A Father to His Son

MY DEAR SON: I am writing a few things I meant to say to you when we took our last walk together, the day before you left for Yale. I intended to say them then, and I will even confess that I shamelessly inveigled you into taking a stroll on the quiet street that I might rehearse a carefully prepared bit of Chesterfield up-to-date; but somehow I could not seem to begin, —and, after all, perhaps I can write what was in my mind more freely and plainly than I could have spoken it.

[7]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

I think I had never realized be-
fore that I was getting old.

Of course I have known that my
hair is causing your mother much
solicitude, and that I am hopelessly
wedded to my pince-nez while read-
ing my daily paper, and at the
opera; but in some incomprehen-
sible way I had forgotten to asso-
ciate these trifles with the encroach-
ments of time. It was the sudden
realization that you were about to
become a Freshman in the college
from which, as it seems to me, I but
yesterday graduated, that "froze the
genial current of my soul," and
spared you my paternal lecture.

Why, I can shut my eyes and still

[8]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

hear the Ivy Song, as we sang it that
beautiful June morning; and yet but
a few nights more and you will be
locked in the deadly Rush on the
same field where I triumphantly
received two blackened eyes, and, I
trust, gave many more!

Another thing, trifling in itself,
opened my eyes to the fact of my
advancing years.

My son, my loyal and affectionate
boy, some day it may be yours to
know the pain, the unreasonable pain
that comes over a man to know
that between him and his boy, and
his boy's friends, an unseen but un-
assailable barrier has arisen, erected
by no human agency; and to feel that

[9]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

while they may experience a vague
respect and even curiosity to know
what exists on your side of the barrier,
you on your part would give all, —
wealth, position, influence, honor, to
get back to theirs! All the world,
clumsily or gracefully, is crawling
over this barrier; but not one ever
crawls back again!

You have ever seemed happy to be
with me; you have worked with me,
read and smoked with me, even played
golf with me; but the subtle change
in your attitude, the kindling of your
eye when we met young men of your
age, is the keenest pain I have ever
known; yet one which, God knows!
I would not reproach you with.

[10]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

It explains what I used to see on
my father's face and did not under-
stand.

For the tyranny of youth, my son,
is the one tyranny which never has
been, never can be overthrown. Noth-
ing can displace it, nothing shake its
power.

I usually beat you at golf, and occa-
sionally at tennis; I suppose that if
we were to spar together I might still
make a respectable showing, and at
least "save my face." It avails noth-
ing. I am on my side of the barrier,
you on yours.

It seems but a year and a day since
I tucked the ball under my arm and
sped down the gridiron, sustained by

[11]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

the yells of my partisans; and if our
game lacked the machine-like pre-
cision of the mass formations you are
already somewhat familiar with, it
was a good game, and we were good
men, and all on the right side of the
barrier!

So bear with me if I pause a mo-
ment and gaze back across this inevi-
table gulf into the pleasant land that
lies behind me, — a picture evoked
by your dawning college career.

I would not have you think me re-
gretful, or melancholy. Life has been
good to me — and every age has
its gifts for the man who is willing to
work for them and use them tem-
perately. And nothing is more un-

[ 12 ]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

graceful, more ludicrous, than the
spectacle of one who attempts to
linger over the pleasures of an age
he had outlived, and ignore the ad-
vantages of his own time of life.

Yet, as the years bring weakness,
the mind persistently drifts back to
the earlier periods of life, until the
aged actually enter a phase we not
inaptly name “second childhood,”
from which Heaven forefend me!

I can still appreciate a pair of
sparkling blue eyes, and I am not
oblivious to the turn of a pretty shoul-
der; although I devoutly trust that
my interest is now impersonal, and
merely artistic.

I can still do my 18 holes of golf

[13]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

well under 85 and I think I shot last fall as well as ever in my life; but I must admit, sadly but not rancorously, that I much prefer my comfortable grandstand seat to my old position of halfback, and I should not be willing to run at top speed for a quarter of a mile, except upon a matter of great moment.

And so, comfortably situated upon my side of the barrier, let me, my dear son, who have spared you so much elderly wisdom (more, I fear, because I have hitherto been blissfully unaware of my own seniority than from any conscious motive) let me, I say, indulge in a few customary parental warnings to you at this time. I trust

[ 14 ]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

that they will not be hackneyed, and
I know that they will be sincere.

