Set out with the determination that you will be faithful in everything. Only last week a Girard boy called on me to help him get employment. I asked him some questions, and he told me that he had been out of the college five or six years, and had five or six situations. Do you think he had been faithful in anything? If he had been, he would not have lost place after place. When you get a place, and I hope every one of you will have a place provided for you before you leave here, be among the first to arrive in the morning, and be among the last to leave at the end of the day’s work. Do not let any fascination of base ball or anything else lead you to forget that your first duty is to your employer. Be quick to answer every call. Don’t say to yourself, “It is not my place to answer that call, it is the other boy’s place,” but go yourself, if the other fellow is slow, and let it be seen that you are ready for any work. And be very prompt to answer. Do whatever you are told. Say “yes, sir,” “no, sir” with hearty good-will, and say “good-morning” as if you meant it. In short, do not be slovenly in anything you have to do; be alive, and remember all the time that no labor is degrading.
Be sure to treat your employers with unfailing respect, and your fellow-clerks or workers, whether superiors, inferiors or equals, with hearty good-will.
Do not tell lies directly or indirectly, for even if your employer do so, he will despise you for doing so. No matter if he is untruthful, he will respect you if you tell the truth always. Do not indulge in or listen to impure talk. No real gentleman does this, and you can be a real gentleman even if you are poor, for you will be educated. Make yourself indispensable to your employer; this, too, is quite possible, and it will almost certainly insure success. Be ambitious in the highest sense. Remember, that if not now, you will hereafter have others dependent upon you for support or help. It is a splendid thing for a boy to go out from this college with the determination to support his mother; and some that I know and you know are doing this, and many others will do it.
I pause here to say that, so far, my words have been spoken as to your duties to the world, to yourselves. I have supposed that you boys would rather be bosses than journeymen, that you would rather own teams than drive them for other people, that you would rather be a contractor than carry the pick and shovel, that you would rather be a bricklayer than carry the hod, that you would rather be a house-builder than a shoveler of coal into the house-builder’s cellar. Is it not so?
Now, I say that if you should do everything I tell you, and avoid everything I have warned you against, you cannot succeed in the best sense, you cannot become true men, such men as the city has a right to expect you to be, unless you seek the blessing of God; for he holds all things in his hands. “The silver and the gold are mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.” If God be for us, who can be against us?
In these closing words, then, I would speak to you as to your duty to God.
What shall I say about this? I can hardly tell you anything that you do not already know, so often have you been talked to about this subject. But nothing is so important for you to be reminded of, though I fear that to some of you hardly anything is so uninteresting. Naturally the heart is disinclined to think of God and our duty to him. But we cannot do without him, though many people think they can, or they act as if they thought so. Such people are not wise; they are very foolish.
He made us, he preserves us, he cares for us with infinite love and care, he has appointed the time for our departure from this life, and he has prepared a better life than this for those who love him here. We cannot afford to disregard such a being as this, for all things are in his hands. If you will think of it, some of the best men and women you know are believers in God, and are trying to serve him. Do you think you can do without him?
Cultivate, then, the companionship, the friendship of those who love and fear God, both men and women. You are safe with such; you are not quite so sure of safety in the society of those who openly say they can do without God. When I speak of those who fear God, I do not mean merely professors of religion, not merely members of meeting or members of church, but I mean people who live such lives as people ought to live, who fear God and keep his commandments. You know there are such, you have met with them, you will meet many more of them, and you will meet also those who call themselves Christians, but whose lives show that they have no true knowledge of God, who are mere formalists, mere professors.