Valparaiso University - Beacon / Record Yearbook (Valparaiso, IN)

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latter, why should we believe that a man who is an acknowledged failure-eand even this pathetic ad- mission reveals a peculiar vanity, saying, as it were: I had great innate capabilities, but alas l-why, I say, should we believe that a man who has failed at every- thing else can be a success at giving advice? Then again, advice must be general or specific. It must deal with broad generalizations supposed to be applicable to everybody, at least to a elass or group of persons, such as principles of character and conduct; or with particulars suitable for the indi-r Vidual. Now, the diftieulty in the one instance is that few things in the way of advice are universally ap- plicable, and these few have become haekneyed by wearisome and trite iteration. Suppose I advise you to be honest. You have heard that a thousand times and it falls cold and dead; and besides I do not wish to plagiarize the Ten Commandments. Or suppose I tell you to work hard. You have also heard that; before, and, moreover, many of you work too hard already. As to individual advice, it would seem that the one who essays to give it is obsessed with a pre- sumptuous, overweening self-eonfidenee. How can I; or how can any man pretend to have the wisdom necessary to offer advice to you as a sort of guide; book for this interesting tour which we call life? In the first place, we havent been over the whole road. Then, too, how can we be sure that we have chosen the best or the worst read? About all we can do is to tell you some of the pleasures and dangers, the- wayside shade, the winding streams and the undu- lating plains lost in the mystic haze of the horizon that we have seen; or the ruts and stones, bad bridges and worse hills that we have found. But you know already that these will likely be encoun- tered on any road. We can, indeed, suggest a good equipment in the way of extra tires and accessories, or, in other words, reserve Vitality and reserve preparation; or the need of careful renewals of gasoline and lubricating oil, which is to say continued watehfulness that head and heart do not run dry; or we may advise caution and patience and taking no more than your share of the roacl-whieh needs no interpretation. This we can do, and little more. How can I be specific and urge you to choose a certain profession, to be a farmer, teacher, physician, lawyer. banker? Do I have any extraordinary intuition, any nlagie insight into your capacities, inclinations and ideals that enables me to tell in which you would succeed best? Shall I ad- vise you individually to marry early, late, or not at all; to live in the country or city; to seek many friends or few; to save money like a miser or spend it generously like a prince? This would be specific advice, but what possible value could it have ? Seareely any man has the wisdom to guide his own life aright, can see failure after failure. mistake after mistake along the back track. That sharp turn he should have taken on low speed; he should have remembered that a COW is naturally phlegmatie and non-exeitable; he should never have tried to make the big Packard take his dust. Memory and Medi- tation, one would think, might be parents to Mod-i: esty. To you young people starting out with your new machines, can I say with becoming humility much more than that I have found the game of life worth the candle, or the tour worth the garage bills, and to wish you heartily a safe and happy journey? Well, if it be presumptuous to proffer individual advice, either general or specific, what sublime assur- ance must the baccalaureate speaker, or the popular platform orator. have who engages to tell the country what it should do and forbear doing? I have noticed that such speakers usually believe in the provi- dential guidance of nations, but they also apparently think that Providence is occasionally negleetful, or that He is on a vacation; or, as Elijah Inoekingly said about Baal, Heither he is talking, or he is pursu- ing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleep- eth, and must be awakedfiaand therefore offer themselves as a substitute. Without experience as statesmen, often with a superficial knowledge of the fundamental ideas of government and law and offi- cial responsibility, they point out in glaring, garish rh etorie the derelietion of the Senate and the House, of the justices of the Supreme Court, of mayors and aldermen and policemen. This thing of telling other men, especially men in otlieial position, their duty, in- stead of tending to ones own, is getting to be a pre- valent and contagious mania in this country. Only a few weeks ago Mayor Gaynor of New York City wrote a significant letter to the district superinten- dent of the International Reform Bureau who had protested against the exhibition of the Johnson- Jeffries fight pictures tthey wrote it Jeffries-John- son before the fightl ciIf it lay in my power? wrote Mayor Gaynor, ttto say whether the pictures sliould be exhibited it would not take me long to de- eide it. I do not see how it can do anyone anyagood to look at them, but will you be so good astonemem- her that ours is a government of laws and not: of men? Will you please get that well into your head? I am not able to do as I like as mayor. I must take the law just as it is. and you may be ab- solutely certain that I shall not take the law into my own hands. The growing exercise of arbitrary power in this country by those put in office would be fan more dangerous and is far more to be dreaded than certain other Vices that we all wish to minimize or be rid off, HWill you please get that well into your headtW he said. That letter. I think, is well worth getting into anybodyts head. This is not saying that there are not social and economic evils under our government, or under any government, but I should be very loath. if such a tling were possible, to turn the government over to the nopular orators and self-appointed reformers. Florid, popular oratory at so much per is as much, of a menace, one may honestly think, as the graft and corruption which serve as such profitable themes. The man who diagnoses national or social ills, and,

