On the threshold

Front matter

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Preface

The object of this little book is to put into clear form some of the main principles that enter into life as it is now opening before young men in this country. Its suggestions are more specific and direct than if they had been addressed to older persons ; still, I have aimed to support every point by sound reasons, and to join the authority and inspiration of the greater minds with my own views. I think I may assure my readers that they will not encounter a simple mass of advice, nor the generalities of an essay, but rather a series of hints suitable to the times, and pointing out paths that are just now somewhat obscured. If they find some pages that are strenuous in their suggestions, they will find none that are keyed to impossible standards of conduct, or filled

2 PREFACE.

with moralizings that are remote from the every-day business of life.

It is not pleasant to play the role of Polonius, and I undertake it only because Laertes seems to be quite as much in need of advice as ever. I have not, however, written out of a critical mood, so much as from a desire to bring young men face to face with the inspiring influences which, in a peculiar degree, surround them. The country was never so prosperous, the future never so full of happy assurance, as it is to-day. To point out the way of reaping the double harvest of this prosperity and a noble manhood, is the motive that underlies these pages.

Contents

I. Purpose ....

II. Friends and Companions

III. Manners ....

II. Fkiends And Companions

11 God divided man into men that they might help eacn other." — Seneca.

" A man that hath friends most show himself friendly." — Solomon.

" A talent is perfected in solitude ; a character in the stream of the world." — Goethe.

" Live with wolve9, and you will learn to howl." — Spanish Proverb.

" Although unconscious of the pleasing charm. The mind still bends where friendship points the way ;

Let virtue then thy partner's bosom warm, Lest vice should lead thy softened soul astray."

Theognis, from Xenophon.

" Beyond all wealth, honor, or even health, is the attachment we form to noble souls ; because to become one with the good, generous and true, is to become in a measure good, generous, and true ourselves." — Db. Arnold.

II.

FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS.

Without doubt, home and companions are the chief external influences that determine character. One is almost always good, because it is charged with divine instincts ; the other is uncertain in its character, because it springs out of the chances of the world. The main feature of the home is love which " worketh no ill ; " hence its natural influence is favorable to good character. Parents for the most part inculcate truth, purity, honesty, and kindness. With abundant allowance for mistake and neglect, the influence of parents and brother and sister is good, but outside of the home there is no such certainty.

When John bids father and mother goodby amongst the Berkshire hills, and goes to Boston or New York to make his way in the world, his future depends with almost mathematical certainty upon the character of his associates. He may have good principles and high purposes ; tender words of advice are in his ears ; his Bible lies next his heart, and love follows him with unceasing prayers ; but John will do well or ill as he falls among good or bad companions. Education, ingrafted principles and tastes, remembered love, ambition, conscience, — all these will do much for him, but they will not avail against this later influence.

There are many turning-points when the question of success or failure is decided again and again. Life is a campaign, in which a series of fortresses are to be taken ; all previous victories and advances may be thrown away by failure in the next. Nearly the last of these is companionship ; if one wins the victory here, the reward of a prosperous manhood is within his reach.

At the risk of logically inverting my subject, I will speak first of friendship ; and I must beg your patience while I put a foundation under my suggestions.

If there were but one general truth that I could lodge in the mind of any one or of all men, it would be this : that true life consist* in the fulfillment of relations. We are born into relations ; we never get out of them ; all duty consists in meeting them. The family, the church, the state, humanity at large, — these are the sources of our primary and abiding duties, as well as of our happiness, — the sum-total of ethics and religion.

The relation of friends, though not so sharply defined as that of the family or the state, is as real and as essential to a full life. Emerson says : " Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether." To get this ensphering love into form and expression, is the office of friendship. Bacon goes so far as to say that " a principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness of the heart." He goes on in his noble and wise way to name its other points, and nothing on the subject is better than his threefold statement of its uses : " Peace in the affections, support of the judgment, and bearing a part in all actions and occasions."

It is not enough to love only our own family. Love is a great and wide passion, demanding various food and broad fields to range in. When one is only " a family man " he may have a sound nature, but it will not be a large or generous one ; and he will shrink rather than expand with years, and sink into the inevitable sadness that attends old age.

Nor is Bacon's second point of less importance, — to aid one's judgment. Advice can hardly come from any other than a friend when the question involves grave issues. A stranger is not sufficiently interested, a relative is blinded by excess of love, but a friend's advice is tempered by affection, while it is not overruled by the imperativeness of natural instinct. There is much wisdom in the every-day words, " As a friend I advise you," for no other can advise so well.

