Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1880-08-11
A Word to Young Men.

A Word to Young Men.
During this summer holiday the boys
have come promptly TO the surface Rail-
ways, boats, every place of summer resort
swarm with lads or young men, let us call
them, for they like and we all like to think
of them as early as possible as men
among men. They are just free from
school or college, or they have fort.
nights vacation at the shop or Office. so
they are off, with their brand-new rifles,
hunting in the mountains; or, with fine
useless flies, trout fishing or camping in Il
tent on the beach, noisy party, incessant-
ly frying horrible, delicious messes; or,
most likely of all, you shall find them red
and solemn, anxious as to necktie and col
lar, dancing in n hotel parlor with some
pretty woman ten years older than them
selves.
Some hearty, happy lads are ingenious
enough to show how new the world is to
them and how intensely they enjoy it.
Every man whom they dislike is a villain,
every passably nice girl the most noble or
the most beautiful creature in the world
They tell you. knowingly, aside, of a
athlete in their college, who
will sweep the whole field at Mott
Haven next year. They find perpetually
most remarkable characters in every new
acquaintance or tramp they meet. Others
affect Indifferent, blaise ways; they are
early spoiled for boys. and they are sure
to make petty and commonplace men.
But there are uncertainties of character,
rapid changes of disposition in all these
lads which puzzle parents, and often the
boys themselves. They are in the age of
groping, tentative essay. they try first this
then that manual or aim or character
which they have read of or thought out as
suitable to make their own in this I'M
known life that is coming to them. We
have known young men Of eighteen 60
through a routine of study prescribed by
themselves, for months, then break
through and drink like sots, then pull up
again and lay down ascetic rules for every
hour, every action, every thought collect
cd from Poor Richard and a Kempis.
1t won't do. boys. You cannot form
your character or your life by running
yourself into a mould like melted metal.
You will grow, not be cast; there are
forces within and without you which will
inevitably affect your grown. What each
of you has to do is to meet and control
these forces one by one. You will meet,
for instance, mean people, tricky. selfish,
brutal people, who will shove you back
and down; worse than that, you yourself
may have inherited from some dead
grandfather. selfishness, brutality, a sickly
body, thirst for liquor or some other
vice or weakness. You cannot overcome
all these things at eighteen by making up
u code and subscribing to it. What shall
you do, then? Two hints the Tribune will
give you, which will be sure to conquer
success;
First-Bc honest. BY which we do not
mean, simply, not TO steal. That goes
without saying. The young man who,
before his beard is grown, thinks it clever
to cheat his tailor, or to sneak out of his
little debts at college, has already laid a
sure foundation of ill-fortune. Nothing is
known SO quickly or sticks to a man so
long as the reputation of dishonesty. 1t
is the feck of. mildew which eats and
grows blackcr and spreads from year to
year. Boys are fatuously blind to the
lengthening shadow which these faults of
sharp dealing and lying in their earliest
years throw down their whole future. In
a day or two they will be asking for pat
ronage from the public or chance in the
business world, and they will lind that in
damaging their character they have
already squandered their only capital. No
merchant would take u boy, even as a
porter, into his employ, who was not
known to be honest. We take it for grant
ed our boys are honest, in the coarser
meaning of the term. But there is finer
honesty that enters into man S nature and
lifts him above his fellows. He is no
sneak nor sham, neither to his companions,
his God, nor even to himself. lie does
not sham virtue which he has not; he
does not initiate any other mans charac-
ter; but he tries to 90 to the bottom of his
own to clear it and lift it up. AS the boy
begins, 50 the man will end. The lad who
speaks with atfectation, and minces foreign
tongues that he does not understand at
school, will be Il weak chrome in charac-
ter all his life; the boy who cheats his
teachers into thinking him devout at
chapel will be the man who will make
religion Il trade and bring Christianity
into contempt; and the boy who wins the
highest average by stealing his examina-
ton papers will figure some day as
tricky politician. The lad who, whether
rich or poor, dull or clever, looks you
straight in the eye and keeps his answer
inside of the truth. already counts friends
who will last all his life, and holds n capi-
tai which will bring him in surer inter-
est than money.
Then get to the bottom of things. You
see how it is already as to that. 1t was
the student who was grounded in the
grammar that took the Latin prize; it was
that slow, steady drudge who practiced
firing every day last winter that bagged
the most game in the mountains; it is the
clerk who studies the specially of the
house in off hours who is to be promoted.
Your brilliant. happy-go.lucky, hit-or-
miss fellow usually turns out the dead
weight of the family by forty-five. Don't
take anything for granted; get to the bot
tom of things. Neither be sham your
self, nor be fooled by shams. Ready for
you in your early manhood, there are
plenty of pleasures waiting for you to
onqucr-applause, money, society, this
and that kind of philosophy or faith. Take
nothing on trust; weigh it; see what it is
worth. You will have rough disappoint-
ments, but you Will come TO the granite
underneath at last.
We have said nothing about your re-
ligion. Your creed matters little-Bap-
tist, Presbyterian, Cburchman; for if you
are the sincere earnest man we mean, you
will come at last, down through all pro-
fessions. all experiences to the Almighty
Good and Order which underlies them all.
You will discover for yourself that every
sincere and earnest man must build on
that, or on the shifting sand. There is
no other choice in life.- Tribune.
ENGLISH LAVA poor woman named
Catherine Connolly has husband in tho
Clarkenwell, England, house Of detention
under remand on charge of felony.
Two weeks ago, in violation of solemn
law, she conveyed 10 him while on visit
Il small quantity of tobacco-or, to be
more precise, about a qsarter of an ounce
which was found beneath paste "turn-
ovor' that she brought him for his dinner.
When arrested, she explained that the
turnover had been given to her by IN
of her husbands outside the