m 
 
 00 
 
A - 
 
 V^>{ 
 
LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 WRITTEN BY A PRIEST TO 
 HIS NEPHEW 
 
 By the 
 RIGHT REV. FRANCIS C. KELLEY, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Author of 
 
 " THE LAST BATTLE OF THE GODS/' 
 " THE CITY AND THE WORLD," 
 " THE BOOK OF BED AND YELLOW," 
 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 With a Preface by His Grace 
 ARCHBISHOP MUNDELEIN 
 
 EXTENSION PRESS 
 
 223 WEST JACKSON BOULEVARD 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 1917 
 
Nihil Obstat 
 
 P. L. BlEBMANN, 
 
 Censor Deputatus. 
 Imprimatur 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM MUNDELEIN, 
 
 Archbishop of Chicago. 
 
 LOAN STACK 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1917 
 BY FRANCIS CLEMENT KELLEY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Printed in U. S. A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ARCHBISHOP MUNDELEIN 's PREFACE. 5 
 
 NOISE 13 
 
 RELIGION 25 
 
 LIVING - 39 
 
 TEMPTATION 45 
 
 THINKING 51 
 
 FRIENDS 59 
 
 ENEMIES 69 
 
 RULE AND SERVICE 81 
 
 OTHER PEOPLE 95 
 
 THE WORLD 109 
 
 CITIZENSHIP 119 
 
 CLEANLINESS 129 
 
 LOVE 135 
 
 THE PLAIN MAN 143 
 
 THE ENTHUSIAST 149 
 
 THE CONSERVATIVE 157 
 
 CRITICISM 165 
 
 HATRED 173 
 
 SILENCE 181 
 
 DREAMERS 189 
 
 OLD THINGS 197 
 
 HUMILITY 209 
 
 INSPIRATION 217 
 
 OPPORTUNITIES 225 
 
 LOYALTY 233 
 
 BURDEN BEARERS 241 
 
 VISION 251 
 
 3 
 
 073 
 
PKEFACE 
 BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CHICAGO 
 
 We are living in a town which possesses a most 
 energetic public official. I have rarely, if ever, 
 found a harder- working head of department than 
 the present Commissioner of Health in the city 
 of Chicago. When he goes in pursuit of a disease- 
 germ, it is all over with the germ ; for the attack 
 will be made with a ferocity that is appalling. So 
 say his friends, and they are many. Nor will he 
 neglect to ally himself with anyone who can be 
 useful to him in stamping out disease when exist- 
 ing, or preventing its spread when threatening. 
 The writer has good reason to know, for he fell 
 a victim to the doctor's persuasive powers, and 
 became an ally in the campaign. All this brings 
 me to one of the great subjects of discussion 
 at the present time. 
 
 The tendency of medical research to-day is 
 directed far more towards prevention than cure. 
 As soon as a new disease raises its head, or a con- 
 tagion appears to spread among children or 
 adults, at once the laboratories of the country 
 work day and night to find the inimical microbe, 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 discover its origin, isolate the germ, and ferret 
 out its fertile soil ; it is the application in medi- 
 cine of the old adage "an ounce of prevention is 
 better than a pound of cure." If it holds good in 
 this corruptible body of ours, why should not the 
 same rule apply to the soul ? If we try to ward 
 off disease from the infant and the growing child, 
 why should we not adopt the same precaution in 
 training the growing boy or girl, young man or 
 young woman ? Especially does this hold good in 
 the case of youth budding into manhood. It is 
 then that a lad is angular, somewhat rough and 
 uncouth, and by no means attractive in his per- 
 sonality; simply because he is emerging from 
 boyhood and settling slowly into manhood; be- 
 cause then his character is forming, his habits 
 becoming more fixed, and he still lacks the finish 
 that experience will supply. It is a time when he 
 needs good sane advice, given in sugared capsules, 
 administered in patient, kindly doses; when he 
 should have the prompt infusion of "friendly 
 microbes" by a wise physician in order to fight 
 the disease germs that he will take in from bad 
 companions, from vile literature, from careless, 
 conscienceless elders and superiors. It is here 
 that this little volume will play its part. I do not 
 know whether the author is an uncle or not, but 
 he certainly can talk like one. A father really 
 ought to be a boy's closest friend, especially in the 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 years when he feels that he is emancipating from 
 the domination of the maternal apron-string. But 
 most of us know that the father feels he is too busy 
 to play that role, or he is fearful that it may bring 
 about an infringement on the sacred rights of his 
 paternal authority. Of course such an attitude 
 never would undermine a father's jurisdic- 
 tion; rather such friendly intercourse would 
 strengthen, preserve, immortalize it; but most 
 fathers find that out too late in life. 
 
 But sometimes you will find a bachelor uncle 
 in a family who brings in pocketfuls of candies 
 to the youngster, bushels of roses to the de- 
 butantes and smiling good advice to the awkward 
 squad of young nephews, and to them all he is 
 ever a hero, an idol and, later, a depository of 
 secrets and a never-ending source of advice. Just 
 such a role has the author of this book assumed. 
 In an easy conversational style he talks to the 
 young fellow about pretty nearly everything. 
 Without adding any irritation to his reader's sen- 
 sitive spirit of adolescent pride, without brushing 
 the furry mustache of the young man the wrong 
 way ; finally, without letting the interest lag, he is 
 giving him just as much salutary advice as the 
 young fellow's system will absorb with ease. At 
 the same time he does not assume the preaching 
 attitude of a reverent relic of a past generation ; 
 but rather he lets the young man feel that he is 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 listening to the advice given by a chum, a friend 
 who has the one thing that he lacks, namely, ex- 
 perience. And it is one of the experiences of those 
 who have dealt with young men of today, that they 
 listen gladly to advice, just as willingly as their 
 sisters. But they do require from the one offer- 
 ing counsel and guidance certain qualifications to 
 make what he offers palatable and attractive. 
 They want to be talked to without any patronizing 
 attitude ' l man to man, ' ' as they say. Then they 
 require that the other possesses the necessary 
 qualification of knowledge, that he knows what 
 he is talking about, that ' ' he has the goods, ' ' as one 
 of them expressed it to me. Finally they want 
 absolute sincerity, "on the level," as they term 
 it. And then, if the young man once becomes at- 
 tached to you, even though he may fail sometimes 
 to follow your advice, he is and remains loyal to 
 you, even the devil himself cannot tear him from 
 you. After many years of dealing with Catholic 
 young men, recognizing their frailties, the defi- 
 ciencies in their make-up, and the disappointment 
 of one's hopes they often produce, yet I maintain 
 that one of the most beautiful works in God's 
 creation is an honest, clear-eyed, clean-minded 
 young Catholic American. I assure you, he is well 
 worth saving ; and anything that will help to keep 
 him good, hold him steady, prevent him from 
 straying, should receive the encouragement of all 
 
PREFACE 9 
 
 of us who are interested in the saving of souls. 
 One of the means to accomplish this is by giving 
 him a book that is written especially for him, that 
 will interest him, and will prevent the disease 
 germs of corruption and bad habits from eating 
 their way into his soul. I believe this book of let- 
 ters will' help some to accomplish this ; and so I 
 cordially second the sentiments of the official 
 censor of Catholic literature in this Archdiocese, 
 who concluded his examination by saying: "I 
 would, if I could, put a copy of this book into the 
 hands of every young man." 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM MUNDELEEST, 
 
 Archbishop of Chicago. 
 
I 
 
 NOISE 
 
 THE noisy boy is a delight. The noisy man is a 
 nuisance. 
 
 DON'T be noisy enough to make people think you 
 are not genuine; but don't be quiet enough to 
 make them think you are a nonentity, or afraid. 
 
 THE biggest noise is always made by the biggest 
 failure. 
 
NOISE 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 This morning you started down from your bed- 
 room on the third floor like a barrel of nails, and 
 landed with a thud in front of the breakfast 
 table. It is true that you had only a few minutes 
 in which to bolt your breakfast, rush for a car, 
 and get down to work at the office. Knowing 
 that, I said nothing about the noise ; and then I 
 wanted to see how far it would go. Breakfast 
 over, there was a rush to the door, a bang, a hurry 
 down the steps, and peace descended upon me 
 again. My Matins finished, I sat for a moment 
 to think you out; and I made up my mind 
 that you were too much like your uncle . at 
 the same age ; so I resolved to write you a series 
 of letters, and begin on Noise. But the letters 
 that I am going to write are not entirely for you. 
 I am in hopes that they will reach a multitude of 
 Jacks, living all over this broad land of North 
 America ; every one of them the son of Catholic 
 parents, every one of them beginning life as you 
 are, every one of them full of hope and ambition ; 
 and, too, every one of them just a plain Catholic 
 
 13 
 
14 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 boy who makes a noise now to bother more an- 
 cient nerves than those possessed by youth ; but 
 who expect to make a noise later on in a different 
 way that will better, not bother, the world. In- 
 evitably I will have to make the general theme of 
 my letters the old theme of success; though, 
 frankly, I dislike the word. You see, success 
 means a different thing to almost every individ- 
 ual. My idea of it may not be yours ; but all of 
 us know the idea by the same name. I wont 
 attempt to "define what I mean by it, nor ask you 
 what you mean. I am going to try to make these 
 letters the definition. 
 
 The worst way to begin a day any day is as 
 you did this morning. You were due at your 
 office at eight-thirty. It is a forty minute walk 
 from this house. I heard you get up, because you 
 dropped one shoe at exactly seven-thirty. You 
 were at breakfast twenty minutes later, which 
 means that you dressed carelessly, splashed into 
 your bath and out again, had no time to shave, 
 rushed through your breakfast and then caught 
 a car, though you are young and needed the walk. 
 You arrived at your office with the beginnings of 
 an indigestion in your system which will be in 
 full control of your stomach at thirty. By walk- 
 ing you would have saved five cents, though, of 
 course, you would have lost it by the wear and 
 tear on shoe leather; that, however, would not 
 
NOISE 15 
 
 have been entirely a loss, for you would, by walk- 
 ing, have made a beginning of a good habit, and 
 laid the foundation for good health. A walk 
 would have meant entrance to your place of work 
 with a clear head, a bright eye and a cheerful dis- 
 position. You read a paper all the way down- 
 town at least you took a paper as you left the 
 house. You, therefore, saw nothing. Had you 
 walked, you would have noticed the sun and the 
 fact that it is springtime. Had you let your 
 thoughts run, you would have been storing up 
 things good for you later on. People are far 
 more interesting to read than morning papers. 
 A certain friend of mine has a habit, he tells me, 
 of reading the daily paper standing up, so that 
 he wont lose time over it. It is a good habit, 
 worth cultivating. As it is, you got to your office 
 with the wrong sort of a tired feeling, the feeling 
 that is born of insufficient sleep you were up 
 late the night before, you know ; and I was not 
 able then to drive you to bed. In addition, you 
 had twenty minutes of the bad air of the street 
 car ; and you started your labor when you started 
 that paper. You had already been working for 
 yourself before you began to work for your em- 
 ployer; so you did not, therefore, give him what 
 he was paying you for the fine fresh hours of 
 the day. 
 
 It was really only a symptom, that noise. You 
 
16 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 are not yet old enough to have gotten over the 
 habit. A boy who makes a noise around the house 
 is a healthy boy ; but you are just on the verge of 
 manhood. The noisy boy is a delight. The noisy 
 man is a nuisance. Nobody wants to have a noisy 
 man around, because he isn't natural. There is 
 something of the cheat about a noisy man. He 
 is like a shouting mob that hasn't anything really 
 back of it but excitement. His good nature is too 
 often assumed. He is afraid people will get to 
 know him as he is, so he shouts to keep some one 
 from asking questions which he cannot answer. 
 At twenty it is wise already to have passed two 
 years trying to eliminate a boyish disposition, so 
 that, when you begin the life of business, you will 
 have learned something of the gentle art that a 
 certain statesman calls "pussyfooting". I do 
 not, however, quite counsel that. The Latins say 
 "In medio stat virtus", which, by enlargement, 
 means that in moderation is good sense. It is a 
 wise saying. I had a friend, a bachelor, who 
 hired a Japanese servant. The Jap stayed about 
 one month and was then incontinently fired. Now 
 the Jap was a good cook and a good valet, so I 
 asked my friend why he had let him go. He 
 answered : "Because I became afraid of him. I 
 never knew out of what dark corner he would 
 glide at a most unexpected time. He had feet like 
 a cat, and eyes that didn't show in the dark. He 
 
NOISE 17 
 
 got on my nerves. I wanted a little noise to re- 
 lieve the monotony so there you are." The les- 
 son from both extremes is : don't be noisy enough 
 to make people think you are not genuine ; but 
 don't be quiet enough to make them think you 
 are a nonentity or afraid. Don't shout ; but then 
 don't whisper. Don't talk all the time ; but then 
 don't be silent. Come down stairs as if the stairs 
 were intended to be walked on, not pounded ; but 
 come down as if you were walking on stairs, not 
 air. Don't shout "good morning" from another 
 room ; but come in and say it as if you meant it. 
 Give yourself time to dress, and learn the pleas- 
 ure of walking and observing as you walk. Form 
 the habit. It is worth while. I wish I had formed 
 it when I was your age. 
 
 But this noise question is bigger still. The 
 average boy who is working for success, says that 
 he is " going to make a noise in the world ' '. Now 
 get it out of your mind, my dear Jack, that the 
 man who makes a noise in the world is successful. 
 He isn't. The biggest noise is usually made by 
 the biggest criminal. It is easy enough to make 
 a noise, if you care only for the fact of it. The 
 man who starts out with the idea that success con- 
 sists of having people notice him, or having his 
 picture in the paper, often gets it through most 
 devious ways ; and his noise is good neither for 
 his fellows nor for himself. It ends sometimes 
 
18 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 by a choking sensation after dropping from a 
 platform. 
 
 There is another kind of noise often coupled 
 with the idea of success. It is the noise of simple 
 failure. It is much like the noise you made this 
 morning. You hear the rumble of it and then the 
 thud that ends it. It isn't good for anybody, but 
 we all have to notice it. The thud is the failure ; 
 for, mark you, the biggest noise is often made 
 by the biggest failure. There is no thud at the 
 end of the pleasing noise that is made by a suc- 
 cessful man. It begins small and it grows. Its 
 volume increases, but it is musical and pleasant, 
 even at its height. It doesn't end even when the 
 man dies. It merely begins to soften, and then 
 melts away rather than ends. How long it takes 
 thus to melt away, depends upon the measure of 
 success that the individual who was responsible 
 for it has had. That's the kind of a noise to 
 make in the world, and you can make it if you 
 want to. Let me tell you how. 
 
 You begin at the simplest thing possible 
 opening your eyes in the morning at a fixed hour. 
 When they are open they stay open. You waste 
 no time in being alive. You master yourself by 
 not closing them to take another nap. In other 
 words, you begin your day with a victory, and 
 thus you help to cultivate a will. You get out of 
 your bed after an offering of the day to your 
 
NOISE 19 
 
 Maker, and so He has the first moment to Him- 
 self. You dress like a gentleman, not because 
 your clothes are tailor-made and of fine cloth, but 
 because you see that they hang right and are 
 clean. You hurry through nothing, even your 
 morning plunge. You put "snap" into your 
 dressing. You take the measure of your own 
 weaknesses, and therefore of yourself, by an act 
 of humility. You get down on your knees to the 
 One Who alone is Great. You have a cordial 
 smile for every one you meet in the morning, 
 particularly for those who wait on you; since 
 you, like myself, like my superiors, and like their 
 superiors, and then like their superiors, are ser- 
 vants. We must all of us serve ; and service is 
 honorable. Since you have a heart, every servant 
 has a heart and kindness reaches it. I would 
 rather, my dear Jack, be loved by those who serve 
 me than by those whom I serve. There is a priest 
 of my acquaintance who once said : ' ' Mine has 
 been a strange fate. Every one under me loves 
 me ; every one of my equals is suspicious of me ; 
 but my superiors all seem to dislike me." I said 
 to him: "You are a successful man. If your 
 superiors seem to dislike you, perhaps it is be- 
 cause you are too big for them. If your equals 
 are suspicious of you, perhaps it is because they 
 envy you. But if those who serve you love you, 
 it proves that you are good." 
 
20 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 When you leave the house you will remember 
 that God made the sun for you, and that the grass 
 and trees bloom for you. Part of your inherit- 
 ance is the glory of nature that is around you. 
 If you do not enjoy that inheritance, you are los- 
 ing one of the finest things in life. The people 
 you meet are destined to educate you ; you may 
 read the lessons in their morning faces. You 
 thank God for His care of you when you see how 
 much better off you are, or think you are, than 
 others. In the luxurious motor cars that glide 
 past you, you have an incentive to work. You 
 have good health offered as you inhale the fresh 
 air and exercise your limbs. When you enter 
 your office, your geniality will make others genial, 
 others who may not have taken advantage of 
 the things around them as you have. You will 
 remember that you have only two commodities to 
 sell your brains and your hands. These your 
 employer bought for the space of eight hours. 
 He owns them. You made a contract with him as 
 binding as a mortgage or a sale. It has not been 
 registered in the public records, but it is regis- 
 tered in your conscience, and therefore before 
 God. You give to your employer's work exactly 
 the same attention that he gives to superintend- 
 ing it; it makes no difference that he earns 
 twenty-five thousand a year, and you earn only 
 twenty-five dollars a week. He took you when 
 
NOISE 21 
 
 you were not worth even that; and he came up, 
 just as you will come up, by giving an honest 
 measure ef attention and time to little things. 
 Your first noise will be made in that office, and it 
 may not be much of a noise. But it will grow 
 slowly and surely, until someone hears it; and 
 then you will have taken the first step upward. 
 That's the noise that is worth while. 
 
 Now to sum up. Each day that you begin is 
 like the life that you begin, at twenty. If you 
 begin right, you will end right. If you plant good 
 seeds, good things will grow. If you begin by 
 being thoughtful, you will end by being thought- 
 ful. If you begin with God, you will end with 
 God. 
 
II 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 THE strongest willed people in the world were 
 saints; and the happiest and sanest people in the 
 world were saints. 
 
 To live a good example is to do a double good. 
 
 NOTHING is little that is done for God's honor 
 and glory. 
 
KELIGION 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 In yesterday's letter I mentioned two things 
 that gave me an idea as to what I should write 
 today. One you will find in this quotation : "You 
 begin at the simplest thing possible opening 
 your eyes in the morning at a fixed hour. When 
 they are open they stay open. You waste no time 
 in being alive. You master yourself by not clos- 
 ing them to take another nap. In other words, 
 you begin your day with a victory, and thus you 
 help the cultivation of a will. ' ' The other follows 
 immediately: "You get out' of your bed after 
 an offering of the day to your Maker, and so 
 He has the first moment to Himself." 
 
 I have always had an idea that the thing lack- 
 ing in most young men who are striving to make 
 a noise in the world is the cultivation of the will. 
 A few weeks ago I was delighted to read a book 
 on that very subject by a Father Barrett, an Irish 
 Jesuit I believe, who seems to have made a special 
 study of the will. In it I found all my poor ideas 
 admirably expressed, and better ones in addition. 
 By all means, get that book and read it. It will 
 do you a world of good ; and, if he again writes 
 
 25 
 
26 LETTERS TO 'JACK 
 
 something on the same subject, follow him up. 
 He knows what he is talking about. Father Bar- 
 rett suggests a certain number of exercises for 
 the cultivation of the will which doubtless are of 
 great value ; but you must remember that he is 
 addressing a very general audience. If he were 
 addressing his brothers in religion, he would 
 probably suggest the Exercises of St. Ignatius. 
 If he were addressing an audience of Catholic 
 young men, he could easily and admirably sum up 
 what he has to say by telling them to cultivate 
 practices of religion. The best treatise on the 
 cultivation of the will is the best treatise on the 
 cultivation of a spiritual life. The strongest 
 willed men in the world were saints ; and the hap- 
 piest and sanest people in the world were saints. 
 There are many saints who were never canonized. 
 The reason is that the average saint first learned 
 how to conceal from the world the fact that he 
 was a saint. The only canonized saints are those 
 who were discovered; and the fact that they 
 were discovered was always their greatest 
 annoyance. 
 
 The best way to be a saint is to start on your 
 path to sanctity with the greatest possible secrecy. 
 Keep it dark as dark as you can. Of course, 
 it is true that we are told on extremely compe- 
 tent authority that we must not hide our light 
 under a bushel ; in other words, we are expected 
 
RELIGION 27 
 
 to give a good example. But a saint does not 
 have to worry about that; for, the more he tries 
 to conceal his light, the sooner will his good exam- 
 ple be noticed and the effect follow. The most 
 effective good example does not come from 
 shouted prayers. When I was a boy in the old 
 Cathedral, where you followed me as a chorister, 
 there was one man whose voice was always heard 
 over all others in the answers to the Rosary. In 
 my youth I was simple enough to think he was 
 a saint. When I grew up, I knew that he was a 
 little of an oddity. No grown-up person ever mis- 
 takes eccentricity for sanctity ; and one thing you 
 will discover very soon is the fact that the aver- 
 age man is suspicious of the neighbor whose 
 religion is too much on his lips. 
 
 To begin to cultivate religion in a quiet, secret 
 way is to start work on the little things. If you 
 do not close your eyes to take another nap in the 
 morning because you know that God wants you 
 to cultivate being alive, and because He does not 
 want you to acquire habits of self-indulgence and 
 sloth, it is an act of religion that is, at the same 
 time, a cultivation of the will. It is a splendidly 
 good way to begin a day. If you get out of bed 
 while your eyes are heavy with sleep because it is 
 your religious duty to do so, you make it easy to 
 get out of bed. There is no satisfaction like the 
 satisfaction of having done a little thing right, 
 
28 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 but nothing is little that is done for God's honor 
 and glory. 
 
 When you start a day right, it is easy to keep 
 it right. You may be in a hurry, but your morn- 
 ing prayers do not take up much time; and if 
 you get into the habit of missing them you are 
 losing, not only the spiritual benefit of the 
 prayers, but also the benefit that comes from the 
 cultivation of your will. You are losing, too, the 
 little act of humility that is so powerful in put- 
 ting you where you belong and keeping you there. 
 You are losing the force that holds you to your 
 work when you really do not care to work. You 
 have stumbled on the first step that leads to the 
 vague thing which men call Success. The fact 
 that you were weak in the morning when you 
 stood in the presence of God will weaken you all 
 day when you must stand in the presence of men. 
 If you fail to do a simple little thing for your 
 Maker, how can you expect to do other worth 
 while things for the sake of filthy lucre ? 
 
 Now I know, Jack, just as well as you do, that 
 religion isn't popular in the world; and I am 
 going to say an astonishing thing: what passes 
 in that same world for " religion" is not particu- 
 larly popular with priests. Priests know, better 
 than other people, what it is that passes for re- 
 ligion in a great many men loud-voiced procla- 
 mations, assurances that one has it, efforts to in- 
 
RELIGION 29 
 
 fluence in business or politics through it, a self- 
 righteous manner that implies a scorn for others. 
 This is the sort of thing that parades as religion, 
 but it is not religion; and there is no one who 
 hates that sort of thing more than the average 
 priest, because he sees through the sham. 
 
 Again going back to my boyhood days, I re- 
 member well a family of two, man and wife, 
 whose names I never knew and do not know to 
 this day. That man and his wife impressed me 
 more than any others in the great Cathedral par- 
 ish, where we had a governor, some judges, and 
 the nearest approach to a millionaire in the whole 
 country. This man and his wife were not mil- 
 lionaires, nor did they hold any great offices. He 
 was just a clean, upstanding, rather good-looking 
 and very quiet man. She seemed to fit his com- 
 panionship, and that's all I can say about her. 
 She belonged to him and he belonged to her. I 
 never spoke a word to either of them ; but Sunday 
 after Sunday, at the same hour precisely, they 
 took their seats in a pew near my father's. Month 
 after month, I saw them go to Communion to- 
 gether. If I went to a gathering of any kind 
 amongst the parishioners, I looked around to see 
 if they were there ; and if they were not, I seemed 
 to have some sort of a suspicion that the gather- 
 ing was not an entire success. I once had charge 
 of a concert given by the choir boys. All the lads 
 
30 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 except myself sold tickets for it. I had the man- 
 agement and was freed from the duty of ringing 
 doorbells. But for weeks I would find myself 
 wondering if the concert was going to be a suc- 
 cess, and somehow in my mind letting it depend 
 upon whether or not that couple came to it. I 
 stood at the door of the hall on the night of the 
 concert. My man and woman appeared, and I 
 then and there handed over the tickets to another 
 boy. It was time for the concert to begin ; they 
 had arrived. Mark you, Jack, I was not worry- 
 ing about the governor, or the judges, or the 
 so-called millionaire, though I respected them 
 all. The people I was looking for were just the 
 plain simple people I had picked as the best. 
 
 Now what was it that made me think these peo- 
 ple were really the most important in the parish ? 
 As a matter of fact, they were not, taking them 
 as merely two individuals or one family. But in 
 the aggregate they were the most important. The 
 parish depended, not upon its few influential and 
 wealthy people, but upon the many who were like 
 these clean, honest, unpretentious, quietly good, 
 and faithful to every obligation. They repre- 
 sented a type. More than that, the whole Church, 
 under God, depends upon such people ; the whole 
 country depends upon them even more ; and, mak- 
 ing things still stronger, the whole world depends 
 upon them. The other day, I was reading a book 
 
RELIGION 31 
 
 on Mexico, written by a lady who had lived for 
 a long time in Mexico City. I stopped to think 
 over two remarks. One is a quotation made 
 from General Huerta, who said : " Mexico is like 
 a snake. All its life is in its head. I am the 
 head." The other is from herself: "How can a 
 nation be successful that depends only upon the 
 extremes?" 
 
 The General was wrong and the lady was right. 
 No nation depends upon its head. It depends 
 upon its heart and its stomach, since it is from 
 the stomach whence comes the strength that feeds 
 the brain, and it is the heart that feeds the blood 
 coursing through all. People such as those I 
 admired are the heart and stomach, not only of 
 nations, but of the world. I would rather see you 
 succeed in making people look for you as these 
 people made me look for them, than that you 
 should become a millionaire. 
 
 When an athlete starts to run a race, the things 
 that count are his muscles and his wind. For a 
 long time he was preparing in quiet to strengthen 
 both of these necessities. But in the race he for- 
 gets his training. He does not have to think 
 about it. That's about the way it is, Jack, with 
 regard to religion. The thing is, to be what re- 
 ligious training makes us; and everybody will 
 know we are trained without telling them. It is 
 the consequences of religion that a man should 
 
32 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 have. It is the consequences of religion that the 
 world should chiefly see. I once met a man who 
 was a very ardent admirer of the Catholic Church, 
 but he was not a member of it. During his con- 
 versation with me I learned that he knew prac- 
 tically nothing about it ; and so I asked him, out 
 of curiosity, how he had become so enthusiastic. 
 To my utter astonishment, he told me the reason 
 why he admired the Catholic Church was, because 
 every Sunday morning at half past five he was 
 awakened by the tramp of hundreds of feet pass- 
 ing his open window, rain or shine, hot or cold, 
 on their way to six o'clock Mass. "The Catholic 
 Church," he said, "is the only Church that can 
 make people do that. I acknowledge the sacri- 
 fice of my Sunday morning's sleep is too much to 
 ask of me. The fact that the Catholic Church 
 asks it of her children and gets it, is a testimony 
 to her that I cannot ignore." Now this was a 
 very little thing, but, as I said to you before, it is 
 the little things that count. 
 