Bacon's third point — friends as helpers on all occasions — does not have its full weight until we learn the late lesson that man is not equal to life. There is more to do than one can do alone, and an unfriended life will be poor and meagre. It is an old saying that " a friend is another self." If, as a mere matter of strength and resource, I were to face life with the choice of either a fortune or friends, I should be wiser to choose the latter as more helpful. Of course I regard friendship as a real and abiding thing, and not as that other thing that comes and goes with fortune. I have no faith in the miserable notions that the poor are friendless because they are poor, and that friends desert on the approach of poverty. Poverty may winnow the false from the true, but it does not destroy the wheat. The poor may be friendless, and even poor because they are friendless, never having won friends. This fine relation does not turn upon poverty, but upon disposition, or temper, or the chances of life. Happy is he who wins friends in early life by true affinities ! He multiplies himself ; he has more hands and feet than his own, and other fortresses to flee into when his own are dismantled by evil fortune, and other hearts to throb with his joy.

Friendship is of such a nature that it is difficult to name rules for it ; it is its own law and method. So ethereal a thing cannot be brought under choice or rule. It is rather a matter of destiny. If one is born to have friends, he will have them. Emerson says that one need not seek for friends ; they come of themselves. But Solomon goes deeper in his proverb : " A man that hath friends must show himself friendly." Let one offer to the world a large, generous, true, sympathetic nature, and, rich or poor, he will have friends, and he will never be friendless whatever catastrophes befall him. Not as given rules, but rather touching the matter in the way of suggestion, I will name a few points that it is well to think of : —

1. Cultivate the friendly spirit. If one would have friends he must be worthy of them. The bright plumage and the songs of birds are designed to win their mates. It is in vain for one to say, I want friends ; I will go seek them. Go within, rather, and establish yourself in friendly sympathy with your fellow-men ; learn to love ; get the helpful spirit, and above all the responsive temper, and friends will come to you as birds fly to their beautiful singing mates.

2. Make friends early in life, else you will never have them. Youth is often moody, and keeps by itself. The very intensity with which it wakes up to individuality drives it into solitariness, where it morbidly feasts on the wonderful fact of selfhood. There is danger also lest we be caught by entertaining companions instead of winning congenial friends, and so start in life with a set of mere associates. It is in the earliest part of our threescore and ten that life-long friends are made. Agreeable associations may be formed later, and now and then a friendship when there is great congeniality and freshness of spirit ; but friendship is a union and mingling, a shaping of plastic substances to each other that cannot be effected after the mould of life has hardened. We may touch hereafter, but not mingle.

3. Hold fast to your friends. It is one of the commonest regrets in after-life that early friendships were not kept up. Change of residence, neglect of correspondence or of holiday courtesies, some divergence of taste or belief or outward condition, — for some such cause a true friendship is often suffered to languish and die out. Shakespeare well says : —

1 ' I count myself in nothing- else so happy As in a soul rememh'ring my good friends."

And again in " Hamlet : " —

" The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel."

4. Make a point of having friends among your elders. Friendship between those of the same age is sweeter, but friendship with elders is more useful ; they supplement each other. One is the wine of life; the other is its food. The latter balances life, and brings the good of all periods down into one. It is one of the divinest features of human life that in this way there is no such thing as solitary youth or solitary age. Youth may get the value, if not the reality, of the wisdom of age, and age keep forever young. Theology and poetry assert eternal youth ; it is neither a dogma of one nor a dream of the other, but a logical realization of human sympathy and love. It is one of the mistakes in American society that the young people draw off into a society of their own. There is not only a strong flavor of vulgarity in it, but positive loss on both sides.

5. Avoid having many confidants. It is weak; it breeds trouble. Secrets are not in themselves good things, but when of necessity they exist their nature should be respected. Having them, it is well to keep them. Avoid also the effusive habit. It is pitiable to see a man pouring himself out into every listening ear, — mind and heart inverted, the girdle of selfhood thrown aside, and all the secret ways of the being laid open for the common foot. It is a violation of identity, a squandering of personality. The secretive temper is to be criticised, but it is not so fatal to character and dignity as its opposite. There may be times when one must speak all one's thought and emotion, — self is too small to hold the joy or grief; but, having done it, get back into your citadel of selfhood. We never quite respect the man who tells us everything. Take your friends into your heart, but not into your heart of hearts; reserve that for yourself and God.

