Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1902-08-21
SEEKS SUCCESS.
Pessimism of Cultured Youth Whose
Misfortune is Culture.

Pessimism of Cultured Youth Whose
Misfortune is Culture.
Almost any evening, at dinner time,
there may be seen in a well known
downtown restaurant a group of
young men who occupy always the
same corner and spend a long time
talking over their coffee and cigars.
says the New, York Tribune. They
are all college graduates of a recent
date, occupied in the day in getting a
| start in life, or as one of them who is
engaged in some sort of literary work.
more picturesquely puts it, "bucking
the metropolis with a stub PEN Few
have heard their talk, for when a
stranger falls among them they are
decorously polite but uncommunica-
tive, in the spirit of their leader. A
few, however, have been initiated, and
describe the conversations as "a
series of carefully cultivated cynic-
| isms, led by a lecture" Thus do
their guests become victims to phrase
making.
1T would be hard to diagnose their
complaint, said one of these victims;
they are so cheerful in their woe.
Nothing at present suits them, and
they all pronounce their daily tasks a
bore. But they are not bothered with
reform notions and don't make pub
Ii fuss. / suspect they all cherish
secret ambitions of winning common
place successes, and swap their mel
ancholy epigrams because they have
no other way at present to maintain
that academic seclusiveness your
college graduate usually feels the
lack of during the first years of his
plunge into life. However, there's
some truth and humor in their talk
that needn't be summary dismissed
as downy faced cynicism."
And the speaker narrated as nearly
as he could a speech of the leader
on the subject of How to be Success
full Though Educated" The young
man knocked his cigarette ash into
the dregs of his coffee and said:
'T've thought this all out, as Devery
does his brilliants. It's not impromp-
tn. l was burdened with the concep-
ton by too much paternal advice on
how to succeed We get too much of
that advice on all hands. The path
from the log cabin to the white house
has been exploited and explained; we
have been taught how to be happy
though married, and it only remains
to put the teaching into practice-a
minor detail; magazines, conducted
by underpaid editors have told us
how to get from home to college with
a COW for capital; the lives of our
captains of industry have been laid
bare from their always humble be-
ginnings, but the really useful work is
the one not done. Who will tell us
how to be successful though edu-
Gated?
1.-THE worst that may be said of a
college training (until the chair of
success is founded) is that it gives
young man ambitions. After all, the
youth whose capital is a cow in most
instances prefers to keep his capital
and milk it; the boy in the log cabin
hopes some day to build a house with
store shingles; the young worker in
the steel mill thinks he may rise to
be a foreman, and is content II he
does. But the college graduate has
ambitions Nurtured in romance fed
on history, filled with the keen relish
for intellectual excitement and the
power of intellectual mastery, he is
yearly turned by the thousands into
the hard world, with ambitions but
no Job.
There are open for him the law
and medicine; but each requires
three or four more years of training,
and then an additional period of I'M
remunerative waiting. There is bust
ness, but already the high school
graduate has a four years start,
which, when all is said. the classics
and French literature do not help to-
overcome He might write novels,
but his taste is not good, while al
knowledge of arts bars him from the
drama To be sure, there is teach
ing; the world still puts up with al
little education in its teachers. Yet,
as women will teach cheaper. even
that field is restricted. It is no won
der that there are so many men of
culture in the mines of Mexico and
Alaska, or that so few Of us college
men marry before we are 30.
"Then some one asked this gloomy
teacher of %. whose remarks were
greeted with no applause but quiet an
proval." said the outsider. what
he proposed to do about 1t. His
His answer was Characteristic To