_Dear Pierrepont:_ Your Ma got back safe this morning and she wants me
to be sure to tell you not to over-study, and I want to tell you to be
sure not to under-study. What we're really sending you to Harvard for is
to get a little of the education that's so good and plenty there. When
it's passed around you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and
take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You'll
find that education's about the only thing lying around loose in this
world, and that it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of
as he's willing to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight and
the screw-driver lost.
I didn't have your advantages when I was a boy, and you can't have mine.
Some men learn the value of money by not having any and starting out to
pry a few dollars loose from the odd millions that are lying around; and
some learn it by having fifty thousand or so left to them and starting
out to spend it as if it were fifty thousand a year. Some men learn the
value of truth by having to do business with liars; and some by going to
Sunday School. Some men learn the cussedness of whiskey by having a
drunken father; and some by having a good mother. Some men get an
education from other men and newspapers and public libraries; and some
get it from professors and parchments--it doesn't make any special
difference how you get a half-nelson on the right thing, just so you get
it and freeze on to it. The package doesn't count after the eye's been
attracted by it, and in the end it finds its way to the ash heap. It's
the quality of the goods inside which tells, when they once get into the
kitchen and up to the cook.
You can cure a ham in dry salt and you can cure it in sweet pickle, and
when you're through you've got pretty good eating either way, provided
you started in with a sound ham. If you didn't, it doesn't make any
special difference how you cured it--the ham-tryer's going to strike the
sour spot around the bone. And it doesn't make any difference how much
sugar and fancy pickle you soak into a fellow, he's no good unless he's
sound and sweet at the core.
The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and
the second thing is education. That is where I'm a little skittish about
this college business. I'm not starting in to preach to you, because I
know a young fellow with the right sort of stuff in him preaches to
himself harder than any one else can, and that he's mighty often
switched off the right path by having it pointed out to him in the wrong
way.
I remember when I was a boy, and I wasn't a very bad boy, as boys go,
old Doc Hoover got a notion in his head that I ought to join the church,
and he scared me out of it for five years by asking me right out loud in
Sunday School if I didn't want to be saved, and then laying for me after
the service and praying with me. Of course I wanted to be saved, but I
didn't want to be saved quite so publicly.
When a boy's had a good mother he's got a good conscience, and when he's
got a good conscience he don't need to have right and wrong labeled for
him. Now that your Ma's left and the apron strings are cut, you're
naturally running up against a new sensation every minute, but if you'll
simply use a little conscience as a tryer, and probe into a thing which
looks sweet and sound on the skin, to see if you can't fetch up a sour
smell from around the bone, you'll be all right.
[Illustration: "_Old Doc Hoover asked me right out in Sunday School if I
didn't want to be saved._"]
I'm anxious that you should be a good scholar, but I'm more anxious that
you should be a good clean man. And if you graduate with a sound
conscience, I shan't care so much if there are a few holes in your
Latin. There are two parts of a college education--the part that you get
in the schoolroom from the professors, and the part that you get outside
of it from the boys. That's the really important part. For the first
can only make you a scholar, while the second can make you a man.
Education's a good deal like eating--a fellow can't always tell which
particular thing did him good, but he can usually tell which one did him
harm. After a square meal of roast beef and vegetables, and mince pie
and watermelon, you can't say just which ingredient is going into muscle,
but you don't have to be very bright to figure out which one started the
demand for painkiller in your insides, or to guess, next morning, which
one made you believe in a personal devil the night before. And so, while
a fellow can't figure out to an ounce whether it's Latin or algebra or
history or what among the solids that is building him up in this place
or that, he can go right along feeding them in and betting that they're
not the things that turn his tongue fuzzy. It's down among the sweets,
among his amusements and recreations, that he's going to find his
stomach-ache, and it's there that he wants to go slow and to pick and
choose.
It's not the first half, but the second half of a college education
which merchants mean when they ask if a college education pays. It's the
Willie and the Bertie boys; the chocolate eclair and tutti-frutti boys;
the la-de-dah and the baa-baa-billy-goat boys; the high cock-a-lo-rum
and the cock-a-doodle-do boys; the Bah Jove!, hair-parted-in-the-middle,
cigaroot-smoking, Champagne-Charlie, up-all-night-and-in-all-day boys
that make 'em doubt the cash value of the college output, and overlook
the roast-beef and blood-gravy boys, the shirt-sleeves and
high-water-pants boys, who take their college education and make some
fellow's business hum with it.
Does a College education pay? Does it pay to feed in pork trimmings at
five cents a pound at the hopper and draw out nice, cunning, little
"country" sausages at twenty cents a pound at the other end? Does it
pay to take a steer that's been running loose on the range and living
on cactus and petrified wood till he's just a bunch of barb-wire and
sole-leather, and feed him corn till he's just a solid hunk of
porterhouse steak and oleo oil?