6. Avoid absorbing and exclusive friendships. They are not wise ; they are selfish, and not of the nature of true friendship, forming a sort of common selfhood that is but a double selfishness. They commonly breed trouble, and end in quarrel and heartbreak.

This matter of friendship is often regarded slightingly, as a mere accessory of life, a happy chance if one falls into it, but not as entering into the substance of life. No mistake could be greater. It is not, as Emerson says, a thing of " glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know." " There is in friendship " — as Evelyn writes in the " Life of Mrs. Godolphin " — " something of all relations and something above tin-in all. It is the golden thread that ties the hearts of all the world."

It is not pleasant to touch such a subject on its utilitarian side, still it is well to know that it is one of the largest factors of success not only in the social, but also in the commercial and political worlds. Many a merchant is carried through a crisis by his friends when the strict laws of business would have dropped him into ruin. It was Lincoln's immeasurable capacity for friendship that made his splendid career possible. It is no idle thing. Happiness, success, character, largely turn upon it. I shall know more of a man from knowing his friendships, than I can gain from any other single source. Tell me if they are few or many, good or bad, warm or indifferent, and I will give you a reliable measure of the man.

Companionship logically goes before friendship, but I put it last, as the larger and more important relation for you to consider. One shapes itself by a law of affinity ; the other is made. Choose your companions wisely, and your friendships will come about naturally.

Young men are often told that conceit and willfulness are their most marked qualities. I do not believe it. Their largest capability is that of inspiration. They do not readily take advice ; they resent scolding, and utterly rebel against force, but they yield with the certainty of gravitation to personal influence. Through this capability all good and evil get into us. Youth is its period. Then heart and mind are open for all winds to blow through, — " airs from heaven or blasts from hell." A great part of the advantage of a college course is the contact for four years with a set of men who are scholars and gentlemen. It is impossible to overestimate the inspiring influence of contact with such men as those college Presidents, now passed away, Woolsey and Hopkins and Wayland. "The strongest influence I took away from Yale," said an able graduate, " was the spirit of the president." " Something in President Hopkins's letter drew me to Williams," said Garfield. The healthiest influence at work to-day in English society runs back to Dr. Arnold, of Rugby. He made the men who are now making England. Dean Stanley says of him, " His very presence seemed to create a new spring of health and vigor within them, and to give to life an interest and elevation which dwelt so habitually in their thoughts as a living image, that, when death had taken him away, the bond appeared to be still unbroken, and the sense of separation almost lost in the still deeper sense of a life and a union indestructible." It is often hard to tell where the good that is in us comes from, but most of it is inspired, — caught by contact with the good. "It is astonishing," says Mozley, " how much good goodness makes." Old John Brown said, " For a settler in a new country, one good believing man is worth a thousand without character." It is not the teaching of the pulpit nor of the schools, but the men who walk up and down the streets, that determine the character of a community. If the leaders of society are not noble, no drill of teaching nor pungency of exhortation will arouse high thoughts in the young.

I hesitate to touch the subject more closely, because it takes us into a field where it is nearly impossible to say anything that is not trite ; but if the subject does not admit of originality, it admits of earnestness. I ask you to look well to this matter of companions. Evil influences are not resistible;

they may not always overcome, but they inevitably hurt.

For the sake of distinctness, let us put the matter into the form of rules.

Resolutely avoid all companionship that falls below your taste and standard of right. If it offends you, reject it with instant decision ; a second look is dangerous. The wise lines of Pope cannot be quoted too often : —

" Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

Familiarity with evil, the familiarity of contact or intimate knowledge, never ceases to be dangerous to any one. It is the glory and perfection of female virtue that it does not know evil. The difficulty in securing an honest and decent police is due to their close contact with vice and crime. It is not in human nature to endure such contact and remain pure. Whenever you meet a person whose knowledge of evil ways is full and close and exact, you may be sure he is not sound at heart. Such knowledge is not knowledge, for knowledge pertains to order. A philosopher in chaos would have no vocation. If an associate swears, or lies, or drinks, or gambles ; if he is tricky, or lascivious, or vile in his talk ; if his thoughts easily run to baseness, put a wide space between him and yourself ; give room for the pure winds of heaven to blow between you. But a closer distinction is to be made. Get at the temper of your associate ; or, in your own sensible phrase, find out the kind of a fellow he is, before you make a friend of him. On the first show of meanness or lack of honor, let him go. If he is without a high ambition, beware of him. If his thoughts run strongly to some one thing, like money, or dress, or society, or popularity, he can do little for you. If he is cruel or negligent of duty to his family, if he is quick to take undue advantage, if he is penurious, if he scoffs at religion, if he derides the good, if he is skeptical of virtue, if he is scornful of good custom, you cannot afford to class yourself with him.

