The Young Man and the World

by Albert J. Beveridge

Have your doctor look you over every six months, no matter how well you feel—or oftener, if he thinks best. Have your regular physician. Pick out a good one, and, especially, a man congenial to yourself. Make him your friend as well as medical adviser. The true doctor is a marvelous person.

How astonishing the accurate knowledge of the accomplished physician! How miracle-like the dainty and beneficent skill of the modern surgeon. The peculiar ability of a great diagnostician amounts to divination. And he, whom Nature has fitted for this noble profession, is endowed with a sympathy for you and an intuitive understanding of you very much akin to the peculiar sixth sense of woman—that strange power by which she "knows and understands."

Consult your doctor, therefore. Be careful of medicines he does not prescribe. The most innocent drug is a veiled force, a compound of hidden powers—the system a delicate intricacy whose condition may be different every day. The neurosis of our American life is seducing too many of our best and busiest men to the use of chemicals, mixtures, nostrums, pick-me-ups, etc., which make nerves and brain utter brave falsehoods of a strength that is not theirs.

Your doctor won't let you do this—he will stay your unconsciously suicidal hand. If your machinery is out of order, he will tell you so, and do what is necessary to repair it. He will comfort and reassure you, too, and administer to the mind a medicine as potent as powder or liquid. But you will get no false sympathy from him. If you have nothing the matter with you, yet think you have, your doctor will take you by the collar of your coat, stand you on your feet, and bid you be a man. So don't dose yourself. Be a faithful guardian of the treasures Nature gave you.

Returning now to reading: You are not to neglect books. They must be read. If you are a professional man they must be more than read; they must be studied, absorbed, made a part of your intellectual being. I am not despising the accumulated learning of the past. Matthew Arnold, in his "Literature and Dogma," quite makes this point. What I am speaking of is miscellaneous reading.

After a while one wearies of the endless repetition, the "damnable iteration" contained in the great mass of books. You will finally come to care greatly for the Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns. Compared with these most others are "twice-told tales" indeed. Of course one must read the great scientific productions. They are an addition to positive knowledge, and are a thing quite apart from ordinary literature.

My recommendation of the Bible is not alone because of its spiritual or religious influences; I am advising it from the material and even the business view-point. By far the keenest wisdom in literature is in the Bible, and is put in terms so apt and condensed, too, that their very brevity proves its inspiration—is an inspiration to you.

Carry the Bible with you, if for nothing else than as a matter of literary relaxation. The tellers of the Bible stories tell the stories and stop. "He builded him a city"—"he smote the Philistines"—"he took her to his mother's tent." You are not wearied to death by the details. Go into any audience addressed by a public speaker, and you will perceive that his hearers' interest depends on whether he is getting to the point. "Well, why doesn't he get to the point," is the common expression in public assemblages. The Bible "gets to the point."

And it has something for everybody. If you are a politician, or even a statesman, no matter how astute you are, you can read with profit several times a year the career of David, one of the cleverest politicians and greatest statesmen who ever lived. If you are a business man, the proverbs of Solomon will tone you up like mountain-air.

A young woman should read Ruth. A man of practical life, a great man, but purely a man of the world, once said to me: "If I could enact one statute for all the young women of America, it would be that each of them should read the book of Ruth once a month." But the limits and purpose of this paper do not permit a dissertation on the Bible.