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 HOW TO DO IT. 
 
 BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 
 
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 How to Talk ; How to Write ; How to Read ; How to go 
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 WHAT CAREER? or, The Choice of a Vocation and the Use 
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 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 TEN PAPERS ON THE 
 
 CHOICE OF A VOCATION AND 
 THE USE OF TIME. 
 
 BY E. E. HALE, 
 <o 
 
 AUTHOR OF " HOW TO DO IT." 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 1878. 
 
 c /(\
 
 Copyright, 
 BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1878. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
 
 TO 
 
 MY BRETHREN 
 OF 
 
 ALPHA DELTA PHI, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. 
 
 EDWARD E. HALE. 
 
 ROXBURY, MASS., 
 
 December IT, 1877.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE LEADERS LEAD 1 
 
 II. THE SPECIALTIES 29 
 
 III. NOBLESSE OBLIGE 51 
 
 IV. THE MIND'S MAXIMUM * . . 75 
 
 V. A THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 127 
 
 VI. CHARACTER 155 
 
 VII. RESPONSIBILITIES OF YOUNG MEN . . . 180 
 
 VIII. STUDY OUTSIDE SCHOOL 204 
 
 . IX. THE TRAINING OF MEN 221 
 
 X. EXERCISE . . . 251
 
 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 I. 
 
 THE LEADERS LEAD. 
 
 As ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE CONVENTION OF ALPHA 
 DELTA PHI, AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE, MAY 24, 1877. 
 
 "\T7HO are the leaders of society, gentlemen, 
 
 and how shall they be found ? 
 This question, in one way or another, is of 
 course at the bottom of all questions of govern- 
 ment. As we live, it is often vaguely and 
 often falsely answered, because people are 
 misled by the analogies of European litera- 
 ture and history, analogies which must de- 
 ceive, in social conditions so utterly new as 
 ours. Our President is not a king ; our people 
 is not a third estate ; our churches are not 
 hierarchies ; our aristocracy is not hereditary. 
 There is no resemblance between the duty of 
 the governor of an American State and that 
 l
 
 2 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 of the prefect of a French department or the 
 lord-lieutenant of an English county. For 
 such reasons, it becomes impossible to trans- 
 fer from the older systems of government to 
 our systems even the commonplaces, or what 
 are called the axioms, of their political and 
 social economy. And the attempt to make 
 such transfer, on the part of half-trained 
 writers, confuses and in the end embarrasses 
 our administration of our own affairs. It is 
 indeed the origin of half that pessimism which 
 tells us in each hour that we are going to 
 perdition. A prominent English writer said 
 to me once : " Of course you know that there 
 never was any thing we call a nation which 
 extended from one ocean to another." I said : 
 " I know it very well ; but our exact business 
 is to show that what we call a nation can 
 extend from one ocean to the other." But I 
 had to add, that " what we call a nation is 
 something world-wide apart from what you 
 call a nation, and that is the reason why you 
 never understand us." I might have added, I 
 suppose, " why we never understand you."
 
 WHAT CAREER? 3 
 
 This sort of vagueness, not to say misappre- 
 hension, affects the question, Who are our 
 Leaders ; where are they at work, and how 
 are they to be found? Thomas Carlyle the 
 especial absolutist of our time growls out 
 his dissatisfaction with all democratic systems 
 of finding leaders. Other grumblers and 
 growlers of his own nation, or of other nations, 
 take up the easy refrain, and on the same or 
 on another key repeat the dissatisfaction with 
 what is. I am afraid that young men who 
 read the journals much, not having yet found 
 out the best ways of saving time, are apt to be 
 unduly impressed by the weeping and wailing 
 and gnashing of teeth of those writers for the 
 press, who find nothing good outside the walls 
 of their own offices. In the vain attempt to 
 apply European precedents to American real- 
 ities, such writers, especially if they have been 
 educated abroad, tell us, week by week, that 
 the Pope is quite wrong, and the Patriarch of 
 the Greek Church equally wrong ; that the 
 Roman Catholic Church is wholly wrong, and 
 that Protestantism is not worth mention ; that
 
 4 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the Emperor of Russia is wrong, while the 
 Sultan was never right ; that Count Bismark is 
 lamentably wrong, Marshal McMahon entirely 
 mistaken, and Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone 
 each as absurd as the other ; that General Grant 
 was all wrong, and that Mr. Hayes is all 
 wrong ; that no man of any sense cares for Gov- 
 ernor Robinson or Governor Rice ; and that 
 there is not a city in America which has any 
 notion of what government is or should be. 
 The oracles are dumb, the lamp of God has 
 burned out, if indeed there be any God, which 
 they say is doubtful. There is no open vision. 
 From such meanings unutterable the educated 
 young men of America would sink back, de- 
 spairing, but that always in the same issue of 
 the same journal, whichever it may be, there 
 appears one gleam of golden hope. For it 
 seems that in that particular office, by the 
 united graces of natural selection, of evolu- 
 tion, and of accident, there is one clear fountain 
 of absolute truth and absolute wisdom. From 
 that office weekly will trickle forth rills of wise 
 direction, sufficient for one week for the salva-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 5 
 
 tion of the land. If only the people will 
 subscribe liberally to this particular journal, 
 whichever it may be, all will be well ! 
 
 Now it happens, in fact, that our fathers, of 
 the era of the Revolution and the generation 
 after, -relieved us from many of the European 
 dangers and evils. Grant that we have many 
 of our own: of course we have. Still it is a 
 shame that we should be taught that the par- 
 ticular evils of Europe are on our shoulders ; 
 and that the great grievance of all in their 
 affairs is a grievance in ours. The grievance 
 in their affairs is doubtless what Carlyle says 
 it is. " The man who raw," he says, " is not 
 king. He ought to be king. Canning, cunning, 
 konig, man who is able, ought to be the 
 man who reigns." You cannot say this is true, 
 whether in England, in Germany, in Italy, or 
 in Spain. You cannot say that the Prince of 
 Wales, or the Emperor of Germany, or King 
 Victor Emmanuel, or the King Alfonso is the 
 ablest man in either country. If then you 
 stick to the theory that the king is the ruler, 
 you must own that the time is out of joint,
 
 6 WHAT CAREER'? 
 
 and that the world has not hit on a good way 
 to find its leaders. But when you come over 
 to America, it is not the President who rules, 
 it is not the governor of a State who rules. 
 It is the people who rule. And though in 
 England your mournful poet may sing of 
 unknown 
 
 " Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed ; " 
 
 of " village Hampdens," or " inglorious Miltons," 
 it is by no means certain that we have any 
 inglorious Miltons or village Hampdens. It is 
 certain that our system attempts to keep open 
 the lines of promotion, which the systems of 
 the Old World generally try to close. Because 
 we keep them open, certainly so far as we keep 
 them open, we shall find the real correction 
 and the truly conservative element in our 
 affairs. I believe, gentlemen, that we shall find 
 in our history, and in our present fortune, that 
 
 THE LEADERS LEAD. 
 
 To justify this thesis will be my effort in 
 this hour.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 7 
 
 I. It will probably be found that in all his- 
 tory Mr. Canning's epigram is true, that the 
 horse drags the cart, and the cart does not push 
 the horse along. After the glamour of the time, 
 after the smoke and dust have passed away, 
 history will probably always show that certain 
 men and women, who, as the Book of Proverbs 
 says, no man of their own time has much cared 
 for, have still been they who have saved the 
 city. Even in those complicated arrangements 
 of the Old World, your Napoleon and Cromwell, 
 your Calvin and Luther, your Hildebrand and 
 other Gregories, men who were not born to 
 thrones, have a very uncomfortable way of 
 tumbling thrones over, and, if they choose, 
 erecting others in their places. Take such a 
 life as that of Bernard of Clairvaux. Not long 
 after William the Conqueror landed in England, 
 Bernard was born in Burgundy. A young 
 man, he chose a monastic life. A young man, 
 only twenty-five years old, he chose twelve 
 companions, and, with their spades and hoes on 
 their shoulders, they marched into a wilderness 
 of banditti to found a convent. They sep- 
 arated themselves from all command, you say.
 
 8 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 They sank into lazy and selfish seclusion. 
 That is because you take the word " king " as 
 being the only word that means "ruler." In 
 fact, Bernard was a born Leader. He could 
 not help leading. From the Wormwood valley 
 in which he settled, he called up the " Clara 
 Vallis," the Clairvaux, which was, for cen- 
 turies, the centre of light to Europe. From that 
 centre he sent out like-organized emigration into 
 a hundred other centres of barbarism and plun- 
 der. Before he died, he was the centre of the 
 education of his time : and that meant the gov- 
 ernment, nay, it seems to have meant even the 
 agriculture and art, of his time. The little 
 kings referred their quarrels to this leader of 
 men. Conclave after conclave asked him to be 
 Pope. But he knew, as he said, that he was 
 more Pope than the Popes he made. Such a 
 man as that changes the social order of Europe, 
 introduces a new civilization, starts crusades on 
 their career whether of darkness or of light, 
 sets up kings, and throws them down. Yet 
 when you have to put him in a class, he is 
 neither emperor, king, duke, nor prince. He 
 is something much more than any one of them :
 
 WHAT CAREER? 9 
 
 he is a Leader of men. The Leader leads, and 
 the " thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, 
 powers," meekly and orderly obey. 
 
 But it is not my business to show that the 
 Old World offers to all men alike the field and 
 chance for a noble ambition. The difficulties 
 are legion which have been reared there, to 
 prevent the man of native genius from making 
 his way to the front. And the contrivances 
 are endless, as all the satirists show, by which 
 incompetent men are bolstered up to power, 
 the lame pigeon, as Paley said, taking the rule 
 of the flock. I am very sorry for them. But 
 my business is not with them. My effort now 
 is to show that, thanks to the system to which 
 we are born, which is so natural that we forget 
 that it exists, these difficulties fall away with 
 us, and these contrivances are futile. With us 
 the lines of promotion are open. In that is the 
 secret of our successes. To keep them open is 
 the first duty of our self-preservation. Because 
 they are open, and as long as they are kept 
 open, with us 
 
 THE LEADERS LEAD. 
 i*
 
 10 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 There is a pathetic story of a lad named 
 MacDonald, who was born in Oregon ;^and who, 
 before he was a man, was shipwrecked on the 
 shore of Japan. According to the cruel cus- 
 tom of the old government of that country, he 
 was caged, in the province where his life was 
 saved, and kept there as a prisoner indefinitely. 
 It was while he was so held, that an American 
 Commodore touched at Nagasaki, and in an 
 interview on the deck of his own ship was 
 struck by a Japanese official. The Japanese 
 government was alarmed. They wanted to 
 know just what they had done ; and they sent 
 for young MacDonald to ask what was the 
 grade of a commodore ; how many grades of 
 officers were below him. He told them, with 
 precision, of sailors, midshipmen, passed-mid- 
 shipmen, commanders, lieutenants, captains. 
 Above these in their order, he said, was the 
 commodore. Then they asked how many 
 grades were above a commodore. It was before 
 the times of admirals, and young MacDonald 
 told them of the Navy-Board, the Secretary 
 of the Navy, and the President.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 11 
 
 " ' And who is above the President ? ' I told 
 them," said he, " that the people was above the 
 President. But of that they could make 
 nothing." 
 
 " Of that they could make nothing ? " No : 
 of that they could make nothing. Men trained 
 under a pure feudal system, of which the late 
 Japanese government gave the finest illustra- 
 tion to our time, never can make any thing of 
 this central principle. I do not remember any 
 writer of note in England, in our time, who has 
 succeeded in grasping this idea. The popular 
 conception given in the English books is, that 
 our system is an elective monarchy with fixed 
 periods of reign. The analogy is constantly 
 sought between the President of the nation, 
 and the king of a kingdom. There is no 
 analogy. The President is the servant of a 
 sovereign. The king is a person, who, however 
 selected, after he is selected, is the fountain of 
 honor, and at least the arbiter between the 
 leading subjects. The distinction between a 
 citizen and a subject is equally wide. In the 
 feudal or European systems, no man may do
 
 12 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 any thing unless he is permitted. In the 
 democratic or American system, any man may 
 do any thing unless he is forbidden. The 
 difference is as great as that between starlight 
 and noon. In Germany, I may not live in a 
 town twenty-four hours without asking per- 
 mission of the police ; I may not build a carriage 
 unless I have a permit as a carriage-builder ; I 
 may not write a recipe unless I am licensed as 
 a physician ; I may not tell you that you sung 
 b flat instead of b natural unless I am licensed 
 as a music-teacher ; nay, I may not preach the 
 very gospel of good tidings unless I am li- 
 censed as a preacher. But in America I may 
 preach, if you will listen ; and if you will not 
 listen, I may preach to the winds. I may build 
 as many coaches as I like, only if the wheels 
 are not round the people will not ride in them. 
 The function of oversight or command with 
 us is in the hands of the people, unorganized 
 and without form ; while under those systems 
 of government it belongs to the political au- 
 thorities. 
 
 From this it results that fully nine-tenths
 
 WHAT CAREER? 13 
 
 of the functions of political government in the 
 Old World are retained here by the people, 
 by the sovereign, in his own hands. Only 
 one-tenth, then, of the force, talent, or genius 
 needed for political administration in the Old 
 World is required here in the same service. 
 Whole bureaux or departments of administra- 
 tion in the service of the Old World are un- 
 known in our arrangement, and only one-tenth 
 goes there. We need no department of worship, 
 for the people administers the Church. We need, 
 in most States, no department of the higher 
 education: the people administers the colleges. 
 Generally speaking, we need no department of 
 commerce, or of agriculture. We need but a 
 small military bureau, because the army is not 
 one-twentieth part of the army of any other first- 
 rate power. The people builds the railroads, the 
 steamships, and orders the agricultural contests, 
 the rewards, and inventions. Generally speak- 
 ing, we need no department of fine arts or public 
 amusements. The people builds the Museum, 
 arranges the School of Art, crowns the painter 
 or the sculptor. The people opens the Lyceum,
 
 14 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the Theatre, or the Opera, and the people closes 
 
 them. 
 
 
 
 What men choose still to call "the Govern- 
 ment " or " the Administration " reduces itself 
 to what has a mere handful of attributes, if con- 
 trasted with what Government must claim in 
 absolute or in feudal systems. Let us not 'be 
 deceived by the accident of a name. Let us 
 not suppose that because we call the bureaux of 
 political administration "the Government," it 
 is only they who govern. And let us not make 
 the mistake of the Old World critics, of sup- 
 posing that it is among them only that our 
 leaders are to be found. 
 
 II. In simple society, the Leaders, of course, 
 come to the front, 
 
 " Of native impulse, elemental force." 
 
 It will be conceded, I believe, that this hap- 
 pened a hundred years ago, in the Revolutionary 
 times. The land had no lack of leaders then: 
 that is conceded. We are far enough away 
 from those times to see who they were. They 
 appeared when they were wanted ; and they
 
 WHAT CAREER? 15 
 
 did what they had to do. They led ; and, where 
 they led, meu followed. All this is the easier 
 to see, because the pretenders the men who 
 could not lead are clean forgotten, as we look 
 back. Time teaches history well. Time shows 
 us the leaders ; and we need not distress our- 
 selves in looking for the failures. 
 
 And these leaders, whence came their commis- 
 sions? Samuel Adams, Washington, Franklin, 
 Greene, Morris, and a hundred others who led 
 this land as it needed to be led, what brought 
 them forward? Ask, rather, what could have 
 kept them back ? Is it any vote of an Assembly 
 that directs Samuel Adams to insist, through 
 and through, on Independence? Is it any he- 
 reditary right which puts him in a position to 
 maintain it? He has that word to speak: he 
 speaks, and men are compelled to hear. So of 
 Washington, so of Greene, the commanders of 
 your armies. No man will pretend that it needed 
 a commission from the Assembly of Virginia, or 
 from that of Rhode Island, to make those men 
 your leaders in successful wars. What changed 
 Henry Knox, the Boston bookseller, into the
 
 16 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 engineer in command of your artillery ? What 
 so taught him that he 
 
 " Created all the stores of war " ? 
 
 Had you to wait till such a man was born in 
 some predestined succession? Or had you to 
 wait till he was trained to that service by a se- 
 ries of red-taped and decorous promotions? Not 
 a bit of it! You needed him, and you found 
 him. Your lines of promotion were open, so 
 that nothing checked him. For that purpose, 
 as the event proved, he was your leader: and 
 the leader led ! 
 
 This is conceded, I say, for times of exigency, 
 of great trial. " These are the days of mira- 
 cle, " men say. The knot deserves solution, 
 and from the skies some god descends. But 
 then they turn to peaceful times, and they claim 
 that the principle will not apply. For instance 
 (and for this purpose it is a very striking in- 
 stance), men urge the three administrations 
 of the Virginian dynasty of Presidents ; begin- 
 ning with Jefferson, and running down, 
 
 " Fine by degrees, and miserably less,"
 
 WHAT CAREER? 17 
 
 till it ends with James Monroe. Or, if you 
 please to make a point even finer, you may taper 
 it with the reign of John Tyler. And sceptics 
 say to you, "Are these your leaders? Where 
 did they lead you ? " Well, it is true that, of 
 the last two persons I have named, most men 
 in this assembly perhaps would say nothing, 
 good, bad, or indifferent, simply because men 
 remember nothing about them and have nothing 
 to say. Nay, it is true, I suppose, that Jefferson 
 himself had made his last gift to the people of 
 this land, when he had well announced the prin- 
 ciple I am maintaining, namely, that to the 
 people as sovereign may well be entrusted, with- 
 out intermediate delegation, by far the largest 
 share of the people's own affairs. Grant then 
 what I suppose is true that for four and twenty 
 years at the beginning of this century, from 
 1801 to 1825, the so-called heads of this nation 
 led it in no direction. Grant that neither of 
 these three Presidents has proved in fact to be a 
 leader. Grant that no principle for which they 
 struggled has proved to be worth a straw, and 
 that every measure for which they contended has
 
 18 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 proved to be a vanity. The one great event of 
 Jefferson's reign, the acquisition of Louisiana, 
 is no work of his policy. It was the suggestion 
 and the work of no less a man than Napoleon 
 Bonaparte. 
 
 " I have given England a rival," he said to 
 Marbois, when he signed the act of cession. 
 
 All this is simply to grant that the chief 
 servants of the people, in those four and twenty 
 years, were not its leaders. Is that so strange ? 
 Are wise men often led by their servants? 
 Were not the people led all the same ? Why, in 
 those very years, here was Eli Whitney leading 
 them in the development of the new product, cot 
 ton, which gave to this little line of sea-board 
 colonies (for they were still such) the great coun- 
 terpoise in the necessary exchanges of the world. 
 Here were such leaders as Hopkins, of Newport, 
 and Emmons, of Franklin, at work in their 
 Spartan studies, leading the speculation of the 
 men of thought and of religion over the land, 
 as they weighed out in their balances the very at- 
 tributes of the Almighty. Here again was Rob- 
 ert Fulton leading it steadily forward, though
 
 WHAT CAREER? 19 
 
 the land did not know that it was led, by his per- 
 sistency in his great invention, without which, 
 indeed, that whole purchase of Louisiana was 
 almost valueless, an invention which, in its 
 application there alone, called into existence 
 half a continent, whose harvests this day feed 
 half a world. Such men as Allston were lead- 
 ing the country to triumphs of art. Such men 
 as Andrew Jackson were leading the Western 
 pioneers, and teaching them the terrible might 
 of this land for war. Such men as Chamiing 
 were opening a new page before men's eyes as 
 to the relations of man with God, and God 
 with man ; were leading men 
 
 " Nearer, my God, to thee." 
 
 Could a land be better led? And who 
 named these leaders? What commission did 
 they need from this or that Board of returns ? 
 What herald's certificate did they need of their 
 hereditary right to command? They led, be- 
 cause they were leaders. And where they led, 
 men followed ! 
 
 It is the- custom of our time, I am sorry to
 
 20 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 say that it is the custom of occasions like this, 
 to lament that the scholars and men of letters 
 of the country are not placed in places of politi- 
 cal administration. Has the history of the 
 country showed that it needed its first ability 
 at Washington? Were such men as I have 
 named, such men as Whitney and Fulton, 
 such men as Channing and Hopkins, wasted 
 because they were not in the Senate or in the 
 Cabinet ? Take such a life as that of Francis 
 Wayland, who for a quarter of a century directed 
 the education of thousands of young men in 
 Brown University: will any one seriously say 
 that it would be better for this country to-day, if 
 he had spent those years in the Senate chamber 
 at Washington ? May I not ask, even in this 
 presence, without impropriety, whether such a 
 name as that of Mark Hopkins will not go 
 down to posterity with fresher laurels and with 
 more certainty of fame, because he has been the 
 foster-father of the pupils of this Alma Mater, 
 than it would have earned in any forensic strug- 
 gles, or in any legislative arena? Or, in one 
 word, is this people short-sighted? Men are
 
 WHAT CAREER? 21 
 
 apt to say that they are too shrewd. Does not 
 this people know where it most needs service ? 
 And if we find that great men, unselfish men, 
 thoughtful men, and men of genius, men of 
 a pure ambition, and of strong resolve, do not 
 choose the career of administration for their 
 career, have we not reason to think that they 
 know the field of fame and the field of duty as 
 well as we do ? 
 
 Let me adduce a single instance of a single 
 detail of administration, which has proved of 
 great importance. The system of the issues of 
 bank-notes in this country requires that their 
 amount shall be regulated by a deposit of gov- 
 ernment stocks, not held by the bank officers, 
 but placed in the hands of the public adminis- 
 tration. This principle, first tried in New York 
 in 1838, was copied in many other States, and 
 borrowed by Sir Robert Peel in England, in 
 1844. It is now the basis of the National Bank 
 circulation of America. Who is the author of 
 it ? The author was the President of Columbia 
 College, who proposed it in his lectures to his 
 seniors, and demonstrated its fitness. One of
 
 22 WHAT CAEEER? 
 
 those seniors afterwards introduced it into the 
 legislation of New York. From the system of 
 New York it passed into the legislation of the 
 world. The improvement was needed, and it 
 came. Can you suggest any possible system 
 for the choice of your rulers, in which it should 
 have come more easily ? 
 