You bet it pays. Anything that trains a boy to think and to think quick
pays; anything that teaches a boy to get the answer before the other
fellow gets through biting the pencil, pays.
College doesn't make fools; it develops them. It doesn't make
bright men; it develops them. A fool will turn out a fool, whether
he goes to college or not, though he'll probably turn out a
different sort of a fool. And a good, strong boy will turn out a
bright, strong man whether he's worn smooth in the
grab-what-you-want-and-eat-standing-with-one-eye-skinned-for-the-dog
school of the streets and stores, or polished up and slicked down in the
give-your-order-to-the-waiter-and-get-a-sixteen-course-dinner school of
the professors. But while the lack of a college education can't keep No.
1 down, having it boosts No. 2 up.
It's simply the difference between jump in, rough-and-tumble,
kick-with-the-heels-and-butt-with-the-head nigger
fighting, and this grin-and-look-pleasant,
dodge-and-save-your-wind-till-you-see-a-chance-to-land-on-the-solar-plexus
style of the trained athlete. Both styles win fights, but the fellow
with a little science is the better man, providing he's kept his muscle
hard. If he hasn't, he's in a bad way, for his fancy sparring is just
going to aggravate the other fellow so that he'll eat him up.
Of course, some men are like pigs, the more you educate them, the more
amusing little cusses they become, and the funnier capers they cut when
they show off their tricks. Naturally, the place to send a boy of that
breed is to the circus, not to college.
Speaking of educated pigs, naturally calls to mind the case of old man
Whitaker and his son, Stanley. I used to know the old man mighty well
ten years ago. He was one of those men whom business narrows, instead
of broadens. Didn't get any special fun out of his work, but kept right
along at it because he didn't know anything else. Told me he'd had to
root for a living all his life and that he proposed to have Stan's
brought to him in a pail. Sent him to private schools and dancing
schools and colleges and universities, and then shipped him to Oxford
to soak in a little "atmosphere," as he put it. I never could quite lay
hold of that atmosphere dodge by the tail, but so far as I could make
out, the idea was that there was something in the air of the Oxford
ham-house that gave a fellow an extra fancy smoke.
Well, about the time Stan was through, the undertaker called by for the
old man, and when his assets were boiled down and the water drawn off,
there wasn't enough left to furnish Stan with a really nourishing meal.
I had a talk with Stan about what he was going to do, but some ways he
didn't strike me as having the making of a good private of industry, let
alone a captain, so I started in to get him a job that would suit his
talents. Got him in a bank, but while he knew more about the history of
banking than the president, and more about political economy than the
board of directors, he couldn't learn the difference between a fiver
that the Government turned out and one that was run off on a hand press
in a Halsted Street basement. Got him a job on a paper, but while he
knew six different languages and all the facts about the Arctic regions,
and the history of dancing from the days of Old Adam down to those of
Old Nick, he couldn't write up a satisfactory account of the Ice-Men's
Ball. Could prove that two and two made four by trigonometry and
geometry, but couldn't learn to keep books; was thick as thieves with
all the high-toned poets, but couldn't write a good, snappy,
merchantable street-car ad.; knew a thousand diseases that would take a
man off before he could blink, but couldn't sell a thousand-dollar
tontine policy; knew the lives of our Presidents as well as if he'd been
raised with them, but couldn't place a set of the Library of the Fathers
of the Republic, though they were offered on little easy payments that
made them come as easy as borrowing them from a friend. Finally I hit on
what seemed to be just the right thing. I figured out that any fellow
who had such a heavy stock of information on hand, ought to be able to
job it out to good advantage, and so I got him a place teaching. But it
seemed that he'd learned so much about the best way of teaching boys,
that he told his principal right on the jump that he was doing it all
wrong, and that made him sore; and he knew so much about the dead
languages, which was what he was hired to teach, that he forgot he was
handling live boys, and as he couldn't tell it all to them in the
regular time, he kept them after hours, and that made them sore and put
Stan out of a job again. The last I heard of him he was writing articles
on Why Young Men Fail, and making a success of it, because failing was
the one subject on which he was practical.
I simply mention Stan in passing as an example of the fact that it isn't
so much knowing a whole lot, as knowing a little and how to use it that
counts.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN GRAHAM.
+----------------------------+
| No. 2 |
+----------------------------+
| From John Graham, at |
| the Union Stock Yards |
| in Chicago, to his son, |
| Pierrepont, at Harvard |
| University. |
| |
| Mr. Pierrepont's expense |
| account has just passed |
| under his father's eye, |
| and has furnished him |
| with a text for some |
| plain particularities. |
+----------------------------+