 To live a good example is to do a double good. 
 It is to bless yourself and to bless others. The 
 real preachers of religion are not those who de- 
 liver sermons, but the people who go out and 
 preach the same sermons by their daily lives. 
 Every time I preach I feel very humble when I 
 look at the congregation; for there is a certain 
 exhilaration to preaching, a sort of a glow that 
 
. RELIGION 33 
 
 makes one feel he is accomplishing something. 
 But the faces of the people looking up at me, 
 devotion written on them, bring the humility to 
 me at once ; for these are the people. Jack, who 
 are going to carry the gospel in its lessons out 
 into the great wide world, and make it practical. 
 These are the people who are going to use the 
 lessons for the good of the world. It is through 
 these people that the gospel will regenerate the 
 world. After all, the last word is not with me, 
 the priest ; it is with you, the layman. 
 
 Of course, you know that before a priest is 
 ordained he must make a retreat ; in other words, 
 he must give a period of time to meditation upon 
 his responsibilities and his duties. I often think 
 that retreats for laymen, especially for young 
 laymen, are more necessary than for priests. If 
 you could understand what depends upon laymen, 
 not only for eternity but also for time ! If lay- 
 men could only for a little while brush aside the 
 veil the world draws before their eyes, and see 
 unclouded the opportunities lying ahead of them ! 
 I am sad to-day as I write this letter, for I am 
 snatching minutes to read that story of Mexico's 
 tragic hour, to which I have already referred. 
 It is the story of a nation whose leaders forgot 
 God, whose great men thought they no longer 
 needed Him, who believed that religion was for 
 women and that men were too strong for it. And 
 
34 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 behold, the star of their country's destiny is 
 drowned in an ocean of blood. It will be the same 
 with us, Jack, if those who are just reaching their 
 majority loose the grip that faith has on them. 
 Some old emperor said: "If justice should be 
 driven from the earth, it would find its last ref- 
 uge in the hearts of kings." He was mistaken. 
 Its last refuge will be where it should be, in the 
 hearts of the faithful poor. But I am not mis- 
 taken when I say to you, that if religion is ever 
 driven out of our country, its last hope and its 
 strongest hope must be in the hearts of Catholic 
 men. When Catholic manhood loses religion the 
 nation is irretrievably lost. 
 
 You will find that youth is inclined to scoff in 
 these days. Very qften you will find that you 
 must cultivate your will by resisting with it the 
 thought of scoffing, for you cannot always avoid 
 the companionship of the foolish. If you had a 
 "pearl of great price" you would treasure it be- 
 yond measure. You have a stone more precious 
 than pearls in the faith that was handed down to 
 you. Guard it for what it is worth, and that 
 means guard it above every other possession. 
 It has more to do with that vaguely defined suc- 
 cess than you dream of ; for success is not what 
 men think it is, but what God thinks it is. 
 
 Eeligion, and the keeping of it in life, is the 
 simplest of all life's processes. It means only 
 
RELIGION 35 
 
 fidelity to the little things ; the doing well of what 
 is not very hard to do, and what takes so little 
 time to do properly ; the raising of the heart to 
 God in the midst of temptations if only for an 
 instant ; the murmur of a secret prayer when no 
 one seems to want to believe ; fidelity to the virtue 
 of humility when everything beckons one to 
 pride. Out of these little things steps forth an 
 honest man, the noblest work of the grace of God. 
 
Ill 
 
 LIVING 
 
 WE go about learning how to live and begin at the 
 wrong end. We ought first to learn how to die. 
 
LIVING 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 I saw a book in your hands yesterday on "The 
 Art of Living Long". I understand that you are 
 considering the idea of pushing its sale through 
 your department. If you decide to do so I com- 
 mend your judgment. The title will carry the 
 first effort to success ; and the contents, through 
 which I glanced, will sustain it. Men like to read 
 such books, for they want to live a long time. 
 They would succeed in doing that if they followed 
 the book's counsels; which, in spite of the fact 
 that they chiefly concern themselves with the 
 question of diet, yet get down to the fundamental 
 Christian rule for longevity self-restraint and 
 sacrifice. The monks taught the "Art of Living 
 Long" before Louis Cornaro was born. But the 
 best sort of a book on the subject would not bother 
 about diet at all. It would be called, How to Die. 
 
 "The Imitation of Christ" is, perhaps, the 
 most wonderful and comforting of all uninspired, 
 or doubtfully inspired, books that ever were 
 penned. It is comforting to the busy man who 
 has learned to know it, because it tells so much 
 about the art of living. But have you not no- 
 
 39 
 
40 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 ticed that that part of it is quite accidental? Its 
 aims and purposes are plainly to teach people 
 how to die. 
 
 The happiest folk I ever saw were some clois- 
 tered nuns in a small Quebec village. They fairly 
 radiated happiness, though they were enclosed, 
 by their own free will, and confined to their house 
 and garden. By special permission, I was shown 
 their cells. They were clean, white rooms, with- 
 out ornaments or pictures. There was always a 
 cot, one chair, a table and a kneeling bench. On 
 the kneeling bench, where the eye naturally fell 
 when dropped in prayer, was painted an ugly 
 black coffin. I wondered for a little while, until 
 I began to understand that these nuns were 
 happy because, through having learned the art of 
 dying, they had learned the art of living. They 
 worked with their hands, and produced beautiful 
 things which were useful to the world ; but they 
 worked also with their spiritual hands, and pro- 
 duced more beautiful things, useful to themselves, 
 and thus learned the art of dying. .Their great 
 business and their greatest happiness was in 
 learning how to die. 
 
 When you think about it, it is not so hard a les- 
 son to learn, once men try to learn it. There is 
 a whole library of good things in one text of 
 Scripture which everybody knows but so few 
 think about : * ' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God 
 
LIVING 41 
 
 and His justice and all else shall be added unto 
 you." This is practically an admission that we 
 need not go about learning how to live. We begin 
 at the wrong end. We ought first to learn how to 
 die. If we make the world everything, fight for 
 everything in it and win, we are only making the 
 dying harder. It is not business to do that. No 
 commercial man, when laying his plans, would 
 ignore an event which he knows must be faced, 
 for he is not a fool. He foresees, and plans ac- 
 cording to his foresight; and that explains his 
 success. But, strange to say, the same man 
 ignores a greater and surer eventuality, which 
 means, so far as he can see, the loss of all that he 
 has gained, and perhaps his beginning all over 
 again under conditions he has never tried to 
 understand. 
 
 Eeligion is rejected by too many business men, 
 men of the type of the age, because they think it 
 is a gloomy thing and gives them no information 
 about what is to them the great question how to 
 live. In reality religion is the one thing they 
 need, because it, alone, can teach them the essen- 
 tial lesson of living, by teaching them how to die. 
 
IV 
 
 TEMPTATION 
 
 I NEVER knew anyone who had " humanly rea- 
 soned " himself off the path of evil; or who had 
 really overcome dangerous temptations, merely 
 because they interfered with his temporal success. 
 
TEMPTATION 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 I never knew anyone who had " humanly rea- 
 soned" himself off the path of evil; or who had 
 really overcome dangerous temptations, merely 
 because they interfered with his temporal suc- 
 cess. I have heard doctors lecture to young men 
 on the horrible consequences of a life spent in 
 yielding to lust or gluttony. I have known young 
 men to give up evil ways for health's sake, or 
 for the sake of prosperity ; but I also knew that 
 they did not entirely give them up. Those who 
 are strong enough to be moderate for worldly rea- 
 sons are wise enough to know that moderation 
 avoids nine-tenths of the physical dangers, and 
 are willing enough to chance the other tenth. 
 There is only one way to face temptation with 
 any hope of success against it; and that is the 
 Christian way. Let me explain it. 
 
 There is a great palace which is called Life 
 and, by the grace of God, we are all in it as resi- 
 dents. The King dwells in the palace, but our 
 corporal eyes never see Him. We only know 
 that He is under the same roof with us. You 
 have entered houses that spoke most eloquently 
 
 , 45 
 
46 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 of their owners, though you did not see the own- 
 ers at all. Something about the rooms, the fur- 
 nishings, the books, the pictures, the order or the 
 disorder, told you the owner had left himself 
 there even when absent in body. In this great 
 palace you see and note the same thing, only the 
 wonder of its Owner's power to be there and yet 
 not be seen is infinitely greater. He permeates 
 everything about you with His unseen presence. 
 He vivifies and beautifies and inspires, till you 
 ask yourself, " What am I here for ?" and receive 
 the answer before it is corroborated by your fel- 
 low-residents. You are in the palace to serve the 
 King. You have no other purpose in it ; but by 
 this service you are made happy and contented. 
 You do not think of pay, yet you know that your 
 pay will be dealt out to you with lavish generosity. 
 In gardens around the palace multitudes play 
 constantly, but stop often to weep and gaze tipon 
 the buildings. The gardens are splendid; but 
 you know that the fruits are beautiful only to 
 the sight at a touch they fall to ashes. The 
 flowers have beauty, too, but no perfume. The 
 multitude calls to you from the ground, as you 
 now and then look out of the windows. They 
 ask you to come out and pluck the fruit and 
 stroll amongst the odorless flowers; and some- 
 times you long to go. They call to you that you 
 have a duty of mercy or charity to come. You 
 
TEMPTATION 47 
 
 shut out the thought of the Presence sometimes 
 and go. 
 
 But your place is in the King's service. His 
 call may come at any time, and woe to you if then 
 you are absent; for the door may be closed 
 against you, and your strength, which comes from 
 the Presence, will be too much weakened to en- 
 able you to enter again. 
 
 It is better for you to keep within and to call 
 those outside to come to you; for any of that 
 great multitude may enter and join you. If they 
 do come there is great rejoicing in the palace, and 
 a deep peace and satisfaction in your heart for 
 the gaining of other servants for the King. 
 
 There are things in the palace, inanimate and 
 animate, that you may use for your comfort, your 
 convenience and your pleasure. There are things 
 in the gardens below, or in the distance, upon 
 which you may feast your eyes to satiety. But 
 you know that all these things serve but one pur- 
 pose to help you serve the King better. Shall 
 you use them ? Yes, as far as they promote good 
 service. No, as far as they take you from that 
 service. To use these things as far as they pro- 
 mote the service you are to render the King, is 
 wise and good. To use them when they hinder, is 
 to succumb to temptation and fall from grace; 
 then the Presence seems to be less felt, and you 
 languish in your vigilance for the King's call. 
 
48 , LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 I have never known, my dear Jack, a better 
 way " to avoid evil and do good" than to keep this 
 picture before my mind. Father Diertens sums 
 it up splendidly: " All other things on the face of 
 the earth are created for man and that they may 
 help him in the end for which he was created. 
 From this it follows that man is to use them as 
 much as they help him to his end, and ought to 
 rid himself of them as far as they hinder him 
 as to it." 
 
 There you are. To overcome temptations, re- 
 member the palace and the Presence, the win- 
 dows looking out on the fruit that is ashes and 
 the flowers without perfume, the voices that call, 
 the doors that can be opened only by spiritual 
 strength, the service that you must give, and the 
 call that will surely come to the Chamber of the 
 King. Learn that all things about you are yours, 
 and feel your freedom to use them ; but ask your 
 soul the question, " Are they going to promote my 
 efficiency as a servant of God, or hinder it?" 
 
 This, with humility, is the best means of over- 
 coming temptations. 
 
V 
 THINKING 
 
 MEDITATION in its best form is like talking to God 
 with the tongue of the spirit and hearing Him 
 answer with the ears of the soul. 
 
 BRING thought to your problems and see them 
 vanish. 
 
 As serious men become older they grow to dislike 
 crowds. 
 
THINKING 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 You have heard me speak before, in an in- 
 cidental way, of meditation ; and you knew that 
 it referred to some exercise of piety common to 
 priests. I do not think you know much more 
 than that about it. It is an exercise which, 
 however, is known to others besides priests; 
 and happy is the man or woman who not only 
 knows of it, but practices it daily. Meditation 
 is simply prayer without words, prayer of the 
 soul and mind and heart. In its best form it is 
 like talking to God with the tongue of the spirit, 
 and hearing Him answer with the ears of the 
 soul. It is spiritual training. It is filled with con- 
 solations unknown to those who never practice 
 it. At its poorest it is the highest form of prayer, 
 but at its best it is a foretaste of heaven's joy. 
 To those who try it, even in the crudest way, 
 it is full of rewards. To those who let-themselves 
 be led by its beauties, it has ended in visions that 
 themselves are only the beginnings of visions. 
 No, I am not in the clouds. The best thing about 
 meditation is that, while it sends the soul ex- 
 ploring the heavens, those who feed on it are the 
 
 51 
 
52 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 sanest and most sensible of men. My follies are 
 at their greatest when I neglect my meditation. 
 
 'Now, meditation has not only a spiritual and 
 religious lesson to teach, but a worldly one as 
 well. The way to goodness is through the flower- 
 bordered path of meditation. The way to worldly 
 success is through the pleasant path of thought. 
 Bring thought to your problems and see them 
 vanish. 
 
 The greatest evil of the age, my dear Jack, 
 is thoughtlessness. I could almost say that we 
 live in an age when nobody thinks. We seem to 
 be too busy to think ; but he who is too busy to 
 think is too thoughtless to succeed. Let me bring 
 the point home to you. Every day you are at 
 your desk from early morning till evening. After 
 the evening meal you want pleasure, or think you 
 do. As a matter of fact, you only need relaxa- 
 tion. Play rests the mind by changing the cur- 
 rent of thought, not by stopping it. Too much 
 play, however, does stop it. If you merely work 
 and play you will get nowhere. Some sailors do 
 that ; but those who ambition to become masters, 
 do not. There must be someone on every ship to 
 think out the problems of the voyage. The sailor 
 who learns to work, play and think is the sailor 
 who, later on, will command. Every young man 
 is a young captain of his fortunes. He is either 
 going to bring his boat safely into port laden 
 
THINKING 53 
 
 with a precious cargo, or he is going to pile it 
 up on the rocks. Cargoes may vary, but a real 
 cargo and a real port mean success. Every day 
 of the voyage is a day that has its problems. So 
 every day should have one bit of it given up to 
 the solving of them to thought. 
 
 Do I mean that every young man should de- 
 liberately sit down every day and do nothing? 
 No. I mean that every young man should de- 
 liberately sit down every day and think. If he 
 really is interested in his work he will not find 
 it difficult to think for, say, a half hour. If he is 
 not interested in his work he should still think 
 and plan and get interested; for that is just 
 what his thinking and planning will do for him. 
 
 Harriman had his railroad kingdom in his 
 thoughts long before he got the Union Pacific, 
 the key to his greatness. Pullman was carry- 
 ing thousands in his sleepers, long before he 
 could sleep himself, with the assurance that 
 many men were working out his small problems. 
 Rockefeller now, in his old age, may play golf 
 all day, but only because he never played in the 
 time set aside for thinking and planning, when 
 he was young. If you want examples, you can 
 have them in plenty ; but there is the Great Ex- 
 ample, for the whole of creation was but the 
 thought of God, supplemented by the Word of 
 Power. Your future is in yourself. Every 
 
54 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 thoughtful moment is bringing it closer to you. 
 Some day it will all be clear if you are faithful 
 to thinking and planning. Then it is for you 
 to imitate God, and speak the Word of Power 
 He has placed in your mouth for utterance at 
 the right time. 
 
 You cannot think if you always use your leis- 
 ure for "a good time". The head does not work 
 well in concert with the feet, so you cannot think 
 and dance together. Company is not an aid to 
 thought, but solitude is. Your room ought to be 
 more than a place in which to sleep. It ought 
 also to be a hermit's cell, for at least a little while 
 every day. 
 
 Do not imagine that you lose the time you give 
 to yourself alone. Too many young people think 
 that they must be in a crowd or they are losing 
 something of what they call "life". They are 
 really losing all that is worth while in life when 
 they are in a crowd. The only inspiration that 
 is in a crowd is for an orator, but then it is a 
 case of thought joining thought. A man who lis- 
 tens and drinks in a discourse is as much alone 
 as if he were locked in a solitary cell. The magic 
 touch of oratory is in so moving people as to 
 make them forget the speaker in the thoughts he 
 inspires. The magic of a crowd on a speaker is 
 in the communication of the sympathy of their 
 individual thoughts with his own. The only 
 
THINKING 55 
 
 crowd worth getting into is the crowd that lis- 
 tens or prays, which sometimes amounts to about 
 the same thing. As serious men become older 
 they grow to dislike crowds. A growing love for 
 being in a crowd is not a sign of perennial youth. 
 It is more often the sign of a shallow mind. 
 Sometimes, alas, it is the sign of a depraved 
 heart. 
 
 Do not imagine that to be alone with your 
 thoughts is really to be lonely. A certain poet 
 put the case well when he said : "Alone, tut yet 
 not lonely." You can make your thoughts very 
 friendly, as well as the pleasantest of company ; 
 and the best of it is that such company grows 
 better as you intensify your associations with it. 
 The man who said that he liked to talk to him- 
 self because he " liked to talk to a good man, and 
 liked to hear a good man talk," was perhaps try- 
 ing to be funny, but, like Mr. Dooley, he suc- 
 ceeded in being a philosopher. Thinking is 
 really talking to your better self. You can al- 
 ways talk better and straighter to yourself than 
 to anyone else, because you have more freedom. 
 The restraints of human respect are removed. 
 You are not suspicious of motives. You can test 
 and weigh without fear or favor, and, if you 
 practice proper humility, without undue affec- 
 tion. 
 
 The greatest poems never made me love them 
 
56 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 (and you know how I do love poetry) half as 
 much as Father Ryan's "Song of the Mystic", 
 which begins : 
 
 "I walk down the valley of Silence, 
 Down the dim, voiceless Valley alone." 
 
 This verse of it keeps coming back to me as I 
 write : 
 
 " And I have had thoughts in the valley, 
 Ah me, how my spirit was stirred! 
 And they wear holy veils on their faces, 
 Their footsteps can scarcely be heard. 
 They float down the Valley like virgins, 
 Too pure for the touch of a word." 
 
 Of course, again all my hopes for writing a 
 real practical business letter have fled long ago. 
 I try and try not to preach, and only succeed in 
 preaching the more. Well, perhaps after all it 
 is for the best. 
 
VI 
 
 FRIENDS 
 
 IP I were a saint, I should be more afraid of flat- 
 tery than of anything else ; and, because I am not 
 a saint, I ought to fear it still more. 
 
 No friendship will stand the shock of a sin. 
 
 BE at least as much of a gentleman to your friend 
 as you are to a stranger. 
 
FRIENDS 
 My Dear Jack: 
 
 All friends are rare; wise friends are rarer; 
 but foolish friends are worse than enemies. Fer- 
 vently do I pray: "From my foolish friends, 
 good Lord, deliver me." It sounds a little un- 
 charitable that I should consider any of my 
 friends foolish, but alas, I know that some of 
 them are. The most foolish friend of all is the 
 one who thinks that he has to overpraise in order 
 to do his duty of friendship. Listen to him and 
 you will think yourself a demigod, but no one 
 else will. Because he overstates his case, he 
 makes listeners doubt the actual truth. He drags 
 your name into his conversations constantly. He 
 basks in the sunlight of your supposed greatness ; 
 but, in nine cases out of ten, he thinks that in 
 this way he makes a little glory for himself. He 
 is not a real friend of yours, but a very real 
 friend of himself. You are the steps of the lad- 
 der upon which he hopes to mount. One would 
 not mind it, but that he insists on scraping the 
 steps with his rough, hob-nailed shoes as he 
 climbs, and that hurts. You must just live down 
 this kind of a friend. It is hard to rebuke him ; 
 indeed often he will not be rebuked. 
 
 59 
 
60 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 Sometimes, however, you find this sort of a 
 friend absolutely unselfish. He does not want 
 to mount at your expense. He is only an enthu- 
 siast about you. He thinks he has discovered 
 virtues in you that nobody else suspects. He 
 looks on himself merely as an humble admirer; 
 but, though he doesn't know it, he is really swing- 
 ing incense to his own astuteness. The less he 
 understands of that, the harder it is to save your- 
 self from him, for he sees no flaw in you. This 
 man hurts you because he flatters you ; and flat- 
 tery always hurts. If I were a saint, I should be 
 more afraid of flattery than of anything else; 
 and because I am not a saint, I ought to fear 
 it still more. It io an insidious poison, and no 
 armor of righteousness is strong enough to make 
 you fearless of it. It strengthens your enemy 
 because it makes you self-satisfied. It increases 
 your pride, which is especially bad. It kills the 
 humility that is your real strength. This kind 
 of a friend, while not to be avoided, nevertheless 
 is one to reason with. Do not let him flatter you. 
 Have a heart-to heart talk with him, and own up 
 to the truth. I knew two men who passed as 
 friends so well that I had come to call them 
 Damon and Pythias. Pythias seemed always lost 
 in admiration for Damon. One day I met them 
 together, but Damon was hopelessly drunk. Now 
 both of these men were parishioners of mine, and 
 
FRIENDS 61 
 
 I thought it was time for me to act. I called 
 Damon aside and reproached him, adding to my 
 scolding: "I never saw you in this condition 
 before." He had sense enough to answer, wisely 
 enough: "Yes, I am drunk and I know it; and 
 more than that, Father, I am glad of it. That 
 pest of a friend will now know that I am only a 
 human being." I always suspected that Damon 
 played drunk that day for a purpose. 
 
 The real friend is the man who knows all about 
 you and loves vou in spite of it. I am sure some 
 one must have said that before; but I do not 
 know who it was or I would give him credit for 
 it. Friendship is really founded on generosity. 
 I am not a believer in the intimate "friendships" 
 between men and women that are often called 
 "platonic love." If such intimacies are platonic 
 they may not be classed as love ; and if they may, 
 why the adjective? I believe that friendships 
 between men and women are almost always lack- 
 ing in the essential of equality; for women are 
 governed more by the heart than are men, and in 
 friendship, therefore, are far more generous. 
 Friendship will not, as a rule, stand the strain 
 of great inequality. "Platonic love" either be- 
 comes real love, or ends in a break. The truest 
 friendships are between persons of the same sex ; 
 and there is nothing of what is usually called 
 ' ' love ' ' in them. The man who knows your faults 
 
62 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 and is still your friend overlooks a lot of 
 defects. He, therefore, is generous; but, at the 
 same time, he is humble, because he is thus con- 
 fessing, in his own way, that he has some defects 
 to be overlooked on your part. Do not conceal 
 your defects from your friend. When you talk 
 to him do not boast. Minimize your virtues ; but 
 it is not wise to emphasize your faults too much. 
 Let your friend know that you have faults. It 
 makes the bond of union closer. The fellow who 
 is always striking his breast is not safe, because 
 he is not sincere. The publican in the parable 
 only struck his breast and confessed his sins in 
 the temple. Had he gone out and proclaimed 
 them, he would have been as bad as the pharisee, 
 though in another way. You may confess faults 
 in the temple of friendship : but remember, that 
 to be always disparaging yourself is to be seek- 
 ing praise. To get down to the level of knowl- 
 edge with your friend, and then find equality, is 
 a pretty good way to make a friendship last. 
 
 On general principles it can be asserted that 
 there is no possibility of friendship between a 
 superior and an inferior between one who rules 
 and one who is under his jurisdiction. A su- 
 perior who has friends amongst his "subjects" 
 is running the risk of violating justice toward 
 those not thus honored. The nearest approach 
 to friendship of that kind, so far as the superior 
 
FRIENDS 63 
 
 is concerned, must be admiration and apprecia- 
 tion. When an inferior has what people call 
 friendship for his superior, it is usually devo- 
 tion ; and it ought to be absolutely unselfish to be 
 worth anything. The day may come when equal- 
 ity will raise this devotion to the plane of real 
 friendship ; but, until it does, the devotion ought 
 to be whole-hearted, and rather for what the su- 
 perior represents than for himself. Such devo- 
 tion ought to ask nothing ; for if it demands spe- 
 cial consideration it loses its virtue and is, there- 
 fore, in danger of losing its utility. The best way 
 to consider superiors is by thinking of them as 
 not detached from their offices. He is a happy 
 superior who makes those under him have re- 
 gard and devotion for what he represents. Per- 
 sonal friendships between superiors and those 
 they govern provoke jealousies and misunder- 
 standings; and so, in general, do not work out 
 for good. 
 
 Get it firmly fixed in your mind, Jack, that 
 friendship never demands v anything that is 
 wrong. No friendship will stand the shock of 
 a sin. The friend who asks you to lie for him, 
 or to do some other wrong act for him, or to 
 place your own position in jeopardy for him, is 
 nothing more than a supposed friend. A busi- 
 ness man in Detroit has a motto stuck over his 
 desk that is more to be praised for its truth than 
 
64 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 its eloquence: "That which takes gall to ask, 
 takes no gall to refuse." The man who places 
 before you the suggestion, that because he is in 
 trouble your friendship for him must be tested 
 by the sacrifice of your honesty, ought to be put 
 out of your life at once. If he is a true friend, 
 he will admire the good in you and he will not 
 attempt to destroy it. He should be willing to 
 cut off his right hand rather than ask you to do 
 wrong; and yet the whole business world of to- 
 day is full of men who think that they have a 
 right to demand, in the name of friendship, 
 things that sully the soul. In the world of poli- 
 tics this is especially true; and it is because of 
 that fact that there are really no political friends ; 
 or rather that a political friend is no friend at 
 all. The man who happens to be a politician may 
 have a man's friendship; but political friend- 
 ships are based upon selfishness, pure and sim- 
 ple; though the adjectives are misleading, for 
 selfishness is neither pure nor simple. Selfish- 
 ness is to the highest degree impure; and, far 
 from being simple, it is as cunning as a serpent. 
 You may often trust a politician in matters 
 other than those that are political ; but in politics 
 one should seldom trust him. You may trust a 
 statesman in everything except statecraft; but 
 the word "craft" has been well applied in this 
 connection. A statesman is often only a post- 
 
FRIENDS 65 
 
 graduate politician. An ecclesiastical friend is 
 safe for your spiritual self ; but he is hard for a 
 worldly man to understand. If he is worth any- 
 thing to you it is because his motto is : " All for 
 the greater glory of God." Unless you have that 
 motto yourself, you cannot understand the eccle- 
 siastical point of view. The things that you be- 
 lieve are necessary the ecclesiastic very often puts 
 down as " vanity and affliction of spirit". He is 
 a safeguard, but unless he has many worldly 
 faults, he is not capable of the friendship that a 
 man of the world demands. He is too unbending. 
 Friendships between the clergy and the laity are 
 usually very imperfect, and are not particularly 
 to be encouraged. Though you have one priest in 
 your family, with a possibility of having more, 
 yet, as a priest, I would not encourage you to 
 form friendships with other priests. Their duty 
 toward you is in the way of guidance and direc- 
 tion. Your duty toward them is implied in the 
 definition of their duty toward you. The founda- 
 tion of equality is lacking in the friendship of a 
 layman and a priest ; and hence such friendships 
 very often are failures. The best way to deal 
 with a priest is to appeal to the father in him. 
 Do not then seek friends; because in seeking 
 you rarely find them. You want them too badly, 
 and in your eagerness you may buy shoddy in- 
 stead of good cloth. Wait until they come into 
 
66 .LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 your life unasked, and then consider well before 
 you surrender. Look first for unselfishness ; but 
 find out there and then if you are yourself capa- 
 ble of it ; for you are an equal partner in friend- 
 ship. You cannot expect what you cannot give. 
 Study every possible friend as if he were a pos- 
 sible enemy. See that he is as near your equal 
 as he may be ; but try to think of him always as 
 just a little superior to yourself. Be open and 
 honest with him. Let him be open and honest 
 with you. Never praise him to his face, and 
 do not praise him unduly behind his back. 
 If he has faults and he surely has them 
 show them to him by calling attention to 
 the sapie possible defects in your own charac- 
 ter. He will see the point. Lean on him in 
 your little weaknesses, but do not put your heavy 
 burdens upon his shoulders. To lean lightly is 
 to make him happy that you come to him in your 
 troubles ; but to throw on him the heavy burdens 
 that you should carry yourself, is to prove your 
 own selfishness. Be at least as much of a gen- 
 tleman to your friend as you are to a stranger. 
 He has greater claims on you than any stranger. 
 Ask nothing of him that you would not want him 
 to ask of you; and thus you shall keep your 
 friend, and in his friendship you shall find a 
 great deal to help and sustain you. 
 
