[QUESTIONS FOR YOUNG MEN.]
ON KEEPING YOUR OWN COUNSEL.
It is an old saying among schoolboys and college men that the fellow who keeps his mouth shut is always the big man; that he who deliberately says little quickly wins for himself the name for wisdom. Such statements are quite as true in the outer world to a certain degree as they are in college and school. The pith of the matter is that if in any way you arrive at a position of any importance, the less you talk to every one the more credit you receive for care, for thoughtfulness, for sound well-considered opinions. Here is nothing which urges a boy to have no opinions or to never express them; and in fact this "wise silence" at school and college as often, perhaps, covers up an empty mind as it does the wisdom of Solomon. There is, however, a good rule to follow, which may be given briefly, to the effect that it is well to say little until you have thoroughly made up your mind, and then not to hesitate in your statements. The temptation of the average man is to express some opinion at once, but if that is changed later, the full force of the final opinion is lost.
Let others do the wrangling. Your opinion will have all the more influence if you come out strong with it at the close of the discussion, when not only are the others considerably in doubt as to what they do want, but you have also had the advantage of hearing many sides of the case.
That is to say, that in your daily behavior towards the others in school it is well to keep your "talk" in reserve. It is a habit easily acquired, and one that in the end works both ways. It adds both to the value of your advice, because the advice is better considered, and it gives the advice an added value so far as others are concerned, because when you only say a little, that little has the more consideration.
In the course of athletic games there are two ways of treating friends and opponents. One way is as easy as another, for both are merely habits. Many a good chap at baseball or football is constantly grumbling whenever the umpire or referee gives a decision. He objects to the decision on principle; he goes back to his place in the field criticising the partisanship of the official, and makes himself uncomfortable as well as disagreeable to the umpires and the other teams. If this young man should be asked some day—off the field, of course—whether it were sportsmanlike to criticise in the midst of a game an umpire properly chosen, he would, no doubt, maintain in strong terms that such criticism was the most unsportsmanlike thing possible, and then he would promptly deny that he ever made such criticism. Yet there are many such, and it is unfortunately one of the most common sights on a school athletic field to-day to find the two teams wrangling with the umpire over a decision he has made, and this, too, after he has been asked ten minutes before to decide all such questions for them. It is only another form of the same lack of habit in courteous behavior, and it causes most of the hard feeling between schools and colleges to-day.
So one might go on by the hour speaking of the different questions in school and college life which are examples of lack of behavior of the most ordinary kind, but the root of the matter is that each boy should say to himself that he will be constantly reserved, that he will wait for the proper moment to speak and act, and that he will then act vigorously if he is convinced the time has come.