 III. It will happen, of course, that there come 
 crises of importance, when the political admin- 
 istration is the pivot on which all interests turn, 
 and the welfare of the country hinges. Wisdom, 
 and the first wisdom ; prudence, and the first 
 prudence ; courage God-born, is then needed 
 by the officers in that service. Never fear, when 
 that moment comes, but that they will watch 
 the people, and obey the Leaders of the people, 
 whether the Leaders be in this office or in that, 
 or in none ; whether they wear this, that, or an- 
 other crown of honor. What is Abraham Lin- 
 coln's great honor, but that he understood the 
 instincts of the American people, knew what 
 it wanted, what it meant, and what it would 
 do ? In point of fact, you find pessimism and
 
 WHAT CAREER? . 23 
 
 despair among those persons who see least of 
 the real people of this land. The men who 
 see only the drunken class of foreigners in Bos- 
 ton, in New York and Chicago, may well be in 
 doubt as to our political institutions. But you 
 will notice that that doubt is never shared by the 
 men who meet, whether on the stump or in daily 
 converse, the freeholders of the Western States, 
 the men who have made their own houses, 
 their own farms, their own schools, their own 
 churches, their own laws. They know that 
 such men will make their own officers, and will 
 unmake them. 
 
 Yes, and more than this : those officers, when 
 made, be the name President, Senator, Secre- 
 tary, chief clerk, or under clerk; be he head 
 of a bureau, or the lowest messenger boy of a 
 porter, those officers listen obediently, take to 
 heart, digest, and obey the directions of the 
 Leaders of the people, be those Leaders where 
 they may. It is some unknown penman in his 
 closet ; it is some Lowell singing a song ; it is 
 some Emerson dreaming a dream ; it is some 
 Moody moving a multitude ; it is some Tom
 
 24 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Scott annihilating time; it is some Sampson 
 organizing emigration ; it is some Phillips on a 
 rostrum ; or it is Mark Hopkins in this pulpit. 
 The officer of the administration sits at the centre 
 where a thousand mirrors reflect, where a thou- 
 sand telephones repeat the words, and, like the 
 obedient genie when Aladdin rubs his lamp, the 
 officer of administration starts up, to say, 
 
 " I HEAR, AND I OBEY." 
 
 IV. Gentlemen, I will not leave this subject, 
 addressing as I do the chosen representatives 
 of so many of the most favored young men of 
 the Northern States, without offering a word 
 to them of practical suggestion. Take it, in 
 Alpha Delta Phi, as the counsel of an older 
 brother. 
 
 In this business of the choice of a career, 
 which occupies you already, you will defer to 
 the last possible moment mere study for your 
 specialty. A specialty there must be at last, 
 but put off as long as you may your special 
 preparation. Distrust all charlatans who tell 
 you that they have a patent process to fit you
 
 WHAT CAREER? 25 
 
 for any one career in life, whether they call it 
 a Commercial College, a Normal School, or a 
 double-conibination-refined Elective, without 
 broad Liberal Culture as the basis. Do not 
 listen to the man who advises you to go into 
 the business of making weather-cocks and 
 steeples for churches, without building towers, 
 and walls, and strong crypts, and foundations 
 underground. 
 
 Then, when the profession is chosen, and 
 prepared for, consecrate yourself to God as his 
 servant in it, that its work shall be done well. 
 " Be 3^6 perfect, even as your Father who is in 
 heaven is perfect." That is the rule. Whether 
 you open a copper mine in Michigan ; whether 
 you plough and sow and harvest a thousand 
 acres in Illinois ; whether you organize labor, 
 and make cosmos out of chaos in Louisiana; 
 whether you preach the gospel of Christ in 
 some lonely village in the mountains ; whether 
 you wait for clients who will not come, but 
 prepare, while you are waiting, to unravel the 
 knot of Gordius himself, whatever you do, 
 do that work well. Do it as a Leader does it. 
 2
 
 26 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 This country has founded these colleges, it has 
 endowed these professorships, it has selected 
 you to be students, that you may be its edu- 
 cated leaders. Gentlemen, do not be false to 
 her ! Lead you will, if lead you can. See that 
 you are leaders, by doing well what you have 
 to do. 
 
 I do not say that you are to avoid what is 
 called Public Life. I say you are to enter one 
 of its duties or another, as it may happen. For 
 the truth is that you are in it, of course, if you 
 do your duty. Men, trained as you are, speak 
 easily when you have any thing to say. God 
 forbid that else you should speak at all ! Men, 
 trained as you are, write simply what you have 
 to teach. It is your fault then, so far, if the 
 Press, where you live, falters, or does not say 
 what it might do. A free press, and an open 
 rostrum, is the privilege of course of every 
 educated American gentleman. Whoever else 
 in this world complains that he cannot move 
 men as he should, it is not men to whom are 
 open avenues like these. 
 
 Do well what you do. And do it conscious
 
 WHAT CAREER? 27 
 
 that you ought to be Leaders among men, It 
 is said to be the privilege of the young Ameri- 
 can that he may be what Miltiades was, and 
 Alcibiades, a founder of a State, if he choose. 
 Gentlemen, this founding of a State does not 
 require us to cross the mountains. Wherever 
 our lot is thrown, we may dig deep for the 
 foundations, and build solidly the walls of the 
 institutions which are to stand. And whether 
 our names perish or are remembered, such in- 
 stitutions, in the days that are to come, will be 
 the monuments to those who come after us, 
 that these men builded well ! 
 
 And, above all, do not blow your own trum- 
 pets ; nor, which is the same thing, ask other 
 people to blow them. No trumpeter ever rose 
 to be a general. If the power to lead is in you, 
 other men will follow. If it is not in you, 
 nothing will make them follow. It is for you 
 to find the eternal law of this universe, and to 
 put yourself in harmony with that law. Speak- 
 ing more simply, it is to find God, and to work 
 as fellow-laborer with Him. Do that, and you 
 may afford to be indifferent, who else works 
 with you.
 
 28 
 
 ' Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control : 
 These three alone lead men to sovereign power ! 
 Yet not for power : power of itself would come 
 Uncalled for. But to live by law, 
 Acting the law we live by, without fear ; 
 And, because right is right, to follow right, 
 Were wisdom in the spite of consequence."
 
 WHAT CAREER? 29 
 
 II. 
 
 THE SPECIALTIES. 
 
 TOHN MILTON returned to England, from 
 his foreign travels, just as England was on 
 the edge of civil war. In France and in Italy 
 he had been welcomed with enthusiasm. He 
 had been fairly petted by scholars ; he had been 
 jealously watched by cat-like inquisitors, afraid 
 that he was budding heresies into the true vine ; 
 he had been serenaded by musicians ; he had 
 been sung by poets ; he had been beloved by all. 
 But Milton would not stay to be petted or flat- 
 tered. The thunders growled in the horizon of 
 England ; the batteries were builded which were 
 to open on the English Sumter ; and the true 
 Englishman knew, the true Christian knew, that 
 in such an exigency his place was home. He 
 left sunny Italy for foggy London ; left flattery 
 to find abuse ; left play for work, and work the 
 hardest. He had been graduated at the uni-
 
 30 WHAT CAEEER? 
 
 versity a few years before. I may say that, 
 when he turned his back upon Italy, his last 
 vacation was over, and the real commencement 
 of his life had come. 
 
 I may, then, fairly allude to his life as an 
 illustration for some inquiries which we will 
 make as to liberal study, such as that to which 
 the readers of this book devote themselves. 
 Here is the man on the whole most distinguished 
 among men of our race, if, in our estimate of 
 distinction, we are to give a fair estimate to per- 
 sonal purity, to moral greatness, and to intel- 
 lectual power. Of all men who have spoken 
 our language, Shakspeare and Milton are the 
 two whose loss, if we can conceive of it, would 
 be the most fatal; and, of these two, John 
 Milton is the man who, in thought and action, 
 in character, in politics, in his hope and effort 
 for the coming-in of the kingdom of heaven, 
 say, in one word, in his religion, represents 
 the idea and the prophecy most dear to America, 
 and especially to young America. Some illus- 
 trations drawn from that master life ought to be 
 of use to young America to-day.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 31 
 
 John Milton was the first scholar of his time ; 
 he was the first theologian of his time ; he was 
 the first statesman of his time ; he was the first 
 poet of his time. 
 
 He was the first scholar of his time. When 
 Charles the Second, fleeing into exile, wished to 
 establish his cause before Europe, he retained 
 the person then accredited as the first man of 
 letters in Europe, Claude de Saumaise, to write 
 out the justification of Charles I., his father. 
 At the order of the Parliament, Milton replied. 
 He rode over Saumaise in their tournament, as 
 Charlemagne or Roland would have ridden down 
 and ridden over Don Quixote. And the name 
 of the showy scholar, who knew, men said, every 
 thing worth knowing, exists to-day in the drear- 
 iest corner of the dreariest cyclopaedia, only 
 because Milton honored him with a reply. 
 
 Milton was the first theologian of his time. 
 Not even his friends who made the Westminster 
 Confession ; not even such sweet spirits as Her- 
 bert and Vaughan and Chillingworth and Taylor, 
 who in an opposing camp showed their unity of 
 the spirit with those who overthrew the crown
 
 32 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 and the throne ; not Hooker, Baxter, and Law ; 
 nor, on our side the water, not any Cotton or 
 Davenport or Mather or Williams of them all, 
 have so held the faith of the world, have so 
 swayed its devotion or so guided its prayer, as he 
 who invoked the Holy Spirit for his muse, and 
 taught all men the music of the first evening 
 hymn. 
 
 Looking back upon it all, we have a right to 
 say he was the first statesman of his time. 
 Cromwell and the rest were trained in that 
 rough school of statesmanship which does not 
 miss its mark. Like our own dear Abraham 
 Lincoln, when the common sense of the people 
 pushed them on, they found out how to lead. 
 There was no lack of will, and they found out 
 the way. But when they had to defend in let- 
 ters the work that they had done ; when, as 
 against a defeated church, or a throne over- 
 turned, they had to justify in eternal argument 
 their cause, whom had they to turn to but 
 John Milton? 
 
 That he was the first poet of his time, the 
 world allows. There are not wanting those who 
 say he was the first poet of all time.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 33 
 
 Now, what was the training which stood Mil- 
 ton in stead for service so various to the world ? 
 What were the early studies wKich laid the 
 foundation for work so distinguished, work in 
 lines so different, which was, however, work so 
 bravely, nay, so completely done? There are 
 ugly proverbs which say that a "Jack at all 
 trades works ill at all." That may be true of 
 trades : clearly it is not true of the nobler range 
 of service. How was Milton trained in boyhood 
 and in youth, that, when a man, he might serve 
 his country and his God, whether as advocate, 
 whether as theologian, whether as statesman or 
 as poet? The answer is in familiar words. As 
 boy and youth, thanks to a fond father's wis- 
 dom, Milton had the most generous, the broadest 
 culture England or Europe had to give. He en- 
 joyed what we rightly call a liberal education. 
 
 The world was then what it is now, in the 
 habit of men's minds and in the drift of their 
 ambitions. There is no doubt, therefore, that 
 John Milton and his father were surrounded with 
 people who advised Borne other training. They , 
 
 2*
 
 34 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 urged, I do not doubt, what people now call a 
 specialty ; that this young man should be early 
 trained to some special pursuit, trade, or calling. 
 As time passed on, I do not doubt that they 
 pointed out the success, the brilliant success, of 
 this or that specialist, as illustrative of the value 
 of their counsel. The chief contractor who 
 made Cromwell's powder, for instance (there 
 must have been such a man, though history has 
 forgotten him), the master manufacturer who 
 made the powder which Cromwell's soldiers 
 kept so dry, and burned to so much purpose, 
 was, doubtless, in the London of that day, a per- 
 son of more mark and note than John Milton. 
 He had wrought on his specialty, and had 
 wrought on it well. He had made a good con- 
 tract, he made good powder, and he got good 
 pay. History has forgotten him ; but I dare re- 
 construct history so far as to say that I am sure 
 he rode in his carriage, while Milton went afoot ; 
 that his wife had laces and silks fit for an em- 
 press, while Milton's wife spread thin butter on 
 thick bread for hungry schoolboys. I think the 
 powder-contractor and the poet may have known 
 each other at school. I think he may have.
 
 WHAT CAREER ? 35 
 
 nodded good-naturedly to Milton, as they met 
 some day at the government offices ; and I can 
 hear the contractor saying to himself, with con- 
 temptuous pity ; " That is what comes of the 
 classics and the mathematics, Christ College and 
 the university ; and my coach and four here are 
 what came of my specialty." Yet, for all that, 
 if we had to choose between the two lines for 
 son of ours, we should not choose the special 
 training ; we should choose the liberal education. 
 For we should say : " It is perfectly certain 
 that the powder manufacturing will be done ; it 
 is not perfectly certain that, without watchful 
 care and delicate nursing, the world will get its 
 science, its statesmanship, its theolog3 r , or its 
 poetry." About the methods in life there need 
 be no fear. The doubt and danger are about 
 the principles on which all methods depend. 
 The methods of life are all that the specialist 
 fully learns. The man of liberal education is 
 studying its principles. 
 
 It is unquestionably true that, with the im- 
 mense enlargement of human knowledge, the
 
 36 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 several sciences part so widely that no man can 
 pretend to master them all ; and only the merest 
 charlatan professes the knowledge of the detail 
 of every vocation. Still it is as true as ever, 
 first, that all science involves a kno\vledge of 
 fundamental and essential principles, and that 
 the man who is not trained and habituated in 
 these will be a mere dabster and empiric, even 
 in the method of the special science which he 
 has chosen. It is true, again, that each science 
 is to be investigated and explained by the same 
 eternal laws of truth and methods of reasoning 
 as every other ; and the specialist who under- 
 takes to study or to teach without habit and 
 experience in these laws of truth and methods 
 of reasoning, breaks down again as dabster and 
 pretender. Once more, it is true that, as the 
 unity of Nature asserts itself, and the correlation 
 of one force with another, that man succeeds 
 best in interpreting Nature in one of her phases 
 who can best interpret her in another. This is 
 the man who, from the breadth of his education, 
 can tell something of the harmony of things, of 
 the cosmos of the universe. He succeeds in his
 
 WHAT CAEEER? 37 
 
 specialty just in proportion to the breadth of his 
 general education. 
 
 Yet it is necessary to say this, and to illustrate 
 it by such memories as those which tell us to 
 what education we owe John Milton, and how 
 great the loss would have been had we special- 
 ized him into a scrivener ; because, in the rush 
 of our time, even the colleges and universities 
 have been invaded, and the old narrowness of 
 the specialty is here and there proclaimed anew, 
 as if it were some new discovery in education. 
 
 When we come to examine this tempting and 
 specious proposal, does it amount to any thing 
 more than the old temptation, that the child of 
 God shall use the heavenly power God has given 
 him by setting it to make bread out of stones ? 
 
 What do we say of the same proposal when it 
 is presented a little earlier in men's lives ? 
 
 In my own home, the city of Boston, there is 
 an annual expenditure for the education of chil- 
 dren of about a million and a half of dollars. 
 The poorest child may take the advantage of 
 this expenditure till he is eighteen years of age ; 
 and the methods are so arranged that he may,
 
 38 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 if he choose, enter with good instruction on 
 many of the lines of study pursued in most 
 colleges. In spite of this generous provision, 
 however, the larger part of the children leave 
 school before they are twelve years old. They 
 do this that they may acquire certain specialties. 
 It is now the specialty of selling lozenges, or 
 matches ; it is now the specialty of leasing 
 opera-glasses for the evening ; it is now the 
 specialty of what is called a cash-boy in a large 
 retail store. It is not an apprenticeship, which 
 educates a boy for higher life : at twelve, he is 
 too young for that. It is only a specialty which 
 enables him to earn, week by week, about as 
 much as will pay for his food. 
 
 When we see this in the case of the little boy 
 or girl, we all regret it. There is then no ques- 
 tion that the decision of the parents is wrong. 
 By all means in our hands we attempt to change 
 that decision. In Boston, we are at this mo- 
 ment trying to introduce into the school system 
 such technical education in sewing, in carpentry, 
 and other useful arts, as may persuade short- 
 sighted parents to keep their children at school
 
 WHAT CAREER? 39 
 
 a little longer ; for we think even half a loaf is 
 better than no bread. We do not do this be- 
 cause we like to do it : we accept it as the neces- 
 sity forced upon us by the determination of 
 ignorant parents to gain the immediate return 
 of bread and butter for the education which is 
 given to their children. We see that the longer 
 we can put off the acquisition of the specialty, 
 the better. 
 
 This principle, which is acknowledged by all 
 in the case of boys and girls, loses none of its 
 force when it is applied in the lives of young 
 men and young women. Of course, in civilized 
 life, each man, sooner or later, must have his 
 special training in the service which he is to 
 render. But the precise object for which we 
 have founded colleges is to give the liberal and 
 broad foundation on which that training is to 
 be based. And the rule of life might be stated, 
 almost without an exception, that the longer the 
 special training could be postponed, so the gen- 
 erous preparation were still in progress, the bet- 
 ter for the man, and the better for mankind. 
 
 The fine and analytic division of labor for
 
 40 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 which the specialist pleads, results, he thinks, 
 in a certain improvement in the quantity or the 
 quality of the world's manufacture. If one 
 man always does one thing, and another man 
 always does another thing, each man growing 
 perfect in his specialty, the result will be, we 
 are told, better pins in your pin-factory, more 
 sheetings from your majestic mills, finer type 
 for your newspapers, and Remington rifles more 
 highly finished in your armories. All this is 
 very possible. But the argument forgets that 
 this world was not created for the manufacture 
 of pins, of sheetings, of newspapers, or of rifles : 
 it was created for the training of men. And 
 the man is made more perfect and more, not by 
 his deftness in this handicraft, or his knack in 
 that trade ; but as one part of his being is thor- 
 oughly wrought in with another part, body with 
 mind, and mind with soul. 
 
 The great modern patron of that system of 
 industry which makes each man do what he can 
 do cheapest, and divides labor so that one man 
 shall make the heads of pins perfectly, and shall 
 be capable of nothing else ; that another man
 
 WHAT CAREER? 41 
 
 shall point them perfectly, and be fit for nothing 
 else, is Adam Smith. It might be enough to 
 say that, if Adam Smith's theory could have 
 been properly carried out, he would have spent 
 his life, not in writing treatises of political econ- 
 omy, but in fishing for herrings on the shore of 
 Scotland: that being the industry for which 
 Nature seems to have best fitted that region, had 
 not the restrictions of government or civiliza- 
 tion introduced other life there. Adam Smith 
 is himself, then, an illustration how much the 
 world gains when the boy or the man is trained 
 to some broader and higher life than the mere 
 specialty to which circumstances, or what people 
 call " nature," would have directed him. Have 
 we not, in our own history, had instances, 
 instances enough, to teach us what the country 
 gains by training its citizens in the broader cul- 
 ture? Like the old Greek culture, it enables 
 them to turn to any service. What is the whole 
 tenor of the history of the war? Who were 
 our diplomatists, our Adams, and Marsh, and 
 Motley? They were men who had been trained 
 in the broader culture, and took up the specialty
 
 42 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 of diplomacy as a matter of course, just as 
 Themistocles led a fleet without having been 
 trained to the specialty of a sailor. The special 
 accomplishment, indeed, is only charlatanism, 
 when it is not based on knowledge of the prin- 
 ciple employed. Such is the rule-of-thumb 
 reckoning of the seaman who does not know 
 why his latitudes and longitudes come right, 
 and is wholly the slave of his process. 
 
 It was my fortune, once, to sit for several 
 days by the side of the late Governor Andrew, 
 of Massachusetts, while, with skill and success 
 which I will not pretend to describe, he presided 
 over a large, excited assembly, which, but for 
 his admirable gift, would have been stormy. 
 When all was done, I ventured to felicitate him 
 on his success. " I think I have succeeded," said 
 he ; " and I believe it is because, in all my life, 
 I have only for three or four hours been in the 
 chair of any assembly. I believe it is because 
 I know nothing of the technics of parliamentary 
 law. I mean," he added, with earnestness, 
 " that I have been trying all through these days 
 to apply the principles of justice, of truth, and
 
 WHAT CAREER? 43 
 
 common sense, in the forms, which were of 
 course familiar to me, of deliberative assem- 
 blies." I could not but contrast that verdict 
 with the verdict of my distinguished kinsman, 
 John P. Hale, who stood with me one day, in 
 the gallery at the Capitol, as an acute parlia- 
 mentarian, who has thus far never been any 
 thing but an acute parliamentarian, dissected 
 some point of order to the bottom. " I would 
 not," said Mr. Hale, " know as much as that 
 man knows of parliamentary law, no, not if 
 you gave me the world ! " Take that as a not 
 unfair contrast of the difference between prin- 
 ciple and method, if, by any misfortune, either 
 must be learned alone. 
 
 The man who does not understand the prin- 
 ciple will constantly be blundering in his method. 
 The amusing stories of the blunders of the ac- 
 curate Chinese imitators are illustrations. But 
 more than this, and worse than this, the spe- 
 cialist who has not laid a generous foundation 
 for his art cannot explain it to another ; cannot 
 wisely conduct the experiments for advancing 
 it: he can only repeat the processes to which
 
 44 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 he himself is bred. The hackneyed anecdote 
 says that Mansfield told the Indian judge, who 
 had not been trained in the principles of law, to 
 make his decisions boldly, and they would be 
 right ; but to beware how he gave his reasons, 
 for they would surely be wrong. Precisely so : 
 the mere specialist cannot give his reasons. He 
 has to work by a recipe ; and what becomes of 
 such work? It was such work which the arti- 
 sans of old time wrought in. in the lost arts, 
 over whose monuments we are left to wonder. 
 Such workmen learned the process, but they 
 were powerless to explain the principle ; so the 
 abiding or eternal element was gone. The sci- 
 ence ceased to be a science : it became an art, a 
 knack, a secret, a memory, a shadow, and 
 then was gone for ever. 
 
 Of modern science, on the other hand, the 
 glory is, that it is built up on certain eternal 
 principles which have found their formulas in 
 what we call laws. A knowledge of these laws 
 leads to the true experiment, and to the simpli- 
 fying of science. All true science is seeking to 
 make science simpler and simpler : it is seeking
 
 WHAT CAREER? 45 
 
 to find the general principle of which these spe- 
 cial arts are only the illustrations. The great- 
 est victory of modern science the correlation 
 of physical forces is an exquisite instance 
 of the answer given to men who were able to 
 interrogate Nature, not with one but with many 
 questions. And the bold suggestions and fasci- 
 nating generalizations of the most distinguished 
 naturalists of our time, -of the Darwins and 
 Huxleys and Tyndalls, are gifts to us from 
 minds which have been trained, not in one line 
 of research, nor in two, but in many : I might 
 almost say in all. Their generalization takes 
 its value from the range of their observation. 
 Then the statement of it is intelligible, because 
 they have not disregarded intellectual sciences 
 of analysis, of investigation, and of argument. 
 And, once more, their methods are intelligible 
 because there is, and they know there is, a prin- 
 ciple behind. 
 