VII 
 ENEMIES 
 
 THE way to change into friends the enemies who 
 misunderstand, is to find out the way to tell 
 them the truth; and one doesn't lose the time 
 taken in scheming to that end. 
 
 ENMITY at bottom is a sin; and the only thing 
 with which a sin can be successfully opposed is 
 the opposite virtue. 
 
 CHERISH your enemies. 
 
ENEMIES 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 I have noticed that you are inclined to be popu- 
 lar. The people you meet in my house like you. 
 The people who have met you in the office say nice 
 things about you. If I reach for my coat when 
 you are around, you jump up to hold it for me. 
 That isn't particularly complimentary to me, for 
 I am not so very old, nor have I been accustomed 
 to a valet around to make me think myself a 
 petted child of fortune. But let that go. You 
 have acquired a good habit in always trying to 
 help other people. It is inevitable that, under 
 such a system, you are bound to be popular ; but 
 I would not have you close your eyes to the fact 
 that, with popularity, you are also going to accu- 
 mulate a few enemies. While great popularity 
 reduces the number of our enemies, it surely 
 makes very bitter ones ; for it appears to be half 
 a law that the hands which stretch up from imme- 
 diately beneath the pinnacle of success, are hands 
 reaching for feet to pull down. You will have 
 your enemies ; you may have incipient ones now. 
 It is wise to begin already to think how you are 
 to treat them. 
 
70 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 I had a chat once with a statesman possessing 
 more enemies to the square inch than any other 
 man I ever knew. He had just passed through a 
 terrible ordeal and his enemies had almost beaten 
 him. Amongst other things he said: " Revenge 
 is not worth while. Your whole life is a proces- 
 sion from birth to death, and the procession is a 
 race. If somebody hurts you, you cannot afford 
 to stop and wait for him to come around to strike 
 back at him. If you do that the procession will 
 have gone on while you are waiting, and you will 
 be just that much behind." I was so interested 
 in the views of this man that I watched his career. 
 No one ever suffered so much from enemies ; but 
 I never saw him try to strike back. A friend once 
 said of him: "Why, the fool, he would compro- 
 mise with his worst enemy." I would not have 
 put it that way; I would have substituted "wise 
 man" for "fool". An enemy who can be concil- 
 iated hasn't any excuse for existing. Richelieu 
 said that statesmanship is to make friends out of 
 enemies ; and Richelieu was right. Nine-tenths 
 of my own enemies are people who misunder- 
 stood, and thought that their enmity was for my 
 good. Nearly all of the other tenth were people 
 who, while they did not misunderstand, never- 
 theless in a vague sort of way thought I had in- 
 jured them. All of them were wrong. I never 
 tried willfully to injure anybody in my life ; but, 
 
ENEMIES 71 
 
 nevertheless, I may have been at fault, for some- 
 times a man doesn't know when he is doing harm 
 to another. The way to change into friends the 
 enemies who misunderstand, is to find out the way 
 to tell them the truth, and one doesn't lose the 
 time taken in scheming to that end. The way 
 to change into friends enemies who think they 
 have been injured, is not by building up a case 
 for yourself and remaining self -righteously stub- 
 born; it is to take it for granted that you are 
 wrong, whether you are or not. There is no bet- 
 ter way of making an enemy realize that you are 
 right. 
 
 I can truthfully say, Jack, that if I have any 
 enemies today, and doubtless I have, they are 
 enemies I never met, or of whom I am blissfully 
 ignorant. The people I might know later on 
 as enemies will never find out from my conduct 
 toward them that I acknowledge or notice their 
 enmity. The best rule of life that I find for 
 such situations is to ignore the fact that anyone 
 dislikes you. 
 
 Of course, sometimes this conduct does not 
 seem to work out well, for a man who hates you 
 sometimes will hate through everything. But 
 what difference does it make, except that of 
 momentary annoyance? The thing is to be at 
 peace yourself, and you cannot be at peace with 
 yourself if you must add, to the ordinary wor- 
 
72 LETTERS TO 'JACK 
 
 ries of life, the extraordinary ones of plotting 
 and planning how to circumvent an enemy. 
 There is really only one way to circumvent him 
 the scriptural way of heaping coals of fire on 
 his head. Enmity at bottom is a sin, and the only 
 thing with which a sin can be successfully op- 
 posed is the opposite virtue. 
 
 A harder situation arises when you find a man 
 dislikes you as a matter of duty. We all have 
 superiors, and it is the superior's business to 
 know those who are under his jurisdiction. He 
 rarely gets his knowledge direct, for he has to 
 depend upon others ; and out of a multiplicity 
 of opinions expressed to him, he draws his con- 
 clusions, sometimes unconsciously. As he has 
 power, these conclusions often work out to your 
 undoing. The superior may think that he is 
 eminently just, whereas he is disgracefully un- 
 just. He may want to do right, but succeeds only 
 in doing wrong. He may not consider the fact 
 that no man looks upon his neighbor as quite per- 
 fect, and that most of us, alas, will talk about 
 imperfections rather than perfections. How are 
 you going to handle such a case as that? The 
 first rule, of course, is to see that your own con- 
 duct squares with integrity and honesty, so that, 
 if the charges are made against you openly, you 
 may prove your innocence. That's what might 
 be called preparation for the break, but with that 
 
ENEMIES 73 
 
 preparation the open break is often averted. It 
 is an uncomfortable feeling, that of being obliged 
 to work under the power of a superior who sus- 
 pects you and your motives, who is an enemy of 
 the worst kind because an enemy through what 
 he considers his duty. The rule to follow then 
 is : never betray yourself into a resentment be- 
 fore him or before others. Never criticise him 
 or his actions. Never show pique because he does 
 not like you. Praise him whenever you can; 
 and, by the way, it will be easy to pick out things 
 in the life of that sort of a man to praise, for he 
 is usually honest. Help him even more cheer- 
 fully than you help anyone else. Rise to every 
 occasion that he puts in your way ; but, above all 
 else, even if you have the power, do not try to 
 injure him. You will be tempted to do so. The 
 devil will put it into your power sometime to do 
 so. The time may come when he is caught, and 
 when a word from you may ruin him ; but that 
 is the day of your trial, not Ms; that is the day 
 your mettle is being tested ; that is the great oc- 
 casion that God gives you for growth. Right 
 there you have the chance to be a big man or a 
 little man, to be a success before God or merely 
 a human so-called success. You are there before 
 the caskets, of which there are but two: one 
 moth-eaten, cobweb-covered and ugly, because so 
 few people ever touch it; the other gilded and 
 
74 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 jeweled, cleaned and garnished, because it is pop- 
 ular. But in that last casket there is only re- 
 proach and regret : while in the other is the prize 
 of self-conquest, that admits you at once into 
 the outer circle surrounding the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. 
 
 The worst kind of enemy, the one hardest to 
 deal with, is always the man who has already 
 wronged you by act or thought. There is an old 
 advice often given, and it comes in very apropos 
 here, to the effect that one should never lend 
 money to a friend if one values the friend. Of 
 course, like most bits of worldly philosophy, this 
 is not always strictly true ; but it is true enough 
 to make it a general rule of conduct. The man 
 who has received a benefit from you, very often 
 resents in his heart the fact that he was humil- 
 iated by accepting it. At first it is only a 
 resentment, but it has a strange and unreason- 
 able growth that arrives often at hatred. Every 
 time this man does something to actually injure 
 you the hatred increases, and grows on its own 
 unreason. There seems to be no remedy for this 
 kind of enmity. New favors only add fuel to 
 the flame, for they bring a return of resentment 
 by giving hatred a fictitious justification. Such 
 enmity goes very far to prove the doctrine of 
 total depravity, whose only remedy was and is 
 the grace of God ; which, by the way, you need 
 
ENEMIES 75 
 
 as much in facing the situation as your enemy 
 does in shaking off his blinders. 
 
 It takes your self -discipline, and all of it, to 
 stand up under the feeling of rankling injustice 
 that overflows your very soul, when you become 
 conscious of this sort of unreasonable and ever- 
 degrading enmity. Always fall back on the con- 
 sciousness of eternal justice before the fact of 
 human injustice; and then stand to your guns. 
 Make the unreasonable enemy respect your firm- 
 ness and the right of your position. Do not give 
 such a mari an inch. Demand from him your 
 own all your own ; not because you want it, but 
 because you know it is good for him to restore it. 
 He is entitled to no consideration from you ; but 
 just the same have all consideration for him 
 within the limits of reason, justice and charity. 
 Take no more than is yours ; take that and wait. 
 When you are through with that sort of enemy 
 be through with him forever and ever, so far as 
 giving him a chance at you again is concerned; 
 but do not forget that he remains one of a mul- 
 titude for you, one out of thousands for whom 
 you still ought to have kindly feelings, honest in- 
 tentions, and overflowing charity. Just forget 
 your trouble in all but the experience you have 
 gotten out of it. It will pass, but it would never 
 pass if you let it have its evil way. 
 
 Enemies have their uses, for they make us 
 
76 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 careful. They teach us how to govern ourselves. 
 They show us how naturally unreasonable we 
 might become if we permitted ourselves to go 
 wrong. Cherish your enemies, Jack, since you 
 must have them; for a strong and powerful 
 enemy is often a help up the ladder, spiritually 
 as well as temporally. 
 
 To avoid making enemies one would have to 
 avoid living at all. There is another old adage 
 which says: "To avoid enemies, say nothing, do 
 nothing, be nothing. ' ' This is unhappily only too 
 true; yet though we cannot avoid enemies, the 
 wise man always keeps trying to do so, and thus 
 cuts down their number and their malignity. The 
 best rule to follow in avoiding the making of ene- 
 mies, is always to impute good motives to the 
 acts of your neighbor. After all, we cannot read 
 hearts; only God can do that. An old Scotch 
 lady made it a rule to praise everybody. She dis- 
 gusted an uncharitable neighbor once to the 
 point of making him blurt out: "Ye auld hag, I 
 think ye'd praise the deil himself." The old 
 lady was not taken aback, but smilingly an- 
 swered: "Aweel, he is a vera industrious body." 
 I would not have you arrive at the point where 
 you could find something to praise in the devil ; 
 but, except for the devil, you can imagine a good 
 motive to nearly every act that is not a sin. Even 
 that vou can leave to God. There is always an 
 
ENEMIES 77 
 
 excuse ; there is always an explanation ; there is 
 always the chance of good intentions; there is 
 always a weakness; there is always something 
 you can pick up to explain. When you do that, 
 you never know how far your words go. I met 
 a certain man once, and never thought of him 
 afterwards until he forced me to do so. He said 
 a nice thing about me to some one else, when 
 there really was no call for him to say it. He 
 had no obligation toward me. I had never done 
 him a favor. I had merely shaken hands with 
 him once and chatted for two or three minutes ; 
 but when the chance came he went out of his way 
 to say the thing that helped me. Now, I am 
 watching my opportunity to say good things 
 about him. It is by practising charity in thought, 
 word and deed that you avoid making enemies 
 and succeed in making friends. 
 
VIII 
 RULE AND SERVICE 
 
 THE strong man is the man who feels his respon- 
 sibility and accepts it in the spirit of humility. 
 
 THE wisest ruler is he who gives the fewest orders 
 but looks for the greatest results. 
 
 No man can be just and selfish at the same time. 
 
RULE AND SERVICE 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 It has been said that "no one has learned how 
 to rule until he has learned how to serve". The 
 statement is quite true, quite smart and quite 
 catchy ; but I like to express it in another way. 
 I believe that no one has learned how to serve 
 until he has learned how to rule. If you analyze 
 the two statements you will find that they really 
 amount to the same thing. Everybody is called 
 upon to rule, and everybody is called upon to 
 serve. You do the one only as well as you do the 
 other. When a king, for example, ceases to serve 
 his people well, he ceases to rule them well, and 
 vice versa. Every man, woman and child born 
 into this world is destined to rule. We are all 
 destined, for example, to rule ourselves. If we 
 fail in that, the depravity in us gets the upper 
 hand, and there is nothing left in life. Every 
 task you set out to do gives you the opportunity 
 of ruling; and as you rule you serve. There is 
 no such thing as an absolute ruler in this world, 
 for even the monarch most unlimited in his 
 powers is ruled by some elements in the things 
 
 81 
 
82 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 that he believes he is ruling. It is said that the 
 Czar of Eussia is the most absolute of all rulers ; 
 but the Czar himself knows that there are a thou- 
 sand things he cannot do, and therefore that 
 there are a thousand things and conditions that 
 rule him. If you do well the work that is put 
 under your hands to do, the work for which you 
 are responsible, you are ruling much more than 
 you are serving ; in fact, while you are doing the 
 work you are entirely ruling. It is only when 
 the work is done and the results are placed before 
 your superior that you show your service ; but it 
 is so hard to mark the point where rule ends and 
 service begins, that you might truthfully say that 
 while you serve you rule, and while you rule you 
 serve. 
 
 So, as I look at it, the first thing to learn is 
 the art of ruling instead of the art of serving. 
 We are made to the image and likeness of God ; 
 and man is given the earth for his kingdom. We 
 have, therefore, a higher appreciation of our dig- 
 nity when we learn how to rule rather than how 
 to serve; but when the spiritual steps in and 
 shows us that we really serve when we rule, we 
 understand perfectly, and thus strong men are 
 made. The strong man is a man who feels his 
 responsibility and accepts it in a spirit of hu- 
 mility. Such a man has the elements of greatness 
 in him and will overcome every obstacle and 
 
RULE AND SERVICE 83 
 
 every handicap. Because serving is so intimately 
 bound up with ruling, I am going to devote most 
 of this letter to speaking of rulers rather than of 
 subjects. 
 
 You are now at the head of a very little depart- 
 ment, and rather young for even that small re- 
 sponsibility. If you succeed in that department, 
 within a short time your responsibilities will be 
 greater, and you will have a number of others 
 under your charge. As soon as you arrive at that 
 stage, you will face two great obligations: one 
 toward your work, the other toward your work- 
 ers. Since the greatness of the work depends 
 upon the workers, I am going to consider them 
 first. The head of a department, a superior of 
 any kind, is given his place that he may produce 
 results. The priest gets results in souls ; the busi- 
 ness man in money. Keep that idea before you 
 always in your work. You are there to get 
 results! Your superiors selected you because 
 they thought you had in you the ability to obtain 
 them. They depend upon you. In your turn you 
 must depend upon others ; and in their turn they 
 become, in smaller things, responsible parties 
 themselves. Now the best way to secure results 
 from those under you is to make them feel that 
 they are shouldering part of your burden. Re- 
 sponsibility is the most sobering /thing in the 
 world. A baby would never be able to walk if the 
 
84 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 mother always carried it in her arms, or wheeled 
 it around in the perambulator. The mother's 
 responsibility is to see that the baby does not 
 walk too soon, so that it later will walk correctly ; 
 but the mother cannot walk for the baby that 
 the baby has to do itself. Did you ever see chicks 
 come out of their shells ? They break out and are 
 busy at once. It is worth remarking that they 
 arrive at maturity very soon. The reason is be- 
 cause they are active early. When the time has 
 come for them to earn their own living without 
 assistance, they have the advantage of having 
 been doing it partially from the very beginning. 
 Instinct told the mother hen to have no hesitation 
 about forgetting them. The more responsibility 
 you put upon a subordinate, the bigger and 
 brighter you are making that subordinate. It is 
 by ruling that he learns how best to serve. The 
 wisest ruler is he who gives the fewest orders but 
 looks for the greatest results. 
 
 I believe that the business man understands 
 this much better than the ecclesiastic, and the 
 ecclesiastic understands it much better than the 
 statesman. . Eepublics rarely get efficiency in gov- 
 ernment, because they cannot always enforce the 
 basic rules that it requires. Influence counts too 
 much for one thing. The self-seeker has too much 
 chance. Favoritism has opportunities that are 
 not present anywhere else. To have an efficient 
 
RULE AND SERVICE 85 
 
 government, we would have to demand an abso- 
 lute monarchy. In other words, we would have 
 to model the state after the business corpora- 
 tion ; for the lack of efficiency is the weakness of 
 republics. This weakness is always a danger and 
 it can only be removed by dragging others into 
 it. Since republics never want to become monar- 
 chies, their only safety is in making republics out 
 of monarchies. If a monarchy were established 
 in any great state of the Western Hemisphere, 
 it would be a menace not only to the prosperity, 
 but to the very existence of every republic on the 
 Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is 
 a very good example of a nation recognizing its 
 own weaknesses. The test of anyone is his work, 
 and the test of his work is the result. It is for the 
 superior to see that the means are as worthy as 
 the end. 
 
 A certain Pope managed to select the most 
 beautiful title ever taken by a ruler in this world. 
 He called himself " Servant of the Servants of 
 God". Here is an acknowledgment from one of 
 the greatest of men that rule and service prac- 
 tically amount to the same thing. Men are se- 
 lected to rule only for the purpose of advancing 
 the interests of their fellow-men, ^hich means 
 that they are merely in the service of their fellow- 
 men. The trappings, the pomp, the dignity that 
 go with government, are only necessary on the 
 
86 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 same principle that liveries are necessary. , A 
 democracy is a great thing if people would first 
 learn how to be democrats ; but the real reason 
 why democracies are not entirely successful is 
 because perverse human nature insists on forget- 
 ting that service means dignity as well as respon- 
 sibility, that "to serve is to reign". No democ- 
 racy can exist amongst ignorant people, because 
 the mental training is not there to make them 
 understand and use their responsibilities in- 
 telligently. No democracy is possible amongst 
 an irreligious people, because there is no 
 higher sanction than themselves for public 
 service. No democracy is possible amongst a 
 sinful people, because one sin breeds another; 
 and soon, by the very weakness of the people, 
 the state is corrupted for the sake of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 To be a good servant-ruler over the small 
 things is to have the reward later on of being 
 placed over what is great. The parable told in 
 Holy Scripture about the three servants who 
 were made rulers over their masters' talents, like 
 all of Christ's parables applies universally. 
 Since rule and service mean responsibility, they 
 call for vigilance, activity, honesty, fairness and 
 results. When you are placed over others, look 
 upon each one of your employees as a person you 
 are training for future leadership. The first 
 
RULE AND SERVICE 87 
 
 requisite for you is to secure confidence in your- 
 self. You cannot secure confidence in yourself 
 by antagonizing your employees through irrita- 
 bleness, dishonesty and unfairness. If you ex- 
 pect those under you to be cheerful and happy in 
 their work, be cheerful and happy yourself. If 
 you want to be met with a smile in the morning, 
 have one of your own on hand for early use. An 
 even-tempered superior is the best kind of a 
 superior to get along with. You know where such 
 a person stands, and he radiates confidence. The 
 meanest thing you could say about a superior is 
 that he " meant well" as an apology for his occa- 
 sional outbreaks. It really does not make any 
 difference whether he " meant well" or not. He 
 did not act well, and that's the thing that counts. 
 I do not admire the superior who carries his good 
 nature to the point where he thinks he ought to 
 be always cracking jokes and telling stories, to 
 make those under him believe that he really is a 
 good-natured person. There is more solid good- 
 nature in a merry twinkle of the eye than in all 
 the stories in a joke book. Stories take time, 
 which is precious. A smile and a twinkle take no 
 time. Any fool can tell a story ; but nobody can 
 look kind when he is not kind, and deceive 
 anyone. 
 
 Honesty and fair play, which, after all, amount 
 to about the same thing, are appreciated more 
 
88 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 than any other virtue in a superior; and it is 
 right here that a man or a woman in a position 
 of importance has to constantly keep examining 
 his or her conscience. The easiest thing in the 
 world, is to let yourself get the habit of judging 
 what is good for others by what you like yourself. 
 It is pretty hard for a farmer to answer the nod 
 of a passer-by who assures him that it is a "fine 
 day", when the farmer knows that it is not a fine 
 day for Mm, because his land needs rain. Every- 
 thing in God's world works out for the best and 
 for the general good ; but individuals rarely can 
 think of a general rule when they are hit them- 
 selves. As an example : there is not really any 
 argument for divorce from the standpoint of the 
 general good. From that standpoint divorce is 
 a curse to the world and a curse to the human 
 race. Every argument, therefore, that you hear 
 in its favor is a selfish argument, because it is an 
 argument for the individual case. It is merely 
 the lack of logic in the national mind that allows 
 divorce to continue. This logic, however, is not 
 lacking when it comes to the treatment of another 
 kind of criminal the one who commits murder. 
 If you consider the murderer only as an indi- 
 vidual, he should not be hanged or put in jail 
 for life, because it is not going to do him any 
 good. But he is not hanged or jailed for his own 
 sake, but for the sake of society for the general 
 
RULE AND SERVICE 89 
 
 good. Here is where the public mind works log- 
 ically. In judging others and their actions, try 
 to get a little of the logic required for the gen- 
 eral mind, and consider the work and deeds of 
 your subordinates from the standpoint of the re- 
 sults you are expecting for the business or cause, 
 rather than for the results to yourself as a pri- 
 vate individual. 
 
 As a matter of fact, you do not amount to very 
 much. You are only a cog in a wheel. It is not 
 even the wheel that counts, but the machine ; not 
 even the machine but the product. For a ma- 
 chine to function well, every cog has to be doing 
 its work honestly. Iron cogs usually do ; human 
 cogs do not. The trouble with human cogs is 
 always the fact that they become so selfish that 
 they put their own personal feeling in place of 
 what should be the general feeling. The easiest 
 way to be fair with subordinates is to realize that 
 they too are part of the machine, and in their own 
 way are just as necessary as the other part of it. 
 Of course, no big institution can get along with- 
 out a head ; but it would be a sorry sort of a head 
 that had no members beneath it. Some of the 
 most brilliant men in this world died as the result 
 of neglecting a little lump somewhere on their 
 bodies that finally turned into a cancer. Some of 
 the biggest movements and institutions in the 
 world died, because the head had not honesty 
 
90 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 enough, or brains enough, to consider the general 
 good. 
 
 The easiest road a superior can take to success 
 is the realization of the fact of his own service. 
 The easiest way to realize that fact is by striving 
 always to make one's own mind a part of the 
 general mind. The easiest way to do that is by 
 looking up to God. How admirably every part 
 of His works functions, when its functioning is 
 not interfered with by the only servant who has 
 been given intelligence and free will. The sea- 
 sons come and go ; the leaves die and are reborn ; 
 the rain falls, and the sun shines; the earth 
 stores its unused treasures away ; the ground pro- 
 duces and rests until it regains its forces; the 
 lower animals serve their turn; everything in 
 nature, except man, runs like a clock. But man 
 has free will and in that resembles God, and God 
 gave Him the gift of intelligence. He has the 
 power, therefore, to interfere if he wants to do so ; 
 but when he uses it wrongfully, he gets in the way 
 of the harmony of creation. He would not if he 
 kept looking up to God. We would not be dream- 
 ing of the millennium if all men acted as they 
 know God wants them to act; if they could keep 
 selfishness out of their conduct and were part 
 and parcel of God's machine. We would not err 
 if we tried to imitate the perfections that we 
 know are in God ; or at least we would not err 
 
KULE AND SERVICE 91 
 
 greatly enough to keep so much injustice in the 
 world. Banish injustice and you banish sin. No 
 man can be just and selfish at the same time. 
 That is a supreme law which admits of no 
 exceptions. 
 
IX 
 OTHER PEOPLE 
 
 v 
 
 THE world is a great ocean beneath which there 
 are innumerable fishing banks. Death is the shore 
 at which we unload what we have taken, at the 
 feet of God. 
 
 MEN respect their fellow-men for their good 
 qualities, not for their spendings. 
 
 TAKE everybody's good intentions for granted 
 but watch your step. 
 
OTHER PEOPLE 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 It is generally supposed that a man's "family" 
 consists only of very near relatives. I would, 
 however, call these a man's intimate family. His 
 real family consists of his relatives, his friends 
 and his enemies ; because all of these have more or 
 less close relations with him, and are more or 
 less responsible for influencing his career. Out- 
 side of this family stands the great mass of peo- 
 ple with whom he is going to come into business 
 and social relations. The Scriptures call this 
 great body a man's "neighbors". It is a good 
 name for them. I suppose that I should give 
 them the same general name ; but, for no particu- 
 lar reason, I have fallen into the habit of calling 
 them the "Other People". 
 
 Although for the success of any man or woman 
 a great deal depends upon the way he or she 
 treats friends and enemies, nevertheless I think 
 more depends upon the way the Other People are 
 treated. There are more of the Other People, 
 and all are indifferent to you until they need 
 you. Because they are indifferent to you until 
 
 95 
 
96 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 that time, and must then go to you, or then listen 
 to you, they are somewhat like judges of your 
 case, unprejudiced by affection or by hatred. 
 They are the people likely to take you for what 
 you are worth. 
 
 The Scripture says : ' ' Cast thy bread upon the 
 running waters : for after a long time thou shalt 
 find it again." No one can very well improve the 
 counsels of the Scriptures ; yet everybody tries, 
 if not to improve them, at least to adapt them. 
 I am like the rest, and my adaptation of this text 
 is: "Cast your cake upon the waters; it will 
 attract the fishes and make fat those that come 
 into your net." We are all of us out fishing with 
 nets for something. This world is a great ocean 
 beneath which there are innumerable fishing 
 banks. Death is the shore at which we unload 
 what we have taken, at the feet of God. Most of 
 us are hoping to land "big fish", that is to say, to 
 do big things. It is perfectly legitimate for us to 
 have such hopes ; provided we do not forget that 
 what we catch must go to the shore for inspection. 
 If we forget that, it is probable that we will not 
 throw out the bad fish before landing, and thus 
 keep the catch clean. Cast your cake upon the 
 waters? Yes, for cake is sweeter than bread; 
 but do not make it too sweet. In dealing with 
 Other People it is best to treat them all as 
 friends, but watch them as if they were enemies. 
 
