Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1884-06-07
OUR ADVICE TO THE GRADUATES.


plomas at the University this week
have been very much advised as to
their future course and congratulated
and complimented on their present
requirements. Before they go out
into the world to fight the battle of
life the CHRONICLE would like to give
them its blessing and add something
more to the admonitions they have
already received. Newspapers have
very practical way of considering mat
tiers. The ship that editors ride in is
the ever present Now, and it is usually
tossed about ON an angry ocean. The
journalist learns to consider life as it
is and men as they are, and he indul-
ges very little in sentiment or theory.
The advice that we propose to give
our young friends, therefore, will
probably be somewhat different from
that they have heard from the pulpit
and the rostrum.
In beginning, we will lay down this
fact as a kind of premises: There are
a great many college graduates in the
world and a young man is not created
a superior being by virtue of having
taken degree. The numerous col
leges of the land grind out hundreds
OF graduates every year. A great
many of these novices go out into the
world to possess it, but they very soon
realize the fact that the world possesses
them and they, of all its minions, find
it the hardest master. No merchant
is going to employ young man as
clerk or book keeper because he can
write A. M. after his name. If the
young man chances to have capital
and desires to follow business pur-
suit his education is not going to Gre
ate him a merchant and he will come
in contact with numerous keen witted
sons of trade that never saw the inside
of school house who will be able to
Guido him in any kind of business. A
college education will not, of itself,
make a man lawyer or physician
with paying practice; Horace Gree
ly is authority for the assertion that it
won't make him journalist, and about
the only practical life for which it
alone qualities him is to teach a free
school in backwoods district.
Now, young gentlemen, don't under
stand that we are disparaging that
education that you have labored so
long and so industriously to acquire.
Your education is a good thing and if
you use it properly it win prove value
received for the pains you have be-
slowed upon it. But you have yet to
learn that most useful of all lessons;
how to get along in the world. You
will meet other young men when you
get out in life who have had to scram-
BILE for living while you were inn
INJURED in college walls. They have
already learned this lesson. and a young
man of that class has a decided ad-
vantage over you at present. He is
more useful than you are, and the
practical world bids a higher price for
him than it does for you. You must
learn what he knows before you can
turn your education to account, and
then, if nature has given you both
equal endowments, you can outstrip
him in the race, for you will have a
broader and a better trained mind.
What we wish to impress on you is
that you cant at once take a promi-
nent position in life by virtue of your
diploma, and though you are master
of arts, to the every day business world
you are only "greeny' and fiedge-
ling.
You have been told that it is the
educated classes who do the thinking
for the world and control its destinies
That is true only in one sense, and it
is apt to lead you into a cruel delusion.
The educated men who shape the af-
fairs of the world are not necessarily
collegians. The multiplication of
printing presses and the quick and
wide dissemination of knowledge has
made education easy of access in these
latter days, and statistics would proba-
bly, show that self educated men large
ly control the business and politics of
this country, and comprise a large
portion of its professional men. You
should not let this idea lead you into
believing you are going to be great
thinker and take leading part in life
because you have been through col
lege. Men of such superior stamp are
made from Natures gold, and if a
University
aPut the minted mark
On copper. brass and a. that,