 The truth seems to be that, for all these 
 reasons, we should be glad in every case to post- 
 pone the training for the specialty as long as 
 possible. We are to make the studies in prep-
 
 46 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 aration for it broad enough to train every fac- 
 ulty of body, mind, or soul. It is only in the 
 lowest grades of life that we do not find fault 
 with the absence of either side of such training. 
 We do not expect, perhaps, that a hod-carrier 
 shall move gracefully, or speak fluently, or talk 
 without profanity. But just so soon as life calls 
 for leaders, just so soon as a crisis comes, so 
 soon as education, or men of education, are in 
 question, we ask that body, mind, and soul, all 
 shall be quite ready for our service. 
 
 Does any one venture to make what men call 
 the crucial . test the test of success in war ? If 
 you inquire there, our own experience is all on 
 one side. The education of West Point, which 
 has given such vigor to our armies, is thoroughly 
 liberal, and by no means technical or special. 
 What men write English like your West. Point 
 army officers? What men better understand 
 the relations of science with science? Nay, 
 what men have been more successful in their 
 practical interpretation of constitutional law? 
 And if you will ask the most successful of them 
 as to what is the best preparation for West
 
 WHAT CAREER? 47 
 
 Point, they will tell you, without exception, 
 that the best introduction to West Point is 
 the full training of one of our colleges. And if 
 you look outside West Point, in the army, the 
 verdict is the same. What men rose to rank 
 most distinguished, and won the love as well as 
 the honors of the country, as did the men whom 
 the colleges had trained, not for one service 
 only, but to be ready for whatever call of duty ? 
 Let me indulge a personal regard, and speak 
 with a regret which is not personal but national, 
 in naming for my own Alma Mater our Lowell 
 and Wadsworth. Or let me speak for the coun- 
 try when I name men still living, Hayes and 
 Terry, and Butler and Chamberlain, and Hawley 
 and Howard. Did not such men lead their sol- 
 diers under fire more cheerfully, because every 
 memory of old heroism and storied victory was 
 theirs, the memories of Mantin'ea and Ther- 
 mopylae and Lutzen and Naseby ? Did they 
 not care for their soldiers more tenderly because 
 their eyes had overflowed when they read of the 
 gentle ministries of St. Louis and St. Vincent ? 
 Did not they rule conquered cities more firmly
 
 48 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 and more wisely because they had early learned 
 how to love a Curtius and to scorn a Verres ? 
 Nay, such men died more easily, the eye of the 
 body closed with one smile more tender creeping 
 over the cold features, because, as they died, 
 they remembered what Harvard and Yale and 
 Brunswick and Lewiston and Dartmouth had 
 taught them in their boyhood : " Blessing and 
 honor indeed, that a man may die for his coun- 
 try!" 
 
 But I do not choose to discuss these ques- 
 tions on the strength of any illustrations, how- 
 ever pertinent or strong. I am addressing 
 young men whose lives are consecrated- to 
 liberal study, in colleges founded for liberal 
 study, or preparing for them. No college can 
 pretend to liberal study unless it is baptized 
 in the free thought of its founders. Addressing 
 them, I need only refer to the central demand 
 of all Christian education, the demand made 
 by him who was a scholar before he was an 
 apostle ; who, in the schools of Jewish thought, 
 and even from the teachers of Gentile wisdom, 
 had learned what the wisdom of men had to say
 
 WHAT CAREER? 49 
 
 in these things. It is St. Paul who rises above 
 the wisdom of the flesh to speak to you in the 
 words of the Spirit. It is Saint Paul who sa} r s, 
 in words which might be well taken for the 
 eternal motto of a new-born college, that the 
 aim of all life, the object of all training, is that 
 we may come unto a perfect man: ei<? avBpa 
 Te\etov, " Unto a perfect man ! " 
 
 It is not simply the training of the voice to 
 speak ; it is not simply the training of the eye 
 to see ; far less is it the training of the fin- 
 gers of the hand to this service or that toil. 
 It is that we may come unto a perfect man. 
 The whole body, soul and spirit, are to be 
 presented blameless, the body, by those ex- 
 ercises and by that temperance which come 
 from the wisdom that is first pure ; the mind, 
 by that discipline which shall quicken fancy, 
 shall strengthen memory, and shall clear argu- 
 ment from sophistry. And the soul, the infinite 
 child of an infinite God, is to be trained in 
 faith and hope and love : in faith to look above 
 the world ; in hope to look beyond time ; in 
 love to look outside its lesser life, in that com- 
 3
 
 50 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 munion in which we are one with all God's 
 children, one even with himself. This is the 
 standard, which the great Christian apostle 
 proposes for your education. Try his experi- 
 ment, and look forward to nothing less than 
 this ultimate blessing. Then let life offer what 
 it may ; let the special duty be here or there ; 
 let the hand be called for, or the head, or the 
 heart ; let it be words of conviction, or deeds of 
 valor, or prayers of faith, which the world 
 needs, we are equipped for the one call or the 
 other. We stand not hampered lay the little 
 habits of some petty training ; we stand forth 
 ready, ay, ready, the willing sons of Almighty 
 God, strong in the liberty in which Christ has 
 made us free.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 51 
 
 III. 
 
 NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ANNUAL CONVENTION 
 OF ALPHA DELTA PHI, MAY 18, 1871. 
 
 "l^TEARLY twenty of the chief colleges of 
 America assemble here to-day. The 
 vision of a far-sighted man, who thought it 
 possible to unite the educated men of America 
 in a certain unseen tie of friendship, is so far 
 accomplished. The fittest solemnities of such 
 an occasion would be, perhaps, a generous 
 rivalry of letters between the institutions rep- 
 resented. As Yale and Harvard, Amherst and 
 Brown, meet at Lake Quinsigamond to* test 
 muscle and endurance on the water, what if 
 A. A. $. should institute such games as those 
 in which Herodotus and Pindar won victories 
 in the days of laurels ? if here, not one orator 
 spoke alone, nor one poet sang, but if from 
 every Alma Mater there were a lyric ; or if he
 
 52 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 who had composed a history first published it 
 to the world by reading here a chapter, and if 
 we awarded to the fittest the first wreath of the 
 crowns of thirty centuries? Well, if from one 
 Sybaris or another, it prove that one Herodotus 
 or another among you, gentlemen, have this 
 chapter of history in his pocket, or if one Pin- 
 dar or another is ready to sing his lay, my 
 friend the poet, and I, the more prosaic spokes- 
 man, will not delay them long. It is ours to 
 introduce the feast of learning, which, if we 
 adopt that custom of the Alpha Deltas of the 
 Isthmus, will continue, I think, for many days. 
 I will be satisfied, in such preface, to speak only 
 as one of so many representatives of the seats 
 of learning. I will not pretend that we are all 
 scholars. At the bottom of our hearts we know 
 that none of us deserve that name. But I will 
 speak to men of the liberal professions, as one 
 who has had a liberal education. To education 
 in the liberal arts, in the humanities, our col- 
 leges are pledged and our fraternity is conse- 
 crated. By education to the humanities, and 
 in the liberal arts, our lives have been blessed,
 
 WHAT CAREER? 53 
 
 we are the men we are, and we enjoy what we 
 enjoy. In daily life we may be hewers of wood 
 and drawers of water ; but we hew and we 
 draw with a certain divine energy, and can 
 make the humblest duty shine. Nay : this also 
 is true, that from the moment when we elected 
 liberal study for our study, the liberal arts for 
 our arts, the liberal professions for our callings, 
 the whole community combined to help us 
 on. For us it has endowed its Yale and its 
 Cornell. For us it has founded the Astor 
 Library and the Franklin Academy. For us 
 it established in every new State marked out 
 upon the map in the wilderness such a foun- 
 dation for a university as no emperor of 
 them all ever gives to letters. We then, as 
 men of the liberal professions or as those who 
 look forward to them, consider, almost of 
 course, when we meet together, what are the 
 essential attributes of these professions, and 
 what we owe, in every-day life, to Church and 
 State, which have vied with each other in es- 
 tablishing them and maintaining them. 
 
 Noblesse Oblige ! Our privilege compels us !
 
 54 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 This was the battle-cry with which the Duke 
 de Levis, one of the old regime of France, tried 
 to quicken the new noblesse, created by Napo- 
 leon, and to point them their duty in the State. 
 The French dictionaries of to-day will tell you 
 that it is an " old proverb." The idea is as 
 old and as new as the word of Him who said, 
 he " who is greatest among you shall be your 
 servant." But this was not an idea believed 
 in by the old noblesse of France. And its 
 revival in new expression, when Napoleon tried 
 to renew that nobility, marks well enough the 
 period in modern history, when the world was 
 becoming so far Christian that men of great 
 opportunities were all taught that they had 
 great responsibilities. The Count Laborde is 
 my authority for saying that this noble Chris- 
 tian axiom is in form thus modern. 
 
 The old noblesse of France never made public 
 expression of the idea. But the motto illus- 
 trates fairly enough the responsibility which, 
 in all countries and in all times, is on the lead- 
 ers of the people. In our country, in our time, 
 it is the responsibility which rests on the men
 
 WHAT CAREER? 55 
 
 of liberal culture and of the liberal professions. 
 Public spirit, which is the life-breath of the 
 Commonwealth ; publicus spiritus, the breath 
 which, if it cannot draw, it is stifled and dies ; 
 public spirit, which colors red the lazy life- 
 blood of the State, gives it its oxygen, gives 
 it quickness, gives it victory, public spirit 
 will so quicken it, if we do our duty, speak our 
 word, put our shoulders to the wheel. If we 
 fail, that public spirit pants heavily and slowly. 
 For the men of liberal culture, of the liberal 
 arts and professions, for the men who have 
 had such advantage as the training of the 
 higher humanities attempts to give, I say all 
 these advantages demand of us special sacrifices 
 in the public service ; that we quicken as we 
 can the public life ; that we live as we may in 
 a public spirit. Noblesse Oblige ! Each gift 
 that the past has given to us is pledge for our 
 discharge of the common duty. 
 
 I. If I had no other reason for saying this, I 
 should be tempted to make it the subject of my 
 address to-day, because of the habit bred among
 
 56 WHAT CAREER V 
 
 persons who do not know what liberal culture 
 is, of reducing all art, study, philosophy, and 
 religion to what the Germans call bread-and- 
 butter vocations. When the Saviour of man- 
 kind entered upon his work among men, the 
 arch-tempter of mankind tried the first of dev- 
 ilish wiles upon him, by trying to persuade him 
 to debase the life divine by some selfish miracle 
 which should make bread for his own personal 
 hunger. The same tempter offers the same 
 temptation to each child of God this day. And 
 in the several voices by which the Father of lies 
 addresses men, he tries to make them believe 
 that according as they succeed in coining the 
 divine gift, or in exchanging it for bread, or 
 palace, or fine clothing, or other personal lux- 
 ury, in that proportion have their lives suc- 
 ceeded. Thus they will tell you that Demas 
 has made a good thing of it because he sold his 
 article in the " Review " for two hundred arid 
 fifty dollars. Thing, indeed ! They will tell 
 you that such or such a clergyman preached so 
 many sermons in a year, and that the treasurer 
 of his church paid him such or such a salary ;
 
 WHAT CAREER? 57 
 
 that, therefore, each sermon was worth so many 
 dollars, so many cents, so many mills, and so 
 many infinitesimal fractions. They will tell 
 you that the charming little bas-relief by Green- 
 ough, in whose simple composition lingers a 
 prayer only not spoken in words which for 
 century upon century will lift spirits eternal 
 nearer heaven, sold for only five hundred 
 dollars ; while the piled-up bronze of some 
 Alexander the copper-smith, which insults high 
 heaven in its angles, shocks low earth even in 
 its tawdriness, and is destined to be cast into 
 bell-metal as soon as the Right shall triumph in 
 any happy revolution, they will tell you that 
 this piled-up hideousness cost half a million 
 dollars, and is therefore a work of art of a 
 thousand times the value of the other. By 
 such absurd and forced analogies, all borrowed 
 from the world of hogsheads and tierces and 
 tons and quintals, do men degrade the aspira- 
 tions and the victories of the only life that is 
 life ! Now, because this vulgar talk creeps into 
 the journals and into general society, it seems 
 fit to present the true purpose and motive of 
 
 3*
 
 58 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the liberal professions and the liberal arts, in 
 a meeting of men who are pledged to them. 
 We are not hirelings in our service. Noblesse 
 Oblige! The very privileges which are con- 
 ferred upon us compel us to do our duty. The 
 endowments of the colleges, every luxury of 
 letters, this freemasonry which makes us 
 friends here, though we never saw each other's 
 faces; every privilege of our lives as men of 
 liberal training, involves duties to the State 
 and to mankind. 
 
 II. What, then, are the distinctions between 
 a guild of craftsmen and a guild of men of 
 liberal training ? What account is to be given 
 of the distinctions which we enjoy, as men of 
 liberal culture, and which we know that we 
 enjoy? The mock-modesty which pretends 
 there are no such distinctions is but folly. 
 
 I do not speak first of the principle involved. 
 Before we examine that, we shall notice two 
 external and visible distinctions. 
 
 First, The liberal professions admit no secrets 
 in their methods.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 59 
 
 Second, In these professions, the compensa- 
 tion rendered is not computed with any relation 
 to the service performed. 
 
 The historical distinction first to be noticed 
 is that the professor, or the master of liberal 
 arts, by whatever name he may be called, 
 mediaeval or of our own time, has no secrets 
 in his calling. I suppose, if we cared to trace 
 the history of language, we should find in this 
 distinction alone the origin of the word "lib- 
 eral" as applied to the freedom of art, of 
 science, or, in general, of vocation. 
 
 Thus the great distinction of the artists to 
 whom we owe the new birth of fine art in the 
 middle ages is in the loyalty with which they 
 taught all they knew. To surround himself 
 with a staff of young and brilliant pupils, to 
 work with them, to show them every process, 
 to talk with them of every inspiration, nay, to 
 intrust to their hands the execution of detail 
 upon the canvas, this was the method of the 
 enthusiasm of the great Italian artists. It was 
 thus that Raphael studied with Perugino ; that 
 Perugino, Leonardo, and Michel Angelo, at
 
 60 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 one time or at another, studied together ; that 
 Michel Angelo learned from Ghirlandaio. 
 Vasari says of Raphael that he never refused 
 to any artist, though he were wholly unknown 
 to him, his personal assistance in design or in 
 execution of any work ; and in his studio he 
 was sometimes surrounded by fifty students, 
 some of them the most distinguished men of 
 his time, to whom he was glad indeed to teach 
 all he knew. 
 
 In every generation of such communion and 
 inspiration, by the divine law of selection itself, 
 Art gains something. " Nature gives us more 
 than all she ever takes away." The mere sug- 
 gestion of the man of genius is worked out by 
 the care and sympathy of the man of talent ; or 
 the ingenious plan and structure of the man of 
 talent is taken in hand and made effective by 
 the perseverance and adaptations of the man 
 of practice. Nay, let us not forget, in such 
 a review, the place filled by the mere drudge, 
 who thought he could only grind the color, or 
 rub down the surface, or hew the wood, or draw 
 the water for the more favored children of Art
 
 WHAT CAREER? 61 
 
 in their divine imagining ; for, as he faithfully 
 does the duty that comes next his hand, how 
 often has it proved that he also contributed 
 what was essential to the whole : nay, how 
 often has it been seen that here was the com- 
 pleter life, because of the slower development, 
 and that when its hour of bud and blossom 
 and perfume came, there unfolded from our 
 unsightly cactus a wealth of crystalline color, 
 spicy fragrance, and delicate grace which ex- 
 ceeded all the glories of precocious gardening ! 
 Such are the triumphs of Art, where the artist 
 proves himself the true artist by taking all who 
 come into his confidence, by keeping nothing 
 secret which God has taught to him, but teach- 
 ing freely to all who will hear all he knows he 
 knows. 
 
 Perhaps it is easier for a clergyman to make 
 this statement in its principle, because every one 
 grants at once that in those cases, rare if you 
 please, where our services are of any value, they 
 are invaluable and beyond all price. A sermon 
 of Robertson's, if it be of any use at all, is of 
 transcendent and infinite value. The advice
 
 62 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 which the country parson gave your brother 
 when he went away to sea, if it had any worth 
 at all, had worth not to be measured by any 
 human coinage. What, indeed, shall a man 
 give in exchange for his soul, if he have a soul ? 
 St. Paul, therefore, the first of preachers, putb 
 this matter on a perfect basis in the very begin- 
 ning, when he says that the man who gives his 
 life to the preaching of the gospel, or to other 
 ministry, is entitled somewhere and somehow to 
 a physical livelihood at the hands of the world 
 he serves. As to where or how the somewhere 
 or somehow comes, St. Paul is indifferent: let 
 the world settle that for itself. So he sends the 
 Epistle to the Philippians without entering it 
 for copyright at the clerk's office in the library 
 of the Senate ; and he sends out the devil from 
 the possessed girl, in the streets of Philippi, 
 without asking her, as Dr. This or That whom 
 you or I could name would do, how much money 
 she is willing to pay in advance on the chances 
 of a cure. Not because Paul said it, but be- 
 cause it is essential common sense, this is the 
 necessary law of compensation for those callings
 
 WHAT CAREER? 63 
 
 which deal with life, life being in itself in- 
 finite and priceless. Nobody pays us for this 
 special duty or that duty. The world is bound 
 in general to see that we live. And there is no 
 asceticism about this, nor what people call com- 
 munism. The world must see that its servants 
 so live as to render the most efficient service. 
 
 True, the world's servant must prove to the 
 world that he can serve it. The world must 
 compensate him at its estimate, and not at his 
 own. But, beyond this, the particular method 
 in which society or the world arranges for his 
 compensation is matter, not of principle, but of 
 detail. It will be settled by custom, or settled 
 by history, or settled as a natural outgrowth of 
 the organization of the country. The life-salary 
 of a physician may be adjusted for him by the 
 table of fees which the county medical society 
 agree upon. I think very likely that may be 
 the most convenient way. But he might be 
 paid as a ship's surgeon is paid, by an annual 
 salary; or he might be paid as they say the 
 Chinese physicians are paid, a fixed income pro- 
 ** portioned on the families in health in his dis-
 
 64 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 trict, subject to a regular deduction, to be paid 
 by the doctors in pensions to those families 
 where there is disease. Just so in a clergyman's 
 duty : his living may be secured to him by a tax 
 upon the land, as in England ; by a salary from 
 the government, as in France ; by alms collected 
 by begging, as with the Dominicans ; by a stated 
 annual compensation guaranteed by a particular 
 parish, as is sometimes the practice here ; or by 
 the varying contributions of the worshippers, as 
 is the custom sometimes. The method is mere 
 leather and prunella : the essential is, that the 
 servant of the community in a liberal profession, 
 because he deals with infinite values, is entitled 
 to his living at the hands of the world he serves. 
 What follows is, that the world's servant in a 
 liberal profession renders his service without 
 stint or stop, to the full and utmost of his ca- 
 pacity. Ready ? ay, ready ! Body, mind, and 
 soul held ready for the noblest duty. Never 
 overstrained, never sluggish, never fevered, 
 never torpid, never despondent, never extrav- 
 agant, all this because never bought and 
 never sold!
 
 WHAT CAREER? 65 
 
 The clergy and the doctors deal directly with 
 life in distinct issues ; so that these illustrations 
 seem most simple, perhaps, in the cases which I 
 have cited. Life, being an infinite principle, is 
 of infinite value. It is invaluable. But the 
 principle is the same in all the liberal callings, 
 for the reason that they all deal with infinite 
 values, not to be weighed, counted, or measured. 
 Such are the dealings of an artist: beauty in 
 the finished marble, or on the glowing canvas, is 
 of infinite value or it is of none. When we 
 read " Viri Romae " at school, we were taught to 
 laugh at the barbarous consul who, when the 
 statues of Corinth were packed for his Roman 
 triumph, told the expressmen of that day that if 
 they were broken they must make him new 
 ones. But the same absurdity shows itself at 
 Washington, whenever Congress limits an ap- 
 propriation for a work of art, by saying it shall 
 be made from American marble, or by an Ameri- 
 can artist, or perhaps by an artist who has never 
 learned how, in order to give him an opportu- 
 nity. I want my statue first-rate, or I do not 
 want any! Give me a fresh egg, or give me 
 none at all!
 
 66 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 So in education. Let tutor or professor give 
 himself completely to his work, body, soul, 
 and spirit, and I do not care whether he 
 teaches my boy botany or electricity. The liv- 
 ing soul will quicken other life. But let him 
 give only the fag-end, the drainings, what there 
 is left in the yellow sheets of the lectures of 
 some other generation, again ; he may lecture 
 of Sanskrit or of Pleiocene to the boy, it is all 
 one, the one lecture is as useless as the other. 
 Let him give his best, or let him give nothing. 
 
 I need no better illustration than the contrast 
 between the free sports of your own ball-grounds 
 and the prostituted exercise, purchased and 
 paid for, of what is miscalled " professional ball- 
 playing." The true aspirant in the liberal call- 
 ings enters on his career as freshly and as bravely 
 as you, young gentlemen, strike the ball, catch 
 it, make a base, or wait your turn ; but the other 
 has, of his own free will, degraded himself to 
 the level of the so-called "professional club- 
 man," who must throw so far or must strike so 
 true or run so fast, or he has not earned his 
 share in the day's receipts, and may lose his 
 engagements for the next quarter!
 
 WHAT CAREER? 67 
 
 I hope the American lawyer understands the 
 same truth, that, unless he deals with infinite 
 values, his profession is a handicraft and his 
 duty a job. Unless he deals with justice, pure 
 as heaven, unless he deals with truth, virgin 
 as truth was born, there is for him no ermine. 
 These States, in our organization of society, 
 have given distinguished position to the men of 
 his calling ; have shielded them by privilege else 
 wholly unknown. They are exempt from many 
 of the burdens of other life, and see open to 
 them its highest honors. This is because they 
 are pledged in their very training, and by their 
 oaths of office are sworn, to obtain justice for all 
 men and for the State. The American lawyer 
 ought not to forget the traditions of his pro- 
 fession. The Templars of England, through 
 whose hands come down to him the methods of 
 the past, are the direct descendants of templars 
 bound to the service of chivalry. The only fee 
 which he receives is in form an " honorarium" 
 not the pay for service. The service is the 
 unbought service of the King of truth and of 
 right. He goes forth on his circuit, such is the
 
 68 WHAT CAREER V 
 
 theory of his profession, with the same deter- 
 mination to protect the right and to crush the 
 wrong which sent out Launcelot or Arthur. 
 Who needs his help? Is it this poor boy, ar- 
 raigned for murder by a mad mob, because he 
 is of another color than theirs, and they will 
 wreak on him the wrath of centuries ? Or is it 
 some child of luxury, born in the purple, who 
 has smiles and honors and gold for her minions ? 
 He does his best, be it for the one or for the 
 other : ferrets out conspiracy ; seizes truth, 
 though truth be hiding her face in tears ; and 
 compels the tribunal to decide rightly! The 
 moment that the American lawyer abandons 
 this position ; the moment that he sells justice, 
 or the share of justice that his services can com- 
 mand, to the highest bidder ; the moment he 
 says that the ring which can spend millions shall 
 have millions' worth, while the beggar with 
 a penny shall have a penny's worth, in such 
 words of blasphemy he shows he has no knowl- 
 edge of what justice is. He abandons the posi- 
 tion of one who deals with infinite realities. 
 He has left, as one unfit, the ranks of a liberal
 
 WHAT CAREER? 69 
 
 calling. He makes himself a mere craftsman, 
 dealing with things alone, and to be recompensed 
 with things alone. Leave him, gentlemen ; leave 
 him to the company he deserves ! 
 
