things more
objectionable on the face of the broad earth. This boy is afterward
thrown on his own resources, amid wholesome surroundings, and is forced
to work hard among boys and men who are real boys and real men doing
real work. The effect is invaluable. On the other hand, if one wishes
to find types of boys to be avoided with utter dislike, one will find
them in another story by Kipling, called “Stalky & Co.,” a story which
ought never to have been written, for there is hardly a single form of
meanness which it does not seem to extol, or of school mismanagement
which it does not seem to applaud. Bullies do not make brave men; and
boys or men of foul life cannot become good citizens, good Americans,
until they change; and even after the change scars will be left on
their souls.
The boy can best become a good man by being a good boy--not a
goody-goody boy, but just a plain good boy. I do not mean that he must
love only the negative virtues; I mean he must love the positive
virtues also. “Good,” in the largest sense, should include whatever
is fine, straightforward, clean, brave, and manly. The best boys I
know--the best men I know--are good at their studies or their business,
fearless and stalwart, hated and feared by all that is wicked and
depraved, incapable of submitting to wrongdoing, and equally incapable
of being aught but tender to the weak and helpless. A healthy-minded
boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward, and even more hearty
indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures
animals. One prime reason for abhorring cowards is because every good
boy should have it in him to thrash the objectionable boy as the need
arises.
Of course, the effect that a thoroughly manly, thoroughly straight and
upright boy can have upon the companions of his own age, and upon those
who are younger, is incalculable. If he is not thoroughly manly, then
they will not respect him, and his good qualities will count for but
little; while, of course, if he is mean, cruel, or wicked, then his
physical strength and force of mind merely make him so much the more
objectionable a member of society. He cannot do good work if he is not
strong, and does not try with his whole heart and soul to count in any
contest; and his strength will be a curse to himself and to every one
else if he does not have thorough command over himself and over his
own evil passions, and if he does not use his strength on the side of
decency, justice, and fair dealing.
In short, in life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is:
Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard!
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. In a single sentence express Mr. Roosevelt's principal thought.
2. Point out the subordinate thoughts that aid the development of
the essay.
3. Point out examples of antithesis.
4. Show how Mr. Roosevelt gains power by the use of short and
common words.
5. Describe the sort of boy whom Mr. Roosevelt does not admire.
6. Describe the sort of boy whom Mr. Roosevelt does admire.
7. What is Mr. Roosevelt's opinion of the value of athletics?
8. What is Mr. Roosevelt's opinion of the relative position of
study and of athletics?
9. What sort of books for boys does Mr. Roosevelt admire?
10. What is the effect of the last sentence?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. The American Girl 11. Fearlessness
2. The American Man 12. Physical Strength
3. The American Woman 13. Fair Play
4. The Good Athlete 14. Energy
5. The Good Student 15. The Under Dog
6. The True Aristocrat 16. American Ideals
7. The Truly Rich 17. Success in Life
8. The Ideal of Work 18. Skill
9. Good Reading 19. A Good Time
10. Good Citizenship 20. Manliness
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Your subject must be one on which you have strong convictions
as the result of personal experience. In a certain sense, your
essay must represent your own life. Try to hold forward no ideals
that you yourself do not uphold.
Formulate a strong central thought, and two or three subordinate and
supporting thoughts. When you have done this develop your essay step
by step, giving examples drawn from history or from well-known facts.
Mention books that set forward the ideals you wish to emphasize.
Write in a strong, forceful, almost commanding style, but do not say
“Thus and so shalt thou do.” Speak in strong terms of the principles
that you admire but leave your readers to draw value from the
enthusiasm of your words rather than information from directions given.
THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
By HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE
_Daughter of Julian Hawthorne, and grand-daughter of Nathaniel
Hawthorne. She writes with rare charm and literary power, and
contributes regularly to many periodicals. Among her books are_: A
Country Interlude; The Lure of the Garden; Old Seaport Towns of New
England; Girls in Bookland.
=The article that follows is much like an oration or an editorial
article in that it is directed to “you” rather than expressive of
“I”. The true essay is not concerned with “you”: it is concerned
only with “I”.=
=Both the oration and the editorial article have much in common
with the essay type; for both turn aside frequently into the happy
fields of meditation.=
=The first three paragraphs of _The Spirit of Adventure_ are purely
personal in nature and therefore wholly in keeping with the spirit
of the essay form. Furthermore, those paragraphs--so reminiscent
of the fancy of the writer's famous grandfather, Nathaniel
Hawthorne,--represent poetic prose. Throughout the article the
personal note mingles with the directing voice of the editorial
article. Indeed, it would be easy to drop from _The Spirit of
Adventure_ everything that is not personal, and thereby to leave
pure essay.=
=As it stands, _The Spirit of Adventure_ is a didactic essay, brave
and strong in its thought, and poetic in its style.=
Wind has always seemed wonderful and beautiful to me.
Invisible as it is, it pervades the whole world. It has the very
quality of life. Without wind, how dead and still the world would be!