OTHER PEOPLE 97 
 
 A school-master once said to me that the best 
 way to manage boys is, "to think of them as little 
 angels, but to watch them as little devils". An 
 enlargement of this idea is a rather good rule in 
 dealing with men. Kindness, courtesy, fairness, 
 honesty, candor, all can be brought into play; 
 but never forget that the Other People have nets 
 out too ; and their success does not depend upon 
 giving you what they catch. The most you have 
 a right to expect from them, in fairness and jus- 
 tice, is a chance to moor your boat where the fish- 
 ing is good, provided it does not hurt their own 
 chances. 
 
 Some people seem to imagine that they have a 
 right to get presents of fish from their neigh- 
 bors' catches. It is here that trouble begins. 
 They haven't any such right. They only have a 
 right to a fair chance. Such people are com- 
 monly called "grafters" and "pikers". There 
 is nothing so contemptible and pitiful in life as 
 to see an able-bodied and talented man trying to 
 live off his neighbors, with his hand eternally out 
 to beg and his mouth perpetually open to com- 
 plain. The worst habit in the world to get into 
 is the habit of taking for yourself what you do not 
 earn, of always looking for gifts. It is a form of 
 stealing that hasn't exactly been condemned by 
 the Ten Commandments, but is reprehensible be- 
 cause it injures the soul. It certainly makes the 
 
98 LETTERS TO 'JACK 
 
 man who practices it an object of contempt to 
 others. Amongst Other People you find this 
 specimen everywhere. In the street car he never 
 puts his hand into his pocket to pay a fare ; or, if 
 he is shamed into doing it, he never has the 
 change. He always drops in to see you at lunch 
 time, or trumps up the excuse of an important 
 conference so that you may invite him. He never 
 goes to the theatre except at someone else's ex- 
 pense. If you play a game with him, he will 
 never bet unless with inferior players ; and then 
 he is a willing " sport", and wants everybody to 
 know it. Avoid this man. Never give way to the 
 temptation to be like him. "Pay as you go" ; be 
 as good as the next man, but do not let the next 
 man take advantage of your goodness. Above 
 all, make up your mind that, if you cannot do 
 your share in any company, it is not the com- 
 pany for you. Never mind assurances that your 
 companions understand the situation, or that 
 they really do not expect you to do as they 
 do. If you accept favors thus you are not a com- 
 panion ; you are an inferior ; you do not ' l belong ' '. 
 Avoid patronizing the Other People by getting 
 into a crowd and paying for everything. Many 
 will let you do it; but in their hearts they are 
 calling you a fool. Nobody respects a spender, 
 and the word "good fellow", as it is commonly 
 used, does not really mean anything good. The 
 
OTHER PEOPLE 99 
 
 average "good fellow" is not a good fellow at all. 
 He is a person so full of human respect that he 
 is trying to buy the respect of humans, which 
 cannot be bought. Men respect their fellow-men 
 for their good qualities, not for their spendings. 
 I read this bit of truth once, and it has stuck to 
 me ever since: "When a man begins to neglect 
 his family, people begin to call him a good fel- 
 low. ' ' Indeed, I would rather have a man call me 
 a thief than a good fellow; because at least a 
 thief may be physically and mentally a strong 
 and courageous man, though weak spiritually. A 
 "good fellow" is often a thief in a meaner way. 
 He squanders what duty requires him to use for 
 his family. The only sort of courage he has is 
 too often the courage to beat his wife and abuse 
 his children when they ask for what they are 
 entitled to have. For heaven's sake, don't be a 
 "good fellow". Be an honest man. Be self- 
 respecting in your own kind of society. Let 
 everybody know that you stand on your own feet ; 
 and that, when you give charity, you give it to 
 those in need and not to encourage vice and 
 laziness. 
 
 Avoid the man popularly known as a 
 "climber". He has only one desire in seeking 
 your society : to secure the social prestige he can 
 get out of you or the people with whom you are 
 connected. He is the easiest man in the world to 
 
100 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 discover, because lie is always telling you of the 
 important people lie has met and what they said 
 to him. He looks cheap even though he wears 
 the very best of clothes. In some way that you 
 do not quite understand, he may consider your 
 acquaintanceship an asset ; and he will seek it for 
 that reason only. This is the sort of a man who, 
 while he does not rely upon himself at all, yet 
 will often get into the society he desires to enter ; 
 only, however, to find out that it would have been 
 much better for him had he stayed out. Society 
 usually has a lot of parasites of this kind. They 
 amuse society, and society wants to be amused. 
 At every king's court in the olden days, there 
 was a jester wearing cap and bells. Anybody 
 who was deformed enough, or funny enough, 
 could be a jester. He mixed freely with lords 
 and ladies, and with royalty itself. But who 
 would want to be a jester? We have no jesters 
 with cap and bells in modern society ; but there 
 are those who take the jester's place splendidly. 
 Never be tempted to " climb". If you succeed, it 
 will be to your sorrow. Society seeks those who 
 naturally belong to it ; and the society you enter 
 unsought, you enter either at the cost of your 
 self-respect, or it is not worth your considera- 
 tion. Water will find its level and so will people. 
 One of the most expressive words in the dic- 
 tionary of slang is the word "fourflusher". 
 
OTHER PEOPLE 101 
 
 There are more than enough f ourflushers in the 
 world. He is a fourflusher who is trying to 
 spend what he does not possess, to live where he 
 has no right to live, to eat and drink what he has 
 not the money to pay for, to be what he is not and 
 could not be. The fourflusher thinks he succeeds. 
 He never does with the " people who know", 
 for his very extravagance exposes him; and, 
 like the "climber", he turns into a jester, only 
 in his case he is an object of laughter and con- 
 tempt for a wider range of people. The 
 " climber" is often satisfied to be thought a fool 
 in a limited circle, that he may be thought a wise 
 man in general. A fourflusher has a harder 
 row to hoe, because more people find him out, 
 and therefore more people laugh at him. If you 
 are only a clerk say that you are a clerk ; and do 
 not, in a grandiloquent way, mention that you 
 are " connected with" such and such a house. Do 
 not boast about your friendships or your attain- 
 ments. It takes a genius to deceive with that; 
 indeed, it takes a genius to be a successful 
 fourflusher. Thank God you show no sign of 
 being a genius along that line. If one insists on 
 being a fourflusher, it is better for him to be 
 found out and found out quickly. 
 
 In dealing with the Other People, one of the 
 most important things to get rid of is prejudice ; 
 but in the case of a young Catholic, it ought to 
 
102 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 be an easy thing to get rid of. Prejudice breeds 
 hate, and hate is the destruction of peace. Your 
 Church, it is true, teaches with certainty on mat- 
 ters of faith and morals ; but the fact that you 
 know does not give you a right to be prejudiced 
 against others who do not believe as you do. It 
 is not true that almost every horse has a blind 
 side, but it is true that almost every man has. If 
 men had no blind sides, they would all be perfect ; 
 and none of us is perfect. There are some things 
 that Other People know well which I could 
 not learn in a million years trigonometry, for 
 example ; and there are some things that are clear 
 to other men's vision that are not clear to mine. 
 You have religious certainty partially because of 
 the chances you had in your youth to learn the 
 ' ' truth that makes you free ' '. The Other People 
 may not have had the same chance; but they 
 think they are right just as surely as you know 
 you are. They are honest, and therefore you owe 
 them respect; for you owe respect to honesty 
 wherever you meet it. Prejudice is nothing more 
 than pre- judging, as the word indicates. Now, 
 you have no right to prejudge. God is the Judge, 
 and you are to appear before His court in com- 
 pany with all the Other People. What are you 
 to gain by judging those about you before their 
 time ? Prejudice is not going to put a dollar in 
 your pocket, or give you one happy day, or one 
 
OTHER PEOPLE 103 
 
 moment of honest satisfaction. It is not going 
 to help the Other People. It is not going to make 
 the world any happier; on the contrary, it is 
 going to make the world more miserable. It is 
 going to hurt the Other People and it is going 
 to hurt you. Avoid prejudice. If you are in- 
 vited to join a society that boasts of the charity 
 to its members, and the help it is going to give 
 you in business, or in other activities, think twice 
 before you join it. It may be built upon preju- 
 dice. It may be contrary to the spirit of Christ, 
 to the charity that should exist amongst all the 
 children of God. 
 
 A consideration of societies very naturally 
 arises in referring to your relations with the 
 Other People. Through societies you meet them 
 in numbers, and you deal with them not only as 
 individuals, but in the mass. There is a useful 
 side to societies; but the moment they become 
 selfish the usefulness has passed away. The mo- 
 ment societies cause a young man to depend upon 
 anyone but himself and the grace of God, they 
 become dangerous. If it will make you happier 
 to be in a society, by all means, join it; provided 
 it is not of the dangerous kind; but if in joining 
 you have the idea that the society is going to 
 help you climb, to give you a position that you 
 will not have to work for, keep out of it. Above 
 all else, do not wear badges. Avoid lodge watch 
 
104 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 charms and buttons. Here, of course, you have 
 the laugh on your old uncle who has a rosette on 
 every coat ; but let me say that, while the society 
 button is a possible sign of the f ourflusher, the 
 rosette is at least supposed to be a badge of dis- 
 tinction. The button is merely a vulgar substi- 
 tute for a decoration. Decorations are given by 
 nations for distinguished services rendered. In 
 our democratic country we have no decorations, 
 except the Medal of Honor; but Congress has 
 recognized certain marks of war service, so that 
 in this country, as in other countries, the rosette 
 means a decoration won by service to the nation. 
 While the wearing of it may indicate some pride 
 which perhaps a man should not have, neverthe- 
 less it comes close to being a legitimate pride. A 
 button represents nothing. It is not an honor to 
 belong to a fraternal society. It is often the 
 opposite. It is not a mark of distinction, since 
 anybody may win that sort of a badge by the pay- 
 ment of money ; but, above all, it is not the mark 
 of a strong man. You never saw a society button 
 on the coat of a statesman. You never saw one on 
 the coat of a great painter, or a great sculptor, 
 or a great writer. Society buttons are so com- 
 mon that distinction goes to the man who does 
 not wear one. But over and above all this stands 
 the fact that a society button, or badge, is a sign 
 that the man who wears it is depending upon 
 
OTHER PEOPLE 105 
 
 something outside of himself. It is therefore a 
 mark of weakness, a hand stretched forth to beg. 
 As any part of your body which is exercised be- 
 comes strong through use, so your own person- 
 ality will become strong from within by using it. 
 A man who lies in bed whenjie is not sick, finds 
 himself weak when he gets out ; and therefore in 
 a way he has become sicker. A man who habit- 
 ually uses a crutch that he does not need will ulti- 
 mately need it. A man who uses the crutch of a 
 society in business or social life, weakens himself 
 just that much. One sign of a strong character 
 is found in buttonless lapels and plain watch 
 chains. 
 
 In dealing with Other People take everybody's 
 good intention for granted but watch your step, 
 for good intentions may be like the Birnim wood 
 in Macbeth, only severed trees carried to deceive. 
 Be slow to believe that any man is wrong, and 
 never give in to the idea that he is until you have 
 certainty. Even when you are certain do not talk 
 about it to others. Do not, in fact, as I already 
 told you, talk about anybody, except to speak 
 good of them. Hunt for the good thing to say. 
 Look upon every person you meet as a man or 
 woman with trials and troubles like your own, 
 trying hard to make his or her way, to do the right 
 thing, and in the end to get to the right place. 
 Reverence their reputations as you reverence 
 
106 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 your own. Be kind and smiling to everybody, 
 but slap nobody on the back. If you find anyone 
 you particularly like be chary about prying into 
 his life or you may get a shock. Trust everybody 
 but do not put temptation in anyone's way unless 
 you have to. And do not flatter people; but 
 remember that, while it is true " honey catches 
 more flies than vinegar" and also more bears 
 neither flies nor bears can live on an exclusive 
 honey diet. 
 
X 
 
 THE WORLD 
 
 IT was a mark of divine wisdom in Christ that he 
 foresaw that the world was going to do to His 
 followers what it had done to Him. 
 
 DON'T worry if you find that the world is against 
 you. If the world were for you, you would have 
 cause for worry. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE alone does not give us discipline ; but 
 the getting of knowledge does. 
 
THE WORLD 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 Yesterday I was glancing over the editorial 
 pages of a New York weekly paper whose chief 
 reason for existence seems to be enmity to "the 
 things that are". Naturally, the Catholic Church 
 is included. A rather vicious editorial was 
 headed, "The Catholic Church against the 
 World ". I smiled when I read that title. It was 
 intended as a "knock", but like most "knocks", 
 it succeeded in being a "boost". As a matter of 
 fact, to any reader of the life of Christ it must 
 be apparent that Christianity of necessity is ar- 
 rayed against the w r orld ; and it naturally follows 
 that the world will always be arrayed against 
 Christianity. The Church of the poor is the 
 Church of Christ ; for to the wedding feast came 
 the blind and the lame. The "big men" of the 
 world were quick to refuse their own invitations. 
 The Church the world hates must be the true 
 Church ; for Christ constantly warned against the 
 world, and even went so far as to say to His fol- 
 lowers: "Fear not if the world hates you." It 
 was a mark of divine wisdom in Christ that He 
 
 109 
 
110 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 foresaw that the world was going to do to His 
 followers what it had done to Him. 
 
 All the above was preliminary to telling you, 
 Jack, that the world has a silken cord around 
 every human being, one especially around youth, 
 and it is constantly pulling us away from the 
 things that are good. The pull was never 
 stronger perhaps than it is today. As the world 
 becomes richer, worldlings become more insistent 
 in demanding the comforts that riches alone can 
 buy. As democracy advances beyond the zone of 
 safety, the world demands more and more that 
 all restraint be thrown aside. As the world be- 
 comes more " civilized", in the poorest sense of 
 the word, it demands more and more that men 
 take their pleasures here, and pay less attention 
 to hopes of the hereafter. The pull of the world is 
 away from pain, from discomfort, from labor, 
 from effort ; in other words, from the very things 
 that have been responsible for the comforts and 
 the achievements in which this same world re- 
 joices. The world is against the discipline which 
 gave it all its great achievements. The big de- 
 mand today is for a freedom of its own construc- 
 tion. Everybody asks "to live his or her own 
 life", which is another way of saying that every- 
 body is becoming selfish. We are in an age of 
 "isms" that are mostly aimed at giving us a 
 "good time", and end in giving us the "blues." 
 
THE WORLD 111 
 
 A few days ago, while driving outside the city, 
 I noticed two very large fields. One had evi- 
 dently been lying fallow for a great many years ; 
 but the other was full of waving corn. Instantly 
 the process that worked on both was pictured to 
 my mind. It was evident that the fallow field 
 had once been used for raising hay. There were 
 still some patches of hay in it, or rather there 
 was some tall grass, mixed up with shrubs of all 
 kinds, saplings, wild flowers, weeds. When the 
 owner began to neglect that land, blowing time 
 had come for the dandelions; and a wonderful 
 number of the little white balloons, with seeds in 
 the baskets, burst over the field. Each basket 
 dropped on a blade of grass ; then the rain came 
 and washed the seeds into the moist earth. Be- 
 tween the blades the dandelions sprang up, but 
 always at the expense of the useful grass. Later 
 came the rag-weed, the golden rod and the poi- 
 soned sumac ; and then countless other seeds, each 
 looking for a foothold. It took years to do it, but 
 when the years had passed the field was a picture 
 of the world without Christ, of a "free world", 
 of a world without restraints. The weeds are, of 
 course, a survival of the strongest, but the strong- 
 est in the worldly sense is not always the de- 
 sirable. Every plant in the field was free to do 
 its best. Each one of them did its best ; and so 
 even to look at the result, causes pain. 
 
112 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 The other field had nothing in it but corn 
 beautiful corn, grown high and with cobs well 
 covered with nourishment. There was not a 
 thing about that corn that could not be put to use, 
 even down to its roots. It occupied the field to 
 the exclusion of everything else. What process 
 produced this splendid result ? The farmer had 
 gone into that field with a plow, scored it a foot 
 deep and broke it into sods. Then he went in 
 again and harrowed out all the weeds. After that 
 he went over the field with a pulverizer. He 
 smashed the remaining sods to pieces, so that 
 there was nothing left but the soft yielding soil. 
 Only then did he plant. When the corn came up, 
 he again went to cutting and slashing at the earth. 
 He pulverized it over again with the hoe. He 
 took out every noxious plant that could hurt ; and 
 he went back to the same task again and again. 
 So the useful thing was done. 
 
 The Christian Church is the mystical body of 
 Christ ; and Christians are the useful things that 
 grow in the field. How was the field first pre- 
 pared ? It was prepared by the breaking of the 
 flesh of Christ Himself. Like the field He was 
 scored and plowed with pain. There wasn't an 
 inch of His body left without a wound, and not a 
 spot, no matter how small, without the red but 
 glorious stain of His blood. Then from His own 
 lips fell the seed of the Word, out of which 
 
THE WORLD 113 
 
 spring the Christian lives that are to be " gath- 
 ered into His barns". Again and again the mys- 
 tical body of Christ is cut and scored for the cul- 
 tivation of souls. All the while the rain of God's 
 grace falls on the field and on the plants to give 
 them strength and nourishment. Thus are souls 
 grown for God. 
 
 The great lesson that comes out of all this is 
 that of the utility of pain. Christianity is built 
 upon pain. We are growing constantly upon 
 pain. Love is pain. We were given human life 
 in the pain of our mothers. We go into Eternal 
 Life through the pain of death. We are kept in 
 God's ways by pain. I might even say that we 
 cannot grow to full Christian stature without 
 pain. 
 
 But since the world is against pain, since it is 
 looking only for comforts, it follows that Chris- 
 tianity, born in pain and living in pain and to 
 die to the earth in pain, is against the world. 
 But this is not actually so hard as it seems, for 
 Christianity alone understands what is beyond 
 the gates of the Great Pain ; and knows that the 
 plowing and the harrowing and the hoeing must 
 be done to produce the result. 
 
 If you would be a success even in the world, by 
 which I mean the kind of a success that begins in 
 this world but grows into the next, do not shrink 
 from discipline ; therefore, do not fear pain over- 
 
114 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 much. Nothing you can do will take either one 
 out of your life ; but you may do very much to 
 get good out of both. Discipline in reality epito- 
 mizes the whole idea of education. Sidney Smith, 
 referring to knowledge, says : " It is worth while 
 in the days of our youth to strive hard for this 
 great discipline/' But knowledge alone does not 
 give us any discipline, while the getting of knowl- 
 edge does. A truly educated man is not the one 
 who speaks many languages and knows all 
 branches of science. He is rather the one who 
 has profited by his efforts to learn these things, 
 as well as the higher things of God, to the extent 
 that he is disciplined. The truly educated man 
 is the man who has mastered himself. A river 
 without banks would not be a river at all. Steam 
 unconfined is worthless as a power. Thoughts 
 without reason are useless. Love without respect 
 is base. But the banks are the discipline of the 
 river, the cylinder of the steam, reason of thought 
 and respect of love. The big thing that religion 
 does for a man or a woman is in the soul disci- 
 pline that it gives. There is no education without 
 that. There is only one step between knowledge 
 and barbarism. The French revolutionists re- 
 jecting discipline, took barbarism, and drenched 
 their country with blood. 
 
 Do not try the easy path if you would make a 
 success in life and a greater success in death. No 
 
THE WORLD 115 
 
 one ever succeeded who picked the easy path. 
 Some people are placed upon it and like it so well 
 that they will not seek another. These are mostly 
 the unfortunate sons of foolish millionaires. The 
 biggest curse a boy could have is the fortune that 
 puts him on the easy path and holds him there. 
 The greatest gift he can get is the chance to suf- 
 fer. It is an unfortunate thing that so many 
 who get that chance, do not take the fruit out of 
 suffering, or have not the grace to do it, and 
 so drift and drift until they end disgruntled 
 failure?. 
 
 Don't worry if you find, therefore, that the 
 world is against you. If the world were for you, 
 you would have cause for worry ; but when it is 
 against you, then you may know that you are on 
 the right track. The best of it is that, even though 
 the world is against you, it cannot prevent your 
 succeeding ; for all men who win out in the battle 
 of life succeed in spite of the world. The world 
 hates to confess that you are right; but it is 
 forced to make the confession, because it does not 
 trust its own. When, even for the protection of 
 its own pleasures it demands honesty, it knows 
 that it must go outside of itself to find it. When 
 it wants greatness, it knows that true greatness 
 is not found in its cabarets. When it demands 
 genius, it knows that its own kind of genius is 
 like a poppy, brilliant enough in color, but full 
 
116 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 of a deadly soporific. All the world's blossoms 
 are poison-flowers. Blossoms of the God who is 
 against the world are less brilliant in color, per- 
 haps, to the eye of the world ; but their perfume 
 is the sweetest and it lasts through eternity. 
 
 Perhaps to the minds of many it may sound 
 strange that I should counsel you to love pain; 
 but when I say "pain" I mean all the things that 
 make for discipline ; the unpleasant things that 
 prepare you, the hard work that wearies you, the 
 good thoughts that shut the ears of your soul 
 from what men think are the sweetest melodies. 
 This is the pain I mean. But even out of phys- 
 ical pain you may get many things for your good. 
 You may rise triumphantly above it. You may 
 make it a small thing in your life instead of let- 
 ting it fill your life. Above all you may make it 
 count for fertility, and, because of its plowing 
 and harrowing and pulverizing and hoeing of 
 your soul, you may, out of it, grow into vigor 
 and strength. 
 
XI 
 CITIZENSHIP 
 
 ALREADY we are beginning to talk of a " wider 
 democracy " than was planned by our fathers, 
 not realizing that the " wider democracy " of 
 tomorrow may be only a swinging back of the 
 pendulum to absolute monarchy. 
 
 IT is important to realize that when monarchies 
 fail it is because of the monarch; but when 
 democracies fail it is because of the people. 
 
 POVERTY is a cement for democracy which riches 
 corrode. 
 
CITIZENSHIP 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 The proper time for talking to a young man 
 about citizenship is when he has reached the age 
 of twenty one year before he assumes citizen's 
 duties, when his mind has already matured suffi- 
 ciently to make his thinking intelligent; but 
 with twelve months ahead to leisurely consider 
 advice. 
 
 The fatal errors of the age arise chiefly from 
 the shallowness of the modern mind, which is too 
 ready to accept ideas merely because they are 
 new and interesting. The world today is eter- 
 nally hungering for novelty, which unfortunately 
 it takes for discovery. We exalt the age in which 
 we live with very good reason, for it has produced 
 many really good things ; but we forget that we 
 purchased at a high price what good we have. We 
 seldom think of the multitude of ruins that sur- 
 round our modern skyscraper. Fearing to go too 
 slow, we have raced. Our own nation trembles 
 at every blast. We are not ready to admit, even 
 to ourselves, that our democracy is going to en- 
 dure. We say that it is, but inwardly we doubt 
 our own optimism. Already we are beginning 
 
 119 
 
120 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 to talk of a "wider democracy " than that which 
 was planned by our fathers, not realizing that 
 the "wider democracy" of tomorrow may be only 
 a swinging back of the pendulum to absolute 
 monarchy. Our government upheld the recent 
 Mexican revolution, but did not discover until 
 it was too late that it intended to supplant dem- 
 ocracy by socialism. Socialism was actually es- 
 tablished in Yucatan, and upheld by one-man 
 power. The Church knew all along that the 
 trend toward socialism meant a trend toward 
 absolute monarchy. It makes very little differ- 
 ence practically, whether you call the ruler a 
 monarch or a president. It makes very little 
 difference whether you call a government by the 
 name of kingdom or republic. It is not title that 
 counts ; it is the power. I very much fear that 
 the "wider democracy" our day looks for will, 
 when it arrives, be the end of democracy of any 
 kind. 
 
 It is perfectly true that our democracy has not 
 worked out ideally, but that should not be taken 
 as proving it a failure. Monarchies have not 
 worked out ideally, and they have the advantage 
 of a sounder philosophy behind them. But it is 
 important to realize that, when monarchies fail 
 it is because of the monarch; but when democra- 
 cies fail, it is because of the people. So the fail- 
 ure of a democracy is something to be regretted 
 
CITIZENSHIP 121 
 
 far more than the failure of a monarchy. It is 
 bad enough for a king to sell the liberties of his 
 people; but it is worse for a people to sell the 
 liberties they had bought so dearly for them- 
 selves. 
 
 We have a clear field for democracy in North 
 America, for we have two, at least, that are 
 working out well. I refer, of course, to the 
 United States, and Canada. The United States 
 is a democracy under its proper name. Canada 
 is a democracy masquerading under the name 
 of a royal colony. Both have been successful. 
 Their continued success depends on all their 
 people rather than on an individual ruler. We 
 have the opportunity to prove the very attrac- 
 tive theory of democracy quite sound; and, in 
 proving it, we work for the happiness of mil- 
 lions. 
 
 The greatest obstacle to the success of a dem- 
 ocracy is that it depends in a too impersonal sort 
 of way on a very large body of citizens. The 
 responsibility, therefore, does not weigh heavily 
 enough upon each individual. It is much easier 
 to have a successful Republic of San Marino, 
 with its handful of citizens, none wealthy but 
 each taking a real and personal interest in it, 
 than to have a successful Republic of the United 
 States of America, depending upon the rather 
 vague affection of many chiefly anxious to pile 
 
122 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 up fortunes for themselves. Wealth inevitably 
 makes for careless citizenship. A significant fact 
 is, that the well-to-do cannot be brought out to 
 vote on a rainy day. Poverty is a cement for 
 democracy which riches corrode. A small popu- 
 lation keeps loyalty concentrated and effective, 
 while millions spread the responsibility out too 
 thin. Millions are not an asset to a democracy, 
 but rather a very great and a very dangerous 
 liability. When, as in the United States, we have 
 wealth and a hundred million citizens, it becomes 
 all the more necessary for individuals to con- 
 sider their duties well and often, trying to make 
 up for the inevitable delinquency of their fel- 
 lows. 
 
 The importance of thinking deeply over the 
 obligations of responsible citizenship is great. It 
 is no light thing to take on one the burden of 
 the ballot ; and the fact that so many share the 
 burden is an added, not a lessened weight. There 
 are too many who hold their duties lightly, to 
 permit the serious to shirk. There are too many 
 who depend for their well-being on the action 
 of individual citizens to permit those who know, 
 to act as if they did not know. I counsel you to 
 approach the coming responsibilities carefully 
 and to assume them very thoughtfully. 
 