 III. The visible distinctions, then, between 
 the liberal professions and the crafts, or trades, 
 are these two : 
 
 First, That the liberal professions have, and 
 can have, no secrets in their methods. 
 
 Second, That men engaged in them are not 
 paid, and cannot be paid, piecemeal fok their 
 endeavors. 
 
 Woe to the doctor who does not his best for 
 the poorest beggar as for the richest prince ! 
 
 Woe to the clergyman who has fewer minis- 
 tries of comfort for Lazarus than for Dives ! 
 
 Woe to the lawyer who is other than the 
 defender of ignorance against cunning ! 
 
 Woe to the artist who carves less than his 
 best in the marble, or paints other than his 
 truest on the canvas ! 
 
 Woe to the teacher who teaches by rote and 
 catechism, and does not make the classic burn
 
 70 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 again with Virgil's fire, or the hard equation 
 speak with the eloquence of truth divine ! 
 
 And these two distinctions are enough to 
 show that the essential principle which lifts the 
 liberal professions to their place above all other 
 callings, is that they deal directly with infinite 
 values. They deal with infinite life, or life 
 in one of its infinite relations. The callings of 
 the teacher, the artist, the lawyer, the doctor, 
 the clergyman, all assert their dignity because 
 of this infinite element appearing directly in 
 their endeavors. Can any other calling make 
 the same claim ? That moment there is another 
 liberal profession, so long as that claim is true. 
 
 This, gentlemen of the Alpha Delta Phi, is 
 the life for which your training in these uni- 
 versities is fitting you. In one ministry or an- 
 other to which you are to devote yourselves, 
 you are to be engaged in these highest of rela- 
 tions. Justice, Beauty, Truth, Life : it is to 
 these that you consecrate your being, to a 
 chivalry, to a nobility, no less than is involved 
 in such consecration. 
 
 That privilege, I said, brings with it its du-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 71 
 
 ties. Noblesse Oblige! When the Government 
 trains your young friends at West Point, they 
 know they are bound in honor for its flag to 
 live and for its flag to die. Nor have many of 
 them proved false to that requisition. When 
 these colleges, which you represent, were estab- 
 lished by pious men, or by far-seeing Govern- 
 ments, or by an aggressive Church. when they 
 gave to you the training and the companionship 
 which make you what you are and will be, 
 you were bound in just the same responsibility. 
 Noblesse Oblige! You could not, if you would, 
 escape the obligation. And the Republic lives 
 or dies according as we, and others like us, give 
 to her or refuse to her this unpurchased service. 
 There are enough who will go into her councils 
 "bribed by her gold. There are enough who will 
 affiliate themselves in intrigues to sway her 
 policy, in the hope of petty places for them- 
 selves or their friends. 
 
 Unless there are more who are driven into 
 the service, which public spirit demands by the 
 nobility of men, who would bear their brothers' 
 burdens, the Republic dies.* Enter upon life,
 
 72 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 and you will find with every day some new call 
 made for your unselfish service. You are to im- 
 prove the schools, or you are to mend the roads, 
 or you are to give strength to the church. 
 Here must be a free library, and no one but you 
 to see to it ; there must be a hospital, and but 
 for you the sick will die unattended, and the 
 blind in darkness. Do not let us, who are your 
 seniors, hear any such excuse from you as that 
 " every man has his price ; " that " every hour 
 must be coined ; " that " another man may do it 
 as well as you." No man can do the work to 
 which God calls you, but you yourself. And 
 we, as we pass off the stage, expect and demand 
 of you, who come after us, that you stand by the 
 State and Church which have stood by you. 
 Let us hear this resolution from the young men 
 who follow us. Our privilege compels us, 
 Noblesse Oblige ! 
 
 Men of my calling, trained to the one univer- 
 sal profession in the study of theology, who 
 may study all life, because our study is to draw 
 men nearer to the God of life, in the fascina- 
 tion of our own calling never fully understand
 
 WHAT CAREER? 73 
 
 why men engage themselves willingly in other 
 walks of duty. To us all studies are open, and 
 there is no science where we may not inquire. 
 None the less do we see, however, that all men, 
 of whatever calling, so far as they deal with 
 these divine and infinite relations of man, 
 truth, beauty, justice, or life, are all Knights 
 of one Round Table, linked together in one 
 great fraternity of duty, blessed by one privi- 
 lege, and called by one call. That call is, 
 to quicken and enlarge the life of the State, 
 the public spirit, in which the State endures. 
 We stand by each other, shoulder to shoulder, 
 in such endeavors ; or we encourage each other 
 by distant signals, each from his lonely beacon. 
 That these drudges in the crowded city may 
 truly live; that these heathen in the polluted 
 islands may truly live ; that this miser, heaping 
 up rusty gold, may truly live ; that these de- 
 bauched profligates, wasted in lust, may truly 
 live ; that the nation, not hampered by her use- 
 less acres, nor bound to earth by her mines of 
 wealth, may truly live, this is our office, 
 an office which is our privilege. This is the 
 4
 
 74 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 service in which we are united as servants of 
 the liberal professions. It is the service to 
 which we are called by Him who lived and died 
 that men might have life more abundantly !
 
 WHAT CAREER? 75 
 
 IV. 
 THE MIND'S MAXIMUM. 
 
 men who have to do work with their 
 brains, even in the humbler processes of 
 such labor, grow to be forty years old without 
 regretting that they were not taught, twenty 
 years before, those arrangements and devices 
 for husbanding their intellectual faculty, and 
 making it as useful to them as possible, which 
 they have been obliged to learn for themselves, 
 without system, and often in the wreck of fail- 
 ure. There is nothing so much neglected in 
 the universities, where they attempt to teach 
 almost every thing, as the sciences of learning 
 rapidly and of using readily what one knows. 
 The rules and constitutions of Benedictines 
 and of Jesuits show how much and how little 
 care the lawgivers of such orders of students 
 devoted to systematizing study. These direc- 
 tions are almost always superficial and empirical,
 
 76 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 and, though by no means without value, no- 
 where rise to the dignity of a philosophical sys- 
 tem of intellectual activity. In our own time, 
 there has been a great deal said about "self- 
 culture," which has professed to give instructions 
 for intellectual culture. But a treatise on self- 
 culture generally ends, as Dr. Channing's does, 
 in showing that it is very important to have the 
 mind well trained, and in good working order, 
 without telling how it is to be trained for keep- 
 ing its working power at a maximum. There 
 is also latent in most of such books the grave 
 error that a man cultivates his mind simply by 
 reading, a process which, in fact, often in- 
 volves a loss of mental efficiency. This error 
 has gone so far, that in common talk a man is 
 praised for cultivating his mind, simply in pro- 
 portion as he reads books of any graver char- 
 acter than novels. 
 
 Such errors are not made in either of the 
 other great lines of human activity. In the 
 domain of bodily work, people understand that 
 the training of the body is one thing, and the 
 feeding it quite another. When that periodical
 
 WHAT CAREER? 77 
 
 cycle of interest in physical training comes 
 round, through which just now we happen to be 
 passing, nobody sends the young gymnast into 
 a fruit-market, or to a table d'hote, directing 
 him to eat all he can, by way of educating his 
 body. And the time has passed, in the other 
 science of training the soul, when men thought 
 it would attain its full power by rapt contem- 
 plation of God and heaven. It is only in the 
 cultivation of the mind, that there is tolerated 
 a general gorging : each teacher encouraged to 
 force down as much as he can, and the pupil 
 then turned loose, to bring his resources to bear 
 as best he can, without a suggestion, even, as to 
 methods of working power. 
 
 Yet the demand of the present time is es- 
 pecially for the utmost amount of intellectual 
 work which can be extorted from educated men, 
 and consequently for its utmost facility and 
 method. There are not enough of them to 
 do the world's work now ; and the insufficient 
 body of those who are detailed to this duty, 
 ought to husband their mental resources to the 
 utmost, and to bring them to bear with the most
 
 78 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 recondite tactics. Let any professional man of 
 to-day amuse himself for an hour with his 
 grandfather's diary of his professional life. Let 
 him compare the letter a month received and 
 answered in the life of the last century, against 
 his own file of three or four hundred received, 
 indexed, and replied to within a like time. Let 
 him compare the grandfather's annual ride, by 
 his own horse-and-chaise power, to the " Con- 
 vention of Ministers," when Election Week 
 came round, with his own annual attendance at 
 a year's directors' meetings, committee meetings, 
 board meetings, and trustees' meetings. Let 
 him look at the schedule of books attached to 
 his grandfather's will, called his "library," to 
 see that there are not so many in all as he has 
 been expected to give an opinion on in the 
 conversation of the last five years of life. Let 
 him count, in the diary, the number of public 
 opinions which his grandfather formed in ten 
 years of voting for Washington, Adams, Bow- 
 doin and Strong, against the opinions which he 
 has himself been compelled to form, and form 
 correctly, regarding foreign and home politics,
 
 WHAT CAREER? 79 
 
 State administration, city, church, and school 
 affairs ; regarding water, gas, horse railroads, 
 school-ventilation, foreign emigration, negro 
 emancipation, and the rest, opinions which 
 he has had to enforce, and to carry if he could, 
 at three or four special, city, State, and national 
 elections every year. Any man who will make 
 this contrast will see that this generation re- 
 quires an amount of intellectual readiness, and 
 a degree of economy in the right and righteous 
 use of intellectual power, such as no generation 
 has required before. 
 
 We have no hope of laying down the true 
 system of the maximum of intellectual effort. 
 But we do hope to show that teachers, of what- 
 ever grade, ought to give more attention than 
 they have done to suggesting for their pupils 
 systems so essential. To take a little instance : 
 there is not an axiom in physics more absolutely 
 settled than the fact that no mental labor of 
 any sort should be attempted within the hour 
 after a full meal. Yet it is only within a few 
 years that the University at our Cambridge 
 ceased to bid students recite within forty min-
 
 80 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 utes after the beginning of breakfast, and with- 
 in an hour after the beginning of dinner. What 
 was as bad was, that half the college recited 
 or, shall we say, pretended to recite before 
 breakfast was served. The old monks, from 
 whom the greater part of our college system 
 has descended, at least knew better than this. 
 In these details, matters are now better ordered 
 at Cambridge. It is possible that the gym- 
 nasium and the trainer may introduce yet 
 more improvements. We hear rumors some- 
 times of practical hints, given by professors 
 there, of the way to bring mental faculty into 
 play. And we are not without hopes that, as 
 there has long been a course there on " The 
 Means of Preserving Health," some teacher 
 may introduce a course on " The Methods of 
 Using Intellectual Power." Such a course 
 comes fairly within the range either of theology, 
 ethics, metaphysics, or hygiene ; and whoever 
 first does throw into system the results of thirty 
 years of his own experience, and teach the arts, 
 methods, and science of best husbanding and 
 cultivating, and of most quickly and vividly
 
 WHAT CAREER? 81 
 
 using, intellectual power, whether of the 
 meanest or finest quality, will earn the grati- 
 tude of the meanest and finest minds together, 
 and a claim to a share in whatever good they 
 may ever work for mankind. 
 
 I. In pointing out the relations of such in- 
 struction to the different lines of human science, 
 we must, with whatever regret, speak first of its 
 physiological relations. We beg the reader, 
 however, not, for this, to turn ruthlessly from 
 this paper, as if he had here only another divi- 
 dend from the assets of Sylvester-Grahamism, 
 or House-I-Live-in-ism. We are forced to speak 
 of physiology; but our chief object is to say 
 that that folly is now nearly exploded, which 
 mistook the severe treatment necessary (per- 
 haps) for the cure of students in confirmed 
 dyspepsia, for the proper treatment of men in 
 health, eager to work, mentally, under the 
 requisitions of this time, up to the very top of 
 their steam. The dyspeptics may settle with 
 the doctors what is the proper treatment for 
 them. We neither know nor care. Our busi- 
 4
 
 82 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 ness is with men in health, that they may keep 
 their health, and that they may find out what is 
 the highest amount of their working power, and 
 may keep to that without overrunning it. We 
 venture to say that, for them, any system of 
 half-diet, of scales to weigh daily bread, of food 
 marked by some invalid name, any system, in 
 short, which in any way suggests hospitals 
 or convalescence, is bad practice. On the 
 other hand, we venture to say to the dyspeptics, 
 that they had better leave the company of men 
 working with their minds till they are well. It 
 will not be long. There is always open, for in- 
 stance, the army ; and when on foot in the open 
 air, we forget the doctor soon. 
 
 The dictum with regard to food, then, is 
 probably that of one of our most judicious 
 medical men, to whom this community is largely 
 indebted, who used to say to his class: "In 
 brief, gentlemen, you may eat what you choose, 
 when you choose, and as often as you choose ; 
 only be careful not to look at your tongues after 
 you have done." For as, in the highest stage 
 which in this world we come to in the religious
 
 WHAT CAREER? 83 
 
 life, a man forgets he has a soul through uinetj- 
 nine out of a hundred of the hours which he 
 crowds full of enterprise for the glory of God, 
 so, in the lower plane of which we speak now, 
 he forgets, by a corresponding law, that he has 
 a body. The degree to which he remembers or 
 forgets it gives an accurate measurement of its 
 frailty or its health. 
 
 For all this, however, he has a body ; and 
 the ignorance of youth, which risks it some- 
 times to its ruin, is not the same grace as the 
 confirmed habit of discipline to which we would 
 lead youth, which uses it as not abusing it. 
 They are, at the least, as different as is inno- 
 cence from virtue. Man has a body. It is one 
 of his tools. His mind is the other. Now, the 
 Latin Grammar is very right in saying : " The 
 mind itself knows not what the mind is ;" which 
 is as true of Spurzheim's mind as it was of Cic- 
 ero's. But the mind does know, by this time, 
 that, whatever it is or is not, it works by means 
 of a physical arrangement called a brain, or a 
 pair of brains. Let the question lie, then, what 
 the mind is. Still, in discussing the discipline
 
 84 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 of its working power, we must say something, 
 however unwillingly, on the physiological con- 
 ditions of the brain, on the privileges to which 
 it is entitled, and the cautions which it has a 
 right to claim from those who would effect the 
 most the most promptly, with an organ so 
 exquisite and so delicate. 
 
 The familiar statement that the " brain is the 
 stomach," or the " stomach is the brain," which 
 we sometimes hear, would probably not satisfy 
 the anatomists. But it expresses very con- 
 veniently some results of physiology and anat- 
 omy which all workmen ought to remember. 
 The chief of them is this, that, at the moment 
 when you have given the stomach its work to 
 do, you have no right to call upon the brain, at 
 the other end of the same system, to be working 
 for you also. When you are journeying, you 
 take assiduous care that your horse shall not be 
 compelled to do any work in the hour after he 
 has slowly eaten his grain. The horse has cost 
 you money ; and, even in the poor business of 
 his muscular action, you know that he needs all 
 his vital resource for the single matter of getting
 
 WHAT CAREER? 85 
 
 his grain in part stowed away. Because you 
 happen to be impatient, you do not risk his 
 health, which you have paid for. Now, it is 
 true that you never bought your brain at a 
 horse-market. It might not fetch a bid there. 
 Certainly it ought not, if you have no more 
 practical notion, after your experience of it, 
 than to set it hard at work while the whole 
 working power of your system has been pre- ' 
 engaged lower down. Consider what you have 
 done. You have poured together a pint of 
 coffee, three hot biscuits buttered, the lean 
 parts of two mutton-chops, and a slice of stale 
 bread, into the reservoir which contains your 
 provisions for the first six hours of the day. 
 You have done this by way of breaking the fast 
 of the night before. Give, now, to the officials 
 who have the present charge of those supplies 
 an hour's uninterrupted time after you have 
 done : do not embarrass them by constantly 
 sending down to ask what is seven times nine, 
 or what is the interest for four years and eleven 
 days on blank hundred and blankty-blank dol- 
 lars at blank per cent. Give them that hour
 
 86 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 of undisturbed work on their present business, 
 and then start the engine slowly ; and thank 
 us, who have advised you, for the promptness 
 and efficiency of its new revolution. 
 
 Without dabbling in the detail of physiology, 
 we may say, simply, that one precise object for 
 which you have eaten your breakfast is to give 
 to this delicate organ, the brain, the compensa- 
 tion it needs for the work it did for you yester- 
 day. You may call it wages, if you regard the 
 brain as your servant ; or food, if you regard it 
 as your slave ; or sympathy and encouragement, 
 if you regard it as your friend. Whatever you 
 call the breakfast, the fact is, that the brain lost 
 in amount of substance yesterday just in pro- 
 portion as you worked hard with it. The nice 
 observations of a few years past have shown to 
 a certainty that the brain loses elements, which 
 may be detected as phosphates in the fluids of 
 the body, just in proportion to the intensity of 
 its exercise. The masterly argument with which 
 you kept that drows}^ jury awake yesterday 
 cost you its weight in phosphate. The letter of 
 entreaty which you wrote last night (which you
 
 WHAT CAREER? 87 
 
 should have left till this morning) was well 
 put, succinct, and pathetic ; and it cost you, 
 therefore, its weight in phosphate. Your calcu- 
 lation of the comet's orbit differs by two days 
 from Dr. Pape's. You have analyzed your 
 work, and, in a day's careful labor, have proved 
 to all men and angels that you are right and 
 that Dr. Pape is wrong. Yes, that is very fine ; 
 but the tongs which you put into that white- 
 heat lost some little scales of iron as you turned 
 over and over the equations and formulas. The 
 triumphant calculation cost your brain just its 
 weight in phosphate. Do not cheat the servant 
 or the friend who has served you so. Or, do 
 you count him as a slave, do not cheat your- 
 self by starving him. And if you mean to 
 work him in that same fashion to-day, let him 
 have new phosphates, exquisitely and carefully 
 elaborated from the coffee, the chop, and the 
 bread-and-butter ; let the new and the old be 
 well introduced to each other, and on good 
 social terms, before you give the word for new 
 duty. 
 
 It is not simply new substance, however,
 
 88 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 which the brain requires. While we know 
 very little about its methods, we know that it 
 has methods which it insists upon. We will 
 not anticipate the physiologists so far as to say 
 it is a Voltaic battery : but this is a guess so 
 well sustained now that we might do that with 
 reason ; and we may say that, in the particular 
 matter with which we are dealing, it works 
 with exactly the laws of a Voltaic battery. 
 Those laws are now matters understood in daily 
 practice. Bear them in mind. If you were 
 De Sauty working the Atlantic Telegraph, seek- 
 ing the highest power from your battery, and 
 the most precise action, would you use the very 
 same fluids to stimulate the plates month after 
 month, regardless of the wear of the plates 
 and the disintegration of the liquid? Not at 
 all. You have not only to renew the plates at 
 certain periods, but you have, at shorter periods, 
 to renew the liquids. Of course you would 
 never attempt to work without liquids in the 
 battery. As well work without plates. Of 
 course you would not be satisfied, even though 
 you had the best double-combination improved
 
 WHAT CAREER? 89 
 
 battery which science ever invented, to work 
 by splashing a little liquid, whatever might 
 come along, on the plates for a moment. 
 Though some result would undoubtedly follow, 
 it would not be the high-pressure, extreme- 
 tension result which you are in search of. You 
 would pour in, with the utmost care, the liquids 
 which had been prepared with the most accu- 
 rate chemistry. And, even then, you would 
 have to wait for some moments, more or less, 
 before the battery would fully work on them, 
 or they on the battery, and the high action 
 begin. Now, whether the brain is or is not a 
 battery, let the physiologists settle. It works 
 precisely by these laws which we have stated. 
 In sleep, for instance, it is inactive, if the fluids 
 elaborated from food are not ruthlessly poured 
 upon it, in which case it acts in dream or night- 
 mare. Before breakfast, it is in no condition 
 for active work. When breakfast comes, still 
 it must wait till the elaboration of its precise 
 liquid is completed. When that is at length 
 poured on, grant the few moments, more or 
 less, of the electrician, and then you may draw
 
 90 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 your sparks, lift your heavy weights, telegraph 
 to the other side of the world, or the other 
 end of time, at your pleasure. 
 
 "With these mere hints, we close what we 
 have to say of the very foundation of our sub- 
 ject, however important that foundation may be. 
 In most of the popular frenzies on the connec- 
 tion of mind and body, some piece of successful 
 treatment of disease is seized upon, and held up 
 as the legitimate system to be pursued in health. 
 Because a shower-bath occasionally gives to 
 a disordered system the freshness and vivacity 
 which it had forgotten, people tell you to take 
 one every day, and that you shall be sure to be 
 fresh and alive. The experiment fails. Be- 
 cause a bon vivant gains spirits and energy when 
 he cuts off half his luxurious dinner, Sylvester 
 Graham tells him, virtually, that if he will give 
 up the other half he will have twice as much 
 spirit and energy. And, in physical exercise, 
 because a man works more lightly and happily 
 after a walk, or other exercise sufficient to pro- 
 mote digestion and renew appetite, we are told 
 to work like Hercules in a gymnasium, and to
 
 WHAT CAREER? 91 
 
 walk like Captain Walker in the training- 
 ground. All this is absurd. If a man wants 
 to work with his mind, he only wastes food, 
 time, and life by bringing his body up to the 
 mark of a blacksmith's or a boxer's. He neither 
 needs to run a mile in five-thirty, nor to lift six 
 hundred pounds, nor to walk up to the house- 
 top by the lightning-rod. He wants exercise 
 enough to keep him in high spirits, good appe- 
 tite, and that absolute health which almost for- 
 gets there is a body to be cared for. The truth 
 is, that a prime condition of vivid intellectual 
 labor is that one give as little attention as is 
 practicable to the tools with which he works. 
 And, just as the mower loses repute for mowing 
 who is constantly setting his scythe anew, or 
 stopping to sharpen it; and just as he advances 
 more slowly than the more skilful workman who 
 does not complain of his tools, the mental 
 artisan who works lightly in the harness with 
 which it has pleased God to clothe his spirit, ad- 
 vances with most success and most rapidity. It 
 is folly to pretend there are no tools. It is folly 
 to leave them to rust in the meadow over night.
 
