Part 4 (1/2)

II

THE OLD HOME

Do we not pay so much attention to mere material success that we exclude from mind and heart other things more precious? I am anxious that every young American should win in all the conflicts of life--win in college, win in business, etc.; but I am even more anxious that through all of his triumphs he should grow ever broader, sweeter, and more kindly. After all, we are human beings. We do not want to become mere machines of success, do we?

That is carrying our mechanical age a little too far. We want to keep that within us which makes our victory worth having after we have won it. What matters your mountains of wealth, or your network of political power, or those secrets which in your laboratory you have wrung from Nature--what matters all and everything that the world calls ”success,” if the human quality has been dried up in you?

Those are fine things that St. Paul says about a man not amounting to anything, no matter how talented and powerful he may be, if he have not charity: ”And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing”; and you will recall the remainder of his admirable comments on this subject.

Everybody points out to you what you can get out of college, and how to get it; what you can get out of a ”career,” and how to get that.

But lest all of your getting turns to bitter emptiness in the end, you must pay attention to that elemental manhood exalted by those beautiful moralities that you get at but one place and at but one period in this world. That period is the early time of your young manhood before you enter college; and that place is the old home where influences angelic have been at work upon your character.

It could not be otherwise. Home--the home that you leave or the home you make--is the spot where most of your life is to be spent. Home was the place of your birth; and if the angel of death is kind to you, home will be the place of your farewell. It is to the home that you bring life's wages, whether those wages are opulence, glory, or merely daily bread.

It is the home which interprets the whole universe for you. And it is the home which not only furnishes a reason for your existence, but in itself const.i.tutes the motive for all manly effort. Quite naturally, therefore, the home is concerned with character more than it is with grosser things.

The instruction which the American mother gives her son is a training in honor rather than in success. Her pa.s.sion for righteousness creeps into the commonplaces of her daily speech. ”Be a good boy” is what she says to the little fellow each day as he starts to school. ”Be a good boy” is what she says to the youth when he leaves for college. ”Be a good boy” is still her sacred charge when, standing at the gate, she gives him her blessing as he goes out into the world.

And, finally, ”Be a good boy” is what her lips murmur when in after years, rich perchance in achievement, honor, power, or wealth, the man of the world returns to the old home to again get her benediction, and have his weary soul refreshed by the beauty of her almost holy presence.

For you never cease to be a boy to her; and her supreme wish and most pa.s.sionate prayer for you is not that you shall be a strong man, or a rich man, or an able man--she wants you to be all these, of course, and everything else that is fine--but chiefly she cares that you should be a good man.

And so it is that home is the temple of ideals, the sanctuary of the true, the beautiful, and the good. Or put it in scientific phrase, and say: Home is the laboratory of character. The home is the place where you get what the common people so pithily call your ”bringing up.” It is there where your conception of all human relations.h.i.+ps is formed.

It is there where it is largely determined whether you will make your life worth the living.

Your future sits at the old fireside. The fate of the Nation abides beneath the roof-tree. And so it is that neither college, nor market-place, nor forum, nor editor's sanctum, nor traffic of the high seas, nor anything that you may do, nor any environment that may hereafter surround you, is so important to you as the old home and your early years. Yes, and not to you only, but to the Nation also.

Nothing means so much to the Republic as the influence of the American home upon the young manhood of the Nation.

We are about to enter upon the serious problem of the regulation of railway rates, which is a beginning in some sort of the national control of transportation. It is a problem whose weight and possibilities challenge and all but confound every thoughtful and serious mind. Every step in its solution must be taken with both wisdom and justice.

Our relations with the Orient daily increase, and the fixedness of our position in the Far East hourly becomes more definite. The public man wears a scarf about his eyes who does not see that our historic statesmans.h.i.+p during this century will deal with our growing mastery of the Pacific, and the weaving backward and forward across that ocean of our ever-multiplying relations with the East.

This paper might be entirely taken up with a statement of tangled situations and deep problems which will require the combined intelligence of the whole American people to solve.

Yet, for the purpose of this life, what are they all, compared with the character of individual Americans, and therefore with the influence of the American home upon American men in the making; for men in the making is what the youth of our land are. Gladstone stated a truth, wide and vital as English inst.i.tutions, when he said that the relation of the Church to the youth of Great Britain is a matter of more concern than all the problems of the Empire put together.

All this is commonplace, you say. I say so too. Yet it is the commonplaces, and those things alone, by which we live and move and have our being. For example, sunlight is commonplace, and so is air.

Who was it that spoke about the d.a.m.nable iteration of the seasons?

A storm is not commonplace, but how long could any of us live--how long would any of us choose to live--were each day and night a succession of thunder, lightning, and downpour? Good citizens.h.i.+p is commonplace, whereas a murder mystery excites us thrillingly. Yet none of us on that account would choose the society of criminals.

It is to the elemental commonplaces that I am now going to direct your attention. The world is kept alive by its monotonies. The trouble is that the indispensable things are so inevitable and persistent that we take them for granted, and yield them neither grat.i.tude nor even attention.

Take the beauty of daylight as our ill.u.s.tration once more. We had it yesterday, have it to-day, have had it ever since we were born, and will have it until we die. Note, too, the eternal stability of the heavens, which change not at all; and the endless pour of ocean's currents, warming certain coasts and leaving others chill. It is the same with the life intellectual and the life spiritual.

”What is the grandest thing in the universe?” asks Hugo. ”A storm at sea,” he answers, and continues, ”And what is grander than a storm at sea?” ”The unclouded heavens on a starry and moonless night.” ”And what is grander than these midnight skies?” ”The soul of man!” A spectacular climax such as Hugo loved; and still, with all its dramatic effect, the picturesque statement of a vast and mighty truth!

Very well. The home is the place where character is to be formed, and therefore its influences on ”the soul of man” are like those of the sun on the body of man. Let us get to those commonplaces, therefore, at which the cynic lifts his lip, but which are worth a good deal more to you, young man, than all your achievings will be.