The weekly tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1891-1894, 1892-01-02
ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN.
BUSINESS" IS NOT BY ANY MEANS
THE CHIEF AIM IN LIFE.


What will You do with your lives?
We. who are older, who have lived long
er and travelled further, are usually
ready enough with our counsel: but it Is
your ideal that must lead You now. and
not the advice Of others. Honor and
truth we take for granted. Il would be
virtuous.' said an old philosopher.
Though no one We're to know it, just AS
would be clean, though no one were TO
see me-"
The book of commonplace precept
need not be opened here. Yet there is
n word of counsel which now more
than ever-in this Pagan age of denial
and democracy-ought to be spoken to
the youth of America. Be yourselves.
and never abandon your noble aspira-
tions!
You cannot live in absolute independ-
ence Of the world. You must have
affiliations with other persons. But it is
not imperative that those affiliations
should be numerous, and you have it
within your power to make them select.
You are under no obligation to initiate
others or to do as others do.
You ought never to permit your
minds TO be inundated with the igno-
rance, the crudity and the vapid chatter
of commonplace persons. Do NOT too
much reverence the past. Old burdens
that have rolled from the shoulders of
weary and dying men and women should
not he taken mp again by you.
1t Is your life that you must live: it is
not theirs: and now that they rest froIl
their labors, let their works follow them.
Neither must You suppose Yourselves en-
coined 10 assume the burdens that other
persons have created in the present day.
AVOID o. MANY FRIENDS.
Let those attend to grievances who
have them. and do nOt allow your spirits
to be detected, your hope, darkened and
Your lives encountered with the vices.
the errors, the follirs and the weakness
Of failures and Of fools. 1t is. no doubt.
pitiable and deplorable that failures and
fools should exist and suffer; but they
must not be permitted, merely because
they exist and suffer, to drag you also
into failure and folly. Respect the sane
tity of your souls, and beware of super
fiuous contact with other lives.
For it is only the temporary and the
expedient that is gregarious. In every
great moment of life--in every time Of
insight or inspiration or crisis-the hui
man being is alone. The object Of edu.
cation, therefore, should be the develop.
ment and building of an original, noble,
adequate character-nUt simply a prep
a~ration for industrial pursuits, but an
armament for everlasting life.
The occupations of this world, how
ever important, are transitory. The soul
of man is immortal. Other views, | am
aware, are commonly entertained. Peo-
pie who claim to be practical but are
only narrow are never weary of declar-
ing that education must be sensible and
not visionary. An effort to worry the
public mind on this subject is u part of
tin. Grant activity of the compliment
man of business, all the world over, and
has been SO, at periodic intervals, for
many years.
| remember its pernicious existence
long ago-the jealous sheer at what was
called 'book learning" as opposed to
what was called practical knowledge of
affairs: meaning thereby cotton. iron,
coal, the Stock exchange and the Re-
vised Statutes.
som SHEER AT EDUCATION.
Not long sincc-in 1890, in the news
papers Of New York-that epidemic of
mean commonplace burst forth with In
common virulence, and various individ-
uals, in every case possessed of more
wealth than sense, apprised us that
scholastic training is superfiuous, be-
cause it aims to furnish an equipment
wholly in excess OF what is requisite for
business.
My dear old friend, William Warren,
the comedian, used to tell, in his inimit-
able way, a story about II pompous
tradesman of the conventional kind,
who once was addressing the pupils at a
Sunday school. II knew a little boy
he said, 'who always obeyed his mother,
always washed his face in the morning.
always came early to Sunday school,
t never stole an apple. And where do
YOU think that good boy is now" To
r this inquiry a small voice piped out an
answer, SIN heaven, sir mo, sir,
cried the disgusted orator, not in
heaven! He's in a store!'
That is the mental drift of those enc
mics of the higher education. To their
minds the chief end of man is to get him.
self employed in a store. They are what
Joseph jefferson calls ''the selfish made
men of our time" Certainly the fact Is
significant that the sensitive feeling is
all on one side.
Educated men are not worried. II
education has not always given them
wealth, it has given them blessings that
+ no prodigality of wealth can buy, and
by this token they know that the prov
ince of education is not to train young
people for business, but to embark them
upon life-of which business is only an
incident. The best wisdom of the WIS
: est of mankind has always taught thai
lesson.
Make your business tributary to your
! mind, and not your mind subservleht tc