 92 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 It is folly to pretend there is no harness. It is 
 folly to leave the harness without oiling it. 
 But it is worse folly to spend all one's life in 
 sharpening one's scythe, or in beautifying the 
 traces or the collar. 
 
 We shall leave, for a like reason, without any 
 notice, the questions regarding diet: how the 
 food should be concocted which is to renew the 
 plates of our battery, if it be a battery ; and 
 how the liquids, which are to be poured on it to 
 excite its motion. Bearing in mind the golden 
 injunction which we have quoted, that we 
 may eat much as we please, if we do not make 
 food too much the subject of after-meditation ; 
 that the brain-stomach is most likely to digest 
 our food for us when we do not make the 
 stomach-brain weigh it, analyze it, account for 
 it, and justify it ; resolving that we will not 
 thus try to think cake and eat cake too, we 
 do not discuss the relative merits of coffee, tea, 
 matt*?, cocoa, or guarana, in their province of 
 reproducing brain, which is, according to Liebig, 
 their duty in the economy of civilization. Swe- 
 denborg wrote his oracles on coffee ; and so,
 
 WHAT CAREER? 93 
 
 they say, did Agassiz his. Most poor sermons 
 are written on tea, and, they say, some good 
 ones. We have read capital editorials which 
 were written on shells ; we have heard that the 
 high law-officers in England are detected with 
 ale when they are caught at luncheon ; and we 
 know that Anacreon says that the best is water. 
 Into that discussion we do not go. 
 
 II. We have reached a much more interest- 
 ing part of our subject, where, however, all 
 the authorities in print begin to fail us sadly. 
 We may call it the internal economy of mental 
 action. It seeks light on the best methods 
 and proportions of work, either in varying men- 
 tal processes, or in holding steadily to one. 
 It involves, also, the questions as to the real 
 maxima of intellectual effectiveness. On these 
 subjects the monkish authorities have but little 
 to say. The truth is that their work did not 
 admit of much variety. It was simply the 
 steady plodding on of uncritical readers, or of 
 self-satisfied writers, who were in no dread of 
 criticism. The German scholars also have wide
 
 94 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 reputation as great workmen, but we are dis- 
 posed to challenge that too. When it is said 
 that Heyne worked twenty hours three days in 
 the week, and twenty-four hours on the inter- 
 mediate days, and this is said of Heyne, a 
 quality of work is meant much of which does 
 not deserve the name. These pundits go into 
 their rooms, and call all that is done there 
 work, if it only involve reading. The news- 
 paper counts for work, or the last novel or re- 
 view. We have known similar self-deception 
 nearer home, but we have nothing to do with it 
 in this paper. We are discussing simply the 
 action of the mind which directly aims at some 
 new evolution of truth, or some new presenta- 
 tion of truth evolved before. The student is at 
 work if he is presenting truth in new forms to 
 himself, or if he is attempting to present it in 
 new forms to others. But, exactly as copying 
 does not come within our idea of intellectual 
 work, because the workman there only repeats 
 for others truth already evolved, in an unchanged 
 form, mere reading or acquisition of information 
 undigested comes as little within it. For here
 
 WHAT CAREER? 95 
 
 the workman only repeats to himself the result 
 of the study of others. The workman, in both 
 cases, works mechanically. In fact, mere read- 
 ing is the greatest of intellectual luxuries. If 
 there is any difficulty in understanding an au- 
 thor, of course an element of labor comes in, 
 as when one reads in a language not perfectly 
 familiar to him. But where the reading is per- 
 fectly intelligible, it is not to be ranked as intel- 
 lectual work. It will undoubtedly fatigue eye 
 and brain ; but the fatigue to the brain is the 
 very minimum involved in any mental action. 
 As the German epicure said he could eat larks 
 all day, any man or woman may say he can 
 read all the time he can spare from his meals, 
 his digestion, and his other physical exercises. 
 If it tire his eyes, that is merely a bodily affair. 
 We do not therefore take mere reading into 
 the account of the mental effort which we are 
 considering. 
 
 A popular writer l succinctly stated the moral 
 aspect of the maximum of work in the following 
 words, in a newspaper article : " No man has 
 
 1 Mr. Thomas Drew.
 
 96 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 a right to incur more fatigue in a day than the 
 sleep of the next night will recover from." 
 
 As a general rule, we conceive that this state- 
 ment is the true one. There are exceptions, or 
 course, when generals must march their men by 
 forced marches, but they are exceptions to be 
 permitted with the greatest care. The inten- 
 tional violation of the rule is simply suicide 
 by inches. The man who wakes to-day con- 
 scious that he overworked yesterday, because lie 
 finds he is not up to yesterday morning's work- 
 ing mark, has run back just so far in his own 
 life. There seems no moral distinction between 
 the act, if it were intentional, and the aot 
 by which, instead of injuring his brains a little, 
 he should injure them a great deal in blowing 
 them away. The regular recurrence of night 
 and day seems to be so adapted to the human 
 constitution of mind and body, that we must 
 put ourselves under regulations of this sort 
 dependent upon it. And as no man eats one 
 great breakfast Sunday, expecting to lunch 
 Tuesday for the week, to take the week's exer- 
 cise Wednesday, to dine once for all Thursday,
 
 WHAT CAREER? 97 
 
 to take a twenty-four hour siesta on Friday, and 
 a protracted cup of tea Saturday, all to be fol- 
 lowed by a week's night of sleep ; as every 
 man admits that the regimen of the body is to 
 be regulated by cycles of twenty-four hours 
 each, we hold that every man must use his 
 mind in the same way. It must come up to 
 time, as the Ring says, every morning fresh and 
 bright, as if, indeed, it were new-born, if we 
 mean to get from it the maximum of vivacity 
 and power. The great tours deforce invariably 
 prove this. A newspaper reporter will tell you 
 of specific feats in which he wrote steadily, in 
 the most fatiguing form of writing, perhaps for 
 fourteen consecutive hours. So will turfmen 
 tell you of horses who have been driven with- 
 out stopping for as many. But neither of them 
 will tell you that the week in which those hours 
 were included came up to the average steady 
 work of the mind, or the horse, concerned. 
 
 No more work is to be done in a day than the 
 
 night's sleep will recover from. That is the 
 
 first rule. So far the sun, Ammon Re", is the lord 
 
 of this business, as the Egyptians regarded him. 
 
 5
 
 98 WHAT CAEEER ? 
 
 So much of subdivision is mapped out for 
 a man in the calendar as matter of morals. 
 And, as the calendar marks Sunday with red 
 letters for him, he is to throw that also out from 
 his list of working-days, except as the priests 
 in the temple profaned the Sabbath and were 
 blameless. If a man's profession make him work 
 on Sundays, as does a daily editor's, or his 
 printer's, or a chorister's, or organist's, or other 
 minister's, let him make allowance for that va- 
 riation by taking his rest-day on some other day 
 of the week: best on Saturday, so far as the 
 arrangements of modern life suggest the resting- 
 day for the exceptional classes we have named. 
 There is no difficulty in advancing thus far in 
 the regulation of working-time. But in further 
 subdivision, where we have the moral question, 
 the ground is more difficult, the lights less fre- 
 quent, and the authorities are more at variance. 
 Dr. Andrew P. Peabody, an excellent guide, 
 tells us in his Discourse before the Divinity 
 School Alumni, that every man who works with 
 his mind "should have a vocation and an avo- 
 cation." That is to say, to avoid the fatigue
 
 WHAT CAREER? 99 
 
 of monotony, or the danger of any of the forms 
 of monomania, from despondency up to the 
 acme of that disease, let a man be sure that 
 his daily duty has, at least, two sides to it. 
 When he has worked enough at the one, let 
 him work in turn at the other. Be it observed, 
 this is a rule for alternating forms of work. 
 We say nothing as yet of play. The rule, as 
 an empirical rule, proves itself true. It would 
 prove itself true in practice, even in the limited 
 view which our subject takes, a much nar- 
 rower one than the broad view of professional 
 life which Dr. Peabody was considering. For 
 if we only regarded mental efficiency and vi- 
 vacity, it would prove better for a man to have 
 two subjects of mental effort, which should en- 
 gage him alternately, than one alone. As mat- 
 ter of practice, most thinkers, or most students, 
 would admit this. But what is the principle 
 on which this rule rests, and how far may we 
 make the rule go? First, as to the principle. 
 Are there different sets of mental faculties, as 
 the phrenologists say, so bounded and contrasted 
 that it rests one set to have you put another set
 
 100 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 in motion, as they used to tell us that a 
 blacksmith, after striking with his arms all 
 day, rested himself with dancing? When, for 
 instance, one has been loving his children in- 
 tensely for an hour, does it rest him to do sums 
 in the rule of three for an hour, and then will 
 he rest himself more by remembering the roots 
 of the Greek numerals for an hour more ? We 
 do not believe he will. We believe this whole 
 theory of the rotation of mental crops to be a 
 mistake. The true rotation is precisely akin to 
 that of the rotation of vegetable crops. The 
 old notion was, that the land which had been 
 cultivated for wheat rested when you put it in 
 clover, and rested more when you put it in 
 turnips ; so that it was with perfect enthusiasm 
 that in the fourth year it received wheat again, 
 and that it then produced wheat as never be- 
 fore. The truth was, that that land never 
 rested at all. The clover took up elements 
 which the wheat had left, and the turnips found 
 such as both had left. But if the clover and 
 the turnips had been carried off the ground, 
 when the wheat came again in the fourth year
 
 WHAT CAREER? 101 
 
 of the rotation to the dinner which had been 
 warmed over twice for these different guests, 
 it found but poor picking left. And it proves 
 that the system of rotation, undoubtedly well 
 founded, requires for its correct use that one or 
 more years shall be virtually years of rest. The 
 best rest is that which is given when a crop is 
 planted, permitted to grow, and ploughed back 
 into the ground. At all events, nothing must 
 be carried, in the rest-year, from the field. We 
 believe this to be just as true of intellectual 
 croppings. You undoubtedly gain by varying 
 your vocation with an avocation ; perhaps you 
 gain then by what we have heard called a 
 " third," some third pursuit, which may be 
 called an avocation of the second power. But 
 you have only a very limited line of relief in 
 this direction. It is undoubtedly exhausted 
 when you have come to the " third," and 
 very soon you must give to the soil you are 
 drawing from the complete rest of a fallow, 
 or of hours spent for its own re-creation only. 
 It is probable that the impression that passive 
 qualities are rested because others are at work,
 
 102 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 is false. The blacksmith does not rest himself 
 by dancing, or reading, or playing checkers. 
 He may di-vert himself thus, but he does not 
 re-create himself. To re-create himself he is 
 more apt to eat his dinner, to drink his tea, to 
 smoke his pipe, or to go to sleep. In all which 
 experiments but one, he shows his practical 
 knowledge of physiology. 
 
 It is true that the facility with which different 
 minds change from subject to subject, is one of 
 the traits of character in which men are most 
 unlike each other. We are the more restricted 
 in our discussion of it. The word " versatility " 
 has been invented to express a high degree of 
 this facility. It is to be observed, however, 
 that because Lord Brougham can discuss Nat- 
 ural Theology, Criminal Law, and any thing 
 else in the Cyclopaedia, with equal ease, when 
 Tie chooses, it does not follow that he will choose 
 to work on three such subjects in the same hour 
 or in the same day. Our own conviction is 
 that he will prefer to do all his work on one 
 in one day, and all his work on another in an- 
 other day, perhaps in another month or year.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 103 
 
 All reputations for versatility are to be studied 
 with reference to this distinction. The ease 
 with which Mr. Charles Mathews or Mr. Pro- 
 teus Love drops behind a table, and reappears 
 instantly as an old woman instead of a young 
 man, as we saw him just before, is indeed amus- 
 ing to the spectator. But it is not a valuable 
 accomplishment. Even as a bit of costume, the 
 old woman's dress or the young man's would 
 prove badly adapted for practical purposes. In 
 the same manner, the versatility which works 
 its wonders in mental work within an hour is 
 a gift as amusing, and in some points perhaps 
 proves convenient ; yet the work it does is of 
 but poor quality after the first change or two. 
 Homer characterizes this quality, when he says 
 of Margites, 
 
 .' ijirlffraTo <=pya,, HULKUS 5" ifiriffTOLTo irdira. 
 "He knew a great many things, but he knew all of them 
 badly." 
 
 The versatility, however, of which Mr. James 
 Martineau's various scholarly work seems so 
 good an illustration, of a mind which occu- 
 pies itself heartily with one subject till it can
 
 104 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 make to the world some statement of real value 
 regarding it, and then grapples with like force 
 with a subject wholly different, is a versatility 
 without which the world would lose almost the 
 blessings which it wins from its heroes. 
 
 Work without interruption, then, while you 
 work, till the day's task is done. That is the 
 rule for gaining the maximum of the best work 
 of which the particular mind concerned is cap- 
 able. Between the vocation and the avocation 
 there is fair opportunity for a pause, which may 
 be hours long if necessary. But when work is 
 once begun on one subject, it should not be 
 suspended till the day's contribution has been 
 rendered. In " Miss Martineau's Travels" is 
 Dr. Channing's statement on this point, not 
 repeated, if we remember, in his Life. He says 
 that the first hour of composition is to him very 
 painful, that the work grows easier and easier 
 as the hour advances, but that only at the be- 
 ginning of the second hour does he begin to 
 work at ease and cheerfully. The experience 
 again reminds us of what we see in a Voltaic 
 battery, of the irregular, almost spasmodic la-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 105 
 
 bor of the cells when work begins, and the 
 gradual regularity, and even passion, which in 
 a short time the process obtains. Now the 
 practical remark of importance is that, if the 
 work be thoroughly interrupted, all this initial 
 difficulty has to be passed through again. It is 
 exactly as if the battery be lifted from the liquid 
 long enough for its plates to dry. The bore 
 who says, " I will not interrupt you, I only 
 want two minutes," speaks like a fool. The 
 two minutes involve as completely a new initia- 
 tion of the mental process as two months would 
 do. He might as well say, " I am not going to 
 break your mirror into pieces far apart, I 
 will only separate the bits by a crack of a 
 millionth of an inch." You do not want the 
 mirror broken at all. And you must not have 
 the mental process broken at all, whether of 
 mathematics, of logic, of historical research, 
 of the reconstruction of lost historical truth, of 
 illustration by poetry, or of composition for 
 conviction, if it is to be your best process. It 
 must begin and work steadily to its own self- 
 appointed close. There is not the slightest un- 
 5*
 
 106 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 certainty when that close comes. You know it 
 yourself when you feel it. And then, after such 
 pause as you like, the a-vocation must begin. 
 
 It is said that the musical critics can tell in 
 Mozart's Requiem at what points he went to 
 sleep in its composition, and was waked by his 
 wife to begin again. We have no doubt this 
 is true. A truly sympathetic criticism would 
 show of almost any fine literary composition 
 where the work was suspended and where it 
 began again, where Homer nodded. If in 
 any case this seems impossible, it is probably 
 because the work is all mosaic: the mental 
 process was broken so often, that it is patched 
 all through, and nowhere rises to the severity 
 or the simplicity of an intaglio in an unbroken 
 gem. 
 
 This principle of intellectual effort seems to 
 us to decide the question as to the number of 
 a-vocations, or sides to a man's daily duty. 
 Two sides will probably exhaust his working- 
 power for a day. The " third " to which we 
 have alluded should, in our opinion, be thrown 
 wholly into the part of the day allotted to
 
 WHAT CAREER? 107 
 
 amusement, and should be of no character re- 
 quiring energy, will, or vivacity even. It ought 
 not even to involve physical fatigue beyond the 
 requirements for the day's bodily exercise. Do 
 not play chess for a diversion to intellectual 
 labor. Do not read history merely because you 
 like to. Do not read any thing grave enough 
 to require what Capel Lofft calls re-flection, 
 the turning back over the passage to determine 
 whether you agree with the author or no. Do 
 not persuade yourself that a fatiguing walk will 
 rest your brain. It is only so much drain on 
 phosphates of the muscles, and you must repro- 
 duce phosphate for the brain before you can go 
 to work again. Do not pretend to be virtuous, 
 in short, by passing any labor into currency as 
 if it were play. You had better go to the 
 theatre, or to the opera, if these are not as hard 
 work to you as they seem to be to most per- 
 formers. Play cards. Dance. Listen to music. 
 Laugh. Sit on a rail-fence and see how green 
 the grass is, and how blue the sky. New Eng- 
 land undertook, a generation ago, to smuggle 
 the Lyceum into the place of the drama, and
 
 108 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 grind a few axes in the way of instruction when 
 she pretended to be amusing her work-people. 
 Human nature took its revenge, however. And 
 it has been years since a Lyceum Lecture of the 
 popular class instructed anybody, called for any 
 thought, or indeed fatigued any one but the 
 lecturer. All which is as it should be. 
 
 We have said that the time to stop work 
 showed itself. As soon as the vital current 
 enlivening study or composition flags, this time 
 has come. If the student looks at his watch, or 
 shakes his hour-glass, or in any way feels mis- 
 trust of his subject or himself, the battery is 
 losing power, and the direction of its activity 
 should be changed. This is the time for the 
 a-vocation to come in. We need not say that 
 the more unlike its processes to those of the 
 vocation, the better for all concerned. If one 
 have involved writing, let the other be mainly 
 reading. If the one have been fine art, let the 
 other be mathematical, or historical, or, in a 
 word, as different as it can be. In our judg- 
 ment, by the time the a-vocation rings its alarm- 
 bells in its turn, and asks, as the Jacquard loom
 
 WHAT CAREER? 109 
 
 does in like junctures, for a change of color, it 
 is time for the workman to stop mental work 
 for that day. Let his exercise begin, or his 
 diversion, his social life, or that general pot- 
 pourri of undetermined existence in which most 
 of us spend most of our hours ; directed not by 
 ourselves but by destiny, by the post-office, 
 the almanac, the pig escaped, the cows in the 
 cornfield, the agreeable Englishman who has 
 come with a letter of introduction, or the unfor- 
 tunate missionary to the Ojibways who wants 
 to know how he is to educate three promising 
 young men. The day's mental work is done, 
 when the first mental a-vocation after the voca- 
 tion begins to drag. 
 
 It is perfectly idle to attempt to say how long 
 the day's mental work will continue before this 
 limit is attained. It will vary with different 
 minds, of course, and it will vary in the same 
 mind, with the class of work done, and the 
 degree of concentration required. The tours de 
 force of which the human mind is capable are 
 so extravagant that they can hardly be over- 
 stated. A hard-working physician in an epi-
 
 110 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 demic will keep on his beat twelve hours, 
 working down two or three horses in that time 
 in his duties in a large city. But he is committing 
 suicide all the time, and in this case scarcely by 
 inches. The gentlemen of the bar sit in their 
 offices, or in court, nearly as long, for continued 
 periods. But much of each day is not work in 
 that duty. Our own observation of as broad 
 range of lives as have left us their memoranda, 
 would decide that three hours is as high a max- 
 imum as an average mind can seek, for the 
 average of its concentrated daily effort, of six 
 days' work in a week, and fifty-two weeks in a 
 year. This is Sir Edward Lytton's statement ; 
 Scott's was even lower than this. The British 
 Commission on Education has often reported, 
 what we have no doubt is true, that with chil- 
 dren, at the end of three hours' faithful study, 
 the power of acquiring is, in general, at the end 
 for that day. That is to say, the child could 
 learn in three hours, well used, all that it does 
 learn in the six you keep it in school. We have 
 no doubt this is true for children. We should 
 put the acquiring power of men and women
 
 WHAT CAREER? Ill 
 
 rather higher, perhaps ; but the average of all 
 kinds of highly concentrated mental work is 
 probably fully stated as three hours a day. 
 
 But alas ! in saying that the man who works 
 with his brains ought, for the best work which 
 he can do, to work on only two lines of work 
 every day, we do but demand an impossibility, 
 if we be speaking of modern civilization. Per- 
 haps they work so in Arcadia, though Dr. 
 Wordsworth makes no mention of any clergy- 
 men, lawyers, or critics whom he found there. 
 We have heard it said that in Charleston, South 
 Carolina, before that city and State were in- 
 cluded in the organism of the world, no man 
 did but one thing in a day. At dinner you 
 conversed on the day's employment. " I," said 
 one, " went to Russell's for my umbrella, which 
 I left there yesterday." " I," said another, 
 " called at the news-room." " I," said a third, 
 " made my compliments to Mr. Frazer, and 
 saw his last picture." And the man who had 
 done one thing in a forenoon deserved well 
 of his country and posterity. Now that South 
 Carolina also manures her fields, pays her
 
 112 WHAT CABEER? 
 
 laborers, shoots her voters, and approaches 
 modern civilization in other points of prac- 
 tice, good and bad, there is left no such sim- 
 plicity of civilization anywhere. The man who 
 has brains, who should start on the determi- 
 nation that he would every day devote him- 
 self to two subjects only, would soon be shut 
 up by his neighbors in the same palace with 
 those who have none. Men must devote 
 thought, and a great deal of thought, to a very 
 wide circle of inquiries and occupations as a 
 single day's work goes by. One cannot be 
 Saint Bernard, or Duns Scotus, if he would, in 
 a world which has advanced into the nineteenth 
 century of the enlivenment of its life. To 
 speak only of the invention of the post-office, 
 of which the advantages have never been so 
 demonstrated as to leave it beyond question 
 whether the curse it inflicts is not greater, 
 correspondence alone is enough to destroy the 
 ideal system of daily mental activity which we 
 have tried to describe. 
 