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pick out the brightest pupil of the class and have him stand and deliver a hortatory valedietory winding up with gLet us then be up and doingK or words to that effect. As I recall these valedietories CI never. gave one myselfl, they ran something like this: HWe should all have high ideals. Where would XVashing- ton have been without high ideals? Where would Lincoln havebeen without high ideals? Therefore, let us all have high idealsfi Valedictories in lzzie years,hmvevenhave said their vales, and their return is little more desired than would be an encore of tie Fourth of July. I 15nd myself at this time. altlioz'gh fully appreciative of the courtesy of this Class in asking me to speak to them and to you, alnutst wit:- ing that baccalaureate addresses might pass into a siiniliar desuetude. I may note, though, this distinction lGl'xZOOn valedietories and baeealauretories. The valeiieter- ian in all his pride had, nevertheless, to assrine a modest and becoming equality, and say: Let us. The baccalaureate speaker, on the contrary, is not subject to the same limiting conditions, but may speak authoritatively, and say: Do this; shun tltat. Although perehanee a flat failure himself, none the less he is supposed to be, at least apparently sup; poses himself to be, capable of giving safe and sound exhortation to tens or hundreds of young persons of various temperaments, capabilities and ideals. If an occasion of this kind were not naturally solemn, one would be tempted to say that this is a big, hoaxy joke. I have wondered sometimes what the effect would be if a baccalaureate speaker were honestly to say: Young people, I do not know enough about anything, least of all about you, to give you anyi sensible advice, so I believe I711 just talk about other things. To be sure, in more recent years there has been less direct advice to members of a graduating class, and now the tendency is toward pointing out to the Nation its pitfalls and pet follies. Ilin not at all sure, though, that the Nation listens very attentively or pays any heed to this gratuitous admonition. When I think of the thousands of such addresses given yearly in Grammar Schools, High Schools, Colleges and Universities, I cant help thinking of blank cartridges, those noisy things whose only Vir- tue is comparative harmlessness. I have read a good many of these recent addresses in whole or in part. and I note a generally pessimistic tone in many of; them. Summarized, they amount to about this: The Country is in a bad way; it has been leading a riot- ous, prodigal life. until not only is its voice husky. but it has really lost its pristine health and Vigor as well as the moral tone of earlier years. It has moral and physical diabetes, sarcoma, appendicitis, gall- stones and gout. It must diet religiously for a time. and then submit to the surgeonis knife. Well, this is an old tune. Jeremiah and Isaiah sang it. Cicero industriously tive-iingered it, and in modern times it has been the favorite solo number of Carlyle, Ruskin and Tolstoy. Naturally it is in the minor key, and makes liberal use of diseords. A young man is buoyant, hopeful, idealistic; so is a young nation; a niicldleeaged man is thoughtful, prac- tical, prosaic; so is a iniddle-aged nation; an old man tends toward pessimism. distrust, inelaneolia; so does an old nation. But America is not an old nation, and just as we dislike to hear a young man or a man of niiddle-age always speaking as if he were an oetogen- arian, so this pessimistic outlook in America seems premature. Change is not necessarily deterioration, but rather is the law of life; and the spirit of honor- did not die with Jefferson and Lincoln. These later addresses generally close with a little well-meant flattery to the graduating classes, telling them that though the country has lost its savor, it is through them, the salt of the earth, that the savor may be restored. This doubtless does little. harm; and anyhow one is entitled to feel proud and important on two occasions of his life: namely, on graduation and e on one other occasion. So far, too, as I am able to discover, this feeling of importance is usually ephemeral, and it is therefore only fair that one should not be cheated out of his rightful inheri- tanee. Nevertheless, when we stop to think of this mat- ter of giving advice in allopathie allotments, we can- not help noticing seine amusing inconsistencies and ineongruities. In the first place, a man in giving ad- Viee must speak either as a superior to inferiors, or from the standpoint of admitted failure. In the one ease, he impliedly says: See in me the benefieent re- sults of living according to the principles which I now urge upon you. I have fought the good fight; go thou, and do likewise. This attitude involves a naive, unconscious, Rooseveltian egoism the humor of which repays the one who takes the trouble to think about it. ttThere is nothingf says Addison. Hwhieh we receive with so much reluctance as ad- Viee. XVe look upon the man who gives it as offering an affront to our understanding, and treating us like children or idiots. We consider the instruction as an implicit censure, and the zeal which any one shows for our good on sueh an occasion, as a pieee of pre- sumption or iinpertinenee. The truth of it is, the person who pretends to advise, does, in that particu- lar, exercise a superiority over us. and can have no other reason for it, but that, in comparing us with himself. he thinks us defective either in our eonduet or our eharaeterY, In similar vein are Thoreauis Clever, eaustie words in Walden: ltIf I knew for a eertainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my lifeW In the other ease, he will practically say: My life has been an ignominious failure. I was indiffer- ent in youth to education, and always I have been a shiftless spendthrift. careless of my money, my time, my reputation, my character. Look at me as a hora rible example. and profit by my experience. Be stud- ious, economical. industrious, deeorous and'you will have your reward, as I have had mine; As to this