 Neither can I too much urge upon you to dis- 
 trust theories until they have been tried, but 
 
CITIZENSHIP 123 
 
 never to dismiss them untouched. Outside of 
 revealed truth and the truths of natural religion, 
 all progress has come from theorizing. Theories 
 have a way of rejecting themselves, or proving 
 themselves, if you give them a chance. When 
 they prove themselves, they become accepted 
 principles and facts. The common mind, if you 
 let it work its way, does not go far wrong, since 
 it is always at least open to conviction. Selfish- 
 ness, however, often swerves it from- the proper 
 path. Sloth and sin have the same effect upon 
 it. Right does not always win in an election, any 
 more than in a battle; but when right loses, it 
 is because honest thinking was not done, re- 
 sponsibilities were slurred over. God has a way 
 of letting the common mind, when deceived, run 
 to disaster, so that out of it a fresh start can be 
 made. Once the common mind goes wrong, it 
 needs disaster to set it right, for the down-grade 
 always stops with a bump at the bottom of the 
 hill. 
 
 You will hear it said that every citizen should 
 vote. Some governments interfere with individ- 
 ual liberty to the extent of forcing citizens to 
 vote. It is true and it is not true that every 
 citizen should vote. Every great obligation is 
 reached only by piling minor obligations on top 
 of one another. The obligation of voting pre- 
 supposes the obligation of honest voting. The 
 
124 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 obligation of honest voting presupposes the obli- 
 gation of conscientious consideration. The citi- 
 zen who has not fulfilled his minor obligations 
 should refrain from thrusting his ignorance into 
 the solution of a great question. No one has a 
 right to vote until he has made himself capable 
 of judging. Those who have not made them- 
 selves capable of judging should leave voting to 
 better men. When we utter the commonplace 
 that " every citizen should go to the polls", we 
 are merely saying that every citizen should be 
 an honest and thoughtful citizen. 
 
 The citizens of a democracy are judges, sitting 
 in the court of public opinion on questions that 
 concern even the very existence, as well as the 
 prosperity of their country, and the happiness 
 of its people. Judges may err, but should never 
 err willfully. A citizen, therefore, cannot let a 
 political party do his thinking for him and re- 
 main an upright judge. He cannot shift his re- 
 sponsibility over on anybody else. Political par- 
 ties are necessary, just as lawyers are necessary 
 in the courts ; but they are not judges, they are 
 pleaders. The judge has no right to go down, 
 mingle with the lawyers, and take sides in a case 
 that he is trying. The really honest citizen is 
 never a partisan. It is not a disgrace to be "on 
 the fence", for "on the fence" means to be on 
 the bench. My counsel to you is to stay on the 
 
CITIZENSHIP 125 
 
 bench when you arrive on it, and be free in fact 
 as well as in name. Never vote for any party 
 unless it has made good its case. Bring your con- 
 science along with you to every election. It was 
 Henry Clay who said: "I had rather be right 
 than be President." We can improve that say- 
 ing by adding; " Still better is it to be right and 
 President." So I had rather be right than vic- 
 torious, but it is better to be right and victorious. 
 
XII 
 CLEANLINESS 
 
 IT is quite useless to tell a young man not to' 
 narrate filthy stories or to blaspheme, if he has 
 the filth in his mind and the thoughts of blas- 
 phemy in his soul. 
 
 TRACE out all the failures in the world and you 
 will find that impurity has the largest toll of 
 victims. 
 
 HE who guards his thoughts also guards his 
 tongue. 
 
CLEANLINESS 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 This letter is not about bathing, in spite of 
 its title. Neither you nor your fellow modern 
 young men need to be informed on that subject. 
 Our day has exalted the bath, but I do not think 
 we are going quite so far as the old Romans. 
 We are too busy for one thing. The worst of 
 us have to take our pleasures in a hurry ; so the 
 old Romans must still remain in a bathing class 
 by themselves. 
 
 The unfortunate thing about the old Romans 
 was the fact that, though clean without, they were 
 foul within ; and so they succeeded in attaching 
 to the idea of a clean skin the idea of a filthy 
 mind. When Christianity arrived there was a 
 revolt which drove some good men to the oppo- 
 site extreme, not because the saintly people loved 
 dirt, but because they loved mortification. Had 
 paganism not made cleanliness an excuse for lux- 
 ury and vice, certain Christians would never 
 have been affrighted at the bath. Now it is 
 known that there is a " golden mean". If " clean- 
 liness" is not really "next to godliness", it is at 
 least not opposed to godliness. I rather admire 
 
 129 
 
130 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 some of the saints for the sacrifices they made 
 to combat an evil that was much worse than dirt. 
 Had Eome been dirty, I question if she would 
 have fallen so soon. The bath had more to do 
 with her fall than the Goths. The legacy of the 
 luxury bath to the Vandals who slept out their 
 strength in their villas around Carthage was the 
 appropriate revenge of the conquered. 
 
 Luxury breeds uncleanness of heart and soul ; 
 but there is an uncleanness of heart and soul 
 that precedes luxury. This is the uncleanness 
 that kills all that is good in a man, the surest 
 road to absolute failure. Ponder often on the 
 Beatitude: " Blessed are the clean of heart, for 
 they shall see God." 
 
 It is good to have the blessing put on the clean 
 of heart; for that implies interior cleanliness, 
 and gets us to the root of the virtue of purity at 
 once. Purity is within, though the manifesta- 
 tion of it is without. It is quite useless to tell 
 a young man not to narrate filthy stories, or to 
 blaspheme, if he has the filth in his mind and the 
 thoughts of blasphemy in his soul. Doctors to- 
 day are getting away from drugs so as to attack 
 the root rather than the manifestations of dis- 
 ease. The doctors of the soul did that from the 
 beginning. As "the wish is father to the 
 thought," they sought to change the unworthy 
 desires of men by substituting the desire for 
 
CLEANLINESS 131 
 
 God. To cure impurity it is necessary to work 
 on the heart. The heart' will take care of the 
 mind, and the mind will, by God's grace which 
 strengthens the will, take care of the actions. 
 
 There is one kind of flight that is not coward- 
 ice. It is flight from the occasions of sin, from 
 evil and impure thoughts. This flight is bravery, 
 the bravery that wins. Impurity cannot be trifled 
 with. It is too insidious an enemy of God and 
 man. Flee the very thought of it. Avoid the oc- 
 casions of it. Put a guard on every sense through 
 which it may enter the soul. It is like a raging 
 flood when you fail to stop the first break in your 
 defences. The smallest trickle through the dyke 
 is dangerous. The flood itself kills every good 
 thought and aspiration. It overflows from one 
 soul to another. It ruins races and peoples and 
 nations. Trace out all the failures of the world 
 and you will find that impurity has the largest 
 toll of victims. Would you swallow a tiny germ 
 of cholera just because it is so small? Then, do 
 not entertain a bad thought because it is so weak. 
 The cholera germ is not small in its power; and 
 the evil thought is anything but weak. 
 
 He who guards his thoughts also guards his 
 tongue. Blasphemy is, like all sins, the depth of 
 folly. No one ever profited by it to the value of 
 a penny. It gets you nowhere. It gives you 
 nothing. It stamps you a boor, a fool or a knave 
 
132 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 to clean-spoken people. There is no reason in it. 
 There is no consolation. It leaves only bitterness 
 after it to the one who is its slave, and only hurt 
 for those who hear it. When the Jews stoned 
 blasphemers they inflicted a just penalty on 
 them ; for a blasphemer is a rotten apple in the 
 barrel and should be thrown out to save the rest. 
 Be clean for God's sake. Be clean for your 
 own sake. Be clean for your neighbor's sake. 
 Be clean for your country's sake. Be clean of 
 body, clean of heart, clean of lips, clean of 
 thought, clean of mind. You need very little 
 more than that to be a success, even in a worldly 
 way. When a man is thus clean, it shows that 
 he has an intellect. I would take my chances for 
 other things a thousand times more readily with 
 the clean man than with the filthy one. If the 
 latter had the genius of Cicero I would yet not 
 want a shameless man around me. He cannot 
 do enough for me in a worldly way to offset the 
 harm his very presence causes. One of the worst 
 terrors in the idea of Hell is its associations ; for 
 by losing the Supreme Cleanliness, we drop to 
 an eternal contact with all that is supremely 
 unclean. 
 
XIII 
 LOVE 
 
 THERE isn't anything funnier, and yet there isn't 
 anything more appealing, than a boy or a girl 
 suffering and happy in * * love ' ' ; and yet there 
 isn't anything quite so fearful as that same love 
 when it has discovered itself to itself. 
 
 A BABY is attracted by a shining ornament, and a 
 youth is attracted by bright eyes. Both may be 
 fools in their own way. 
 
LOVE 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 I can almost see you smile when you open this 
 letter and almost hear the whispered question: 
 "How can forty-six years of inexperience teach 
 modern twenty anything about the great lesson 
 of loving?" Yes, I know. Love, you think, was 
 cut out of my life ; while to you it is not only per- 
 missible, but much to be desired. But how do 
 you know that it was cut out of my life ? Mortal 
 eyes have not searched hearts ; and the great bulk 
 of the love that has been in the world, and is still 
 in the world, has been, and is, love unconfessed. 
 Indeed, I think the strongest loves are those that 
 never, by the touch of speech, were released from 
 the heart. It may be that I know a great deal 
 more about it than you do; though in another 
 way. One thing I am willing to confess : of what 
 the world calls "love", I have known nothing by 
 experience. 
 
 But if I have not in manhood had any experi- 
 ence, at least stern duty has always forced ob- 
 servation. A pastor very soon gets to fear the 
 thing that seems so often to be stronger than God 
 Himself. He knows what sends many of the 
 
 135 
 
136 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 young people, who owe much to his careful teach- 
 ings, straight on the downward path to perdition. 
 Every pastor has remembrances of long argu- 
 mentations, in which he had the right side, with 
 reason, logic, self-interest and a great many other 
 things supporting him; and on the other side 
 nothing but "love" but it was love that won. 
 He remembers very well that he entered into the 
 fight hopeless, knowing in advance that he was 
 beaten, but fighting on for the sake of duty. 
 "Love", as the world knows it, has been a will-o'- 
 the-wisp that beckoned many lost ones into the 
 everglades. 
 
 But, after all, is that thing really love ? It is 
 not. Some people cannot understand how reason 
 and love could ever go together; yet I cannot 
 understand love without reason. 
 
 To show you what I mean I am going to ask 
 you to consider the two kinds of love, both of 
 which inevitably push themselves on the atten- 
 tion : that of husband and wife, and that of par- 
 ent and child. Which is the stronger and the 
 more enduring? My observation tells me that it 
 is the latter. The love of husband and wife 
 changes, with fading beauty, into a wonderful 
 companionship, that has a charm all its own. It 
 lasts less as love than as understanding. It 
 steadies into something reasonable, having a defi- 
 nite end in view ; and dies only when the reason 
 
LOVE 137 
 
 is quarreled out of it. I have no hesitation in 
 saying that the emotion immediately preceding 
 this understanding is not love. It is passion, 
 chastened and made somewhat beautiful by re- 
 spect. I think that the boy or girl stage of love 
 is very beautiful, because it is a love that is full 
 of fear to touch and spoil. There isn't anything 
 funnier, and yet there isn't anything more ap- 
 pealing, than a boy or a girl suffering, and happy, 
 in "love"; and yet there isn't anything quite so 
 fearful as that same love when it has discovered 
 itself to itself. It is then that passion steps in. 
 I have come to the melancholy conclusion that too 
 many mistake passion for something better. The 
 love that begins pure, that passes through the 
 second stage when it is not so pure, and then mel- 
 lows into understanding, is the love that, while 
 it peoples the earth, nevertheless cares for the 
 earth, and gives birth to the great things. To 
 my mind this love is never as strong as the love 
 of parent for child, which will dare all and do all ; 
 which is constantly reasonable and thoughtful, 
 and in which there is never a selfish thought. The 
 wife may "love" her husband because he is good 
 to her; because he makes it easy for her ; because 
 he is considerate of her ; because he is generous 
 with her ; because he is an ideal to her. The hus- 
 band may love the wife for reasons that are akin 
 to her reasons for loving him. But the love of a 
 
138 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 mother for her childls not because of the child's 
 strength or power to help her, but rather because 
 of its very weakness and its very helplessness and 
 its very powerlessness. Therefore, to me the 
 thought has often come that love is a growth 
 passing, after a stage of preparation, through 
 three epochs : the epoch of preparation, the epoch 
 of passion, the epoch of understanding, and then, 
 at its best, spending itself, and becoming there- 
 fore real, on what it produces. 
 
 I do not know if I have made myself clear to 
 you. I fear I have not, because I am not sure 
 that I have made myself clear to myself ; for the 
 hardest thing that one can do is to express, even 
 to oneself, the things that are of the spirit and 
 the soul, and true love is of the spirit and the soul. 
 
 Feeling as I do about this supremely impor- 
 tant matter, I would warn you to mistrust your- 
 self ; for youth is impressionable. It is youth 
 that hurries through the woods to gather wild 
 flowers, while age only walks thoughtfully 
 through the gardens. A baby is attracted by a 
 shining ornament and a youth is attracted by 
 bright eyes. Both may be fools in their own way. 
 To abandon oneself to love without any thought 
 of the course that it inevitably must take, is an 
 act of folly. But you say, " Perhaps it cannot be 
 helped?" It can be helped, for even love is no 
 excuse to lay aside reason and religion. Religion 
 
LOVE 139 
 
 says that love is placed upon earth for a good 
 purpose, to replenish the earth. When it is un- 
 derstood that this is the purpose, reason steps in 
 and then love will go to the great goal which is its 
 best and purest, to the foot of the Throne. 
 
XIV 
 THE PLAIN MAN 
 
 SOME people have been born to the purple; but 
 they never wore it as if it fitted them. 
 
 THE dress of a man or woman is ugly in propor- 
 tion as it gets away from the natural. 
 
 SAINTS are not exactly different; they are only 
 right and normal. 
 
THE PLAIN MAN 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 For common sense, I commend you to get ac- 
 quainted with the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. 
 Most of them are delightful; some of them I 
 keep with me always. Lincoln divides the human 
 race very truly, and very quaintly, into two sec- 
 tions, one of which, the larger, comprises the 
 " plain" people. It is not necessary for him to 
 label the rest. "God," he said, "must have loved 
 the plain people; He made so many of them." 
 It is not necessary to be poor to be enrolled in 
 the ranks of the plain people. There are many 
 rich men who never had the desire to move out 
 of the class of plain men. Some people have 
 been born to the purple, but they never wore it 
 as if it fitted them. The best of kings have re- 
 mained "plain" men. Saint Louis, King of 
 France, was the simplest of men. The most 
 highly educated of the world have had "plain" 
 men in plenty amongst them. This letter is to 
 counsel you not even to attempt to be anything 
 but a "plain man". 
 
 It is time we stopped using the word "plain" 
 
 143 
 
144 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 as a reproach. It is true that to be plain means 
 to be common ; but it is not true that to be com- 
 mon means to be ugly. More often the opposite 
 is true ; for that which is plain is usually well 
 ordered, and beauty is essentially an attribute of 
 what is well ordered a result of things existing, 
 or being placed, so as to conform with fixed and 
 proper standards. The plain things are usually 
 the very beautiful things. 
 
 Contrary to the ideas of many, it is true that 
 one must be a plain man or woman to be beauti- 
 ful. No rouge can equal the tint of ordinary red 
 blood showing through healthy skin. No trim- 
 ming of the hair was ever half so beautiful as 
 unbound tresses, flowing and free. Physical 
 beauty in man does not concern itself with his 
 gaudy clothes. What ugliness there is in his 
 form is accounted for by what is abnormal in it. 
 
 The dress of a man or woman is ugly in pro- 
 portion as it gets away from the natural. It is 
 natural for women who usually stay in the home 
 to throw over them garments made with little 
 cutting, falling in graceful folds about them, such 
 as the dresses and cloaks that were worn by the 
 ancient Celtic and British women. The female 
 form lends itself to this graceful draping, and 
 women do not ordinarily live where the cold 
 winds buffet and chill them. As the fashion in 
 women's dress moves away from this simplicity 
 
THE PLAIN MAN 145 
 
 and plainness, it becomes ugly, because it offers 
 the abnormal for admiration. Too much decora- 
 tion succeeds only in concealing beauty. On a 
 feast day the artistic Italian may tolerate bunt- 
 ing and drapery on the walls of St. Peter's; but 
 he would not like St. Peter's were the draping 
 and bunting to be left there permanently. 
 
 The plain man or woman thinks plain, normal 
 thoughts. The cultivated orchard produces large, 
 ruddy and beautiful apples, but such apples are 
 only normal. They were produced by getting 
 back to the rule and away from the exception. 
 Wormy apples are the exception. Farmers who 
 habitually have been neglecting their orchards 
 have become accustomed to exceptions. But the 
 normal apple, the plain apple, is always the 
 beautiful one. 
 
 To live a plain life fits the plain man and 
 woman, and keeps them plain. To live otherwise 
 spoils the lines of the figure, and makes them 
 abnormal and ugly. Obesity is a sign of overeat- 
 ing or disease. To eat when hungry, to drink 
 when thirsty, to rest when tired, these are plain 
 actions that produce results in physical beauty. 
 To feed the soul as honestly with plain spiritual 
 food as the body is fed with what it needs, is to 
 produce the normal goodness, the soul's natural 
 and beautiful state. Saints are not exactly dif- 
 ferent; they are only right and normal 
 
146 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 It is not remarkable that he who lives in a 
 palace and eats nightingales' tongues should be 
 forced sometimes to fly to a hut in the woods or 
 on the shore, and eat only what he can fish or 
 shoot. His action is the natural protest of the 
 plain man which the palace is killing in him, 
 against the ugliness of his condition. It is a 
 temporary assumption of control by the normal, 
 and a temporary defeat for the ugly. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the plain man 
 is loved. We shiver and frown at his opposite, 
 when we shiver and frown at the dandy or the 
 ragamuffin. We like the middle because it is the 
 normal. We honor it even without noticing that 
 we do so. The -things we notice are often the 
 things which disgust us ; and sometimes the dis- 
 gust is at ourselves, because we have noticed, or 
 were enticed by them. The plain man is the 
 world's man; so he always has been; but he 
 also and always has been God's man; for what 
 God hates in the world is what the world has 
 done against His Will with itself and 'with His 
 children. What God made was and is good. He 
 loves the good. Yes! He loves the plain man 
 as Lincoln said He did ; for thus He made him, 
 and thus He wills he should remain. 
 
XV 
 
 THE ENTHUSIAST 
 
 BY the Enthusiast have nations been born and by 
 his hand have tyrants died. He has deluged the 
 world with blood ; but he has planted and watered 
 the peace that gives life and plenty. He has done 
 evil ; but, too, he has loved justice. His name is a 
 curse; but it has also been honored as a blessing. 
 ... He has crushed out the name of God, yet he 
 has paused again to invoke it. 
 
THE ENTHUSIAST 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 Last night you said something about " Enthu- 
 siasm for one's work", and being an " Enthusi- 
 ast". It set me thinking. I have heard so many 
 things of the kind that I really must tell you 
 today what I think of the Enthusiast ; for I am 
 his friend and admirer, but not the defender of 
 his faults. You can only copy him if you are a 
 genius. If you are not that, you are, however, 
 in the happy position of being able to work up 
 to the good and leave the bad alone. 
 
 Who is the Enthusiast? He is the conqueror 
 and the king, the leader in every movement, 
 whether good or bad, the blazer of every trail, 
 the pathfinder into every jungle. His keel has 
 furrowed the unknown seas, his alpenstock has 
 marked the sides of every mountain and glacier, 
 his spade has dug deepest into the earth, his mind 
 has tried to encompass every problem, his zeal 
 has converted millions to truth or perverted mil- 
 lions to error. Today he soars on wings into the 
 air, seeking new outlets to his unquenchable fury 
 of action. He has done all of the world's things 
 
 149 
 
150 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 yet done that were worth doing. He is Progress 
 personified. 
 
 Yet, over the desert his bones have whitened. 
 The kindly moss has covered his dead body in the 
 great forests, to hide the ugliness of its decay. 
 The sea gives up neither its treasures nor its dead 
 so he is sleeping forever in the peaceful depths. 
 He has encrimsoned the world's battlefields, and 
 has found graves deep down where men take gold 
 and silver from the bowels of the earth. Yet he 
 lives and never learns. It is well it should be so. 
 Progress would cease were he to think too deeply 
 and learn too much from what he has suffered. 
 
 By the Enthusiast have nations been born and 
 by his hand have tyrants died. He has deluged 
 the world with blood; but has planted and wa- 
 tered the peace that gives life and plenty. He has 
 done evil; but, too, he has loved justice. His 
 name is a curse ; but it has also been honored as 
 a blessing. They have hanged him in chains to 
 the gallows; and they have wept and would not 
 be consoled, because they had led him forth to 
 die. Yet he has often won more in dying thus 
 than life could have given him. His eye has 
 dropped tears for misery and has shot fires of joy 
 for destruction. He burned the precious books of 
 Alexandria, but gathered the Vatican's treasures 
 of literature and art. He has swept whole tribes 
 from a continent, but behold that continent be- 
 
THE ENTHUSIAST 151 
 
 comes a new world to beckon the old onward and 
 upward to the heights of achievement. He has 
 crushed out the name of God, yet has he paused 
 again to invoke it. 
 
 Of all men he is the most loved and the most 
 hated ; but he is hated of tener than he is loved, for 
 the world must forget much about him to love him 
 at all ; must forget especially that he trampled on 
 some of its cherished ideals. While he lives the 
 Enthusiast must be disliked, because he is, of 
 necessity, both thoughtless and selfish. He thinks 
 too deeply of his work to realize his own lack of 
 thought for others. He is too bound up with the 
 problems that fill his own brain, to worry about 
 either the problems or the cares of his neighbors. 
 Therefore does the world think him selfish. But 
 he is ultimately neither thoughtless nor selfish. 
 He has the record of his world benefactions for 
 centuries, to prove his love for his kind ; and his 
 record of unceasing suffering and pain, extend- 
 ing just as far back into history, to prove his 
 disinterestedness. 
 
 It has been charged that the Enthusiast has 
 been loyal only to his own dreams. But one can- 
 not have a dream at all, without the substantial 
 upon which to base it. The baby's dreams are of 
 the smiles it has seen on mother's face, which 
 is his entire universe; but these it has actually 
 seen. The Enthusiast has seen his world, has had 
 
152 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 his impressions, has shaped his thoughts. It is 
 on these his dreams are founded and his ends 
 directed. He is loyal to the great things. 
 
 The Enthusiast is not alone a dreamer. He is 
 the world worker, who labors not for pay, but for 
 the very love of it. Money could never have made 
 a Columbus, and only a Columbus could have dis- 
 covered a continent. Civilization would be with- 
 out masterpieces and mastermen if the Enthusi- 
 ast were bound by the laws of labor unions. His 
 work sets itself no time limit and permits none 
 to be set for it. His strength comes and goes. It 
 is fed by fires from the soul that burn only fit- 
 fully. He works while they burn and then he 
 produces. He stops when the fires smoulder. 
 His dreams are the fires which give him strength 
 for action. 
 
 The real Enthusiast belongs to no nation, but 
 to all nations, since his work is for all. The good 
 he does, the discoveries he makes, the evil he 
 causes, all belong to the world at large, which 
 cannot avoid the consequence of having produced 
 him, whether good or bad. The disgrace of a 
 Robespierre belongs to France, but the Revolu- 
 tion he fostered shed the world's blood and is still 
 the world's problem. Voltaire went farther than 
 Sans Souci and Frederick the Great with his cyn- 
 ical friendship. The circles shot out by his fall 
 into the waters of doubt have long ago touched 
 
THE ENTHUSIAST 153 
 
 even the Arctic. Michelangelo's genius is not 
 only the adornment of Italy, but the inspiration 
 of all nations. O'Connell liberated two peoples: 
 his own from injustice; and the enemies of his 
 own from the slavery of being tyrants. 
 
 The Enthusiast cannot die while the earth 
 lives; since every generation must have him to 
 depend upon for the step in advance which God 
 seems to destine each generation to take. 
 
 To have " Enthusiasm for one's work" is good : 
 but it is not pleasant to be a real Enthusiast. It 
 is a pain. 
 
XVI 
 THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 THE Conservative is not usually the one who pro- 
 duces great results ; but he is nevertheless the one 
 who enables others to produce them. 
 
 THE Conservative knows men better than they 
 know themselves, and loves them more wisely. 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 I had to smile when Billy said he was a " liber- 
 tine". Billy does not know what " libertine" 
 means. If he had known he would have hesi- 
 tated about claiming such a title. Billy meant to 
 say that he was a " liberal", in things political. 
 He is; but Billy is a " liberal" in other things 
 as well. So far as the "other things", at least, 
 are concerned, so much the worse for Billy. 
 Don't mistake my meaning: I am not opposed to 
 all liberalism; only to the dangerous kind that 
 makes liberalism an engine of destruction. There 
 is a true and a false liberalism. That which 
 takes no heed of eternal principles is the false 
 kind. 
 
 Liberalism is busy today flinging bricks at the 
 Conservative. He deserves a few of them, but 
 not all. As a matter of fact, he deserves more 
 bouquets than bricks. He has done his work 
 better than men realize. The Conservative is not 
 usually the one who produces great results, but 
 he is nevertheless the one who enables others to 
 produce them. He is the watchman who guards 
 
 157 
 
158 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 the foundation of the building ; the treasurer of 
 all the real riches gathered in bygone ages, and 
 which, wisely used, give new riches to the pres- 
 ent, and will give them also to the future. He 
 is the keeper of the granary w r herein lie stored 
 the seeds from which the world's next crop of 
 ideas, inventions and facts will spring. He is the 
 unappreciated Joseph to thousands of spend- 
 thrift Pharaohs ; but he wears no outward crown 
 in proof of it, and holds no scepter of public 
 honor. He is the power behind every throne that 
 is firm upon its base. He is the port of refuge 
 for every storm-driven ship. Without him there 
 could be no progress ; because there would be no 
 tools preserved with which to labor, no principles 
 upon which to rest, no weapons with which to 
 fight truth's battles. The armories and maga- 
 zines of intellectual warfare are in his care; the 
 fact that he hesitates and considers long before 
 he lends the keys, is rather a proof of his sagacity 
 than a reproach to his slowness. It is well for the 
 world that the Conservative is thus hard to con- 
 vince and thus slow to act. He has been, and is, 
 largely responsible for a diminishing in the 
 world's stock of regrets. He scarcely knows the 
 meaning of "it might have been"; and for him 
 there is no Past Conditional tense. He alone can 
 say, "it was"; but he alone never says, except of 
 God, "it will be". 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 159 
 
 It is the Conservative who comes upon the bat- 
 tlefield when the fight is done, and the bodies of 
 the rash lie with glassy eyes uplifted to the unre- 
 lenting heavens. He it is who gathers up all that 
 is useful for another fight, and stores it away 
 until it is needed. It is he who goes to the council 
 tent, and there takes the fruits of victory or 
 defeat. It is he who treasures the lessons, 
 whether they be in the form of tests of new ex- 
 plosives, the folly of entering into a war unpre- 
 pared, or the crime of entering into it at all. 
 When others think that all is lost, he quietly has 
 laid away some spoils at least; and knows that 
 even out of a rout something always can be 
 gained. Though he did not face battle, yet he 
 alone faces its consequences more deadly oft- 
 times than the fight itself. 
 