 " Correspondence is the burden of modern 
 civilization," says Saint-Marc Girardin. He is
 
 WHAT CAREER? 113 
 
 describing the life of luxury which the first 
 families of Rome led in their sea-shore homes in 
 the centuries which Gibbon calls the happiest 
 in the history of the world. On the other hand, 
 most men of affairs tell us to-day that it is per- 
 sonal presence only which moves men now, 
 letters going so easily where printed circulars 
 go of course, into the waste-basket, or more 
 directly into the fire. Yet the world has not 
 yet learned this truth ; if it be truth, and cor- 
 respondence is still one of our greatest burdens. 
 It is a burden which precisely illustrates the 
 danger which we have described, of cutting off 
 one mental process to begin again on another ; 
 of leaving to dry the supposed plates of the 
 mental battery, before we set them to work 
 again. It is far more fatiguing to the mind to 
 write ten letters on different subjects of impor- 
 tance, than to write one on the same subject of 
 the same length as all the ten. The change 
 involved of method, of style, of familiarity, of 
 recollections, calls so severely on the mental 
 power employed as to drain it to the utmost. 
 It would therefore be better, unquestionably,
 
 114 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 always to answer a letter as soon as it is re- 
 ceived, while the mind is still occupied with the 
 subject, thus avoiding break and jar. Letter 
 and answer would then cost onLy the fatigue 
 of hand required in writing. But this would 
 shock people's prejudices in favor of second 
 thoughts, there being in the world a suspicion 
 that rowen is sometimes worth more than June 
 hay. And it would make correspondence fa- 
 tally brisk. The railroads are bad enough, but 
 how terrible life, if every letter brought its 
 echo by return mail ! The practical way for us 
 to regain the paradise of our ancestors in these 
 matters would seem to be to answer our letters 
 in the moment which received them, and then 
 lay the answers by for a month before we 
 posted them. One hard-pressed friend suggests 
 to us that the invention of small note-paper is 
 the providential remedy. We have never seen 
 any small enough to cure the disease. Another 
 studies the Duke of Wellington's despatches, 
 in hope of attaining brevity. Another has 
 blanks by which a secretary furnishes uniform 
 answers to all the people who would like his
 
 WHAT CAREER? 115 
 
 recommendation for Chief-Justice, or, if they 
 cannot be that, would be glad of a subordinate 
 commission in the quartermaster's department. 
 But the system of blanks goes only a very 
 little way in relief. Another used a manifold 
 letter-writer for his letters of affection, and sent 
 them in triplicate to different friends. But this 
 plan was upset when he had one returned by a 
 wounded spirit not appreciated. Members of 
 Congress sometimes detail their wives to write 
 their autographs for them. Mr. Fillmore used 
 the best plan we know, if the thing is to be 
 done at all, in dictating to a phonographic re- 
 porter his letters. They were then written out 
 at the reporter's leisure, signed, and posted; 
 yet the original copies of the letters were pre- 
 served in the phonographic notes. Sixty let- 
 ters of average length could perhaps thus be 
 dictated in an hour; but we should say that 
 an hour of such work would be all the concen- 
 trated work any man ought to do in a day. 
 The most effective man we ever knew never 
 answered any letters at all. All that he wrote 
 were the letters which affairs made necessary
 
 116 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 for the communication of information to his 
 fellow-laborers. For the rest, let them come 
 and see him, as, alas ! they did. It will prob- 
 ably be in this way eventually that the " burden 
 of modern civilization" will be tipped off its 
 back into the sea. 
 
 We need not apologize for this excursus on 
 letter-writing, for the illustration it furnishes of 
 the difficult conditions imposed on mental effort 
 by modern barbarism is an illustration which 
 covers very wide ground. Correspondence is 
 the most oppressive of a series of demands made 
 on men of affairs which interrupt the regularity 
 of mental effort for which any system provides. 
 And no study of the subject is in the least ade- 
 quate, which does not allude to such external 
 demands and interruptions. They must be pro- 
 vided for as well as the mind's personal and im- 
 mediate requisitions. If they cannot be resisted 
 or avoided, the reply made to the requisitions 
 of the mind itself must be adapted, as far as 
 possible, to their rapacity. We are not bound 
 to travel into detail to discuss the adaptations 
 which will be found the most successful. Every
 
 WHAT CAREER? 117 
 
 department of mental effort has to furnish its 
 own ; the tricks by which different hunted hares 
 escape from the hounds let loose upon them in 
 the barbarism in which we live, the methods 
 by which men doing their own duty meet, in 
 contest or in submission, the invaders who ask 
 them also to do theirs. Nor is it fair to speak 
 as if all such invasions of a man's own plan of 
 life ought to be avoided or evaded. In a world 
 where our whole duty is to bear each other's 
 burdens, it ill becomes any man of us to choose 
 the particular way in which he will bear them, 
 the particular yoke which he will carry. 
 
 It is evident that, if one is to shift from point 
 to point among a multitude of important cares 
 in such complex affairs, the maximum of work- 
 ing time must be reduced, even below the poor 
 three hours which we have given as the average 
 of daily exertion. Baron Rothschild, who may 
 be supposed to have arranged as nicely as any 
 man can the methods for disposing rapidly of 
 demands made on his thought, is said to meet 
 them thus. He stands in a central office, in his 
 place of affairs, where he can speak, if necessary,
 
 118 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 to his heads of department. Those who have 
 personal business with him are bidden to pre- 
 pare in writing what they would say ; they are 
 introduced, and give to him or read to him the 
 memorandum. He answers ; and the conversa- 
 tion, if any is necessary, follows, both standing. 
 Brevity is attempted by the two expedients of a 
 standing position and of written inquiry. How 
 necessary this is, any clergyman will say who 
 has known a visitor take three hours in saying 
 he wants to be married. On the other hand, 
 the value of personal presence is not lost, and 
 the assistants, if necessary, are within call. 
 Thus a hundred visitors, perhaps, are disposed 
 of in a forenoon. Concentration could hardly 
 go farther. We have described these details 
 to say that it would evidently be impossible to 
 work in that way, even up to our poor little 
 average of three hours daily. The more varied 
 the subjects of work so highly concentrated, the 
 shorter must its period necessarily be. 
 
 Of the palliatives possible for the relief of 
 the pressure of such work as falls on the student 
 or other literary workman, we do not speak in
 
 WHAT CAREER? 119 
 
 detail, because every condition of mental ac- 
 tivity must of necessity provide its own. The 
 transferring of the mechanical operation of 
 writing, by those who have much work of com- 
 position, to the hand of an amanuensis, is the 
 only one of these expedients which we are to 
 speak of here. It does not seem well to use 
 this relief to the full, as did an alderman of one 
 of our chief cities, who, confident that he could 
 always hire a reader to read for him, and a clerk 
 to write for him, neglected to acquire for him- 
 self the two accomplishments of writing and 
 reading. There are purposes of both accom- 
 plishments which cannot be attained by proxies. 
 So this officer found, when, in an attempt to 
 escape from the arrest which threatened him, 
 because his various writings were so inconsistent 
 with each other, he arrived at the fork of two 
 roads, looked sadly at the finger-post, whose 
 guidance was useless to him because he was 
 without his reader ; and so returned to meet the 
 sheriff, and to acknowledge that there were 
 occasions when one must do his own reading, as 
 he had found before, by the state of his bank-
 
 120 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 books, that he had better have done some of his 
 own writing. Sentimental or exacting corre- 
 spondents, too, are apt to expect that a letter 
 shall be in the handwriting of the author. To 
 meet this difficulty, the English offices have 
 clerks in readiness, who, in three days after a 
 change of ministry, are able to write in the 
 handwriting of the new officials, and to execute 
 for them their " private and confidential memo- 
 randa." Without going into such niceties, it 
 may be said that any duty so mechanical as the 
 mere forming of letters into words is probably 
 better done by a young person whose whole 
 attention is turned to it, than it can be by the 
 person who is also engaged in determining what 
 the words shall be. We have no doubt, there- 
 fore, that, on the whole, the employment of an 
 amanuensis improves the quality of the work 
 performed. It is ver} 7 true that, when the ex- 
 periment of dictating is first tried, the luxury 
 of the ease it gives is apt to be so great that it 
 tends to looseness and verbosity of style ; for 
 there is no better check on sesquipedalianism 
 than the necessity of writing down one's sesqui-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 121 
 
 peclalian words for one's self. And, in the 
 beginning, if one is lying on a sofa, and using 
 another's hand, he puts in his long words and 
 long phrases and unnecessary sentences, in the 
 mere luxury of freedom, as the schoolboy ca- 
 vorts and plunges as he first rushes out into 
 the open air. But this is but the incident of 
 a beginning ; and, with a little discipline and 
 criticism, any man can learn to write with the 
 pen of an amanuensis in the same style as with 
 his own. Some of Scott's best novels were 
 written by the hand of others ; some by his 
 own. We would challenge the most exquisite 
 criticism to discern between the two classes 
 from the mere internal evidence afforded by 
 their composition. 
 
 We can perfectly well hear the whine or the 
 snort of indignation with which conscious genius 
 has put by our suggestions in this paper, long 
 before reading to this point, where we close. 
 Conscious genius is very apt to say that it must 
 work without rules. It has a good deal to tell 
 about the tides of inspiration ; and it is prone to 
 6
 
 122 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 suppose that those tides are very irregular. It 
 will ridicule the possibility of any science of 
 mental effort; it will say that man must wait 
 till he is inspired ; and that until he is inspired 
 all effort is vain. It says a great deal more on 
 this subject, but in this dictum is the pith of 
 the whole. Now, we are willing to own that 
 we know nothing of the methods of genius ex- 
 cept as we read of them in the lives of men 
 of genius. But from those authorities we have 
 to remark that if Goethe and Schiller, Walter 
 Scott, even Byron and Bulwer, are men of 
 genius, not to go outside our own generation, 
 genius is as glad to work under absolute, 
 fixed, and methodical conditions as is any hod- 
 carrier. Even Byron, we say ; for when Byron 
 was engaged upon a poem, he knew perfectly 
 well that it would not finish itself, but that 
 his persistent will must finish it. The ex- 
 traordinary amount of work he did finish in 
 his short career is a monument to the per- 
 sistency and steadiness of his working power. 
 And we doubt if there be any touchstone more 
 certain to distinguish between real genius and
 
 WHAT CAREER ? 123 
 
 Brummagem, than is the test which determines 
 whether the mind in question is fresh, vivid, 
 and in true condition for effort on every blessed 
 morning given it by God ; or whether it can 
 only boast certain fungous growths of gaudy 
 color, but of most perishable substance, which 
 spring up on some mornings, and are nowhere 
 to be found on others, lawless and irregular, 
 and therefore, if not quite worthless, quite un- 
 trustworthy. 
 
 The truth is that all mental effort, like all 
 bodily effort, must fulfil the conditions of effort 
 which God has imposed. This is as true of the 
 highest efforts of divine poetry, as it is of the 
 daily-bread work of the mere artisan of letters, 
 who makes no pretence to genius or inspiration. 
 We have been speaking, thus far, only of the 
 two tools which are employed the body and 
 the mind in such endeavor. But for the soul 
 which employs them, if they are to be kept at 
 their full power, there must be constant acces- 
 sions of the Life from which the soul is born. 
 It is Life which bends the fingers to the pen ; 
 it is Life which drives the pen along the page ; it
 
 124 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 is Life which makes the page live and teach its 
 lesson. This Life of the soul must be renewed 
 and increased with every day of the soul's ef- 
 fort, or the page at length ceases to glow, just 
 as the fingers fail to grasp the pen. The soul 
 must be, indeed, new-born to its daily work as 
 each day comes round. The soul must each 
 day reassert its mastery over body and mind, 
 without which they are only two rebel slaves 
 setting in uproar the whole of the soul's king- 
 dom. We have said enough, perhaps, to show 
 that, for full mental power, this empire of the 
 soul must be a stern one. The soul must deny 
 the body in its appetites of meat, of drink, even 
 of sleep, and of play. It must cut off the stim- 
 ulants which the body would like. It must in- 
 sist on the repose without which the body dies. 
 We have seen also the restraints and the com- 
 mands which it imposes on the mind. The mind 
 would gladly run in a thousand directions in 
 the morning's effort ; and the soul grimly holds 
 it to one duty, or, at the most, to two. We 
 see, again, that the soul does not let off either 
 - servant to a holiday because they choose to beg
 
 WHAT CAREER? 125 
 
 for it. When the hour of work comes, they 
 work ; when it is at end, they stop. Whether 
 they like to work, or like to stop, the soul 
 makes the decision. For such absolute empire, 
 the soul needs new tides of Life daily. And 
 God has been pleased to grant such tides, re- 
 curring with the regularity of his own sunlight 
 if the soul accedes to the conditions. If the 
 soul uses to his glory the Life of to-day, under 
 the conditions which he has fixed for its various 
 exertions, he gives new Life for the duties of 
 to-morrow. The faithful, patient soul working 
 with him for his infinite designs finds itself new- 
 born as each morning struggles up the sky, 
 and, with the freshness of new birth, enters on 
 the new day's duties, "as a little child " 
 indeed. But unless the soul accept the condi- 
 tions, and unless it work in the Father's work, 
 it has no such renewal, and it has no continued 
 victory; any Hercules with whom it wrestles 
 can lift it from the ground, and, with all its 
 struggling, it can get no new strength for 
 conflict. Vital power for the objects of life ; 
 vital power sufficient to hold in constant check
 
 126 WHAT CAEEER? 
 
 the vagaries of the mind and the appetites of 
 the body ; vital power, again, sufficient to reani- 
 mate every morning a mind which has new 
 duties to undertake, and a body which is to 
 fulfil meekly an imperial will, is gained only 
 at the fountain of Life. He has most of that 
 power who drinks deepest at the fountain. He 
 who never drinks the Machiavel or the Na- 
 poleon finds, before he is done, that body 
 and mind cannot be driven up to the behests of 
 the will. He who works with God has God's 
 breath to renew him every day. He who works 
 without God finds his body give way just when 
 he needs it, or his mind disobedient when a 
 crisis comes. For his vital power is diminished 
 by his every victory ; while the faithful child 
 of God receives the promise, and with every 
 day has " Life more abundantly."
 
 WHAT CAREER? 127 
 
 V. 
 A THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
 
 OOME school of theology is allied to almost 
 every one of our larger colleges, in more 
 or less close relations. Most of the colleges, 
 indeed, were established by one or another ec- 
 clesiastical body. In the lists published in the 
 almanacs and elsewhere, they will be found 
 marked with the letters B., R. C., E., P., and 
 the rest, to indicate that they are under Baptist, 
 Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, or 
 other control. In many of the older colleges, 
 the original plan was the training of young men 
 for the Christian ministry. In the more recent 
 instances of colleges thus fostered, the wish is 
 rather to protect boys from the proselyting of 
 other sects ; to give them a direction towards 
 the ministry, and such an inclination for it as 
 may be followed up in the theological seminary 
 or college distinctively so-called. The academ-
 
 128 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 ical college is no longer made a place for the 
 formal study of theology. Every denomination 
 of Christians has its own institutions for that 
 special purpose. Special societies for education 
 are formed, to supply them with students. The 
 Presbyterian Church in each of its organiza- 
 tions, North, South, and " United," maintains 
 such societies for assisting in the education 
 of young men in these schools. The largest of 
 these, that of the Presbyterian Church North, 
 expends nearly a quarter million annually in 
 this service. The American Education Society, 
 in similar service, expended twenty-eight thou- 
 sand dollars last year ; and the similar society 
 of the Reformed Dutch Church, thirteen thou- 
 sand dollars. The various beneficiary funds 
 which the Unitarians apply to like service, afford 
 about ten thousand dollars a year for this pur- 
 pose. Under such auspices, there are now in 
 this country just one hundred theological schools, 
 existing either as independent institutions or as 
 the theological departments of universities. 
 
 What is the reason why young men do not go 
 to these institutions in much larger numbers ?
 
 WHAT CAREER? 129 
 
 The reason, I suppose, is two-fold. First, an 
 objection lies against the method supposed to be 
 pursued in the theological school. Second, an 
 objection lies against the profession to be pur- 
 sued as the result of this method. 
 
 I am certain that both these objections rest on 
 insufficient grounds ; and I propose to discuss 
 them both, giving most space to the first. The 
 objection is taken on a limited view of theologi- 
 cal schools as they were : it is certainly not to 
 be sustained by any adequate view of the better 
 theological schools of America, or the schools of 
 Germany, as they are. 
 
 If we could look in on the free conversation 
 of some literary club or friendly gathering oi 
 seniors in any of -our colleges, and hear the 
 familiar talk on this subject, we should hear it 
 said, first, that the young man who goes to a 
 theological seminary goes pledged in advance to 
 certain convictions, of which he has never ex- 
 amined the grounds satisfactorily. To make his 
 training at the seminary of any practical use to 
 him, he has got to say, at the end of the course, 
 that he believes in each and all of certain 
 6*
 
 130 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 formulas of doctrine, regarding which he is, at 
 this present moment, only partially informed. 
 It would be said that no such implied pledge 
 restricted him in going to a law school or a 
 medical school. He might believe opium to be 
 a good drug in practice, or a bad drug ; and yet 
 no professor or school would follow him into the 
 world to stigmatize his practice. He might 
 come out from a law school wholly ignorant of 
 nine-tenths of the studies pursued there ; still, 
 when he nailed up his shingle, no president 
 of the law school would send messages after 
 him, to say that his doctrine of mortmain was 
 faulty, and that he was quite unsound in the 
 theory of the civil law. The young doctor or 
 the young attorney, it would be said, is left to 
 stand or fall on his own merits. 
 
 But a young clergyman, these seniors would 
 tell us, has a very different career in the pro- 
 fessional school. Whether it be a school of 
 thirty-nine articles, of twenty, or of five, he is 
 expected from the beginning to come out, 
 squarely and loyally, the supporter of them all. 
 So far as he has received money from any edu-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 131 
 
 cation society to carry him through the expenses 
 of his course there, he is under a pledge of 
 honor, if not of verbal contract, to do the duty 
 for which they pay this money to prepare him. 
 And, if he is under no such formal pledge, his 
 difficulty is the same. If, as he goes forward in 
 his studies, he should doubt even the least tittle 
 of the formulas put down in the books, if he 
 should think modern science had something to 
 say which in these books is neglected, the 
 officers of the school would mark his dissent. 
 It would be their duty, indeed, to do so. And, 
 go where he might, they would as from their 
 point of view they ought to do follow him 
 up with letter or warning to this, that, or an- 
 other synod, consistory, consociation, or associa- 
 tion, to say that, though of admirable moral 
 character, he was unsound in faith. 
 
 Now, young men do not like to enter on 
 a course of study which, as they suppose, is 
 thus hampered. 
 
 The next thing we should hear said, in such 
 talk of seniors, would be, that there was nothing 
 to study in " theology " that any man was much
 
 132 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 interested in. "We should hear that a man must 
 " get up " a new language, namely, Hebrew, 
 while he knew he was not really master of 
 Greek, Latin, or the modern languages. Then 
 we should be told that the rest of the time at 
 a theological school is spent in studying Greek 
 and criticising the New Testament ; in writing 
 sermons and in hammering over Calvin's In- 
 stitutes. This is about the popular idea which 
 most seniors have of studying theology. The 
 men who have really heard the gospel-trumpet 
 sound, who know in their own hearts what the 
 Holy Spirit is because the Holy Spirit has spoken 
 to them, may have courage to take on the armor 
 thus offered to them, because they are told it is 
 useful armor. Many of them do take it on ; but 
 the majority of men solicited to take it, refuse. 
 They are Christian men, born again into the 
 divine life, as truly as are the young men who 
 go into the schools of theology. But they hesi- 
 tate before attempting more Latin and Greek, 
 before launching upon Hebrew, before spend- 
 ing three years on what seem to them merely 
 technical studies. They say what is true, that
 
 WHAT CAREER? 133 
 
 there are many ways in which a man can work 
 for the kingdom of God outside the pulpit ; 
 and that, if the pulpit require this preparation, 
 other men may take it, but they will not. They 
 enter upon some other profession. 
 
 Now, in answer to the impression which is 
 popular among seniors, and which we have 
 attempted thus to describe in its detail, I write 
 this essay, to show in brief what a theological 
 school is, and what it is not, when it is at work 
 on a true footing. I say, in the outset, that 
 such a theory of a theological seminary as I have 
 described is a gross caricature on any theological 
 seminary in this land. And I say, next, that 
 when a first-class theological seminary of one of 
 the liberal communions is contrasted with such 
 a theory, every one of the objections which 
 young men make to such institutions without 
 knowing what they are, disappears. 
 
 First, as to the subjects studied. I venture 
 the statement that all the great questions of 
 modern discussion in which the young life of 
 this country is specially interested, are nowhere 
 studied in America so thoroughly as in its best 
 theological seminaries.
 
 134 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Ask at the bookstores what those questions 
 are, or ask the secretary of a debating club. 
 The answer will be, first, that all the questions 
 regarding the creation of the world and the ori- 
 gin of man are the leading questions, evolu- 
 tion, protoplasm, Darwinism as, for convenience, 
 people say. Every wide-awake senior has read 
 Darwin, or the reviews of Darwin, Mivart, 
 perhaps : he has read a few articles on the theo- 
 ries discussed by these gentlemen ; and the sub- 
 ject involved has been the subject of the familiar 
 discussion of the philosophical circles among 
 young men. 
 
 Now, where is a man to study this subject ? 
 Where, in the first place, can he get the books 
 about it, German, French, and English ? He 
 will find them in a well-furnished theological 
 library. He will not find them anywhere else. 
 
 In the second place, if he wants to find any 
 professor vitally interested in the study, who 
 will manfully introduce it into his courses, and 
 give the last word of science with regard to it, 
 as well as the view which science has taken of it 
 for twenty-five hundred years, he must seek
 
 WHAT CAREER? 135 
 
 that professor in a theological seminary. He 
 may find the man in what is called a scientific 
 college ; but he will not find there any course 
 of lectures devoted to such subjects. The bread- 
 and-butter studies pursued there do not permit 
 much use of time in speculation. Precisely the 
 line of speculation in which at this moment the 
 world is most interested is, from the nature 
 of the case, because it is speculation, and 
 is not what is called practical, shut out from 
 all the American schools except the theological 
 seminaries. They are, and for a long time must 
 be, our only schools of pure philosophy. 
 