Some fathers say to their sons upon
the first home leaving, — “Beware of
wine and women!” I do not.

If your home life has not taught you
the virtues of a temperate, clean life,
as I hope, then no words of mine can
do it, and you must learn, as too many
others have, from a bitter intimacy
with its antithesis.

As to women, I never avoided
them; I sought them out, from the
time when, a red-cheeked youngster,
I trudged to school beside a red-
cheeked lassie — asleep these many
years in the little village lot where
lie so many with whom I fought

[ 15 ]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

and played these many years gone
by.

I have no advice to offer you on
this great subject; its ethics are not
taught by letter. If I have any
regrets, they are not for your ear, nor
any man's. And if, of some women
I have known, I cannot say that I
lifted them up, at least of no woman
can it be said that I thrust her
down!

I ask of you no more than this and
the guidance of your own heart;
that, in the latter years, when you,
too, pass over the barrier, you may
not leave behind you shadows on
the flower-decked meadows of your
youth.

[16]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

You will probably play cards in
college; most men do, — I did.
The gambling instinct in man is
primordial. Kept under due bounds,
if not useful, it is at least compara-
tively harmless. This is the very
best that I or any honest man can
say of it. I should be glad if you
never cared to gamble; but I do not
ask it. Assuming that you will, I
do not insult you, and myself equally,
by warning you against unfairness;
to suppose you capable of cheating
at cards is to suppose an impossi-
bility. You could not do so without
forfeiting the right ever to enter your
home again. But some careless and
insidious practices, not unknown in

[ 17 ]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

my day and class, savor to the
upright mind of cheating, without
always incurring its penalties.

To play with men whom you know
cannot afford to lose, and who must
either cheat or suffer privation; to
play when you yourself must win
your bet to square yourself; that is,
when you do not reasonably see how
you are going to raise the money to
pay providing you lose, — this is a
gambler's chance to which no gentleman
will ever expose his fellow players.

There is nothing heroic about these
desperate casts of the die; one risks
only the other fellow's money. These
practices I ask and expect you to
avoid.

[ 18 ]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

I ask nothing of you in the way of
a declared position on religion. Your
mother may have demanded more of
you here, — entreated more; I can-
not. I ask but this; that you will
give earnest, serious consideration to
the fact that we exist on this planet
for a shockingly brief fraction of
Eternity; that it behooves every man
to diligently seek an answer to the
great question, — Why am I here?
And then, as best he can, to live up
to the ideal enjoined by his answer.
And if this carries you far, and if it
leads you to embrace any of the great
creeds of Christendom, this will be
to your mother an unspeakable joy,
and perhaps not less so to me; but it

[ 19 ]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

is a question which cannot be settled
by the mere filial desire to please.

Last of all, while you are in college,
be of it and support its every health-
ful activity.

I ask no academic honor your
natural inclinations may not lead
you to strive for; no physical
supremacy your animal spirits may
not instinctively reach out and grasp.

You will, I presume, make the
fraternity I made, and, I hope, the
societies; you will probably then
learn that your father was not always
a dignified, bearded man in pince-
nez and frock coat, and that on his
side of the barrier he cut not a few
capers which, seen in the clear light

[ 20 ]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

of his summer, gain little grace. Yet,
were he to live his life over again, he
would cut the same, or worse.

Finally, if you make any of the
teams, never quit. That is all the
secret of success. Never quit!

Quitting, I like to believe, has not
been a striking characteristic of our
family, and it is not tolerated in our
college.

If you can't win the scholarship,
fight it out to the end of the examina-
tion.

If you can't win your race, at least
finish — somewhere.

If your boat can't win, at least
keep pulling on your oar, even if
your eye glazes and the taste of blood

[21]

A FATHER TO HIS SON

comes into your throat with every
heave.

If you cannot make your five yards
in football, keep bucking the line —
never let up, — if you can't see, or
hear, keep plugging ahead! Never
quit! If you forget all else I have
said, remember these two words,
through all your life, and come
success or failure, I shall proudly
think of you as my own dear son.

And so, from the old home-life,
farewell, and Godspeed!

YOUR AFFECTIONATE FATHER.

[22]