But one cannot always choose his associates. I do not forget how many of you are thrown together in the same office, or store, or shop, or mill or class. But this does not necessitate intimate and sympathetic relations. Here is where you are to choose, and stand firm in your choice. The attitude of a mean or bad man is, Come to my level if you would be my friend ; and he is right. Companionship must be on a level morally, though it need not be intellectually. An ignorant person may be a harmless and even pleasant friend. Sam Lawson, in Mrs. Stowe's " Oldtown Folks," was a very good companion for man or boy, despite his general good - for - nothingness. Men may associate, and waive almost all other differences but that of character. The moral line reaches up to heaven and down into eternal depths. It cannot be passed and repassed. If you make companions of the bad, you will end in being bad. " Live with wolves," says the Spanish proverb, " and you will learn to howl." It is the beginning of a tragedy sad beyond thought when a young man enters a set of a lower moral tone than his own, — the set that drinks a little, and gambles a little, and discusses female frailty a little ; some of whom take a little from their employers on the score of a small salary, and drink a little more than the rest on the ground of a steadier head, and affect a little deeper knowledge of the world, and lie with less hesitation, and scoff with a louder accent ; — it is not a pleasant sight to see a young man cast by chance, or drawn by persuasion, into such a set as this. Superiority of mind is not proof against it. It was the wild smuggler boys of Kirkoswald who led Burns astray.

It is one of the worst features of modern society that such sets as these are everywhere taking an actual organization, with membership and rooms and fees. Society, from top to bottom, is running to clubs. It is a matter not easily disposed of, — having a good and a bad side. In a complex state of society, such forms of social life will spring up. But when the clubs are organized on a basis of dissipation, however mild and however veiled, there is little question as to their influence. They destroy more than moral principles ; they wreck manhood and health and high purpose and self-respect. A young man may enter such a club, but no man comes out of it ; manhood evaporates under this organized pressure of inanity and vice, and leaves something fitter to creep than to walk, — " beastly transformations," who

" Nor once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely than before."

But let us get over to the positive and better side of our subject. I make as a last suggestion that you associate as much as possible with persons of true worth and nobility of character. The main use of a great man is to inspire others. There is a truth parallel to the doctrine of Apostolic Succession through the laying on of hands, which, to my mind, is better than the doctrine. The succession of all high and noble life is through personality. Seek always the superior man. If you are already in a calling, get among those who excel in it. Every professional man will tell you that he cannot associate with one of low grade in his calling without injury, nor with one high up without fresh stimulus. It is well to get near men of reputed energy and worth. The fascination that draws us to the great is deep and divine ; it is a call to share their greatness, the divine way of distributing it to all. Get close to men of energy, and see how they work, — to men of thought, and catch their spirit and method ; get near the refined and cultivated in mind and manners, and feel their charm. The most transforming influence upon a young man is that of a noble, intelligent, refined woman ; not

"Manners are the shadows of virtue." — Sydney Smith.

"High thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." — Sidney.

"The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should recall, — however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny." — Emerson.

"Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous." — St. Paui-

" Who misses or who wins the prize ? Go, lose or conquer as you can ; But if you fail, or if you rise,

Be each, pray God, a gentleman."

Thackeray.

" How sweet and gracious, even in common speech, Is that fine sense which men call Courtesy ! Wholesome as air and genial as the light, Welcome in every clime as breath of flowers, — It transmutes aliens into trusting friends, And gives its owner passport round the globe."

J. T. Fields.

" The appellation of gentleman is never to be affixed to a man's circumstances, but to his behavior in them. For this reason I shall ever, as far as I am able, give my nephews such impressions as shall make them value themselves rather as they are useful to others, than as they are conscious of merit in themselves." — The Tatleb, No. 207.

in.

MANNERS.

