Chapter III. In Search of a Career
Out West
Harvard had taught me this—that I did not know a thing—not even the meaning of human life. Somehow I think a college education is of benefit to two classes of people only—those who desire to acquire a social position and those who want to get training in a certain subject. I have not the battle instinct and could never see any use in competition. If I had not come of good people I might have wanted to fight to get with good people, and that is about all college can give. I can remember getting only one real thrill to go out in the world and do something, and that was after a sort of valedictory talk by old Doctor Grey. I had always cared for the out of doors and it appears I stood well in botany. When the venerable professor told us that it takes fifty years to make a nutmeg orchard, and that a million dollars was waiting anyone who would walk into Boston with him the next day and prove to certain capitalists that he could tell the difference between the male and female nutmeg, my commercial instinct was aroused and a gleam of ambition came to me for the first time. I resolved to find out about the male and the female nutmeg.
There was no way to learn anything about beauty in Harvard—no instruction in it and no honors for it. Taking their cue from the Pilgrim Fathers and, since then, the Church, they did not believe in the value of any of the senses of the body, but only in the quality of the human mind and the power to ratiocinate. Any expression or feeling for beauty, except that made by sacred music, was common, vulgar, and to be repressed. If Harvard could manage to produce one Corot, one Beethoven, or one Michael Angelo, her name would be known longer in future ages than it will be for all the small imitation Shakespeares she has sent out over the country. Even Mr. Emerson, in my opinion, was half ashamed of his lyrical gift; and the elder Story, the sculptor, is more honored in Boston for a law book he wrote, before thirty, than for any of his statues.
One day in Mr. Story’s studio, in Europe, was a group of American business men who always made it more or less one of their loafing places. Of course, they had all been well bred enough to wander around and see what the old man had been working at lately, but it was not long before they were settled down over their cigars, discussing the business of stocks and bonds—what they were all thinking about and all they really cared about. Story stood it as long as he could, walking nervously up and down in silence. Finally he whirled, saying:
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, Phidias built the Parthenon. Who in hell were the stockholders?”
After my graduation, it was a question of a career. I had spent four years to find out that I did not know anything, and was to spend three more to find out what I wanted to do. All my ancestors had lived by talk. I had inherited the “gift of gab,” but there seemed to be no market for it in my generation. It had turned from the pulpit to the stage and novels, in order to get an audience. Rhetoric and fiery oratory is not an honest way to teach, as it hypnotizes the listeners. Reading a speech coolly the next morning in the newspaper is the only fair way to judge it. My father felt this and changed his preaching into a dry, matter-of-fact style, not caring to influence by his personality. He immediately lost his audience.
Groping for an occupation, I went to New York and, with a half-formulated idea to become an architect, called on Russel Sturgis. He was a blond-headed young man, about thirty-five, and seemed to me to be quite old and efficient. Looking at me very keenly, he said:
“Do you know anything about the bearing power of bricks?”
“No.”
“Do you care anything?”