 The Conservative is thought to be the smallest 
 and narrowest of men. It is partially true, but 
 in his seeming defects are his uses and his victo- 
 ries. He is small, but one sees better from the 
 small end of a telescope. He is narrow, but the 
 path of Horatius to glory was a bridge only a 
 few feet wide. He does look backward, but be- 
 hind are the things that justify looking ahead. 
 His foresight is not great, but it is the careful 
 start that makes a glorious finish possible. 
 
 It is not a reproach to the Church that in her 
 fold the Conservative reigns supreme. Cen- 
 
160 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 turies have tried to oust him from this strong- 
 hold, but he has beaten the centuries. So the 
 Present and Future do not refuse an admiring 
 salute with the sword, before they join the Past 
 in thrusting at him. But they will thrust in vain, 
 for he knows his ground. He has lived to see and 
 study men, and he has not learned to scorn but to 
 love them. He knows them better than they 
 know themselves, and loves them more wisely. 
 He watches their weaknesses, while noting their 
 enthusiasms ; and from both he draws the good, 
 and thus wisely saves the future of the race. 
 He has seen centuries which worshipped many 
 gods and all of them shameless ; but he has man- 
 aged to keep the fire alight on the altar of the 
 One who alone is Truth. He has witnessed 
 past centuries drop their books sacred and pro- 
 fane to grasp the sword and couch the lance. 
 But he gathered up and kept the books Bible 
 and classics. We owe their preservation to him. 
 He saw Art fall into the dust to die, but he 
 quietly supplied the materials for its revival. 
 He heard a world cease to sing, but saved melo- 
 dies that the world might sing again. These 
 and all else that he has saved may be arrayed 
 against him, but he understands and hugs his 
 treasures closer, while watching for what he 
 can add to them from the new and more splen- 
 
THE CONSERVATIVE 161 
 
 did mistakes of this new and more splendid 
 present. 
 
 The century is learning fast while the treasures 
 of the Conservative grow apace. What shall the 
 future say of him ? It will speak of him in terms 
 of praise, but it will speak as of one dead. It 
 will enshrine his memory, but enshrine it only 
 as a memory. It will build a mighty mausoleum 
 to him, really believing that he lies beneath it. 
 It will sing of him, imagining that the song is a 
 threnody. It will say that, under God, Religion 
 owes to him its purity, Science its discoveries, 
 Music its inspiration, Art its models, and Oratory 
 its ancient fire ; all the while thinking of him as 
 one of the great departed. But he will not be 
 dead even when the world thinks that the millen- 
 nium has come. The millennium will yet be far 
 away as far as Heaven, which is where the 
 Gate of Death ends the Long Road. Yes, the 
 Conservative shall always be living, and the very 
 praise the Future will unite to give him, shall be 
 but a new form of the old battle he has always 
 fought, and which he must fight to the end ; while 
 the world shall always remain his servant, and 
 all ages his debtor. 
 
XVII 
 CRITICISM 
 
 MILD and pleasant criticisms might accomplish 
 something; but not enough to justify their exist- 
 ence. 
 
 THE gossiping neighbors of a country village have 
 a great deal more to do with keeping the village 
 highly moral, and filling the churches on Sunday, 
 than they get credit for. 
 
 THE less criticism you get the harder will be your 
 road to success. 
 
CRITICISM 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 The most irritating thing in the world is a 
 toothache; but I saved nearly all my teeth by 
 heeding the first twinging warning of that kind. 
 The only tooth I lost forever went because I too 
 long neglected such a warning, using palliatives 
 for the pain rather than a prompt remedy 
 for the disorder that caused it. Criticisms are 
 like toothaches unpleasant, even painful; irri- 
 tating, even maddening; but they help us and 
 they help us very materially. If there possibly 
 could be such a thing as a pleasant toothache, 
 I think that the object of the infliction could 
 not be attained. It is only natural that we 
 should ask why a warning of decay might not 
 be given without the pain; but would we heed 
 such a warning ? It usually takes a hard-grip- 
 ping toothache to drive us to the dentist's chair, 
 where we should have gone months before. It 
 is the same way with criticisms. There are no 
 pleasant ones, and I am glad of it, though I have 
 suffered my share of the pain of them. Mild 
 and pleasant criticisms might accomplish some- 
 thing, but not enough to justify their existence. 
 
 165 
 
166 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 There are, however, toothaches of all degrees 
 of painf ulness ; and there are critics of the same 
 kind. Some critics are vicious ; some are gentle. 
 Both have their uses. They all make us stop 
 and think. If there were no critics in the world, 
 there would be little, if any, progress ; and very 
 much sin. The gossiping neighbors of a country 
 village have a great deal more to do with keep- 
 ing the village highly moral, and filling the 
 churches on Sunday, than they really get credit 
 for ; and, while gossiping hurts the gossiper, it 
 is one of those evils which God confounds by 
 drawing good out of them. More than once the 
 fear of criticism has kept young people from 
 rushing into danger. It is wise always to be on 
 the alert to catch every breath of criticism di- 
 rected your way, because it is always well to see 
 yourself as other people see you. 
 
 The right way to receive criticism is as you 
 receive a toothache suffer it, but do not suffer 
 it any longer than you have to. Remove the 
 cause, if you can, and remove it quickly; thus 
 will you draw your good out of the evil. As a 
 man rarely thinks of a toothache after it ends, 
 in the joy of having gotten rid of it, so hasten 
 yourself to forget criticism and the critic, that 
 you may not lose the good both have done you. 
 
 I counseled you to be sensitive to criticism; 
 but what I meant, was to make only your ears 
 
CRITICISM 167 
 
 sensitive to it. I did not mean that you should 
 make your heart so. Steel yourself against crit- 
 icism. Be prepared to turn it into an advantage, 
 but never let it make you bitter ; and, above all, 
 never let it make you revengeful. Critics are 
 not always enemies ; but much that I said of the 
 critic applies to the enemy. A mean critic is 
 not worth being revenged upon. The critic who 
 is not mean is usually quite honest and worth 
 attention. One of the differences between criti- 
 cisms and toothaches lies in the fact that we 
 ought, within reason, to go out looking for criti- 
 cisms. No man can be successful without his 
 critics ; and therefore even the saints had them. 
 No one profited more by criticisms than did 
 these saints. Your school days were made up 
 of hour after hour of criticism. Your business 
 career will be the same. You will be criticised 
 until the day you die. The less criticism you get, 
 the harder will be your road to success. 
 
 But fear much to criticise others. You may 
 get yourself into the position of being hardened 
 to criticism, and even of welcoming it; but do 
 not presume that others will have been success- 
 ful in like manner. The average man does not 
 take kindly to criticism ; therefore, for your own 
 personal comfort, if for no other reason, give 
 your opinion when it is asked and not before. 
 
 I am afraid that the most sensitive people to 
 
168 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 criticism are Catholics. The reasons for this are 
 many, but one in particular : Catholics know the 
 perfection of the divine side of the Church, and 
 instinctively conclude that all criticism of her 
 is unfounded. They forget that there is a human 
 side to the Church as well as a divine side, and 
 that the human side needs criticism. This, our 
 peculiar sensitiveness, extends to everything that 
 is Catholic. Taught by bitter experience, we 
 are always looking for insults; and we conse- 
 quently often imagine them where there are none. 
 We too frequently fail to allow for inherited 
 prejudices, and above all for a very natural 
 frailty in ourselves the frailty that comes out 
 of our very strength. A man who has outstand- 
 ing ability above all other men in some branch 
 of endeavor, is likely to think that he cannot be 
 very weak in anything. For example, an ex- 
 tremely wealthy man is a miracle if he recog- 
 nizes his own follies. He is flattered and fawned 
 upon until he thinks he is a demigod. It is easy 
 then for the astute time-server to catch him on 
 the weak side; to the time-server's gain. The 
 trouble is that the rich man has been ignoring 
 criticisms, or has bought off his critics. Catholics 
 are very much like that. The very perfection 
 of the divine side of the Church is their weak- 
 ness in the face of criticisms of the human side. 
 It is no attack against our faith, for example, 
 
CRITICISM 169 
 
 to have the flaws in our educational system 
 pointed out. There is really no reason why we 
 should be sensitive if we are told of lapses in 
 the conduct of some individuals, or body of them. 
 It does not really hurt us if we are truthfully 
 told that our social works are too much neglected. 
 We ought to listen to and profit by these things. 
 A professor of Sociology told me a few days ago, 
 that it is refreshing to meet a lot of non-Catholic 
 social workers at gatherings where all are 
 brought together for discussion. "They go at 
 each other hammer and tongs," he said. "They 
 attack, defend and attack again. I never enjoy 
 myself so much as at one of these meetings. Why 
 can't we do it? It would benefit us." The rea- 
 son we can't do it is because we are too sensitive 
 to criticism. We have gotten into the habit of 
 defending the Church at all risks, and doing it 
 at prices we cannot afford to pay. Let us not 
 be too sensitive to such criticisms. After all, we 
 must see our faults in order to correct them. 
 
 Though I know that, in the majority of cases, 
 personal criticisms injure the one who makes 
 them, and benefit the one who receives them, 
 nevertheless I say : God bless the critics. They 
 stimulate enough to keep us moving onward and 
 upward. They impede just enough to prevent 
 our speeding too fast. They irritate just enough 
 to make us careful. They sting just enough to 
 
170 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 make us watchful. They are a constant invita- 
 tion to the practise of humility, and a consequent 
 antidote to pride. Cherish your critics and to 
 the same degree that I advised you to cherish 
 your enemies. 
 
XVIII 
 HATRED 
 
 WHAT the confusion of tongues did in scattering 
 humanity, the gospel of hatred would have done 
 later; but in blood and tears, and with the sacri- 
 fice of thousands. 
 
 No reputation is fortified against hatred, and no 
 personal worth can save entirely from its venom. 
 
 IF you must hate, then hate hatred. 
 
HATRED 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 The chum you brought to dinner last Sunday 
 said that he "just hated" an old friend of his 
 because he thought he had done him a wrong. If 
 you love your chum show him this letter ; and if 
 you love yourself read it carefully and take its 
 counsels to heart. 
 
 The Gospel of Christ is a gospel of love. It 
 is an outspoken gospel, since it has been preached 
 everywhere. But there is another gospel. It is 
 the gospel of evil, that I call the gospel of hatred. 
 It is a gospel of silence, for it is guarded in the 
 heart rather than spoken with the lips, a gospel 
 which too many accept, knowing what it is ; yet 
 which many accept, too, without knowing. Those 
 who accept it most freely are those most anx- 
 ious to tell themselves that they repudiate it. 
 
 The gospel of hatred has its place in the history 
 of mankind. It was born in the first generation 
 of the race, but with Cain, not with Adam. Fallen 
 as was the first man, he could not fall so far as 
 that, since he could not so completely forget the 
 direct Divine handiwork in him. But the world 
 needed only two additions to its population to 
 
 173 
 
174 LETTERS TO 2ACK 
 
 bring the gospel of hatred to the earth: one to 
 excel, and one to realize that he had been excelled. 
 It is a testimony to the power of the gospel of 
 hatred that its first fruit on earth was murder, in 
 one of murder's vilest forms, fratricide. 
 
 Once born, the gospel of hatred lived on the 
 rivalries of men who battled for gain, and the 
 vanities of women who battled to please the win- 
 ner. It spread like a pestilence over the earth, 
 so that not even a deluge could drown it. It 
 entered the Ark with Noah's sons, and came out 
 of it, like the other beasts, on Ararat. What the 
 confusion of tongues did in scattering humanity, 
 the gospel of hatred would have done later, but in 
 blood and tears, and the sacrifice of thousands. 
 It was the gospel that swept Troy to ruin; but 
 fastened itself firmly on the necks of her con- 
 querors to their own ruin later on. It marched 
 with Sesostris out of Egypt and Alexander out 
 of Macedonia. It mixed for Socrates his cup of 
 poison, and stuck a needle through the once elo- 
 quent tongue of the dead Cicero. It stabbed 
 Caesar in irony before Pompey 's Statue ; burned 
 Rome, under its devotee, Nero ; and then extin- 
 guished the Ejmpire in the fury of northern 
 revenge. 
 
 The gospel of hatred has filled the army of 
 martyrs. It gathered the stones that killed Ste- 
 phen, beheaded Paul at the Three Fountains, and 
 
HATRED 175 
 
 crucified Peter on the Capitolian Hill. It 
 dragged Joan of Arc, innocent, pure and sweet 
 as a lily, to the fire lighted in Rouen's market 
 place, and sounded the depths of injustice in the 
 execution of More on Tower Hill. Why not, when 
 it had spit upon Christ in the Court of Caiphas, 
 loaded Him with stripes and buffets and a Cross, 
 and let Calvary stand in history as a never-to-be- 
 forgotten name for all that human malignity 
 could do? 
 
 The gospel of hatred, once accepted, degrades 
 man to the level of the brute. One by one, it 
 quenches in him every generous thought and im- 
 pulse and renders barren that spot in his soul 
 whereon they grew. It hardens hearts against 
 the appeal of affliction and steels them against 
 the ecstasy of pure Iov6. It blinds the eyes to 
 virtue and goodness, but opens them wide to all 
 that is ugly and full of sin. It closes the ears to 
 the call of mercy, but makes them keen for the 
 cry of revenge. It shuts the hand tight over the 
 coin of charity, but stretches it out to pay for 
 acts of plunder and murder. In the poor, it 
 makes poverty sordid and miserable. In the rich, 
 it cultivates flaunting show, as naked before God 
 as it is lavish before men. 
 
 In the wake of the gospel of hatred follows 
 blind injustice, against which there is neither 
 appeal nor hope in this world. No reputation is 
 
176 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 fortified against it, and no personal worth can 
 save entirely from its venom. The king has been 
 dragged from the throne to the headsman's block 
 at its order. The legislator has felt the assassin's 
 steel in his breast, and knew that the gospel of 
 hatred had inspired his killing. But the peasant, 
 also, has been driven from his cabin, to be lashed 
 to death before his own children; while babies 
 have been carried on the points of bayonets, be- 
 cause men having power had accepted this gospel 
 of horror. It was the gospel of hatred that Ma- 
 dame Roland should have blamed on the scaffold, 
 even though the crime was done "in liberty's 
 name". 
 
 To civil and religious liberty no enemy has been 
 so strong, because no enemy is so insidious. The 
 gospel of hatred creeps almost at once into the 
 heart of the conqueror toward the conquered, 
 whispering that he himself is of superior clay, 
 and the subdued but the dust beneath his feet. 
 Thus does it add venom to the sting of the lash 
 and weight to the shackles. 
 
 In a nation the gospel of hatred divides citizens 
 so that, when Power falls to one side it sends 
 hatred to the other; but always double hatred 
 from those who rule to those who are ruled. Self 
 interest is then its spouse and tyranny its 
 offspring. 
 
 But greatest of all is the evil which follows the 
 
HATRED 177 
 
 acceptance of the gospel of hatred amongst 
 friends, for it kills all friendship. It is most ma- 
 lignant toward those who have shown the greatest 
 generosity. By preference, it strikes those who 
 should be loved most, and pursues most relent- 
 lessly those who have been kindest. 
 
 The gospel of hatred has covered the world 
 with destruction and has buried millions, inno- 
 cent and guilty, in the ruins. It stands as the 
 most convincing of all arguments for an Eternal 
 Justice; because wrongs cannot always go un- 
 righted; and the sods of the grave, alas! cover 
 millions of wrongs that call for a righting beyond 
 the power of men. 
 
 For God's dear sake, never say that you hate 
 anybody. Fear lest every little dislike is the be- 
 ginning of a hatred. If you must hate, then hate 
 hatred. It and sin are the only things you may 
 hate with safety. 
 
XIX 
 
 SILENCE 
 
 AN appearance of gravity and wisdom easily 
 deceives and easily fastens incompetence to high 
 places. 
 
 THE Oracles of Apollo were wisest in their silence ; 
 and their race has not yet passed from the earth. 
 
 MOST of the really wise silent men have been taken 
 for fools; and most of the silent fools have been 
 taken for wise men. 
 
SILENCE 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 You remember that a few evenings ago you 
 met three gentlemen in my company. On the 
 way home you remarked about one of them: 
 "He must be a smart man, because he knows how 
 to keep his mouth shut." The remark was 
 rather commonplace, for nine out of every ten 
 would have made it, since the gentleman in ques- 
 tion looked wise and said nothing for the greater 
 part of the evening. You must have noticed, 
 however, that, at one period of the conversation, 
 he broke loose and talked on a subject that had 
 very little to do with the general trend of inter- 
 est. Perhaps you did not also notice that he was 
 the one who dragged that subject in, literally by 
 the heels. He was very brilliant while he held 
 us to that topic, but when it was exhausted, he 
 again relapsed into silence and resumed his ap- 
 pearance of deep thought. 
 
 I quite agree with your idea regarding some 
 silent men, but I do not believe that silence always 
 indicates learning or ability. If I had any right 
 to judge the gentleman whom you admired, 
 merely by what I saw and heard of him a few 
 
 181 
 
182 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 evenings ago, I would be inclined to say that he 
 is one of a class smart enough to know the value 
 of silence, and to assume it for effect or a lack 
 of knowledge. An appearance of gravity and 
 wisdom easily deceives and easily fastens incom- 
 petence to high places. There are today, as there 
 have been in the past, many silent fools who gov- 
 ern wise men, but the wise men were not quite 
 wise enough to hold their tongues. The cheapest 
 and easiest way to unearned advancement and 
 undeserved power is the way of silence, especially 
 if it is made impressive by a show of sternness. 
 In every country village you will find a physician 
 whom the people think is the " greatest doctor 
 of them all if he would only let rum alone". I 
 used to make it my business to get acquainted 
 with these wonderful geniuses, and I always 
 found that those who did not know enough "to 
 let rum alone", were excellent at leaving the 
 materia medico, alone. So, in every village I have 
 found men who never speak until they can direct 
 the conversation and monopolize it, and who 
 never do that until they can get it into a channel 
 familiar to them through a judicious selection of 
 reading from an encyclopedia the day before. 
 There was one wise-looking and silent old chap 
 whom I knew very well, in a town in which I was 
 pastor. He used to meet me daily on the street 
 outside the Post Office ; and he had a new subject 
 
SILENCE 183 
 
 for conversation at every meeting. He intro- 
 duced it and talked on it. It was a topic nobody 
 else would ever dream of taking up. I confess 
 that I used to be impressed at the old man's in- 
 formation about strange and outlandish things ; 
 until one day, in order to verify a statement he 
 had made, I consulted the International Encyclo- 
 pedia, and behold, I found my wise friend's dis- 
 course almost word for word. After that I 
 reduced him to silence by diplomatically refusing 
 to discuss any subject he introduced. He dropped 
 my acquaintance. An advantage this sort of 
 silent man has is that, when obliged to retreat 
 behind the barriers of his taciturnity, he looks 
 wiser in his dignified silence than during his 
 illuminating flashes of borrowed knowledge. 
 Men do not always understand that such a person 
 is like one of these little pocket electric-lights run 
 on a small storage battery, with a tiny lamp set 
 in a strong reflector. He gives out every ray 
 that is in him for the instant that he dares to 
 shine, but there is little current back of the light 
 bulb. 
 
 It is true, nevertheless, that such a silent man 
 is often unusually successful, probably because 
 the rest of mankind is not in his class. The rea- 
 son is, that most men are suspicious of themselves 
 and mistrust their own judgment, though they do 
 not like to own to the fact. Deep down in their 
 
184 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 Hearts they wonder at their own success and their 
 own progress. They are painfully aware of their 
 shortcomings, and full of surprise that these 
 shortcomings have not been noticed by their fel- 
 lows. Consequently they are always ready to be 
 impressed by others who are different and the 
 different man is the silent man. But he is ad- 
 mired too often for w r hat he is not, for what his 
 occasional flashes lead men to think him to be. 
 These occasional flashes favor him as an unex- 
 pected sound intensifies the stillness of the desert. 
 The higher the place such a man holds, the more 
 other men think he is fitted for it, since he does 
 not need to talk to show his wisdom or to conceal 
 his ignorance. The Oracles of Apollo spoke rarely 
 and then but few words. They were thought to 
 possess divine wisdom, but the Oracles of Apollo 
 were wisest in their silence, and their race has 
 not yet passed from the earth. 
 
 I have come to mistrust the silent man. He is 
 dangerous. It is in silence that plots are hatched 
 and evil concocted. It is in silence that hates are 
 nurtured and grudges wax fat. He who speaks 
 little to his kind speaks a great deal to himself, 
 and soon begins to admire the company he keeps. 
 As admiration for himself ripens, disgust for 
 others grows ; and the result is a harmful selfish- 
 ness. The distance between selfishness and hatred 
 is only a difference of time the time between 
 
SILENCE 185 
 
 the ripening of the seed and its taking root in 
 the soil. 
 
 But a minority of silent men are truly great. 
 They are those who enter into silence as the High 
 Priest entered into the Holy of Holies, as Moses 
 entered on the sacred ground about the Burn- 
 ing Bush. It is out of their silence that great 
 messages come, that noble inspirations to high 
 and holy thoughts proceed. In the desert the 
 cenobites lived in silence with all the hosts of 
 heaven for company. In the silence some men 
 dwell with a world of their own about them, 
 happy in it, and never wanting to leave it ; but 
 snatching out of it every now and then some great 
 or beautiful thing, to fling it into that other world 
 in which the rest live, as a treasure from a land 
 so many may never enter. 
 
 Not everybody can know the real beauty and 
 meaning of that Song of the Mystic I already 
 quoted; but, reading it, everybody can feel 
 vaguely that it would be a desirable thing to be 
 able to sing it oneself. There is a poetry that 
 never measures a verse and never needs to ; but 
 it is all written in the Valley of Silence, on sheets 
 that are stained with the tears of disappointment, 
 because words can tell so little of the feelings 
 that are in the heart. There are orations whose 
 force comes not from their beauty and depth of 
 thought and wonder of diction, but from the 
 
186 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 wealth they cannot express, yet always imply. 
 There is a music that the old notes cannot render, 
 but which seems to have back of it strange 
 harmonies, which some hear and to which others 
 are deaf ; which are clear today but tomorrow we 
 shall not be able to understand. The thinkers 
 of the world have been silent men ; but men who 
 could not always keep silence, because the neces- 
 sity of expression came to them. Such men 
 never have to push themselves upon anyone's at- 
 tention. They get the ear of the world without 
 trying. They never speak because they want 
 others to hear. They speak because they must. 
 There is something akin to inspiration in what 
 they do or say. These are the silent men who are 
 worth standing guard over, so as to catch every 
 utterance that is forced from their lips. 
 
 In dealing with silent men it is well to be on 
 your guard, for, as I said, the majority are silent 
 for a purpose. But the minority of the silent 
 ones are worth attention. How shall you know 
 them? It is hard to say. Perhaps the best test 
 is this: do they profit or do they lose by their 
 silence ? Most of the really wise silent men have 
 been taken for fools ; and most of the silent fools 
 have been taken for wise men. 
 
XX 
 
 DREAMERS 
 
 WE do not need to " scratch a Russian " to " find 
 a Tartar." We might scratch ourselves and find 
 the same sort of a wild rover any time. 
 
 So far as the eye can see, the stars were not 
 placed in the heavens by rule of thumb ; but they 
 are there by rule nevertheless. 
 
DREAMERS 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 When I praised the Enthusiast it might have 
 seemed to you that I was pleading for dreamers, 
 and, in a way, I was. But I was rather apolo- 
 gizing than pleading. I was like the judge whom 
 stern duty bid sentence a miserable wretch to 
 prison; but who yet knew the extenuating cir- 
 cumstances that, outside the law, made this man 
 less guilty than many of his accusers. Dreamers 
 have usually been themselves failures ; or unsuc- 
 cessful till success meant nothing to them. If 
 John Boyle O'Reilly was right in saying that 
 "the dreamer lives forever but the toiler dies 
 in a day," his immortality has been a good thing 
 for the dreamer; for only after he has passed 
 from bodily life does he actually begin to live. 
 In the life of this world a salesman must have 
 something to sell, something that men can see 
 and touch and enjoy. So it is the hard, cold, mat- 
 ter-of-fact fellow who counts for the day. The 
 dreamer, the " rainbow-chaser," the lovable wan- 
 derer, is one of Bob Service's "men that don't 
 fit in." How well he describes these men we all 
 know : 
 
 189 
 
190 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 "If they just went straight they might go far; 
 
 They are strong and brave and true; 
 But they're always tired of things that are, 
 
 And they want the strange and new. 
 They say: 'Could I find my proper groove, 
 
 What a deep mark I would make!' 
 So they chop and change, and each fresh move 
 
 Is only a fresh mistake." 
 
 I am sorry, deeply sorry, for these men and 
 so are you. Why? Because they are our kin, as 
 they are kin to all the world. There is some of 
 the same spirit and failing in all of us. If there 
 were not we wouldn't ourselves be worth any- 
 thing. But the rest of us have the spirit under 
 control, or think we have. As a matter of fact, 
 we sometimes discover that we have not the con- 
 trol we so fondly credited to our strength of 
 character. We do not need to "scratch a Eus- 
 sian" to "find a Tartar." We might scratch 
 ourselves and find the same sort of a wild rover 
 any time. The difference between ourselves and 
 the other is, while he 
 
 " . . . forgets that his youth has fled, 
 
 Forgets that Ms prime is past, 
 Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, 
 
 In the glare of the truth at last," 
 
DREAMERS 191 
 
 we had that searching glare on us early. The 
 real difference is only in the time of the revela- 
 tion. Why not love the dreamers'? We were 
 once of the tribe, and there are always memories. 
 
 But, Jack, it would be an awful calamity had 
 we left that tribe and also the memories that 
 bind us to it. It is the dreamer in most men that 
 makes them fit for human companionship. For 
 the scientific mind, I have use only in my argu- 
 mentative moods ; and from the mathematician, 
 "Good Lord, deliver me." I would walk miles 
 to spend an evening with a dreamer, the less he 
 "fits in" the greater my pleasure in his company ; 
 while I would run the same distance from the 
 fifteen minute visit of the "pure intellect." 
 There never was anything but monotony in the 
 squared and the concreted. God laid out no 
 blocks in His universe ; may He be thanked for 
 that. So far as the eye can see, the stars were 
 not placed in the heavens by rule of thumb ; but 
 they are there by rule nevertheless. 
 