 Take another set of questions, the questions 
 of race, on which all young men of intelligence 
 of our times think a great deal and talk a great 
 deal. Chinese question, African question, Cath- 
 olic question, they all hinge on questions of 
 race. Who studies these questions of race? 
 Do the lawyers study them? Not they ; they 
 are no affair of theirs. Do the medical schools ? 
 Scarcely ; the pulse of a Calmuck and the pulse 
 of a Hottentot beat in much the same way. 
 The theologians do study them ; they have to
 
 136 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 study them. Dr. Clarke's book on " The Ten 
 Great Religions " is based on his lectures as 
 a professor of theology. Dr. Everett's studies 
 of Confucius are studies made for his classes in 
 theology. " The Ethnic Religions," as they are 
 called, which involve the full study of the rela- 
 tions of the races to each other, are studied in 
 the theological seminaries, and nowhere besides. 
 Then there are the social-science questions, 
 as people call them, for want of a better name. 
 These occupy largely the attention of young 
 men: questions of the relations of classes to 
 each other, of labor to capital, of poverty to 
 wealth, of emigrants to native citizens, of pris- 
 ons, of punishment, of the " social evil," of the 
 relief of pauperism, and other questions of this 
 class. All men of sense are interested in these 
 questions, nay, all men of sense have to deal 
 with them in life. Now, with regard to these 
 questions, as with regard to the questions of the 
 theory of creation, the books of reference alone 
 are not to be found outside a well-furnished 
 public library, collected with a view to the 
 study. No law library contains such books,
 
 WHAT CAREER? 137 
 
 though in a broad sense it ought to. Social sci- 
 ence is a specialty which thus far in this coun- 
 try has not made large collections. The young 
 man interested in the discussions it involves 
 will have to go to a well-furnished theological 
 or university library to get his materials. And 
 a theological seminary of the first class is the 
 only place where he will find many persons in- 
 terested in the same inquiries. He will find 
 them there. He will find one or more professors 
 personally well-informed in the details of the 
 subject. He will find fellow-students who make 
 it their special study ; who propose to them- 
 selves the struggle with the blunders and evils 
 of society as their work in life. Much of the 
 student life and vital interest of a theological 
 school is given to the methods and direction of 
 such a struggle. 
 
 Now, I do not pretend that a young man 
 entering on a course of theology at most theo- 
 logical seminaries would be permitted to choose 
 simply such philosophical or practical studies as 
 these, which happen to attract young men, 
 and to pass by other studies in the curriculum.
 
 138 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 What I wish to show is, that, in the curriculum 
 of a well-furnished seminary, the yery topics of 
 philosophy most interesting to the public mind 
 now occupy a very large place, though they be 
 shielded and concealed from the public eye 
 under such old-fashioned and academic phrases 
 as "systematic theology," and "philosophy of 
 religion." I will attempt now to unravel some 
 of the other phrases, which, in the programmes 
 of the schools, cover over a set of interests 
 which all young men of intelligence share. 
 
 " Ecclesiastical history " is a great bugbear. 
 " They have to spend so much time in ecclesias- 
 tical history." Popularly, in the average stu- 
 dent mind, it is supposed that this is the study 
 of lists of popes, of the dates in which Scotch 
 synods sat, and of the order of the apostolic 
 succession of Bishop Colenso and of the Rev. 
 Mr. Knickerbacker. The truth is that ecclesi- 
 astical history is the history of the world, studied 
 on the side of ideas rather than on the side of 
 forms or statistics. History studied as Gibbon 
 or Milman or Buckle or Lecky or Carlyle or 
 Michelet study it, is ecclesiastical history. His-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 139 
 
 tory studied in its outside or pictorial form, as 
 Livy studies it, or Suetonius, or Richard of 
 Devizes, or Hume or Prescott, is only an aux- 
 iliary to ecclesiastical history. Now, we need 
 only refer to the real and lasting popularity of 
 such books as Stanley's " Lectures on Church 
 History," to show that the philosophical or ideal 
 method, the only true and comprehensive 
 method, is at the same time the method which 
 really interests intelligent people. And here 
 again, as before, I have a right to say that phil- 
 osophical history is scarcely studied anywhere 
 else in this country but in the better arranged 
 theological seminary. The School of History, 
 in Cornell, and the classes at Charlottesville, 
 Va., are the only striking exceptions which I 
 remember. So far from its being a study en- 
 cumbered with detail of the methods of admin- 
 istration of the so-called " Church " of its time, 
 it is very indifferent to such chaff, which gets 
 itself forgotten very speedily. Dealing with 
 such subjects as the Puritan Revolution in Eng- 
 land, the Reformation in all its forms, the civil- 
 ization of the north of Europe, the abolition of
 
 140 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 slavery in the Roman Empire, the establishment 
 of the civil law, the diffusion of letters over the 
 world, to name only three or four essential 
 points of consideration, it is wholly impossible 
 that " ecclesiastical history " should be either a 
 dry or an unpractical study. 
 
 "Homiletics " again. "Who, in his senses," 
 says the average senior, "would study homi- 
 letics ? " Well, I confess I am tempted to ask 
 what dean of a theological school in his senses 
 would put an old-fashioned word like " homi- 
 letics " into his programme of study ; or rather 
 a word like this, which was never in fashion. 
 Homiletics is the science of address : the sci- 
 ence, so far as it can be put in science, by which 
 such men as Beecher and Wendell Phillips and 
 Charles Finney and Newman Hall and Frederic 
 Robertson and Charles Spurgeon affect in speech 
 their fellow-men, when they want to affect them. 
 Is it, or is it not, worth while to learn any thing 
 about that? Is that, or is it not, an interesting 
 study? To the average American student, 
 whose duty and destiny it is to move throngs of 
 men by the way in which he shall state to them
 
 WHAT CAREER? 141 
 
 the truth, is it, or is it not, an important study ? 
 But people say, " Homiletics sound like ' homily,' 
 and homilies are supposed to be dull ! " No 
 matter what it sounds like : it is the science of 
 address. I never understood that anybody who 
 sat under the preaching of Ward Beecher or 
 Robert Colly er, the chiefs of homiletics just 
 now, found their preaching dull. Precisely be- 
 cause they knew something of homiletics, was 
 their preaching vital and entertaining. 
 
 I have before me the programme of the work 
 of the Theological Seminary at Cambridge, 
 where the " homiletics " are under the charge of 
 Prof. Everett, a gentleman who is one of the 
 few poets who are at the same time writing 
 metaphysicians. He is the man who has written 
 the one thorough statement of " The Science of 
 Thought" which has appeared in the English 
 language, so careful and accurate is his process 
 of reasoning. On the other hand, he is a born 
 poet, and sees the natural illustration of every 
 spiritual truth on the instant that the truth 
 asserts itself. That man, by good fortune, is 
 placed in the position of teaching young men
 
 142 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 how to address audiences. Does any one who 
 ever heard him, suppose that his presentation of 
 that subject will be antiquated or dull ? 
 
 And jet again I am tempted to ask, What 
 place is there, after a man has left college, where 
 he will be taught any thing of this essential 
 business of addressing other men, except in a 
 theological seminary? Certainly not in a law 
 school, unless by good luck there is a spirited 
 debating club among the students. Certainly 
 not in a medical school. The doctors suffer till 
 the day they die, from their inability to tell 
 other men in public speech what they want to 
 say to them. The chairs of the better theologi- 
 cal seminaries alone supply this necessity ; and 
 they veil it under the unintelligible and disre- 
 garded title of the " homiletics." 
 
 There remain, of the studies of a well-appointed 
 theological school, the criticism of the Bible and 
 the science of ethics. These are unquestion- 
 ably those at which the average senior, whom 
 we have tried to describe, looks most suspiciously. 
 Like a horse free in the pasture, he sniffs at the 
 salt in the proffered measure, but determines, on
 
 WHAT CAREER? 143 
 
 the whole, that he prefers freedom without salt, 
 to salt with a halter. He throws up his heels 
 in the luxury of life without a tether, and gal- 
 lops to the farther part of the enclosure ; and 
 his freedom ends in such liberty as he may 
 find in a lawyer's office, or within sound of a 
 doctor's bell, or as a principal of an academy ! 
 
 What, then, is the critical study of the Old 
 Testament and the New ? It is the scientific, 
 philosophical, manly study of a series of books 
 which, as any Christian man believes, nay, 
 knows, are of the very first importance to the 
 world. And does any Christian man really say 
 that he means to get along with any thing less 
 than the scientific, philosophical, manly study of 
 these books? Does he really mean to take his 
 opinion of them at second hand, and at sec- 
 ond hand, perhaps, from very questionable or 
 very ill-educated teachers? If a man really 
 means that he knows more and better than is 
 taught in the Sermon on the Mount, or that he 
 can come nearer God than the Saviour brings 
 him in the fourteenth chapter of John, that is 
 one tiling. That man may, with a certain con-
 
 144 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 sistency, excuse himself from careful and ade- 
 quate study of the Bible ; but even in that con- 
 sistency there is a lamentable confession : "I 
 know very little of the Bible ; therefore I do 
 not want to know any more." But, not to 
 inquire into the duty or the choice of that 
 man, for other men, for men who have found 
 Jesus Christ to be their living help, and the 
 Holy Spirit the true leader of life, is it a 
 natural or a consistent thing for them to say 
 that they are satisfied with a Sunday-school 
 knowledge of our indifferent version of the 
 Bible, and that they will not attempt to extend 
 that knowledge by a systematic or critical study 
 of it in the original? To say the very least, 
 have such men a right to pronounce, a priori, 
 that such study must be functional, formal, 
 and dull? 
 
 To speak very briefly of the last fifty years 
 alone. The opening of the Egyptian hierogly- 
 phics has made a new thing of the five books as- 
 cribed to Moses ; the opening up of the Assyrian 
 and other Eastern inscriptions, and the daily re- 
 ports of researches and travels in the East, have
 
 WHAT CAREER? 145 
 
 made a new thing of the study of the historical 
 books of the Old Testament. The emancipation 
 of Christianity from the dogmas of the darkest 
 ages has reopened the whole subject of the per- 
 son, nature, and character of Christ. Seeley's 
 "Ecce Homo," Kenan's "Jesus," Furness's 
 book with the same title, Parker's "Ecce Deus," 
 Derenbourg's "History of Palestine," "Geikie's 
 Christ," and a hundred other recent books, show 
 that this is so. For the study of the relations 
 of Christianity to the history, social order, and 
 philosophy of the Roman Empire, which is the 
 subject of the critical study of the Epistles, 
 such books in popular circulation as Merivale's, 
 Dezobry's, and Lecky's "History of Morals," 
 are enough to show that that study is to-day 
 a study as fresh and as important as it ever 
 was. 
 
 Lastly, with regard to ethics or morals, no 
 intelligent or high-minded young gentleman will 
 enter into any discussion with me. It will be 
 acknowledged, on all hands, to be the most vital 
 and suggestive subject of our familiar thought 
 and conversation. 
 
 7
 
 146 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Thus much reason have I for saying that a 
 theological seminary, so far from confining itself 
 to obsolete subjects of study, addresses itself to 
 the most important and vital subjects of the 
 day, if it is true to its position ; nay, must do 
 so, from the very law of its being. And thus 
 much reason have I for saying that such a 
 school, instead of pursuing certain antiquated 
 methods, such as would be called functional, is 
 in fact at this moment the only school we have 
 of philosophy proper, speaking in distinction 
 from that study of smoke and dust which is 
 now called natural philosophy or science, to 
 which we owe the present enthusiasm for what 
 are called scientific schools. 
 
 Now, in reply to this statement, I expect to be 
 told that the theological schools of the country 
 are not true to their position. I shall be told 
 at this point that what I have said is an ac- 
 count of what they ought to be, but that in fact 
 they are something very different; that their 
 professors do not dare enter freely into the pop- 
 ular questions of the day; and the students do
 
 WHAT CAREER? 147 
 
 not dare take them up without the countenance 
 of the professors. 
 
 It is here, therefore, that I have to say that 
 all that I have written I have written with 
 the constant use of the programme of one of 
 the oldest and best seminaries in this country, 
 that at Cambridge. I have no reason to doubt 
 that many other schools can say what I say dis- 
 tinctly of this, from its printed reports and from 
 official opportunities of visit and information. 
 This school is under the nominal government of 
 the Corporation of Harvard College; in fact, 
 its arrangements are made by its own Faculty, 
 who are, 
 
 Dr. Oliver Stearns, as well known West as 
 East. 
 
 Dr. Frederic H. Hedge, the author of "He- 
 brew Tradition," " Reason in Religion," " The 
 Collection of German Prose Writers," and so 
 many other books. 
 
 Dr. James Freeman Clarke, author among 
 other books, of "The Ten Great Religions of 
 the World," "The Steps of Belief," "The 
 Truths and Errors of Orthodoxy."
 
 148 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Dr. Charles Carroll Everett, author of " The 
 Science of Thought," to which I have alluded. 
 
 Prof. Edward James Young, one of our most 
 successful students in Germany as in America. 
 
 Besides these, Prof. Sophocles, the author of 
 " The Byzantine Dictionary ; " Prof. Abbot, the 
 American editor of Smith's " Bible Dictionary;" 
 and several Boston clergymen, lecture in the 
 school. 
 
 Now, will anybody pretend to say that gen- 
 tlemen who have in print and before the world 
 used the free, broad, and scientific system which 
 all of these gentlemen have illustrated, will, in 
 their relations with a few students, be narrow, 
 functional, bigoted, or petty? Can such words 
 in any fashion be applied to such men? Can 
 any reason be conceived why they should not 
 do their best to make the study they have in 
 hand broad, natural, suggestive, and even with 
 the times? I am convinced that if any young 
 man who believes in study which is study, will 
 inquire of any student like himself in that, who 
 is now in the Cambridge Divinity school, he will 
 be told that the studies there pursued are in fact
 
 WHAT CAREER? 149 
 
 pursued in the broadest, most generous, and phil- 
 osophical spirit. Nor have I any reason to say 
 that the same may not be asserted of the other 
 leading theological seminaries in the country. 
 
 There remains to be examined the familiar 
 statement which we placed first, that, on enter- 
 ing a theological seminary, a young man pledges 
 himself in advance to certain opinions of which 
 he is yet to examine the foundations. 
 
 This charge, however true it may have been 
 of other eras of the Church, is not in any sense 
 true of the Divinity School at Cambridge ; and 
 I suppoes it to be equally untrue of other leading 
 theological seminaries. Of course, if a man is 
 not a Christian, he will not wish to enter on a 
 course of studies which are arranged to train 
 him to be an effective Christian minister. The 
 presumption is, undoubtedly, that men who study 
 theology in Christian theological seminaries will 
 try their abilities in the Christian ministry. 
 But even to this they are not pledged at Cam- 
 bridge. I doubt if they are so pledged at any in- 
 stitution of the first rank. Undoubtedly, before 
 a young man accepts the flattering help of what
 
 150 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 are called " beneficiary funds," he should inquire 
 very carefully what are the relations in which 
 the' acceptance of such funds involve him. 
 They belong to a system wholly un-American, 
 and which has no parallel in any thing else in 
 our social order. But I can conceive of cases 
 where the use of such funds shall imply no 
 pledge as to the after-course of the man who 
 uses them. And, however that may be, the en- 
 trance into a first-class theological seminary in 
 itself, and the use of its advantages, involve no 
 compromise of opinion whatever. At Cam- 
 bridge, any man who can pass the simple liter- 
 ary examination, and is of good moral character, 
 may enter. Any man who passes the regular 
 term-examinations, and retains his moral char- 
 acter, may graduate, whatever his theological 
 opinions. If he have been well prepared for 
 entrance, and have used his three years to ad- 
 vantage, he may take the degree of Bachelor of 
 Divinity ; and this degree is open to him, what- 
 ever his theological convictions. Chunder Sen 
 could take it, or Pio Nono, if they could pass, 
 as I suppose they both could, the examinations!
 
 WHAT CAREER? 151 
 
 There remains the question, whether the pro- 
 fession of the Christian ministry is worth the 
 three years' preparation, supposing that a man 
 find in the course of that time that he can fit 
 himself for it respectably. Thus far I have in- 
 tentionally avoided this question. I have re- 
 garded the theological seminary as what it is, 
 the one professional school which enlarges and 
 continues the range of philosophical and specu- 
 lative studies in which, at college, a young man 
 begins. Neither of the other schools professes 
 to do this. They profess to select a single walk 
 of life, law, medicine, physics, or engineer- 
 ing, and to prepare for that ; but a theological 
 school is different. Because God rules every 
 thing, all law in whatever line, moral, physical, 
 or historical, may be studied there ; and where 
 the school is rightly organized, it is studied 
 there. A theological seminary, therefore, takes 
 up and enlarges the line of study in the college. 
 
 Now, I will frankly meet the question regard- 
 ing the interest or value of the ministry itself 
 to a man choosing his profession in our time. 
 The popular idea of the life of a clergyman is
 
 152 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 that lie spends his mornings in writing sermons 
 and translating Hebrew, and his afternoons in 
 visiting sick people and burying the dead. The 
 supposition is that he does all this in a certain 
 pre-ordained or conventional way, which leaves 
 very little play for imagination, fancy, personal- 
 character, or indeed for the intellect in any of 
 its enterprises. As this is the popular idea, it 
 probably enters largely into the discussions of 
 such a club of seniors as I have imagined 
 looking forward upon their profession. Now I 
 confess that if young men, with the enthusiasm, 
 vitality, and ambition of young men, liked any 
 such life as that, or could be largely bought into 
 it by the bribes of any education societies, I 
 should think very sadly of our times. I believe 
 it is because young men believe in action, ad- 
 vance, and in the improvement of society, that 
 in general they reject the proposals made to 
 them to enter such a profession, about which, 
 for one or another reason, there hangs such a 
 reputation. And I believe that the bounties 
 paid by the education societies have clouded the 
 matter more, and made it worse than before.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 153 
 
 In point of fact, and as I observe society, this 
 description of the life of an American clergy- 
 man is ridiculously untrue. Perhaps it would 
 be better if a few more of them did study their 
 Hebrew in the morning. Certainly the number 
 that do may be counted on the fingers of a man's 
 hands. It would not be fair, perhaps, to ask as 
 to the private life of Bishop Simpson, Phillips 
 Brooks, Bishop Huntington, or Dr. Bellows ; 
 but I am disposed to believe that there are 
 few more active men in the community. As 
 for general influence on the public, I must say 
 that the one thing certain at school meetings, 
 college meetings, Indian meetings, meetings to 
 welcome and meetings to say farewell, natural- 
 history meetings, public-library meetings, or 
 meetings of whatever sort which have our en- 
 larging civilization in hand, is that the men 
 you will meet are clergymen. Nor is the do- 
 main of literature to be forgotten. It is not 
 by accident that, among the few first-class 
 names in our literary history, the names of such 
 leaders as Channing, Everett, Sparks, Bancroft, 
 Emerson, and Ripley should be the names of 
 7*
 
 154 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 clergymen. There is but one profession which 
 of necessity trains men to express themselves 
 simply, distinctly, and from conviction ; and that 
 profession was theirs. And if any man asks the 
 question of general influence on men, I should 
 be glad to be told what man at the bar, in medi- 
 cine, or in any walk of physical science to-day, 
 meets so many men directly or indirectly in 
 America, whom he may attempt to move by 
 personal appeal in print, or by the influence of 
 those on whom he acts, as do the great preach- 
 ers or ministers, such men as Dr. Bacon, 
 Bishop Simpson, Dr. Bellows, Henry Ward 
 Beecher, or Edwin Hubbell Chapin? 
 
 The theological seminary which shall first de- 
 vise a method of showing to its students, in 
 their vacations from the study of books and of 
 ideas, the romantic and exciting detail of the 
 life of a working minister ; the seminary which 
 will give them what the best medical schools do 
 in giving a clinigue to their students, will, as 
 I believe, become the most popular of profes- 
 sional schools, if only its conductors remember 
 that, for the study of truth, the first requisite is 
 freedom.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 155 
 
 VI. 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 study is more impressive than the study 
 of monuments ; or of dictionaries of biog- 
 raphy, which in their way are monuments. As 
 you ride into Palmyra, you pass for miles on 
 the right and left the bases of lost statues. On 
 these bases are carved the names of the men 
 who were represented there. But the names 
 do not preserve the memory of those men, more 
 than the broken statues. The men were to 
 be forgotten, and they are forgotten. 
 
 On the other hand Zenobia, Queen of Pal- 
 myra, has a name that lives. Longinus, one of 
 her ministers, has a name that lives. There are 
 no statues of Zenobia in Palmyra, none of 
 Longinus. But, with or without statues, they 
 live, because there was something in them of 
 the living sort. They were made to live. 
 
 These miles of statues were reared to the 
 Captains of Caravans who had taken Roman
 
 156 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 gentlemen safely and comfortably across the 
 desert. We all know how much attached we 
 become to a captain of a steamship, who has 
 brought us over well. In the old days of sailing 
 vessels and long passages to and from Europe, 
 a frequent custom and a grateful one, indeed, 
 was for the passengers to subscribe for a piece 
 of silver plate for the captain who had served 
 them. It seems that in those older days of 
 Palmyra there was a similar habit. I suppose 
 that, when the last day of the tedious caravan 
 journey came, some active, busy traveller, who 
 had no family to attend to, bustled round with 
 a subscription paper, and made up a purse for a 
 statue of the commander. Then a good artist 
 was found in Palmyra, and one more statue was 
 added to the long line of fame. 
 
 There is a like story of the decline of Athens. 
 Athens ordered that three hundred and sixty 
 statues should be erected to Demetrius Phale- 
 reus, one of the popular rulers of that time. 
 But three hundred and sixty statues have not 
 saved his name from forgetfulness. In contrast 
 with that, as Nepos says, Miltiades, who saved
 
 WHAT CAREER? 157 
 
 Athens from the Turk of his day, will always be 
 remembered, though the monument to him 
 was only a poor water-color, which soon faded, 
 on a temple-wall. 
 
 These stories are good enough illustrations of 
 the eternal law, that character is the only 
 permanent reality in human life ; and that we 
 cannot substitute brass or marble, not granite 
 nor gold as a substitute. It may happen that a 
 monument, like Cleopatra's needle, takes a name 
 which the steadfast memory of men gives to it, 
 in the place of the forgotten inscription once 
 carved on its corner-stone. By the same law, 
 they tell you at Kenilworth that Cromwell de- 
 stroyed Lord Leicester's Castle. All the per- 
 sonal actors in its destruction are forgotten ; but 
 Cromwell is of the type of men who live. 
 
 Literary men are for ever trying to rake out 
 of the ashes of the past some old bit of badly 
 melted slag, and telling us that it is good coal, 
 or perhaps diamond, and that it should not be 
 forgotten. Every now and then somebody tries 
 to write up Abelard in this way. A few years 
 ago, an accomplished scholar here tried to gal-
 
 158 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 vanize Charles the Bold, and make him live. 
 But the poor corpses will not stand up long 
 enough for men to apply the batteries which 
 should make them twitch and start. There is 
 nothing to live. 
 