In the autumn, wind shakes the leaves free and sends them flying, gold
and red. It takes the seeds of many plants and sows them over the
land. It blows away mists and sets clouds to voyaging, brings rain
and fair weather the year round, builds up snow in fantastic palaces,
rolls the waves high, murmurs a fairy music in the pines and shouts
aloud in storms. Wind is the great adventurer of nature. Sometimes it
is so fierce and terrible that nothing can stand before it--houses
are torn to shreds, trees are felled, ruin follows where it goes. At
other times, it comes marching wet and salt from the sea, or dry and
keen from the mountains on hot summer days, bringing ease and rest and
health. Keen as a knife, it whips over the frozen ground in winter and
screams wildly round the farm-house, taps the panes with ghost fingers,
and whistles like a sprite in the chimney. It brings sails from land to
land, turns windmills in quaint foreign places, and sets the flags of
all the countries of the world fluttering on their high staffs.
Wind is nature's spirit of adventure, keeping her world vigorous,
clean, and alive.
For us, too, the spirit of adventure is the fine wind of life, and
if we have it not, or lose it, either as individual or nation, then
we begin to die, our force and freshness depart, we stop in our
tracks, and joy vanishes. For joy is a thing of movement and energy,
of striving forward, a thing of hope as well as fruition. You must
be thoroughly alive to be truly joyful, and all the great things
accomplished by men and nations have been accomplished by vigorous and
active souls, not content to sit still and hold the past, but eager to
press on and to try undiscovered futures.
If ever a nation was founded on, and built up by, the spirit of
adventure, that nation is our own. The very finding of it was the
result of a splendid upspring of that spirit. From then on through
centuries it was only men in whom the spirit of adventure was strong as
life itself who reached our shores. Great adventurers, on they came,
borne as they should be, by wind itself! Gallant figures, grim figures,
moved by all sorts of lures and impulses, yet one and all stirred and
led by the call of adventure, that cares nothing for ease of body
or safety, for old, tried rules and set ways and trodden paths, but
passionately for freedom and effort, for what is strange and dangerous
and thrilling, for tasks that call on brain and body for quick, new
decisions and acts.
The spirit of adventure did not die with the settling of our shores.
Following the sea adventures came those of the land, the pioneers, who
went forward undismayed by the perils and obstacles that appeared quite
as insurmountable as did the uncharted seas to Columbus's men. Think of
the days, when next you ride across our great continent in the comfort
of a Pullman, when it took five months and more to make the same
journey with ox-teams. Think how day followed day for those travelers
across the Great Plains in a sort of changeless spell, where they
topped long slow rise after long slow rise only to see the seemingly
endless panorama stretch on before them. Think how they passed the
ghastly signs of murdered convoys gone before, and yet pressed on.
Think how they settled here and there in new strange places where never
the foot of men like themselves had been set before, and proceeded to
build homes and till the land, rifle in hand; think how their wives
reared their children and kept their homes where never a white child or
a Christian home had been before.
Where should we be to-day but for such men and women--if this wind of
the spirit had never blown through men's hearts and fired them on to
follow its call, as the wind blows a flame?
Wherever you look here in America you can see the signs and traces
of this wonderful spirit. In old towns, like Provincetown or
Gloucester,[59] you still hear tales of the whale-fisheries, and still
see boats fare out to catch cod and mackerel on the wild and dangerous
Banks. But in the past, the fishers sailed away for a year or two,
round the globe itself, after their game! You see the spirit's tracks
along the barren banks of the Sacramento,[60] where the gold-seekers
fronted the wilderness after treasure, and in Alaska it walks
incarnate. It is hewing its way in forests and digging it in mines; it
is building bridges and plants in the deserts and the mountains. Out it
goes to the islands of the Pacific, and in Africa it finds a land after
its heart.
How much of this spirit lives in you?
I tell you, when I hear a girl or a boy say: “This place is good enough
for me. I can get a good job round the corner! I know all the folks in
town; and I don't see any reason for bothering about how they live in
other places or what they do away from here”; when I hear that sort of
talk from young people, my heart sinks a bit.
For such boys and girls there is no golden call of adventure, no lure
of wonder by day and night, no desire to measure their strength against
the world, no hope of something finer and more beautiful than what they
have as yet known or seen.
I like the boy or girl who sighs after a quest more difficult than the
trodden trail, who wants more of life than the assurance of a good job.
I know very well that the home-keeping lad has a stout task to perform
and a good life to live. But I know, too, that if the youth of a nation
loses its love of adventure, if that wild and moving spirit passes from
it, then the nation is close to losing its soul. It has about reached
the limit of its power and growth.
So much in our daily existence works against this noble spirit,
disapproves it, fears it. People are always ready to prove that there
is neither sense nor profit in it. Why should you sail with Drake[61]
and Frobisher,[62] or march with Fremont[63] or track the forest with
Boone,[64] when it is so much easier and safer and pays better to stay
at home? Why shouldn't you be content to do exactly like the people
about you, and live the life that is already marked out for you to live?
