Letters from a Father to His Son Entering College

by Charles Franklin Thwing

But these men are whole, wholesome, healthy, healthful. They seem to represent those qualities which, James Bryce says, Archbishop Tait embodied: "He had not merely moderation, but what, though often confounded with moderation, is something rarer and better, a steady balance of mind. He was carried about by no winds of doctrine. He seldom yielded to impulses, and was never so seduced by any one theory as to lose sight of other views and conditions which had to be regarded. He knew how to be dignified without assumption, firm without vehemence, prudent without timidity, judicious without coldness." They are remote from crankiness, eccentricity. They may or may not have fads; but they are not faddists. Not one of them is a genius in either the good or the evil side of conspicuous native power. They see and weigh evidence. They are a happy union of wit and wisdom, of jest and precept, of work and play, of companionship and solitude, of thinking and resting, of receptivity and creativeness, of the ideal and the practical, of individualism and of sympathy. They are living in the day, but they are not living for the day. They embody the doctrine of the golden mean.

Each of these men has also in his career usually more than filled the place he occupied. He has overflowed into the next higher place. The overflow has raised him into the higher lock. The career has been an ascending spiral. Each higher curve has sprung out of the preceding and lower. From the attorneyship of the county to service as attorney of the State, and to a place on the Supreme Bench of the United States:—From a pastorate in a small Maine city to a pastorate suburban, and from the pastorate suburban to a pastorate on Fifth Avenue:—From a professorship in an humble place to a professorship in largest relations:—From the building of cottages to the building of great libraries and museums. This is the order of progression. I will not say that any of these men did the best he could do at every step of the way. Some did; some did not, probably. But what is to the point, each did better than the place demanded. He more than earned his wages, his salary, his pay. He had a surplus; he was a creditor. His employers owed him more than they paid him. They found the best way of paying him and keeping him was to advance him.

Such is the natural evolution of skill and power. The only legitimate method of advancement is to make advancement necessary, inevitable, by the simple law of achievement. The simple law of achievement depends upon the law of increasing force, which is the law that personal force grows through the use of personal force.

Hiram Stevens Maxim in the sketch of his life tells of his working in Flynt's carriage factory at Abbot, Maine, when a boy of about fifteen. From Flynt's at Abbot he went to Dexter, a large town, where he became a foreman. He presently went to a threshing machine factory in northern New York; thence to Fitchburg, Mass., where he obtained a place in the engineering works of his uncle. In this factory he says he could do more work than any other man save one. Thence he went to a place in Boston; from Boston to New York, where he received high pay as a draughtsman. While he was working in New York he conceived the idea of making a gun which would load and fire itself by the energy derived from the burning powder. From work in a little place in Maine, Maxim, by doing each work the best possible, has made himself a larger power.

Furthermore, these men represent goodfellowship. They embody friendliness. The late Robert Lowe (Viscount Sherbrooke) was at one time esteemed to be the equal of John Bright and of Gladstone in oratory, and their superior in intellect. He died in 1892 unknown and unlamented. He failed by reason of a lack of friendliness. Lowe was once an examiner at Oxford. Into an oral examination which he was conducting a friend came and asked how he was getting on. "Excellently," replied Lowe, "five men flunked already and the sixth is shaky." Ability without goodfellowship is usually ineffective; good ability plus good fellowship makes for great results.

In this atmosphere of friendliness, these men are practising the Golden Rule. They are not advertising the fact. They do much in this atmosphere of friendliness for large bodies of people. They follow the sentiment which Pasteur expressed near the close of his great career: "Say to yourselves first: 'What have I done for my instruction?' and, as you gradually advance, 'What have I done for my country?' until the time comes when you may have the immense happiness of thinking that you have contributed in some way to the progress and to the good of humanity. But whether our efforts are or are not favored by life, let us be able to say when we come near the great goal: 'I have done what I could.'" They have done much for the individual, for the local neighborhood. They have given themselves in numberless services, boards, committees, commissions—works which count much in time and strength. These services constitute no small share of the worth of a commonwealth, of a community.

To one relation of these men I wish especially to refer. This is their relation to wealth. Some of these men are business men. Wealth is one of the normal results of business. Some of these men are professional men. Wealth is not the normal result of professional service. But the seeking of wealth has not in the life and endeavor of these men played a conspicuous part. If wealth is the primary purpose, they keep the purpose to themselves. They do not talk much about it. But most of them do not hold wealth as a primary purpose. Rather their primary and atmospheric aim is to serve the community through their business. The same purpose moves them which also moves the lawyer, the minister, the doctor. Life, not living, is their principle.

To one further element I must refer. It comprehends, perhaps, much that I have been trying to say to you, my son. These men kept, and are keeping themselves to their work. They do not waste themselves. They are economical of time and strength. The late Provost Pepper of the University of Pennsylvania said (in a manuscript not formally published): "Many can do with less than eight or even seven hours of sleep while working hard, provided they recognize the increased risk; that while running their engine they take more scrupulous care with every part of the machinery. Machine must be perfect, fuel ditto; everything must be sacrificed to the one point of keeping the machinery running thus: Subjection of carnal, emotional excesses; certainty that no weak spots exist; diet, especially too much eating, too fast eating; stimulants, tobacco, open-air exercise; cool-headed, almost callous, critical analysis of oneself, one's sensations and effect of work on the system; clear knowledge of danger lines; result, avoidance of transgressing, and immediate summons at right time."

These men are men of self-restraint. They are like rivers having dams, keeping their waters back in order that the water may be used more effectively. They are free from entangling alliances. They are not men of one thing; they are often men of two, three, a dozen things. But one thing is primary, the others secondary. They may have avocations; but they have only one vocation. "This one thing I do." I have already quoted from Pasteur. Of him it is said by his biographer: "In the evening, after dinner, he usually perambulated the hall and corridor of his rooms at the École Normale, cogitating over various details of his work. At ten o'clock he went to bed, and at eight the next morning, whether he had had a good night or a bad one, he resumed his work in the laboratory." His wife wrote to their children: "Your father is absorbed in his thoughts, talks little, sleeps little, rises at dawn, and in one word, continues the life I began with him this day thirty-five years ago." Learn from the Frenchman, my boy!

Keeping themselves at their one work these men embody a sense of duty. I find they have a conscience. Their conscience is not worn outside, but inside, their bosom. They make no show of doing what they ought. They simply do what they are called upon to do—and that is all there is to it. It was said of a first scholar in an historic college that he was never caught working. These same men may, or may not be caught working, but they do work, and their work is a normal and moral part of their being.