 There is enough worldly wisdom in avoiding 
 the danger of being a dreamer, to justify one's 
 trying hard to keep from drifting entirely that 
 way. There is enough spiritual wisdom in law 
 and order to justify suspecting one's tendency 
 to dreaming. But there is also enough pure joy 
 in dreaming, to assure one that dreams have a 
 right to be, and dreamers a place in God's uni- 
 
192 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 verse. Our greatest fights with ourselves are not 
 fights to keep from going to extremes. They are 
 fights to keep in the middle ; and, at that, most 
 of us have had rather indifferent success. His- 
 tory records that General Wolfe murmured 
 lines from Gray's Elegy on his way to the plains 
 of Abraham, and said that he would rather have 
 written them than take Quebec. Scratched was 
 the Wolfe, and a lamb of Arcadia was found a 
 dreamer who " fitted in," and yet was gloriously 
 unsatisfied. If I look at the whole world's pop- 
 ulation as it now is, I cannot see a place for the 
 dreamer ; but I cannot think of the world and its 
 people that way. I must look at it as it was, as 
 it is, and as it will be. Those who live in it now 
 are but a handful of those who, at the end, will 
 be written down as its citizens. The time will 
 come when there shall be no dead, but a throng- 
 ing multitude of the living, made up of all who 
 once dwelt here on earth. Then we shall have the 
 true perspective and find that, perhaps, Wolfe 
 was right. 
 
 Of one thing I feel sure : for the here and now 
 it is better to "fit in," to be no dreamer, and 
 to forget the rainbows. But to live in the f titure, 
 to court the immortality of fame, to be a great 
 citizen of the world in a day that stretches from 
 Adam to whom? it will prove best to have 
 been one who loved rather than hated, who 
 
DREAMERS 193 
 
 dreamed rather than schemed; who prayed 
 rather than preyed; who smiled in joy rather 
 than frowned in anger; who looked up at the 
 stars rather than fixed eyes on the earth; and 
 such a one is the true dreamer. 
 
XXI 
 
 OLD THINGS 
 
 I SYMPATHIZE with the man who is only the servant 
 of a machine. ... I think there is a deeper rea- 
 son than the question of pay for the modern strike. 
 
 I LIKE to see progress ; but I do not like to pay for 
 it with the old ideals that first made it possible. 
 
 EVIL may be shouting in our souls constantly ; but 
 it is for us to say whether or not we are to hear 
 its voice. 
 
OLD THINGS 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 Some of my friends show a sort of mild and 
 superior tolerance of what they call my- "junk." 
 I have to acknowledge that I am very fond of 
 the things that are old old pictures, old books, 
 old prints, old china. It is not, however, be- 
 cause things are old that I like them; nor yet 
 because they help me get the atmosphere in which 
 history may best be read ; but rather because the 
 old things, nearly all of them, speak to me of 
 devotion and an ideal in work that we have not 
 in this age of machinery. Now, I have nothing 
 against the age of machinery; in fact, I rather 
 like living in these times. I never had, for ex- 
 ample, any prejudices against automobiles. When 
 I travel, I take advantages of modern comforts ; 
 and this is the most comfortable age of the world 
 for travel. Still, I constantly feel like lament- 
 ing the fact that machinery has driven out the 
 personal interest and devotion men used to take 
 in producing things. There isn't much inspira- 
 tion to be gotten out of a modern factory. I 
 visited one a few weeks ago, and the composite 
 
 197 
 
198 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 picture I took away was distressing. It seemed 
 as if one big machine, and the men around it, 
 made a picture for me of the whole factory. Two 
 men were engaged in mechanically picking up 
 long steel bars, placing them singly in a certain 
 groove, leaving each one there until a hammer 
 banged holes in them, and then throwing them on 
 the pile of " finished" work. The men were too 
 much like the machine they attended. The head 
 of the factory told me that they do nothing else 
 from morning until night. The bar forms part 
 of a bed; but the other parts are made in the 
 same way. No individual workman in the fac- 
 tory makes an entire bed. It takes two hundred 
 employes, starting from the designer and wind- 
 ing up with the finisher, to do that. The only 
 inspiration there is in the whole factory is that 
 of the designer. It seemed to me that he was 
 the only man who had a chance to actually enjoy 
 his work. 
 
 You can readily see why I am sorry that the 
 machine has, almost entirely, eliminated the 
 workingman who could start producing some- 
 thing, and finish it all by himself. Machinery 
 has taken the inspiration, and therefore the 
 pleasure, out of work. It is no wonder to me 
 that the age of machinery is the age of labor 
 troubles. I sympathize with the man who is 
 only the servant of a machine. I cannot find the 
 
OLD THINGS 199 
 
 heart to blame him for being dissatisfied. So I 
 think there is a deeper reason than the question 
 of pay for the modern strike. Without knowing 
 it, the men have gotten into the state of working 
 for pay alone. In the olden days there was more 
 pleasure in a man's craftsmanship than in the 
 money he received for it. The old workman was 
 often an artist; for even when he did not have 
 the skill, he had the feeling ; and he did not take 
 his pleasure out of his skill, but out of his feel- 
 ing. I dropped into a little shoe-shop one day 
 to have a lift put upon a heel. It was quite late 
 in the evening, but the shoemaker was pegging 
 away. "You don't keep union hours," I re- 
 marked. The old man loked up at me with a 
 smile. "No," he said, "but my boy does. You 
 see, Father, he works in a shoe factory, and when 
 the whistle blows he stops. A man cannot take 
 very much interest in stamping out soles, and 
 that's what he does. I often work until ten 
 o 'clock because I cannot lay my work aside. You 
 wouldn't think, would you, that I could take in- 
 terest enough in a pair of shoes to keep me from 
 my evening paper? But I do. Now here," he 
 continued, picking up a pair of shoes, "is some- 
 thing I am very proud of. I made these shoes 
 myself. They will last three years. The shoes 
 that are turned out by the factory my son works 
 in look prettier, but they will not last six months. 
 
200 LETTERS TO 'JACK 
 
 These are honest shoes and there is honest labor 
 in them. ' ' I thoroughly understood the old man, 
 and I liked his point of view. I know, of course, 
 that we must have factories. I would not turn 
 back the hand on the clock if I could ; but at the 
 same time I rejoice that there still is, and always 
 will be, a demand for the things that are made in 
 the old way ; not that we need these things so very 
 badly, but that we need the sort of men who per- 
 sist in making them. I suppose these are only 
 the William Morris views I picked up from an 
 occasional glance over the now defunct " Philis- 
 tine." I certainly know that they are not origi- 
 nal; but I am aiming at the giving of advice 
 rather than at originality. 
 
 This love for the old things that I have, con- 
 cerns more than the things that I can see and 
 touch. For example, I love the old spirit that, 
 alas ! now seems to be passing away. Last week, 
 as I was going into my office, I saw a regiment 
 of soldiers marching from the railway station to 
 their armory. They were returning from the 
 Mexican border. The band was playing a patri- 
 otic air as I walked to the curb to watch the 
 regiment go by. The flags passed a minute later. 
 My hat was the only one that was doffed ; and I 
 could not help the fact that my eyes became a 
 little dim. What astonished me was that nobody 
 else seemed to get any sentiment out of the 
 
OLD THINGS 201 
 
 marching men, the flags and the music. I thought 
 at first that perhaps it was because I was a little 
 different, since I had served with the colors in 
 a very mild sort of a war. But later on, while 
 going up in the elevator to my office, I knew that 
 I was wrong. The people have changed. The 
 curse of riches is on us and the evils of prosperity 
 are our own. I was fifteen minutes at my desk 
 before I could get down to work. I sat thinking 
 of twenty years ago when, in the little town where 
 I was pastor, I made my first patriotic address, 
 before a mound erected in the cemetery, "To the 
 Unknown Dead." That day there were ad- 
 dresses by four or five Protestant ministers as 
 well as myself. Some of these ministers were 
 bigoted men, and they usually disliked me be- 
 cause I was a priest ; but they did not dislike me 
 that day. There was a sort of " Truce of God" 
 on Memorial Day; and I never can forget the 
 heartiness with which the ministers, the old sol- 
 diers and the crowd received what they thought 
 were most unusual sentiments from the mouth 
 of a " Romanist. ' ' Bless their poor blind hearts ! 
 I think the " Romanist" felt the occasion more 
 deeply than any of them; for even prosperity 
 does not stampede him ; and prosperity has stam- 
 peded more than one of the men who stood with 
 moist eyes about the mound that day. I like to 
 see progress, but I do not like to pay for it with 
 
202 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 the old ideals that first made it possible. Prog- 
 ress does not rush. It moves with dignity and 
 safety. Its effect is to make good things better ; 
 but it does not destroy that which is good. If a 
 machine only succeeds in producing great quan- 
 tities of inferior things, without even the excuse 
 of giving more leisure for self -development to 
 the workman, I am inclined to look doubtfully 
 at the ultimate value of the machine. 
 
 Truth is, my dear Jack, that the love for the 
 old things is a response to one of those mysteri- 
 ous voices that speak to us constantly from 
 within and without. "Two voices there are, one 
 of the Earth and one of the Sea ; each a mighty 
 voice," said some poet. The poet was conserva- 
 tive. There is a mighty voice also from the 
 heavens ; Bob Service is a new sort of poet, but 
 he has the idea: 
 
 "Here lay the camp fire's flicker, 
 
 Deep in my blanket curled, 
 I long for the peace of the pine-gloom, 
 
 When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled, 
 And the wind and the wave are silent, 
 
 And world is singing to world/' 
 
 There are a myriad of lesser voices from earth, 
 sea and sky, wordless whispers in our ears, speak- 
 ing everywhere and always. What we call "in- 
 spiration" is the message of these voices. The 
 
OLD THINGS 203 
 
 highest inspiration is the Voice of God. The 
 lesser inspirations are His in a way also, since 
 from Him comes all good. But His Voice in 
 the minor things sound through His works. 
 Byron was no saint, but when he heard the 
 ocean's voice, and was inspired to address to it 
 his immortal eulogy: "Roll on, thou deep and 
 dark blue ocean, roll," he could not help con- 
 fessing God's power. The same thing happened 
 when he heard the voice of St. Peter's at Rome, 
 and his praise reached the heights of sublimity 
 in the words: " Worthiest of God, the Holy and 
 the True." Shakespeare heard the voices and 
 confessed it, for to him there were " sermons in 
 stones." It was fitting that the architecture of 
 the Middle Ages inspired the idea of its being 
 called " frozen music." 
 
 Life is full of eloquence raised to the sublim- 
 ity that moves the soul. Even life's smallest 
 things have great messages, if you will only stop 
 to hear them. There is nothing prosaic in life, 
 if you will but attune your ear to catch the voices 
 that arise out of all its movements. Even what 
 men think are only " disorders," like sickness 
 and death, even these speak, with a voice that 
 can be understood, and their message is one of 
 consolation. 
 
 It is only when the fallen nature of mankind 
 gets the upper hand that the voices from within 
 
204 LETTERS TO r JACK 
 
 are evil ; and it is only when these interior voices 
 are evil that the voices from without are mis- 
 understood or ignored. I could almost say that 
 all the voices from without are good. We merely 
 fail sometimes, because of what speaks within 
 us, to hear them aright. If you have a perfectly 
 adjusted receiver on your phonograph, the rec- 
 ord will be perfect. If the receiver is wrong, 
 you will get only a jumble of sounds. The pho- 
 nograph will give out, not what is spoken into it, 
 but what the recorder engraves on the cylinder. 
 The trouble is all with the phonograph. So it 
 is with us. We hear the perfect message, but, 
 if we are ourselves defective, we do not record it 
 as it was spoken ; and, therefore, cannot repro- 
 duce it in our lives. Man's evil instincts are 
 from within. The bad voices speak only out of a 
 depraved nature. The whispers of unclean, of 
 unworthy, desires, become louder on man's spir- 
 itual ear as he neglects more and more the gen- 
 tle warnings of what is good in him ; till, at last, 
 the voice of evil is so loud that it seems to drown 
 out the voice of good. But the latter is never 
 drowned. If you try you may always hear it. 
 There are wireless telegraph stations of such 
 great electrical power that their messages of 
 world wars and intrigues reach half around the 
 globe. Yet, with the waves of the air filled with 
 the power behind these messages, a little instru- 
 
OLD THINGS 205 
 
 ment in a cottage by the sea, tuned to catch a 
 lighter but more important note, answers not at 
 all to the mighty currents, but flashes words of 
 peace and love to its own kin. Evil may be shout- 
 ing in our souls constantly ; but it is for us to say 
 whether or not we are to hear its voice. 
 
 But I have been digressing and I am not 
 sorry for it. 
 
XXII 
 HUMILITY 
 
 WE haven't any more right to steal God's honor 
 from God than to steal their money from our 
 neighbors. 
 
 IF you give an advice you make a present of it to 
 someone else. It no more belongs to you; then 
 why should you seek glory from it? 
 
 TRUE humility is true dignity. 
 
HUMILITY 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 The book that I love and admire next to the 
 Bible is the Imitation of Christ. There is a 
 whole sermon in its title, for Christ is the Ex- 
 emplar of mankind. To attempt even a feeble 
 imitation of Him is to have one's feet set on the 
 road to true success. 
 
 One of the most insistent of Christ's good ex- 
 amples was His humility before His Father ; yet 
 He was one with the Father. "The Father and 
 I," He said, "are one". "I have glorified Thee 
 on earth ; I have finished the work Thou gavest 
 me to do, and now glorify Thou Me, O Father, 
 with Thyself, with the glory which I had before 
 the world was, with Thee." Christ knew per- 
 fectly well what glory was His own, but it was 
 only at the end of His earthly mission that He 
 made any claim to it. It was Christ's constant 
 habit to fight off glory for Himself. His humility 
 was the deepest of all humility. By example He 
 taught that lesson, and established the usefulness 
 and need of this all-conquering virtue. You see, 
 Jack, I have started this letter in a sermonizing 
 sort of way. I am afraid that all my letters have, 
 
 209 
 
210 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 in spite of myself, become half sermons. They 
 have just drifted that way; and I could not help 
 it. These letters unconsciously found out for 
 themselves that they needed a solid basis ; hence 
 the religious tone that they have adopted. 
 
 The fact of the existence of God and our de- 
 pendence upon Him is the basis of the virtue of 
 humility; for we have nothing that is of our own 
 making, nothing belonging to us that we can be 
 proud of, save our divine ancestry. Our divine 
 ancestry even is an invitation for us to be humble. 
 Pride is a sort of apostasy, for it is the setting- 
 up of oneself in a place that belongs to God. The 
 Commandment, "Thou shalt not have strange/ 
 gods before Me", not only hits ordinary idola- 
 tors but also the proud and selfish people who 
 enthrone themselves in God's place. All saints 
 were very humble, and no proud man can be a 
 saint. True success calls for humility. We 
 haven't any more right to steal God's honor from 
 God than to steal their money from our neigh- 
 bors. To be vainglorious, proud and boastful is 
 Jiot only to make yourself a nuisance to all who 
 know you, but it is to steal from God what be- 
 longs to Him. 
 
 The perversities of pride show a man a weak- 
 ling to his fellows and lead to his ruin. I have 
 known some men, for example, who are in the 
 habit of constantly volunteering advice a very 
 
HUMILITY 211 
 
 despicable habit, by the way. It may be that the 
 advice was entirely unnecessary, and that the vic- 
 tim of it receives no information whatever from 
 it; but if his action is in line with that advice, 
 even though it had been previously determined 
 on, long before he met the officious meddler, 
 nevertheless the meddler proceeds to take all the 
 credit to himself. When you hear men say : "I 
 did that", "I made such and such a man", "I 
 pulled this thing out of the mud", etc., etc., you 
 may conclude safely that some one is trying to 
 ride, through his pride and vainglory, on the 
 shoulders of another. It is only a manifestation 
 of foolish conceit. 
 
 If you give an advice you make a present of it 
 to someone else. It no more belongs to you ; then 
 why should you seek glory from it ? When you 
 give advice and then demand the credit for any 
 good that follows, your offering is merely what 
 boys call an "Injun's gift", a gift that you want 
 back. If you give advice keep quiet about it. It 
 is best anyhow not to give it unless you are asked. 
 You haven't any right to be an embarrassment to 
 other people ; and ninety-nine per cent of volun- 
 teered advice is a tax upon the patience and char- 
 ity of those who receive it. I confess to a cordial 
 dislike for the man who constantly thrusts his 
 advice upon me. I may be wrong, but the con- 
 viction forces itself upon me that such a man is 
 
212 LETTERS TO STACK 
 
 selfish, mean and vainglorious. He wants to 
 exalt himself at my expense in most cases. If I 
 take his advice, he will boast about it and act 
 toward me as if I were under a perpetual obliga- 
 tion. If I do not take it, he thinks me a fool. Vol- 
 unteering advice is a sure way to begin to culti- 
 vate a new enemy. Even when you are asked to 
 give advice, do not rattle it off as if you were mas- 
 ter of the subject. Hesitate about giving it, at 
 least until you know it is really wanted. Then 
 offer it in a very humble way. Most people who 
 ask for advice really do not want it. They are 
 seeking confirmation of their own opinions and 
 approval of their own plans. 
 
 It is true that no one should cultivate the 
 " 'umbleness" of Uriah Heep, though there are 
 plenty of people who like it in others, because 
 they cannot see the falseness at the bottom of it. 
 To be humble you have to feel humble, and to feel 
 humble you must be to a great extent a spiritual 
 person. The humbleness that comes from a sense 
 of our dependence upon God is never the " 'um- 
 bleness" of Uriah Heep. True humility does not 
 cringe. True humility is true dignity. The hum- 
 blest men I ever knew were the greatest men I 
 ever knew. I never saw a more beautiful humil- 
 ity than that of Pope Pius X. This sort of 
 humility is very attractive, especially in youth, 
 because there never is any boasting connected 
 
HUMILITY 213 
 
 with it. Deeds have a habit of speaking for them- 
 selves. Boastings are only the gilt wash on base 
 metal. Once a friend gave me a match-case of 
 silver. It was very beautiful. The engraving 
 upon it was especially fine. I was not satisfied, 
 so I had it plated with gold; and I spoiled it, 
 because the plating smoothed over the fine marks 
 of the engraving. The beauty of my match-safe 
 was gone forever. Do not go about gilding your- 
 self and your deeds. People often know you bet- 
 ter than you know yourself. The marks of your 
 own handiwork on your own soul are the marks 
 of character. 
 
 Modesty is a ticket of admission to the heart 
 of all the men who are worth knowing. When 
 you gain entrance to such a man's heart, the way 
 is short to his intelligence. Modesty is the out- 
 ward expression of honesty and well-founded 
 humility. Humility does not destroy the confi- 
 dence you should have in yourself. It only gives 
 it a good foundation because it puts God into it ; 
 and confidence is based on self-knowledge. A 
 man who knows himself knows that his strength 
 is greater than anything it would be possible for 
 him to have made alone. It is God in us that 
 strengthens us. 
 
 I said that true humility is spiritual. It is 
 more it is spiritualizing. When one is truly 
 humble, one possesses a virtue that God loves 
 
214 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 and rewards. If I had a choice of virtues I 
 would select humility, because I know that it 
 includes most of the others ; but it is a hard vir- 
 tue to acquire. It takes patience and prayer to 
 force its development in the soul. The best way 
 to secure what is needed of it for daily life is 
 through that form of prayer which is called 
 " mental", which is meditation. Meditation 
 turns the light on yourself, and shows you up 
 to yourself. To acquire the virtue of humility 
 it is only necessary to be honest with yourself 
 when you see yourself, and carry that honesty 
 out into your dealings with your fellows. 
 
XXIII 
 INSPIRATION 
 
 To arrive at understanding something of God's 
 love for His children one must begin by under- 
 standing the depths of a mother's love. 
 
 THE pleasure of doing anything for a mother is 
 half in the smallness of the thing that pleases her. 
 
 WHEN you stop thinking of your mother, you 
 usually stop thinking of what is good. 
 

 INSPIRATION 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 In one way there is not so much difference 
 between us as our ages indicate, for in one way 
 we are both just boys : I with my forty-six years 
 and you with your twenty. We are both boys 
 to our mothers. Yours has still some justifica- 
 tion for thinking of you as a boy, because you 
 have not yet arrived at the age of manhood. Mine 
 has not that justification ; but what are years to 
 a mother ? I know my mother is always thinking 
 of the old days when she looks at me. She al- 
 ways will ; and that is just what I want her to 
 do. I want to remain a boy as long as she lives. 
 It keeps her young and it makes me feel young. 
 
 Mothers are wonderful, and become more won- 
 derful to boys as the boys grow older and older. 
 I never appreciated my mother as much as I do 
 now; and it is a comfort for me to feel that I 
 shall grow in appreciation of her. I can never 
 be sufficiently grateful that God has let her stay 
 so long where I can go sometimes to see her, and 
 be a boy again. I know that where she is there 
 is a haven of rest for me. Just to enter it for an 
 hour is a relief ; for nothing enters there with me 
 
 217 
 
218 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 but my forty-six years of continued boyhood. 
 Mother has the magic wand that touches grey 
 locks and makes them turn black again. 
 
 But the great thing about mothers for boys, 
 old and young, is the inspiration they seem to 
 have, in infinite reserve, for all good efforts. 
 When I was only a student, wavering and fear- 
 ful about the future, and away from home, some- 
 how my mother stayed with me, and kept me look- 
 ing straight ahead. Once my wavering became 
 very serious, and almost I had decided to give 
 up the hard struggle of college days and go 
 back ; but I thought of my mother. I could hear 
 her unspoken regrets for my lack of courage 
 and the wavering was at an end. Always does 
 the thought come, when I am in danger of mak- 
 ing a false step: "What will mother think?" 
 I feared her displeasure once; but now I fear 
 her pain. I simply could not inflict it knowingly. 
 I had rather die: yes, Jack I had rather die. 
 Do you yet realize what a wealth of inspiration 
 comes from the one you cherish enough to die 
 rather than hurt ? 
 
 I am no exception amongst sons. I am the 
 rule. The exceptions are not entirely human. 
 They are incapable of the highest and best. They 
 are men to be avoided. I had rather counsel a 
 girl to give up. her dreams of a home and chil- 
 dren, than counsel her to marry a bad son. He 
 
INSPIRATION 219 
 
 who does not love his mother will never love his 
 wife. 
 
 To arrive at understanding something of 
 God's love for his children one must begin by 
 understanding the depths of a mother's love. 
 To make a beginning of understanding God's 
 mercy, we need only study mothers. The one 
 thing about God that a mother cannot teach you 
 is an idea of His justice. Mothers are all essen- 
 tially unjust in what concerns the relations of 
 their children to others. They love too much to 
 be just. The scales are always tipped on the side 
 of their devotion. Even their harshness is only 
 assumed. It is love in another form than the 
 conventional. 
 
 If I stood in danger of a worldly dignity, the 
 shallowness of which I had sounded, and conse- 
 quently was far from wanting, I think it would 
 be hard to refuse, because my mother might like 
 it for me. She might only see her son's apparent 
 advancement. Then would I need an overpour- 
 ing of the grace of God. I am always fearing 
 that I am too selfish to be worthy of my mother ; 
 always asking if I am doing enough to show my 
 gratitude and Jove for her. But the blessing of 
 doing anything for a mother is half in the small- 
 ness of the thing that pleases her. But she, 
 she is always thinking that you do too much; 
 while you are worried over the fact that your best 
 
220 LETTERS TO 3"ACK 
 
 is too little. Who else is there in the world with 
 a love like that ? 
 
 Do you think that I am going to all this trouble 
 of writing these letters for your sake alone ? Be 
 undeceived, then. I am thinking more of the 
 pleasure they will give my mother than the possi- 
 ble good they may do to you. Indeed, your chief 
 claim on my affection is not that you are my 
 sister's son; but that you are my mother's 
 grandson. 
 
 Catholics have something in their religion that 
 others sadly lack. It is the idea of a Divine 
 Motherhood. In the litany of the Blessed Virgin 
 there are many beautiful titles: " Mystical 
 Rose," " Tower of David," " Tower of Ivory," 
 "Queen of Martyrs," "Virgin Most Faithful;" 
 but it is when we come to the Mother titles that 
 our hearts expand: "Mother Most Pure," 
 "Mother Undefiled," "Mother Most Amiable," 
 and then the all-embracing title of love ; "Mother 
 of our Creator." That title gives me a near 
 glimpse of God because I seem to almost touch 
 His throne. Before my eyes it changes into a 
 cradle; then into a seat on a Mother's lap; then 
 into a cross that has wide-stretched arms. On 
 Calvary the title changes again and I whisper: 
 "Mother of my Redeemer." If I became 
 unfaithful, the hardest thing to forget in my 
 religion would be the touch of that sorrow- 
 
INSPIRATION 221 
 
 ful Mother leading me to the foot of the Re- 
 deeming Cross. It was my own mother who 
 first introduced me to the Mother of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Jack, be a man; but to your mother never 
 cease to be a boy. She is following you with the 
 prayers that have no distractions because her 
 whole soul is in them. A mother's prayers for 
 her children are the most fervent prayers in the 
 world. Do not think that she ever leaves you 
 alone. She would be with you in a desert. She 
 has a soul in every child, and it constantly comes 
 and goes between them. She always keeps her 
 influence when the other influences count for 
 nothing. She has an instinctive sense of what 
 is right for you. I would trust that instinct 
 very far. When you stop thinking of your 
 mother, you usually stop thinking of what is 
 good. 
 
 Mothers have faults, but not to you. Mothers 
 err, but yours does not. Mothers become old and 
 faded, but yours remains always as you knew 
 her when you played and prayed at her knee. I 
 know I could be happy in Heaven without my 
 mother, because I know what Heaven is : but I 
 do not yet quite understand how. My father 
 was a good man. I honored, revered and loved 
 him, as I honor, revere and love his memory; 
 but when I think of the best in him, it is always 
 
222 INSPIRATION 
 
 that he knew the kind of a mother I had, and left 
 me chiefly to her care. I had a feeling that when 
 my father died I lost him ; living or dead, I know 
 I cannot lose my mother. 
 
XXIV 
 OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 NATURE alone is wonderful, but man often spoils 
 her wonders. 
 
 WHEN the pleasure we get through our gifts is 
 made the only thing desirable, we prostitute the 
 gifts. 
 
 RIGHT living, doing and thinking lower down the 
 net into the sea. 
 
OPPORTUNITIES 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 There is a play by Maurice Maeterlinck called 
 "The' Blue Bird," which brought forth storms 
 of criticism as well as zephyrs of praise. It is 
 quite materialistic, reflecting much of its author's 
 false philosophy; but at the same time it is a 
 beautiful production with more than one grain 
 of truth in it. Mr. Maeterlinck senses the idea 
 of "vocation" for each individual human being; 
 but, unfortunately, he mixes in enough fatalism 
 to destroy pretty nearly every vestige of free 
 will. One of the strongest scenes of the play is 
 laid in that vague "shadow-land" out of which 
 come the souls of humans. When the curtain 
 rises on this scene, the stage is shown full of 
 unborn babies, all playing together, all wishful 
 for the day of birth ; and all of them with some- 
 tiling to bring to the earth with them. One has 
 an invention, another a disease ; one has a war, 
 another a treaty of peace ; one has a virtue, an- 
 other a vice; and so on. Father Time arrives 
 with his boat headed earthward, and the children 
 rush to enter it ; but Time selects only those whom 
 
 225 
 
226 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 Fate has destined to be born that day. Each baby 
 who tries to enter the boat without his contribu- 
 tion of good or evil to the world, is sent back to 
 get it. 
 
