Part 26 (2/2)

No statistician can collect and cla.s.sify the instances of young lives impaired by the heedlessness and insensibility of the mature to the beat.i.tudes which glorify all youth.

This att.i.tude of the world toward young men is not caused by any distrust of them or by any undervaluing of the high qualities of the true, the beautiful, and the good which the young man brings to it.

Let no young man get the idea that the world of society and affairs is ”down on him,” to borrow the phrasing of the people again. Let him never for a moment feel that this world of experience and present power does not believe in him.

For the world does believe in you, young man. It is not ”down on” you.

It is busy, that is all. It is engaged with the numberless and pressing concerns of its from-day-to-day existence. It is forgetful, no doubt, but its apathy does not go deeper than that.

With this caution to the young man that he may not misunderstand what is here written, I appeal to men and women, in whose faces the years have etched the lines and wrinkles of knowledge and understanding, to give more attention to young men; to encourage the n.o.bilities of them; to reach down a helping hand from your secure station on the heights to him who struggles upward toward you.

It will not hurt you, sir or madam, to closely watch for signs of developing power in the young men of your acquaintance and to cultivate that growing strength by your active and aggressive faith in the young giant whom you have thus discovered.

Men and women there are who search minutely for unknown powers in plant-life, and by infinite pains in the use of that power, when found, evolve newer, higher, and better types of fruit and flower. And this is a good work. Men and women there are who sweep the infinitudes of the skies that they may find a star hitherto unseen, or steal unawares upon a hidden planet or a flying comet swiftly, yet stealthily, emerging upon the field of the telescope's vision.

And that is a good work, too--yet fruitless, for the immensities of the universe will never be measured, nor the mysteries of the skies be solved, nor the stars give up their secrets. Most of us are on some quest which requires the very infinitesimalities of patience, quests that are grand and quests that are foolish, searchings that are useful and explorations that are frivolous.

But the n.o.blest of all prospecting is for strength and high purpose and thoroughbred quality among the young manhood of our Nation. For any one who helps some young man to make his life righteously successful has enriched humanity more than he who reveals a Klondike to the uses and the greed of the clans of trade.

Yes; and he or she who, in the search for strong minds and pure hearts among young men, discovers to the world a _great_ man has in that achievement wrought immortality for himself and herself, while rendering to mankind a service like that of a Columbus or a Pasteur.

For Columbus discovered a new continent; but what of the man or woman who while looking through all the immaturities of his youth ”discovers” a Columbus.

Thus would I direct the divining keenness of our men of affairs, so swift and sure to detect advantages in business, to the young men who wait at their outer gates for recognition and service. I would invite the world, whose hearing is so sensitive to the material things of commerce, to the exalted and eternal subject of human characters and human destinies as they are developing daily, hourly, all about us. In a word, I ask the ear of the world for its young men.

I read in some sermon--I think it was by Myron Reed--that the most pathetic thing in life is that a man of either thought or action must spend two-thirds of his time getting a hearing. ”During this time,”

said the preacher, ”the man of thought speaks his immortal word; the man of action does his immortal deed; all the time the World is refusing to listen or to heed; but finally, when the fires of genius have burned low, when the great thoughts have been uttered and the great works wrought, then it is willing to give ear and eye to the necessarily feebler acts and thoughts of the great man's later days.”

It refuses to come near the fire when in full glow; it comes and puts its hands into the ashes after the flame has died out and the ashes themselves are growing cold. Do we not find ourselves wors.h.i.+ping echoes and ghosts in the persons of men who _once_ wrought splendidly, and denying the real forces of the present hour until they compel recognition by their overwhelmingness; and then, having exhausted themselves, become in their turn ghosts and echoes.

It is all right to honor those who have done big things and are ”living on their reputations”; but it is all wrong to deny to those young men who are doing and will do big things, now and in the future, full and glad recognition of their power and possibilities.

The first thing that the world should remember about the young man who is confronting it, asking his daily bread of it, is the inestimable value of the qualities of freshness, of innocence, of faith, of confidence, of high honesty, of Don Quixote courage which the young man brings to it. These are qualities which in human character are worth all the wisdom of the market-place many million times multiplied. They are the qualities which, in spite of itself, keep the world young and tolerable.

The young man comes to the world fresh from his mother's knee. The Lord's Prayer is still in his mind; his mother taught it to him. The glorious fable of Was.h.i.+ngton and the cherry-tree is still in his heart; his mother taught it to him. A beautiful honor that makes him very foolish on the stock exchange and causes the shrewd ones to say, ”He will know more after a while”--the splendid honor that makes him throw over what the world calls ”advantages”--still glorifies his soul; his mother taught him that honor. The confidence that G.o.d is just, and that success is surely his if he will but do right, still beautifies him like the rose-tinted clouds of morning; it is the influence of his mother's teaching.

Let the world understand that these qualities with which the mother labors to endow her child, from the time the blessing of maternity is hers to the time the bright-eyed young fellow steps out from the old home, are more valuable to the world itself than all its gold-mines, all its scientific discoveries, all its electric railroads, all its games of politics, all its commerce. ”Il mondo va da se,” said a cynical Italian statesman--”the world goes by itself.” But it does not.

If the world were not each year renewed, refreshed, glorified by the magnificent honor and fine expectancies of its young men, it would soon become simply fiendish in its sordidness, selfishness, and baseness. Let the world, then, preserve these fine qualities at which it too often idly sneers; not for the young man's sake--no, that is not to be expected--but for its own sake.

Let the world turn to the Master and think of what he said: ”Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” I am pleading for the tolerance of what, by a certain cla.s.s of men, are called impracticable business defects in youthful character, which in reality are the vital blood by which the world is kept morally alive.

The first att.i.tude that the world ought really to take toward the young man is charity. How parrot-like one is! Charity! ”And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” I defy any man who talks about the practical affairs of this life to get away from the Bible.

Let the world then have charity for the young man. Let it realize that for the particular moment there is nothing conceivable so helpless as he. He is just as helpless as, in time, he will become irresistible. I have already earnestly advised every young man, as a practical matter, to do at least one thing each day not only free from any selfish motive, but from which no possible material benefit could come to himself.

And now this is the reverse side of that s.h.i.+eld. Let the world give to the young man a little start, a little help, a little foothold, a little encouragement. And I repeat that by the world I mean the great ma.s.s of men who have ceased to be young men, or who, still young in years, have achieved places of power--those who hold the reins of affairs and business, of industrial and social conditions.

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