Part 8 (1/2)

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 princ.i.p.ally 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 a.r.s.enal 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 s.h.i.+rt.

I have in mind now a spirited young American of this cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances, whose muscles daily strain at the windla.s.ses 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 inst.i.tutions 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 n.o.body interested in the man at the bottom. Yet it is the man at the bottom upon whom our Republican inst.i.tutions 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 compet.i.tors 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!