 It is not hard to see that Maeterlinck has 
 Shakespeare's idea about Opportunities. The 
 great English poet believes that there is but one 
 for the whole lifetime of each individual. You 
 remember from your school days the famous 
 passage : "There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
 which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," 
 etc. Shakespeare would have every one of us 
 eternally watchful of his days, his hours and his 
 minutes, in fear lest fortune's knock come and 
 find him asleep. So each of us, according to the 
 poet's views, brings something into the world; 
 but, unlike Maeterlinck, Shakespeare believes 
 that the something is always good. Bishop Spal- 
 ding holds that Opportunities are spread out be- 
 fore every man in his daily life. He does not 
 believe in fate but he does believe in alertness. 
 He would have shown no patience with Maeter^- 
 linck had he read his play, and commented upon 
 it before his lamented death. 
 
 I believe with Shakespeare that each and every 
 human being has been given a certain something 
 to do in this world; and that the certain some- 
 thing is good, and for the benefit of the human 
 race. I believe that, in the eyes of God, the cer- 
 
OPPORTUNITIES 227 
 
 tain something which is given each one of us to 
 do is a very great thing, even though it may 
 appear very small to the eyes of men. I believe 
 that, if this something be well done, the reward 
 for the small will be as great as the reward for 
 the big. Human beings judge only from what 
 they see; and they see only what is material. 
 God alone sees the hidden things. It is only the 
 man who studies ants who realizes what wonder- 
 ful little creatures they are, and how extraordi- 
 nary are their works. When we carefully study 
 an ant-hill, we have a sort of dim realization of 
 how God sees men. Every little ant has its own 
 work to do and he does it. Every little man and 
 woman has his or her own work to do, and some- 
 times does not do it. When we do that work, we 
 contribute to the harmony of life. When we do 
 not, we lose our great Opportunity. 
 
 Shakespeare's idea is pretty near to the truth. 
 The Great Opportunity for each and every 
 human being is the opportunity to reach his or 
 her last end union with God. That Great Op- 
 portunity is the same for everybody. There is, 
 however, so I think, a special means given each 
 of us, not only to attain that end, but also, in 
 working for it, to help others attain it as well. 
 I would call this latter the accidental Oppor- 
 tunity. It is not entirely necessary, but we do 
 best when we have taken it. It is in grasping 
 
228 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 it that we secure the largest amount of happi- 
 ness in life and labor. 
 
 No one is born into this world to spread dis- 
 ease, to steal, to commit murder to sin in any 
 way. But we have always our 'free will, and 
 therefore the power to reject our opportunities. 
 I believe that the evils of the world, beginning 
 with the first, are all the result of rejected oppor- 
 tunities sins of some kind. It is inconceivable 
 that God laid out the world as men have made 
 it. It is too plain that what men had no chance 
 to interfere with is good and well ordered. No 
 evils spring from nature, but all spring from 
 men. In the Arctic regions one never gets a cold 
 until others come in ; and behold the disorder 
 starts at once. Nature alone is wonderful, but 
 man often spoils her wonders. I do not think 
 this would be, were men to grasp the knowledge 
 of their Great Opportunity. 
 
 You will hear men offer remedies by the thou- 
 sand for every ill from which society suffers. 
 You will, possibly, be impressed with the clever- 
 ness of many of them. But, if you keep your 
 spiritual eyes and ears open, you will note that 
 shallowness is their all-embracing fault. The 
 shallowness comes from the fact that most 
 worldly men never think of the real end of their 
 existence; never know anything of their Great 
 Opportunity, or ignore it. Consequently, they 
 
OPPORTUNITIES 229 
 
 place the " accidental" Opportunity, which is but 
 the means to an end, as the goal of their desires. 
 Money isn't given the rich for their own pleas- 
 ure. It is given to them only as stewards. You 
 may say the same of force, logic, business ability, 
 statesmanship, imagination, lucidity, fluency, 
 etc., etc. When the pleasure we get through our 
 gifts becomes the only thing we deem desirable, 
 we prostitute the gifts. We miss our Great 
 Opportunity. 
 
 Then what happens? Well, much the same 
 as would happen if you insisted on damming up 
 a river, because you wanted a lake for your own 
 enjoyment. You send the water off into streams 
 where none existed before. Things may read- 
 just themselves to the change ; but the readjust- 
 ment has to take into account a flooded country 
 that once was fertile; a barren river-bed that 
 once was beautiful ; the loss of pure water to a 
 country that once was blessed with it ; as well as 
 some greater things that all have not vision 
 enough to see. God's streams in men's hearts 
 and souls are properly located. We cannot inter- 
 fere with them for the sake of our own pleasures 
 without doing harm. Sins are dams on the chan- 
 nels of God's grace. The dams shut it off and 
 send it another way, that is not God's way. What 
 we keep of it changes because it is not flowing 
 and free. We make it ours, not God's. Stag- 
 
230 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 nant, its life is withdrawn from it. No sparkle 
 of the sunshine on its bosom can make up for the 
 loss of the riches in its depths. Happily, some 
 freshness is constantly coming in, which is called 
 "Sufficient Grace," so there is always the Oppor- 
 tunity to get our riches back again. To do that 
 we have only to destroy the dam. 
 
 There is only one "great" accidental Oppor- 
 tunity given us. That is implied in the idea of 
 "vocation." But there are countless minor op- 
 portunities which, if grasped, may still suffice to 
 bring us to our legitimate end. How does the 
 one great, or the many minor opportunities come 
 to us ? Through the medium of our daily duties. 
 We may not know when, but we surely know how. 
 He who honestly tries to live right, to do right, 
 to think right, is not going to miss his "voca- 
 tion" and therefore is not going to miss his 
 opportunities. Many of them, the minor ones, 
 he has not even dreamed of. Right living, doing, 
 and thinking lower down the net into the sea. 
 Many fish may come into it; some we never 
 thought to catch, some we never knew existed. 
 
XXV 
 
 LOYALTY 
 
 GOD tolerates the worst of us ; but men are merci- 
 less. We cannot live with a stone in the breast 
 that beats like a heart, but that feels non of the 
 higher emotions. 
 
 WHEN Loyalty leaves this earth there will be 
 nothing worth while remaining; for the joy will 
 have gone out of life. 
 
LOYALTY 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 Perhaps this letter should have been written 
 long ago, instead of being left till near the end. 
 But I had it in mind all the time ; and only today 
 it seemed to take shape and call for its place 
 with the others. I am not sorry that I waited, 
 because the waiting gives the lesson a better 
 chance to be remembered ; asking your attention, 
 as it does, when there is little to follow that might 
 make you forget. If you did forget all the rest, 
 and only remembered the lesson of Loyalty, I 
 think my task would still have been successfully 
 accomplished. 
 
 The most touching short story I ever read was 
 about a beggar and his dog. I found it when I 
 was a little boy, cried over it, and never quite 
 forgot it. I think the story did a great deal for 
 every dog I owned ; because it made me like dogs. 
 The story itself was a very simple one: only a 
 bit of pathos about a beggar-man and his lonely, 
 hard life, and the loyalty of a little mongrel, 
 who loved him so much that he refused every 
 chance for dog comfort, in order to be with him. 
 The beggar lost his dog only when the loyal brute 
 
 233 
 
234 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 gave up his life for his master ; and, in his dog 
 way, seemed to die happy in doing it. The story 
 taught me my first lesson in Loyalty. I am glad 
 it taught me the lesson young. Had I waited for 
 men to teach it to me, I fear I would never have 
 learned it. Is it not odd that from so lowly a 
 source should come so noble a lesson? Yet not 
 very odd after all. There was a neighbor of 
 mine in Michigan a lady who knew where 
 beautiful orchids grew wild ; but she would never 
 tell the secret. Often she was kind enough to 
 share her treasures with the Rector, but never the 
 knowledge of where the Eector could find them 
 for himself. "It is the natural place for such 
 precious things to grow," was all she would say, 
 "in a black swamp." It was like that with my 
 first lesson in Loyalty. I found it in the story 
 of a dog and a mongrel at that. 
 
 The pitiful part of the story lay in the fact 
 that the beggar had nothing except the dog that 
 remained true to him, and therefore had nothing 
 to bffer the dog in return for loyalty except 
 his love ; but the dog had all of that. And with 
 it he was happy and contented, albeit often hun- 
 gry. I wonder how many human loyalties would 
 stand the test of hunger ? 
 
 It is a sad thing to say, my dear Jack but 
 there are many sad truths that Loyalty is not 
 as popular a virtue today as it once was. The 
 
LOYALTY 235 
 
 days of Chivalry were the days of Loyalty. The 
 dawn of commercialism brought about its decay. 
 There is a great picture in Sir Walter Scott's 
 " Marmion." It is the picture of Douglas look- 
 ing into the eyes of his departing guest, Marmion 
 himself, whom he despised, but had nevertheless 
 entertained because he had been sent by the 
 King. Douglas refused Marmion 's hand, and 
 gave his reasons without hesitation : 
 
 "My manors, halls and towers have still 
 Been open at my Sovereign's will, 
 To each one whom he lists. 
 My castles are my King's alone 
 From turret to foundation stone. 
 The hand of Douglas is his own; 
 And never shall, in friendly grasp, 
 The hand of such as Marmion clasp." 
 
 It took a pretty fine grade of Loyalty in that 
 stern old warrior, to entertain a man he so 
 despised; but he was loyal to the slightest wish 
 of his King. Such as Douglas were most of the 
 knights of old. 
 
 " Business is business", as a motto, has driven 
 out of many modern men all idea of Loyalty. 
 Business says that it has to be cold-blooded. 
 Perhaps it has. I do not know. And yet I think 
 there might be found in a business man's heart 
 some room for a warmer feeling than that of 
 
236 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 measured selfishness. I think that business men 
 pay dearly for their adherence to their motto, by 
 the loss of Loyalty that results amongst their 
 helpers. I can understand why bees kill the 
 drones as soon as they may safely get rid of them ; 
 but humans are never beyond redemption. God 
 tolerates the worst of us ; but men are merciless. 
 We are surely like the servant whose story Christ 
 so effectively narrated to a crowd of listeners, 
 the servant who was forgiven an enormous debt 
 by his master, but would not forgive his fellow- 
 servant a few pennies. " Business is business"? 
 Yes, but perhaps we do not realize that " busi- 
 ness" does not yet really know its own best inter- 
 ests. I think it would be "good business" to be 
 human, for we should be paid for it in Loyalty. 
 When Loyalty leaves this earth, my dear Jack, 
 there will be nothing worth while remaining ; for 
 the joy will have gone out of life. The reason 
 we are so unhappy today, in the midst of pros- 
 perity and comfort, is because we are losing 
 Loyalty. We are getting so that we do not 
 understand it. We are becoming all selfish. The 
 beggar-man of my story loved his dog, and so 
 the dog loved the beggar-man. If a master has 
 no love for those who serve him, how can he 
 expect them to be loyal to him? Love is the 
 foundation of Loyalty. Alas! Love is leaving 
 us "Business is business". One may, of course, 
 
LOYALTY 237 
 
 not love his master, yet be loyal to him ; but such 
 a man loves God, and his Loyalty is securely 
 founded. 
 
 It seems to me that Loyalty is the thing that 
 should be most appreciated in business. I think 
 it is, in spite of mottoes to the contrary. Every- 
 one with a heart is touched and made better by 
 Loyalty. We cannot live with a stone in the 
 breast that beats like a heart, but that feels none 
 of the higher emotions. I knew a bishop, God 
 rest his kind soul, who used to preach " regu- 
 larity" to his students who always smiled at His 
 Lordship's discourse. The smile never escaped 
 the Bishop. ' * I know what you are thinking of, ' ' 
 he would say, "but you are wrong. You only 
 imagine that I do not practice what I preach. 
 But I am at least regularly irregular." I would 
 rather be "regularly irregular," as he was, than 
 so regular that every problem had to be solved 
 with the unbendingness of the multiplication 
 table. Even where regularity is made the foun- 
 dation of a life, as in a monastery, there must 
 be days when it is partially forgotten. But then 
 the exception fits admirably into the rule; and 
 irregularity becomes, in a way, regular. Christ 
 would have condemned St. Peter because of his 
 denial, if He had followed the rule ; but He did 
 not. He knew St. Peter's heart, and saw Loyalty 
 in it. So He made him Prince of the Apostles. 
 
238 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 Would you have me sum up all that I have 
 written in all these letters, into one single coun- 
 sel ? Then hear it : be loyal loyal to your God, 
 loyal to your country, loyal to your ideals, loyal 
 to your work, loyal to your superiors, loyal to 
 yourself. 
 
XXVI 
 BURDEN BEARERS 
 
 COLD marble repays nothing, when the body be- 
 neath it is only a lump of clay. Surely those who 
 received nothing from time for bearing a world's 
 burdens are entitled to justice from the Eternity 
 that shall replace time. 
 
THE BURDEN BEARERS 
 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 Last night, anew, I picked up a copy of Seumas 
 McManus' " Ballads of a Country Boy," and 
 started to dip here and there into it. My wander- 
 ing eye lit on a poem that had escaped my first 
 reading of these fine ballads. It was called "The 
 Silly Truen." I did not know what a "Truen" 
 was supposed to be ; but a foot-note told me that 
 it is a bird called "Corn-craik," which in Irish 
 is known as a "Truen," meaning "strength." 
 But the bird belies its name; for it is a thin, 
 ungainly bird, with weak, spindly legs. Its pecu- 
 liarity is to lie on its .back on the grass, with its 
 legs toward the sky, and keep crying out some- 
 thing that sounds, in Irish, like "strength with 
 strength." The people have a saying that the 
 Truen means to say: "What wonderful strength 
 for two little feet of one poor bird to hold up all 
 the skies!" Mr. McManus, in his ballad, rebukes 
 the "Silly Truen" for his foolishness, frightens 
 him to his feet and to the wing. "And lo! the 
 skies moved not one bit when his heels were 
 drawn away." But this fact made no change in 
 
 241 
 
242 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 the " Silly Truen V ideas as to his strength, for 
 
 . . -. . "from the distance, floating easy, came his 
 
 creaking cries 
 Oh, wonderful! one poor bird's feet to hold up 
 
 all the shies!" 
 
 Well, Jack, I sympathize with the Truen. I 
 like the bird in spite of his mistaken idea about 
 his strength. I wish men might get the- same 
 idea, though in a somewhat different form. Bar- 
 ring out the absurd, I wish more people would 
 act as if, on each and every one of them rested 
 the burdens of all. That would make for a 
 greater feeling of responsibility in the human 
 race ; and, with responsibility, would surely come 
 greater men and women and more real charac- 
 ter. It is the feeling of responsibility that forces 
 men and women to the front. Responsibility 
 produces the great poets, the great essayists, 
 the great statesmen, the great generals. It 
 is the feeling of responsibility in people, the 
 idea that they are born to be the Burden 
 Bearers, that is to be thanked, under God, for 
 all the morality and goodness and learning in the 
 world. Some of the best and greatest of men 
 were probably as silly as the Truen about their 
 "strength"; but, like the Truen, you could dem- 
 onstrate nothing to them ; and they went on act- 
 ing as Burden Bearers. So they did things, and 
 
THE BURDEN BEAKEKS 243 
 
 they do things, and they will go on doing things, 
 till the trump of Gabriel sounds. And God 
 speed them, if the things they do are good and 
 beneficial ! 
 
 It does not hurt others a bit, but it helps them 
 much, if some people insist on being Burden 
 Bearers. But it does hurt the Burden Bearers 
 themselves. It hurts them very much, and 
 always in proportion to the greatness of the bur- 
 den they think they must carry. Then, many of 
 the Burden Bearers are not far wrong about the 
 fact of their vocation. God, without doubt, 
 inspires still. He has selected many Burden 
 Bearers and they know it, and live up to it. 
 These are the people who are happy in bearing 
 the burdens, and could not be happy without 
 them. They feel the weight : their backs are sore : 
 their limbs are tired; but take off the burdens 
 and they die. Friends tell them to retire, that 
 they have done their work, that they needs must 
 rest in their old age; but friends waste 'their 
 breath, for these Burden Bearers cannot retire, 
 cannot rest, and do not see that they grow old. 
 The Burden is life to them ; and a body free from 
 the weight is only a body looking, with wistful, 
 tired eyes, toward the grave. 
 
 In the ranks of the human Truens are Popes, 
 Emperors, Kings, Priests, Patriots, Pleaders, 
 Enthusiasts, Statesmen, Discoverers, Charity 
 
244 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 Workers, Missionaries, Writers, Teachers and 
 oh, the wonder of the numbers of them ! Fathers 
 and Mothers. These are the Burden Bearers, 
 some of them called " Fools for their pains"; 
 some of them fools in reality; but the majority 
 of them God's servants who die in His harness, 
 glad to wear it to the end. 
 
 Mr. McManus could frighten off his " Silly 
 Truen," but he could not change its sad and rasp- 
 ing cry. The world may often frighten its Bur- 
 den Bearers, but it cannot keep them silent nor 
 take away the consciousness of their tasks. They 
 are themselves as sad as the cry of the Truen, and 
 sometimes speak unpleasantly enough, too; but 
 they are in a sad business, and in sad business 
 the voice takes on no note of music. The per- 
 sistency of the Burden Bearers is a marvel ; but 
 neither rack nor rope nor axe can ever reach an 
 inspired idea. 
 
 Of course, the Burden Bearers have been 
 nuisances to a great many people; and this is 
 another strange thing about them that the 
 heavier the burden they insist on bearing, the 
 greater nuisances they are to those who should 
 be bearing part of it themselves, and the harder 
 some people try to get rid of them. The whole 
 might of the Roman Empire was invoked to rid 
 the world of the Apostles, and it succeeded ; but 
 their burdens were shifted to other backs, and 
 
THE BURDEN BEARERS 245 
 
 these remained in spite of the Roman Empire. 
 But the Roman Empire does not remain. 
 It is dangerous to meddle with the Burden 
 Bearers. 
 
 Another strange thing about the Burden Bear- 
 ers is often found in their seeming inconsistency. 
 That is because they are human, and because 
 humanity has the bad habit of not recognizing 
 its own limitations. It illogically demands per- 
 fection where perfection is not possible. In 
 almost every case the Burden is finer and better 
 than the one who carries it ; but he carries it in 
 spite of that. The Abbe Roux puts the case well 
 for the religious Burden Bearer: "This man 
 has his defects; yet he cherishes truth and de- 
 fends justice. And petty souls exclaim: 'Oh, 
 the inconsistency! Oh, the scandal!' But pious 
 hearts say : 'Oh, the native nobility of the man ! 
 Oh, the happy contradiction of the Christian!' ' 
 
 Do I counsel you to be a Burden Bearer? I 
 do, if you have a burden that you feel you should 
 bear. I do, if you feel that you have none. Get 
 a burden and bear it. By which I mean: take 
 unto yourself a responsibility for the sake of 
 others. Good men and women should bear bur- 
 dens not their own ; for there are so many who 
 will not bear even their own. The Burden 
 Bearers serve to equalize things. Since equality 
 is not a possibility, the Burden Bearer becomes a 
 
246 LETTERS TO 'JACK 
 
 necessity; or the world goes fast to ruin. He 
 who does "just enough" falls short of doing 
 what is required of him. The "just enough" 
 man is the man who is only tolerable. It takes 
 more than that to be acceptable, even in ordinary 
 society. 
 
 . It is their souls that enable the Burden Bear- 
 ers to carry their loads. The fact of the existence 
 of Burden Bearers is a proof of the existence of 
 the soul. The fact of their carrying burdens is 
 a proof of the soul's immortality, or "what's the 
 use ?" There is no recompense in time that could 
 ever repay them. But even if time could repay, 
 where and when has it done so ? Columbus died 
 in prison. Peter was crucified and Paul be- 
 headed. Socrates drank of the hemlock. Milton 
 was blind and Shakespeare to the end only a 
 strolling actor. A Pope who "loved justice and 
 hated iniquity" found it quite within the ordi- 
 nary that he should "die in exile." Andreas 
 Hofer was shot. Joan of Arc was burnt at the 
 stake. Abraham Lincoln and Garcia Moreno fell 
 before the assassin's pistol. Since when was it 
 that time repaid while yet there was time to 
 repay? Cold marble repays nothing, when the 
 body beneath it is only a lump of clay. Surely 
 those who received nothing from time for bear- 
 ing a world's burdens, are entitled to justice from 
 the Eternity that shall replace time. 
 
THE BURDEN BEARERS 247 
 
 Do I counsel you to be a Burden Bearer ? I do, 
 because I counsel you to be good, and wise, and 
 noble, and patriotic. I counsel you to have a 
 heart; and I know that you have a soul. If I 
 did not counsel you to be a Burden Bearer, I 
 should be thus counselling you to let the world 
 have its way with you, which God forbid! 
 "Our soul" (again I quote the Abbe Roux), 
 "which the world pretends to divert with its van- 
 ities, resembles the child which is consoled by 
 the offer of a rattle instead of a star/' To have 
 the star, Jack, you must in some degree be a 
 Burden Bearer. 
 
XXVII 
 VISION 
 
 How good God is to let us regret; for by regrets 
 we keep humble and loving; by regrets we try to 
 do the new tasks better. * 
 
VISION 
 My dear Jack: 
 
 I find it inexpressibly hard to write this last 
 letter and I do not know the reason why. Some- 
 how, the others came easy enough and I never 
 once lost my interest in them or forgot that they 
 were the sweetest kind of labor a labor of love. 
 While writing them I was always seeing a thou- 
 sand Jacks, young, aspiring, full of life, vigor 
 and happy curiosity about the future that is fast 
 opening to their vision. It seemed so well worth 
 while to give these thousands all the time I dared 
 snatch from a multitude of duties, that I was 
 full of regret because I could not give them also 
 the thought that they deserved. It was a droll 
 experience to see my own head on these thou- 
 sands of shoulders, my own head as it was at 
 twenty. I tried to speak to them as I would have 
 liked someone to have spoken to me when I 
 needed advice and counsel. Twenty ? Ah me, I 
 have more than doubled that today, my forty- 
 sixth birthday; and I find myself sad enough 
 to think of the things I might have done better, 
 the missed opportunities. I sadly feel the hope- 
 
 251 
 
252 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 less urging to try the tasks of twenty all over 
 again. 
 
 How good God is to let us regret: for by re- 
 grets we keep humble and loving ; by regrets we 
 try to do the new tasks better. It is only those 
 who have made a complete failure of life who 
 are without regrets, since only the complete fail- 
 ures are fools enough to think that they did all 
 things well. I dare to believe that, next best to 
 hope for the future, is regret for the past. With- 
 out regrets would there ever have been an Augus- 
 tine? Is it wrong to think that Peter's impetu- 
 ous mistakes were allowed by his Master in order 
 to form a part preparation for his long and 
 fruitful apostleship ? I always find a solace, as 
 well as pain, in my regrets ; a strange strength 
 in thinking how I might have avoided them; 
 withal, a strong desire (which I delight to think 
 is holy) to warn and counsel others, that their 
 regrets may be fewer than my own but never 
 a wish that they should live to forty and be 
 entirely without regrets. I suppose that it is this 
 mixed feeling that makes it hard for me to write 
 the last letter. I know it is the last and should 
 be the last, but it will always seem a premature 
 ending to me who, at more than forty, love the 
 thousands of Jacks at twenty. 
 
 Youth is the age of visions, for it is in youth 
 that we stand on the mountain top and look out 
 
VISION 253 
 
 over the plain of our future journey and youth 
 never looks behind. Age loves retrospection; 
 and, quite naturally, youth abhors it. Success 
 depends on vision more than we know. The 
 temptation of youth is to limit that vision to the 
 smiling valley at his feet, which is the cause of 
 most of youth's failures. Youth sees only the 
 pleasures of the immediate future. He takes no 
 account of the other valleys that lie behind the 
 high and rocky hills and stretch so far, far away. 
 Youth sees nothing of the distance when song 
 comes up from the valley. Its birds are calling 
 and its zephyrs blow sweet on his face, but 
 Youth looks out not at all, but runs to his joy, 
 and to his regrets. Had he only lifted his eyes 
 to the hills ; had he only counted the cost of the 
 climbing; had he only anticipated the deserts, 
 but, above all, had he only seen the gray line on 
 the horizon and marked the valley of death, with 
 the hopeful blue of the sky above it, he would 
 have understood. Then for him the smiling val- 
 ley would have been what God intended it should 
 be a place of preparation for the journey, 
 where the trees grow fruit that, once gathered, 
 lasts until the end ; where the streams offer liv- 
 ing waters that take out of the desert half its 
 terrors. 
 
 Oh, thousands of Jacks, men in the making, 
 children of that loving Father who calls from 
 
254 LETTERS TO JACK 
 
 the blue sky above the gray desert line, lift up 
 your eyes and hearts above the valley and see. 
 At twenty Life spreads out before you. Take 
 an account of it, and know that it is not play 
 but work, and yet not work but play ; for work 
 well done is pleasure, and pleasure well ordered 
 is part of life's labor. Vision you need at twenty 
 the wide vision, the long vision, the sweeping 
 vision, the vision splendid. 
 
SHORT STORIES BY MONSIGNOR KELLEY 
 
 "The City and the World" 
 
 By the Rt. Reverend Francis Clement Kelley, D.D., 
 President of the Catholic Church Extension Society 
 
 IT ISN'T just accidental that many of the best stories 
 written deal with the seamy side of life. Maybe it's 
 because we understand them better because they so clearly 
 mirror troubles of bur own that stories of that kind 
 impress us most. Surely, if measured by such a standard, 
 a priest's life, of all lives, ought to be about the least inter- 
 esting from a story standpoint. How, then, was anyone to 
 dream that here, in the very innermost recess of a priest's 
 emotions, in the pulsing heart-throbs of a famous mission- 
 ary's life, lay the perfect setting for a wonderful story and 
 the background for an inspiring lesson? It's an entirely 
 different kind of religious story simple, straightforward, 
 intensely human. And, mind you, it's only one of fourteen 
 fascinating, all-absorbing short stories that readers now can 
 secure in this beautifully illustrated, cloth-bound volume. 
 
 You have a real surprise in store for you when you read 
 "The City and the World." You'll find that Monsignor 
 Kelley's short stories are remarkably interesting and enter- 
 taining, too. You're sure to enjoy reading every single 
 one of the entire fifteen in this volume, which contains the 
 remarkable stories, "The Resurrection of Alta" and "The 
 Flaming Cross." 
 
 "The City and the World" will be mailed to any address 
 postpaid on receipt of One Dollar ($1.00). 
 
 Write 
 
 EXTENSION PRESS 
 
 West Jackson Boulevard CHICAGO, ILL. 
 
MAIN CIRCULATION 
 
 ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 
 RENEW BOOKS BY CALLING 642-3405 
 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 rrrrrriVc QNJLN 
 
 ^M 
 
 
 UonKn ~'^ 1 w 
 
 rto -i 3 iqqii 
 
 
 
 OLi ! J P^ ' 
 
 ._, ,-._? r\cp' 
 
 -. " . ;''.: ->^'- : '^ L - 
 ' ".',. u ^ 1 
 
 A TTTH ni^r P T DP 
 
 i - 'G/l 
 
 
 AU 1 U JJl JL LiKL w ^r 
 
 1^.94 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORMNO.DD6 BERKELEY, CA 94720