Perhaps there is no better starting-point in this subject than the one most remote from its real centre, — our national manners. The foreign critics tell us that we are rapidly improving in our behavior ; we are too conscious of the need to resent the patronizing comment, and eagerly wait for the sure coming of that type of manners — higher than has yet been realized — when our institutions have fully ripened the character of the people.

In the externals of behavior we are in advance of the last generation. The immense development in taste and art that has come about through foreign travel and world-expositions has a corresponding development in manners. Uncouthness of dress, roughness of speech, and the general barbarity of manners that once prevailed in large sections of the country have largely passed away. The salutations, respect for another's personality, the care of the person, the tones of the voice, and the use of language, — all are better than they were. Is there also an improvement in feeling and mutual relation ? The external, in the main, is indicative of what is within. Great masses of people are not hypocrites. The kindlier address shows a kinder spirit and a truer sense of equality. The deference of a century ago was the offspring of aristocracy ; that, indeed, has passed away with the dying out of its source. But if we no longer bow down before our fellows, we entertain for them a more rational respect. To go a little closer into the matter, the masses have greatly improved in manners, but the class which used to be regarded as aristocratic and especially well-bred has deteriorated, as was to be expected. The withdrawal of the deference of the lower classes, as our institutions began to be felt, threw it into confusion. The old-time aristocrat — and a noble figure he was — is consciously out of place and relations ; his manners suffer in consequence, and now, like Portia's English suitor, he "gets his behavior everywhere."

But we must not infer that we are yet a people of refined manners. Dr. Bushnell, many years ago, said that emigration tended to barbarism. We are a nation of emigrants ; the greater part of us, for two hundred years, have lived in the woods, and the shadows of primeval forests still overhang us. There must be more intelligence, more culture, a more evenly distributed wealth, a denser population, and a fuller realization of our national idea, which is also the Christian idea, — personality, — before we can claim to be a well-bred people. In Europe, the good manners of the great percolate down to the masses. One consequently hears and sees there a delicacy of behavior and gentleness of address not common here. It is, however, largely external and a matter of imitation. We have few such outstanding examples, and whatever of attainment we have is genuine and from within. We are destined to see on this continent a form of manners more genuinely refined and noble than the world has yet known. Just now we are in an open place between the going out of aristocratic or feudal habits and ways and the coming in of a culture and behavior based on equality and mutual respect. It must be confessed that we lack conspicuous examples of the kind of gentleman that is to be looked for in this country. Washington was undoubtedly a very true and noble gentleman ; but he was not the American gentleman of the future, being essentially English. With certain abatements and additions in minor respects, Lincoln must be regarded as coming nearer our true type. Lowell was our best representative of high cidture combined with democratic sentiment, and he well met the ideal of the gentleman we are to look for.

But let us get nearer our subject. Every young man desires above all else to be regarded as a gentleman. None of us can bear any other imputation. You may accuse one of violating the entire decalogue with less offense than if you tell him he is not a gentleman. Here is something very deep and weighty. What is this that so outweighs every other good word and estimate ? So fine a thing necessarily has many counterfeits ; and so we will search it with definitions.

The word undoubtedly comes from the Latin gens, meaning tribe or family. Hence all the one-sided and incomplete notions that a gentleman is a man of family. It is a good thing to be well born, with inherited tastes and traditions ; but birth does not make the gentleman. Once dependent upon birth, he is so no longer. Julius Hare, himself a fine illustration of his definition, says : " A gentleman should be gentle in everything ; at least in everything that depends upon himself, — in carriage, temper, construction, aims, desires. He ought, therefore, to be mild, calm, quiet, temperate ; not hasty in judgment, not exorbitant in ambition, not overbearing, not proud, not rapacious, not oppressive." Ruskin makes the leading traits of a gentleman to be fineness, sensitiveness, and sympathy, each involving the other. Professor Lieber, who has written on the subject in a manly way, says : " The word gentleman signifies that character which is distinguished by strict honor, self-possession, forbearance, generous as well as refined feelings, and polished deportment, — a character to which all meanness, explosive irritability, and peevish fretfulness are alien ; to which, consequently, a generous candor, scrupulous veracity and essential truthfulness, courage, both moral and physical, dignity and self-respect, liberality in thought, argument, and conduct are habitual, and have become natural. It implies also refinement of feelings and loftiness of conduct to the dictates of morality and the precepts of religion ; " — a long, hard sentence, but well worth our study.