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writes out diagnOSis and prescription in the form of an address to be given place after place and year after year at from fifty dollars to live hundred dole lars a repetition is not specially to be blamed, no matter how imperfect the diagnosis or how unscien. tifie the formula; if he can get the price that is his business. But as to graft, one cannot help thinking that the platform reformer has one of the most lucra- tive and safest of grafts. The dear public, however, which takes readily to predigested thinking and see- ond-rate moralizing never cares to think about this, and in all probability seriously expects the National Pharmacy at Washington to fill out the prescription. Milton got ten pounds, paid in installments, so Car- lyle tells us, for his Paradise Lost, and came near los- ing his head on the gallows into the bargain. Bryan. the papers tell us, has made something like $100,000 out of the The Prince of Peace, and, so far as I know, didnt even lose any votes by it. blame so gracious a personality as that of Bryan, and Lunch of that hundred-thousand I doubt not has gone for other than sellish ends. I do not blame at all, but I merely like to stop and think how much the Prince of Peace got for the unrepeated Sermon on the Mount. Notwithstanding what I have thus far said, one might doubtless from another point of View show that, in a sense, all genuine thinking, all honest ref: form, all great books, all sincere endeavor is a kind of advice. Even nature herself is indirectly admone ishing every man. The cold wind instructs us to put on warmer clothing, the hot sun advises us to keep in the shade, the ant and the bee teach us diligence, the singing bird gives us a lesson of joy, the rippling brook is eloquent of simple contentment, and the vast surging ocean speaks of majesty and power. All this, however, is indirect, unintentioned, suggestive, and therefore unobjeetionable and effective. Neither is it my wish wholly to break with eus- tom and propriety. With no ambition whatever to appear in the role of national adviser, I would gladly enough give you of this graduating Class advice if only I could advise as nature advises, if only there were any certainty that what I should say would be best for you, if only I could have my words certified to with the stamp, HCulruaranteed under the Pure Food Aetfi But I fear me much that a moral, intellectual or business chemist could find more than mere traces of alum. benzoate of soda and other deleterious sub- stances in my product, and could scarcely stamp it H99 per cent pureW All I could honestly say would be: Here is a package of advice put up under fairly sanitary conditions. It is just as good as Smithis or J ones,saand cheaper. Fletcherize as much of it as your appetite ealls for7 but remember that you do it at your own risk. In case Violent pains result, eon; sult your own discretion as to its continued use. Would it not be better, at least more modest7 for me not to compound out of stale materials some shredded morality and ask you to let it take the place of good wholesome bread and meat and I do not Wish tos' potatoes, or, dropping the figure, your own sense of What is just and right and honorable? May I not rather sketch for you a little picture that you can hang up for a brief time in your living-room and eventually in your attic? Once in a While for a time it may eateh your eye, and some line of it, or some suggestion in touch ,or grouping, or perspec- tive may reach your heart and stimulate your imag- ination. And then at any time it will be an easy mat- ter to take it down and put a better one in its place. May I not put my advice to you in the less arrogant and condescending form of a wish. a kind of god- speed put into concrete embodiment? Then, about What I would wish and l? ope for you in the coming. years is this: First. I would wish for you good health. Not that good health is always the basis of good work or that ill health necessarily precludes giod work. Weak, sickly, diseased bodies have strangely enough leoused time and again brave, heroic, creative spirits. To such an extent is this true that one is led some times to question the old dictum about a sound mind in a sound body. Neither is the perfect physical body a guarantee of superior creative power,enot at all. Perhaps the two most nearly perfect physical men in America tO-day are Frank Goteh and John Arthur J ohnson, and there are plenty of worse men. too, than either of them. And yet I can scarcely be- lieve that to be the champion wrestler and the great est living master of the toe-hold, or indeed to tibring back the baeonii from Reno, is comparatively speak- ing, a very lofty ideal. It is better to get a hold on menls minds and their hearts than on their toes, and there is better bacon to be brought back than that cured in Nevada. Therefore, while there is no need of despair for those whose physical endowment is limited and even heavily mortgaged, and ample in- spiration for them in the grim and usually uneom-. plaining heroism of a blind Milton, a dyspeptic Car- lyle, or Darwin, or Huxley, a nerve-raeked Mrs, Browning or an insanity-haunted Charles Lamb; yet, all things considered, a good body is like a good bank aeeount,-it gives one a sense of confidence and security both for his work and his pleasure, and frees him from the thousandfold vexations, worries and haunting, morbid fears that beset the ailing and tie poor. Next, I would wish for you good work, and pri- marily that you may be somewhat independent; somewhat, for no man in modern society is indeneii- dent to any large degree. so complex and interrelated is life and activity. Secondly, because I would have you give a fair equivalent for the privilege of livin g: and not be a parasite or a thief. Thirdly, because good work is a tonic for blue devils and misanthropy. Fourthly, for the value of the work itself to others. As to what good work is, I know no better statement than that of Ruskin. According to him it must have three qualities: first. it must be honest; second, it must be useful ;third, it must be cheerful. TWO pas- sages I quote from Ruskin without comment. iiLife