Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-06-22

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ton. Often, indeed, his college training may
! weave into this with decided advantage, but It
Is oftener an element in the enjoyment OF
! worldly success rather than q means Of attain
| ing it. JAMES A. WHITNEY.
GO INTO A BANK OR MERCANTILE HOUSE.
/ have not had time to give your letter, or,
| rather the question you asked, very careful
| consideration. but in a general way might say
that after graduating the young man should go
into the banking or mercantile business. begin
| ming at the foot of the ladder and working his
| way up. If there is anything to him ne will not
be at the foot of the ladder but very short
| time. IRVING a. EVANS.
TOO MANY SEEK PROFESSIONS.
Replying to your letter, let me say, briefly,
4 that a college graduate ought to go to work.
| He is Just like anybody else. except that the
| man who has acquired an education without the
| opportunity of college instruction is superior,
| in most cases to one who has had those advan-
| tages. Either of them will succeed if he be
| honest, sober and industrious. AS rule.
| think too many college graduates seek profess
! sions SO called, as the law, medicine and the
ministry. If they would go more into mercan-
| tile, mining. manufacturing or railroad indus
4 tries, their chances for success in life would
| doubtless be improved. Ny own observation
| has taught me that young man who is deter
i and high moral tone, is sure to succeed.
| less he meets with loss of health or other UNI
usual misfortune. JAMES f. CAMPBELL.
| TAKE THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY.
| have your letter asking to reply TO the
| question, what should college graduate of
to- day do?'' ! can only answer by saying that
! of the first opportunity for honorable employ
ment.. and did my level best to perform the work
| TO the satisfaction OF my employer From time
| to time, as other opportunities presented them
selves. 1 took advantage of them. know Of no
| other guidance of the young college graduate
but TO work diligently, tell the truth, and avoid
Indulgence in designations OF any kind, and
| especially in the use of alcoholic stimuli nts.
| With training, there is no reason why the col
| lege graduate should not merely hold his own,
but easily surpass all competitors in the occupa-
tions of life. ABRAM s. HEWITT.
TAKE TURN AT SCHOOL TEACHING.
| In response to your favor, would state my
| belief that college graduate, If he contem-
| plates entering business life. should attend
| commercial college with the same humble mo-
| tive that the farmers boy does who comes to
! the city with only district school educa-
ton for the same purpose. II ha proposes the
| three months previously in teaching school. He
has such an honorable precedent as the expert
ence of that other college graduate, John
Adams, second president of the United States.
believe every man who has been at school,
consecutively, for the several years necessary
to pass from the primary school to the COM
mencement day, has cultivated, willingly or ig-
noTantly, state of intellectual conceit that is
detrimental to his. interests, financial, social
placed in actual contact with an experience of
the world as it exists. If that experience is a
trihe unpleasant the better for him.
The sturdest man ever saw was a Harvard
graduate who went Immediately to Texas, lived
two years as cowboy, and went home to Con-
necticut with perfect self-poise- l have lived
among books all my life, but do not believe it
is a normal existence. The manuel training
school is solving this problem of proper educa-
ton, in which mental stimulus is united to
muscular tphysical action Hurriedly, offer
these crude ideas. ALBERT P. SoUTHwIcK.
NEITHER POLITICS NOR IMMEDIATE WEALTH.
IN replying to the question, What Should a
College Graduate of To day Do?'' Thomas
Bailey Aldrich refers to paper by Prot E. R.
Sill, published in the Atlantic Monthly some
time since as the embodiment of his opinions.
Prof. Sill writes thus
"a college is place where young people,
whatever their future occupation is to be, may
receive that more or less complete development
which call a liberal education The human
mind being many sided, the college undertakes
to aid its development on all the lines of its
natural growth. The tendency of modern life,
moreover, with the extreme division of labor,
being to force one or two powers of the mind at
to forestall this sided effect by giving the
whole man fair chance beforehand.
''While the special or professional schools Of
the university provide that q person may go
far possible on some one line of knowledge,
which constitutes his specially, or of that COM
bination of knowledge and skill which consti-
tutes his profession, the college provides that he
sh all get complete possession of himself in all
his powers, mind, body, and that total of quail
ties known as character as is essential to the
highest success in any speciality or profession
whatever. He may get this broad preparation
elsewhere than in college. 1t may come through
private study. 1t may come sometimes,
but only to men of extraordinary endowments.
from the discipline of life itself. But TO the
average man it comes most surely and most
it a man no doubt fits himself best to serve the
world by per Getting his knowledge and skill in
some single direction, but without some such
broad preliminary development, some such
liberal education he will fail not only of his
best possible special work, but-what is worst of
all-he will assuredly fail of that best service
which any man do for the community, the
living in it, whatever his profession, as acom-
plete and roundly modelled man.
1T furnishes favorable phrase for those who
misconceive the purpose of liberal education
to say that it fails TO fit man for the struggle
of life If the phrase means the making Of a
living, this objection seems certainly not well
foEnded. Any ones daily observation of COM
mon life will enable him to answer the question
whether or not literally educated men are,
relatively to the rest OF the community, making
a comfortable living.
Perhaps some men are misled by this phrase,
the strife for sudden wealth, or for political Of
fee, for which a good deal. in fact. of the
violent struggling is done. So far from melting
men to such feverish struggle, it may be hoped
that the higher education will always raise
them above the disposition for it, or the tempta-
ton TO it. Public reputation and public office
should. are beginning once more to believe,
seek the man, and they may be depeni ed on to
find him as fast as he deserves. If not in the
scramble and struggle of certain ignoble regions
of effort. at least in the legitimate pursuit of
every digniied career. men succeed in the long
run by means of their character and intelli-
gence. and the more completely these are de-
veloped the surer the su ccess.''
DON'T BE A COWARD
What shall these young men doP 1 fear is a
vague question TO put to me and can lead only
10 vague answer; for the problem of life be-
fore each youth is separate one. If had any
of these graduates before me, there is a
single vague piece of advice would like to give,
and, if possible, in a way that would make it
remembered. l would say: For Gods sake,
young man, don't be coward!' The young
man would think, / dare say, that such advice |
was i'll bestowed on brave boy like himself;
and in less than three wears you might find this |
same brave boy morally ashamed of every noble |
resolution he carried with him from the college |
campus, gradually adopting logical reasons for |
adhering to ignobie standards of professional, |
business poisi cal activity; slowly and surely
abandoning the fight for social and pc litical |
betterment to men of moral courage; beco ming. |
in fact the poorest kind of a coward, the coward
in spirit, the prosperous cynic-a dead weight |
upon the progress of the race. 1t isn't the |
downright scamp that brings disgrace upon the |
American republic and turns city govern
rnents into dens of thieves it is the lazy, COM
promising ana cowardly respectable. -
r. w. GLIDER.
OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA
Coils p. Huntington, the many times million |
aire, speaking recently of the duty of young |
men with ambition and brains, said eff l were |
a young man with sl0. 900 or 500, 0GU I'd go to |
Africa and make millions in the rubber trade. |
There is town called Opoto, the river Con- |
CO. near the northern boundary of the Congo /
Free state, distant about 400 miles from the |
Guinea coast. You can buy rubber there to-day |
at penny pound young man might go |
there and pay five pence pound for it a nd still |
make a fortune.f
Would you advise young man to go there