That is what most of us will do. But that is no reason why the
glorious spirit of adventure should be denied and reviled. It is the
great spirit of creation in our race. If it stirs in you, listen to it,
be glad of it.
A mere restless impulse to move about, the necessity to change your
environment or else be bored, the dissatisfaction with your condition
that leads to nothing but ill temper or melancholy, these are not part
of the spirit of which I am speaking. You may develop the spirit of
adventure without stirring from home, for it is not ruled by the body
and its movements. Great and high adventure may be yours in the home
where you now live, if you realize that home as a part of the great
world, as a link of the vast chain of life. Two boys can sit side by
side on the same hearth-stone, and in one the spirit of adventure is
living and calling, in the other it is dead. To the first, life will
be an opportunity and a beckoning. He will be ready to give himself
for the better future; he will be ready to strike hands with the fine
thought and generous endeavor of the whole world, bringing to his own
community the fruit of great things, caring little for the ease and
comfort of his body, but much for the possibilities of a finer, truer
realization of man's eternal struggle toward a purer liberty and a
nobler life. The spirit of adventure is a generous spirit, kindling
to great appeals. Of the two boys, sitting there together, the second
may perhaps go round the world, but to him there will be no song and
no wonder. He will not find adventure, because he has it not. The old
phrase, “adventures to the adventurous,” is a true saying. The selfish
and the small of soul know no adventures.
As I think of America to-day, I say the spirit that found and built her
must maintain her. There are great things to be done for America in
the coming years, in your years. Her boundaries are fixed, but within
those boundaries marvelous development is possible. Her government has
found its form, but there is work for the true adventurer in seeing
that the spirit of that government, in all its endless ramifications
and expressions, fulfils the intention of human liberty and well-being
that lie within that form. Her relations with the world outside of
herself are forming anew, and here too there is labor of the noblest.
The lad who cares only for his own small job and his own small
comforts, who dreads the rough contacts of life and the dangers of
pioneering will not help America much.
In the older days the Pilgrim Fathers cast aside every comfort of
life to follow the call of liberty, coming to a wilderness so remote,
that for us a voyage to some star would scarcely seem more distant or
strange. None of us will be called upon to do so tremendous a thing as
that act of theirs, so far as the conditions of existence go, since the
telegraph and the aëroplane and turbine knit us close. But there are
adventures quite as magnificent to be achieved.
The spirit of adventure loves the unknown. And in the unknown we shall
find all the wonders that are waiting for us. Our whole life is lived
on the very border of unknown things, but only the adventurous spirit
reaches out to these and makes them known, and widens the horizons
for humanity. The very essence of the spirit of adventure is in doing
something no one has done before. Every high-road was once a trail,
every trail had its trail-breaker, setting his foot where no man's foot
had gone before through what new forests and over what far plains.
It is good to ride at ease on the broad highway, with every turning
marked and the rules all kept. But it is not the whole of life. The
savor of lonely dawns, the call of an unknown voice, the need to
establish new frontiers of spirit and action beyond any man has yet
set, these are also part of life. Do not forego them. You are young and
the world is before you. Be among those who perceive all its variety,
its potentialities, who can see good in the new and unknown, and find
joy in hazard and strength in effort. Do not be afraid of strange
manners and customs, nor think a thing is wrong because it is different.
Throw wide the great gates of adventure in your soul, young America!
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. Point out effects that have been gained by the use of figures of
speech.
2. What is the relation of the first three paragraphs to the
remainder of the essay?
3. Point out the parts of _The Spirit of Adventure_ that depart
from the strict form of the essay.
4. Indicate what may be omitted in order to make _The Spirit of
Adventure_ truly an essay.
5. How many historical allusions are made in the essay?
6. Explain the most important historical allusions.
7. What does the writer mean by “the spirit of adventure”?
8. What does she say is the importance of such a spirit?
9. How can an ordinary person carry out the writer's wishes?
10. How does the style of the essay strengthen the presentation of
thought?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. Love of Truth 11. The Snow
2. The Spirit of Fair Play 12. Falling Leaves
3. The Sense of Honor 13. The Ocean
4. Stick-to-it-iveness 14. The Storm
5. Faithfulness 15. Moonlight
6. School Spirit 16. The Voice of Thunder
7. Loyalty 17. Flowers
8. The Scientific Spirit 18. The Friendly Trees
9. Work 19. Country Brooks
10. The Spirit of Helpfulness 20. Gentle Rain
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
If you wish to write two or three paragraphs of poetic prose in
imitation of the first three paragraphs of _The Spirit of Adventure_
choose one of the topics in the second column. Write, first of all,
a sentence that will summarize your principal thought, a sentence
that will correspond with the sentence that forms the third paragraph
of Miss Hawthorne's essay. Then lead up to this sentence by
writing a series of sentences full of fancy. Use figures of speech
freely. Arrange your words, phrases or clauses so that you will
produce both striking effects and also rhythm.