 It is of no great consequence whether men 
 are remembered or forgotten. But this persist- 
 ency of character, in its hold on the memory of 
 men, if they have once found out that there is 
 a character to remember, is a good illustration 
 of the absolute or eternal force of character, 
 and the steady and certain victory which it com- 
 mands. At the moment men never understand 
 it. The town cannot understand why Charles, 
 whom it thinks dull, moves steadily forward, 
 while George, whom it thought brilliant, is more 
 and more certainly set on one side. But the 
 reason is that George is only brilliant, while 
 Charles had the weight and force of character. 
 In my early life, I was so placed at one time, in 
 the discharge of my daily duty, as to be com- 
 pletely dependent, for two or three hours per- 
 haps of each day, on the will or whim of two 
 public functionaries. The superior in rank of
 
 WHAT CAREER? 159 
 
 these two was a man of unswerving truth and 
 honor, who was however lonely, low-toned, low- 
 spirited, probably selfish, certainly unsympathiz- 
 ing. The result or combination of these qual- 
 ities made him what we familiarly call " cross " 
 to everybody who came in his way. Many a 
 day have I lost my dinner, and sunk hours of 
 useless life, because this man would not pass a 
 sheet of paper across his desk for me to copy, 
 until his own work was fully done, and his own 
 later dinner-hour come. The younger of these 
 two men, his inferior in rank, was also a man 
 of unswerving truth and honor, of whom then I 
 knew little but that he was quick, sympathetic, 
 unselfish, and kind. He did his own work well, 
 was glad to see others do theirs well ; had ex- 
 actly the same kind of work to do that the 
 other had, but always helped us boys along ; 
 taught us if we needed teaching, was willing 
 to help us if the State took no peril, and won, 
 of course, our enthusiastic love. 
 
 This man rapidly rose up the steps of our 
 social system, received, one after another, the 
 highest honors which this State has to give to
 
 160 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 a man in his profession, and died, only too 
 young for us, having attained a name which 
 will long be remembered in the walk of life to 
 which his life was given. The other, at the 
 first overturn in politics, lost his place ; so did 
 his junior. But my cross friend never regained 
 his, nor indeed any position of trust. Not he. 
 " I care for nobody, no, not I ; and nobody 
 cares for me." That is the law of such men. 
 I used to meet him in the street, every year or 
 two, as I grew older and older. He looked 
 every time rather more sour and rather more 
 hard than the time before. I am perfectly sure 
 that all this time he was satisfying himself that 
 the world was an unjust world and a very hard 
 world. I do not know, but I think, that the 
 wolf came nearer to his door and nearer with 
 every year. And when, after twenty or more 
 years, I read the record of his death also in the 
 newspaper, I felt sadly sure that the grave had 
 closed over a man who was only too willing to go ; 
 and who died, saying that the world had not 
 treated him fairly. 
 
 Well, I do not say that the world is a just
 
 WHAT CAREER? 161 
 
 world, nor that time can be always relied upon 
 for a verdict. It is the kingdom of heaven 
 which is the kingdom of justice ; and only 
 eternity can be relied upon for the truth. But 
 I do say that I believe that in this case of those 
 two men the verdict was substantially a just 
 verdict ; and that one of them was rewarded 
 and the other punished because of differences 
 of character, which were wholly within their 
 own control. Yet it may be that neither of 
 those men was aware of the character which he 
 himself bore. 
 
 For character is very different from reputa- 
 tion, though we mix the names so oft6n. The 
 English servant who wants a place, advertises 
 that he has a three years' character: meaning 
 that he has three years' reputation since any- 
 body has known him who is willing to testify 
 for him, or since he lost his good reputation in 
 some tavern or some brawl. But though he 
 talks of a three-years' "character," his real 
 character has been forming since he drew his 
 first breath. The great trip-hammer of the 
 mint of God hits us hard, and hits us again
 
 162 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 and hits us again ; and, with every blow, the 
 metal struck changes its lustre, changes its 
 strength, even, changes the image and the 
 superscription. The word character is true still 
 to its derivation. It is a Greek word, wholly 
 unchanged, which the Greeks derived from the 
 word which we pronounce harass, which they 
 pronounced char ass (xapdaaai), but which had 
 the meaning then that it has now. They spoke 
 then of a coin in the mint, which was hammered 
 and tortured by the sharp edges of the die, as 
 being stamped upon indeed, as a poor charassed 
 thing, as bearing a character. Its character 
 came to it because it was beaten, pounded by 
 this tremendous hammer. The more it was 
 beaten, the more distinct character it had. I 
 believe all our words of similar import have a 
 similar derivation. Thus, when we say a man 
 is of this " type " of manhood, or that " type " 
 of manhood, the original meaning is that he has 
 been beaten into that shape by the blows of life 
 which have passed over him. And it is true 
 that a man's character begins when he is born, 
 and changes or does not change accordingly as
 
 WHAT CAREER? 163 
 
 he bears the pounding which life gives him. 
 Burns says " The rank is but the guinea's 
 stamp." This means, at bottom, that a " pound " 
 is metal which has been pounded. And there 
 are metals which improve in quality all the 
 time you stamp and hammer them. Just the 
 same is true of man, if he have the true 
 heat, the true life, and make himself master of 
 the circumstance instead of slave. Precisely, 
 now, as you may have seen different strands of 
 iron wire brought together in a bloom, heated 
 red, and struck and struck under a trip-hammer 
 till they are made one, so all the different ex- 
 periences of life, the lessons, for instance, 
 which these papers are trying to set in order, 
 are fused and welded into one in the process 
 of the formation of character. A man's habits 
 of sleep, of exercise, and of appetite ; his meth- 
 ods of reasoning, imagination, and memory; 
 his faith, his hope, his love, are blended to- 
 gether in his character. And the hammering 
 becomes no unimportant part of the process. 
 
 Certain traits of character there are which 
 show themselves all through the pounding.
 
 164 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Thus, all the hammering of eternity will not 
 make iron into gold. But a very little hammer- 
 ing will make pig-iron into wrought-iron, if you 
 give it heat enough ; and, so hammered, it will 
 bear a very different strain. 
 
 I remember a lovely friend, who passed into 
 heaven with less change perhaps than any other 
 angel I ever saw pass from world to world. I 
 remember she told me of a surprise of hers 
 which exactly illustrates the permanency of 
 some traits of character. But that life illus- 
 trates as well the change which on such traits 
 is effected. 
 
 When she was twenty years old, her second 
 mother called her and said : " You will like to 
 see yourself as you were when I knew you first, 
 a girl of six." So her mother put into her 
 hands the letter which contained a descriptive 
 catalogue of her faults and her merits, when, at 
 six years old, the aunts who had trained her 
 transferred her to this mother's care. The 
 young woman read this early description with 
 amazement. " I found there, in black and 
 white," she said, " traits of mine which I knew
 
 WHAT CAEEER? 165 
 
 very well, but which, like an ostrich, I had been 
 carefully concealing all my life, and which I 
 supposed no one had ever noted except myself." 
 All of us, perhaps, have had like experience, 
 whether of inherited traits or of other predispo- 
 sitions, which, showing themselves early, crop 
 out all along the course of life, and are among 
 the constants which are to be managed by a 
 man's own will. And, as this same friend of 
 mine found out, all the interest of life, and all 
 its value, is in the managing them and shaping 
 them. Character is the combined work of God 
 and man in the minting. I may, indeed, keep 
 to the same illustration of the Greeks, of the 
 bar of iron. It is smelted and beaten, smelted 
 and beaten again ; heated and drawn, heated 
 and drawn again ; heated and cooled suddenly, 
 heated and cooled slowly; heated, beaten, and. 
 cooled in every conceivable way, till, in the 
 shape of the hair-spring of my watch, or of the 
 needle with which you sew, or of the index in 
 the mariner's compass, it has properties and 
 values wholly inconceivable to the man who 
 only knew the crude lump of pig-iron. Who
 
 166 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 has been the actor there ? The intelligent en- 
 gineer, you say, who built the furnace and 
 brought to it the charcoal and the fluxes ; who 
 tamed the waterfall, and set in motion the gi- 
 gantic wheels, and taught these trip-hammers 
 to move, now with a crashing blow ; now 
 with so slight a movement that I can gently 
 crack an egg-shell with it, and yet it shall not 
 lose its form. Yes, the engineer is one of the 
 actors. He is, if you please, the principal actor. 
 But he is not the only actor. He needs, and 
 therefore he has trained and has placed here, 
 that quiet, brave, modest, swarthy workman, 
 whom you see waiting by the furnace for the 
 hot bloom of iron to be white ; who, at the fit 
 moment, will seize it and slide it to its place 
 under the trip-hammer ; who then will fix it 
 there, that it shall profit by the blow ; who will 
 turn it from side to side that it shall be squarely 
 shaped ; and who, when fit moment comes, shall 
 cool it in the water which has been prepared. 
 You say he is only a day-laborer. That is true. 
 You say he is ignorant, unskilled in the great 
 powers of the universe, and could never have
 
 WHAT CAREER? 167 
 
 set in order this giant system of which he is a 
 part. That is true. But he is a part of it, all 
 the same, and an essential part. The engineer 
 placed him here to do this duty, and relied on 
 his courage and conduct and fortitude, and on 
 his original thought and discretion, that it might 
 be done well. Nay, the engineer trained him, 
 called out his hidden powers, and made him 
 partner in his undertaking. Yes; and the 
 workman has implicit faith in the mill, and in 
 him that runs it, risks his life on that faith ; 
 and because he trusts to the waterfall, to the 
 furnace, and to the directing skill that sets the 
 whole in order, he is what he is, and aids in 
 the triumph of the whole. But for that man, 
 ignorant and weak though he be, the bloom 
 of iron would never become tough bar, elas- 
 tic sword-blade, or prophetic needle. Place it 
 under the trip-hammer and let this man leave 
 it for twenty seconds, and then see how little 
 "character" it gains, though the iron mill go 
 steadily forward in its preordained career. 
 
 That interaction of the humble workman with 
 the directing engineer is a fit enough representa-
 
 168 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 tion of the interaction with God of man or 
 woman, who are his little children, fellow- 
 laborers with him in this tempering and purifying 
 and stamping which makes up " character." God 
 does not foreordain it. He is too kind for that. 
 We cannot create it, we are too short-sighted for 
 that. But God working in us, and we working 
 with him ; in summer days of loveliness, in the 
 night struggles of winter horror; in the long 
 brooding of wakeful nights, when he is the 
 only companion ; or in that exquisite intimacy 
 with her the dearest or with him the strongest, 
 which is the choicest gift of a God of love, 
 God with his children and his children with 
 him, year in, year out, in boyhood, girlhood, 
 manhood, womanhood, they form together the 
 character which seems such a mystery. 
 
 There is no adequate science of human life, 
 which does not fitly place and fitly state this 
 interaction of the two free agents who direct it. 
 The life of a man differs from the life of the 
 palm tree, or of the branching coral, precisely 
 in this distinction, that the man may or may 
 not " accept the universe." He is free to work
 
 WHAT CAREER? 169 
 
 with God if he chooses, or to oppose him if he 
 can. According as he works with him, or as he 
 works against him, is his success or his failure 
 in the regular formation of his character. 
 
 Hiram Withington, a friend of my youth, 
 whom we lost in the freshness of his promise, 
 said the regularity or the irregularity of this for- 
 mation was typified in the stratification of the 
 great coal regions of the world. He said that 
 every word of our lips, every act of our hands, 
 every step of our feet, every thought of our 
 brain, every emotion of our heart, and every 
 vision of our fancy might be looked upon as so 
 many dancing leaves in an autumn wind, tossed 
 hither, tossed thither, rising now, floating then, 
 but in the end all falling to the' ground, all 
 soaked together in a cold, clammy mass, by 
 the dews and rains of successive night-falls ; all 
 melted together at last in the heats of trial, and 
 crowded together under the pressure of adver- 
 sity, and cooled together in winters of desola- 
 tion, till in the end they made the rock which 
 we call character. We speak of character as if 
 it were solid and uniform, but in truth it is all 
 
 8
 
 170 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 seamed and layered by these traces of our old 
 life ; and one has only to tap the rock here or 
 there, or where he will, and the thin strata will 
 lie open as if it were only yesterday that they 
 were crowded together ; and yon shall find the 
 fibres and tissues, nay, you shall find the micro- 
 scopic cell and the fine down of the leaf, as if it 
 were only yesterday that it had fallen. Each 
 vision, each emotion, each thought, each step, 
 each act, and each word thus combine in the 
 necessary processes of human life to make up 
 the rock which we call character. 
 
 Now, it is according to the worth and might 
 of this character that the man or woman suc- 
 ceeds or fails. Let me return to my cross 
 and gentle masters, of whom I have spoken 
 already. For here is what men and women are 
 always forgetting ; what both of them, perhaps, 
 forget. If the character is light and trivial, no 
 matter how elegant the accomplishment nor how 
 ingenious the tool of one's labor. So there be 
 no might and force behind, tool and accomplish- 
 ment are flung away ; and, as human lives are 
 tested by whatever fire or whatever flood, the
 
 WHAT CAREER? 171 
 
 revelation which is made, and cannot be escaped, 
 is a revelation of how much might and force 
 and strength of character there is in the man. 
 Pathetic enough is it to see this in any moment 
 of history. In Queen Anne's time, for instance, 
 a hundred and seventy years ago in England, 
 there were noblemen and noble-women, court 
 beauties, court jesters, and court gallants in 
 London ; there were politicians working for the 
 queen, and politicians working against her ; there 
 were actors and actresses who were the talk and 
 toast of all England , poets and other writers 
 who were libelling each other, libelling half the 
 people in the land, and not forgetting to libel 
 the crown. In the midst of them all was Isaac 
 Newton, whom every one respected ; yes, but 
 neither courtier, actor, poet, nor satirist knew 
 that his work, his power, and so his name would 
 outlive them all. The prime minister rode to 
 his office, and flattered himself that Newton was 
 specially gratified when his lordship recognized 
 him as he passed in at the office door, Newton 
 being master of the mint. To give a man an 
 appointment in the mint was the only way in
 
 172 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 which Government could acknowledge, what 
 the Government knew, that here was the great 
 thinker, great scholar, great man of the time. 
 Well, time rolls by, and we find what was what. 
 First, the memory of the actors' and the act- 
 resses' paint and powder die. Then dies the 
 memory of the trashy plays they acted. Then 
 dies the memory of the intrigues of the men of 
 party. Treaty of this, treaty of that; Marl- 
 borough's victories. Bolingbroke's lies, we have 
 forgotten them all. By and by the books are re- 
 membered only as names in literature. Persons 
 of tact who know they ought to have them in 
 their libraries are tempted to make the sets out 
 of wood with well-gilt leather covers. Of Mr. 
 Pope, a man of true genius, by far the most 
 brilliant author of them all, a Harvard grad- 
 uate said the other day to Mr. Fields, as they 
 looked upon his portrait, " Were you acquainted 
 with Mr. Pope, Mr. Fields ? " So the fire of time 
 tries these reputations. So the straw burns, 
 the stubble, the lath, and the rafter ; the stucco 
 and plaster crumble and give way. But in 
 the midst of it something remains: it is the
 
 WHAT CAREER? 173 
 
 work which stands for character, and represents 
 character. The work of Newton stands un- 
 changed : his name too may be forgotten, but his 
 work is here. He helped men one step nearer 
 to their God. He brought in Law where all 
 was lawless. He did this, he said, by untiring 
 industry and determined perseverance, not by 
 any flash of brilliant inspiration. On the strand 
 of the Eternal Ocean he picked up a few peb- 
 bles, and these pebbles are as truly jewels of 
 eternal lustre as they ever were. 
 
 " Nature and Nature's Law lay hid in night 
 God said ' Let Newton be,' and all was light" 
 
 This is what one of those brilliant wits of his 
 own time said of him, and said truly. And that 
 service rendered by faith and courage to human- 
 ity stands, and will stand. His name may be 
 forgotten like the rest. But in the higher cer- 
 tainty of truth, in the nearer walk with God, in 
 the clearer significance of Law, are testimonies 
 never to be lost of the might and wealth and 
 worth of character. Work done for the day, by 
 the creatures of a day, has died with the day. 
 Work done for the eternities, by the eternal
 
 174 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 powers which a child of God enlists in his ser- 
 vice, is work as real now as it was then. The 
 man's name is forgotten, or it is remembered. 
 That is nothing. The work stands unchanged, 
 and the contrast is the contrast between the 
 worthlessness of mere accomplishment and the 
 value to all time of the work of character. 
 
 I think the habit of our country leads men to 
 forget this contrast. 
 
 True, there is not a wood-cutter in Maine or 
 Minnesota but knows that the weight of the axe 
 and the swiftness of the stroke are what tell in 
 the cutting of the tree ; that the sharpness of 
 the axe is nothing unless there be weight and 
 swiftness behind it. There is not a man of 
 them who would go into, the wilderness expect- 
 ing to clear his farm with sharp-bladed pen- 
 knives or well-polished scissors. Yet the same 
 men, as they look round for their heroes, as 
 they give applause or as they give votes, are as 
 likely as any men to be misled by the brilliancy 
 of accomplishment, and to forget the necessity, 
 if the work is to last, of the weight and force 
 which only belong to character. I think our
 
 WHAT CAREER? 175 
 
 habit what was our necessity of seeking 
 immediate results, leads to this. As we burned 
 down the forests, and now find too late that we 
 have caused by our folly higher freshets in the 
 spring and longer droughts in the summer, so 
 we applaud some showy fool in the pulpit, 
 or elect men to office for their ease in public 
 speaking, to find only too late that the children 
 do not know what the word religion means, and 
 that the destinies of the State have not been 
 confided to statesmen. This mistake, whenever 
 it is committed, is the mistake of preferring 
 accomplishment above character, a mistake 
 fatal whether it is made in education, in our 
 estimate of ourselves and our plan of our duty, 
 in our selection of other men for office, or in the 
 verdict of praise and censure which we render 
 to the servants of the State or of the Church. 
 
 We meet every day the broken-bladed pen- 
 knives, people who have tried to do the work 
 of axes, and have failed because they had not 
 weight enough. Such men are looking round 
 for patrons and letters of recommendation. 
 They think this man was successful because of
 
 176 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 his uncle's influence, and that one because he 
 was a freemason ; and then say bitter things 
 of society because society does not help them 
 forward. The truth is, all the while, that 
 there is nothing to help, nothing to endorse, 
 nothing to rely upon. The man has failed, not 
 because he had no uncles or no endorsers, but 
 because he had no weight, no steadfastness, 
 no character. 
 
 And, on the other hand, I meet every day 
 this man and that woman who cannot see why 
 God leaves them to such petty detail in the 
 work of his army. " Why should I be left to 
 take care of babies, while Penthesilea can lead 
 Amazons into action? " " Why should I be left 
 to take a class in a Sunday-school, while at my age 
 William Pitt was Prime Minister of England ? " 
 Why, but because the good God, who has some- 
 thing better at stake than the work of Amazons 
 or of prime ministers, has devised these schools 
 for the creation of your character. Dear boy, 
 you did nothing all last week, in your new 
 employ, but to add up units and carry tens, and 
 add tens and carry hundreds ; and you are sure
 
 WHAT CAREER? 177 
 
 that you could have done so much more and so 
 much better, but no man asked you. Is the 
 new employ, for that, mere slavery to you? 
 Only see what is the true sum of your figures 
 and the true product of your multiplication. 
 Be sure, you, that five years hence, when some- 
 body wants a man of might, of trust, of honor, 
 of integrity, and looks for him in that crypt 
 where you are adding and multiplying, the 
 search shall not be made in vain. Show, 
 then, that among a thousand ciphers there 
 is one real value. Among a thousand names, 
 let there be one child of God. Show, then and 
 there, what the service of five faithful years caii 
 do in creating character. 
 
 As I watch men of affairs, I find one set who, 
 as they say, make one hand wash another. 
 They are rushing round at one o'clock to pick 
 up the funds to pay the note which falls due 
 at two. 
 
 I find another set, more thoughtful, who 
 
 know to-day what they are to do next Friday, 
 
 know, as they would say, where they shall be 
 
 next Saturday, who are thus prepared in ad- 
 
 8*
 
 178 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 vance for any exigency in business. You can- 
 not take them by surprise. 
 
 And, once more, I hear of a third set some- 
 times. I hear traditions of the great men of 
 affairs, whose dealings have been governed by 
 combinations which were years in maturing ; 
 who knew how many acres of this world were 
 planted with coffee four years before, how many 
 three years before, what would be the probable 
 crop two years after, and three, and four. Such 
 are the men not satisfied to imitate their rivals, to 
 do as others do, to work by rule of thumb ; but 
 who have a principle, on which even commerce 
 adjusts itself. I might say the first of these is 
 a merchant by knack ; the second, a merchant 
 by system ; the third, a merchant on principle. 
 That familiar series illustrates for us sufficiently 
 a gradation vastly more important, a grada- 
 tion in men's lives, related not to the laws of 
 trade, but to the eternal realities. Men and 
 women of accomplishment are living for the 
 more immediate effect, and trusting the im- 
 mediate effort. Men and women of mere sys- 
 tem are only repeating what some schoolmaster
 
 WHAT CAREER? 179 
 
 or some cyclopaedia suggested. But men and 
 women of character ! ah, there we stand with 
 those who are not satisfied with time! They 
 are not satisfied with to-day's effort or to-day's 
 success. Nay, they are not satisfied to know 
 that next week this shall be adjusted, or that 
 smoothed away. They are not satisfied till 
 the word they speak shall ring as true as the 
 eternal word, and the house they build be built 
 upon the rock eternal. There is the man, there 
 is the woman, to whom, in crisis or in calamity, 
 friend, neighbor, country turn. There is the 
 man, there is the woman, who in new exigency 
 rises to the exigency; needs not to be taught 
 what to do or how to do it, but does it as 
 from "native impulse, elemental force." There 
 is the man or woman whose work stands. 
 Their names may be forgotten. So are the 
 names of almost all martyrs. But their lives 
 live in the higher life of a world renewed !
 
 180 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 VII. 
 RESPONSIBILITIES OF YOUNG MEN. 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL 
 CHURCH, BOSTON. MARCH 22, 1874. 
 
 T HAVE tried, a hundred times, to illustrate 
 in this place the duty of young men who 
 go out from an old community like ours into 
 the new States or the new Territories. In one 
 year I parted from four such young men. I 
 had with each of them most serious talk as 
 to the great duty before them and the noble 
 responsibility before them. Frederick Wads- 
 worth Loring was one of them. There are 
 young men here who well remember him in 
 school, a quick, intense boy, putting ques- 
 tions far in advance of his years, while he was 
 not easily satisfied with commonplace answers, I 
 suppose. I remember seeing him when he was 
 but seven years old, so quick, so mature, that I 
 despaired of his growing to manhood. But he
 
 WHAT CAREER? 181 
 
 did grow to manhood, in strong health, too, 
 such a mother had he and such a father, and 
 without the loss of any of the qualities which 
 made his childhood admirable. Pure and affec- 
 tionate, he passed through college with a lit- 
 erary taste and accomplishment hardly equalled 
 at his age. He devoted himself to a life of 
 letters ; 1 and as correspondent of one or two of 
 our leading journals he went with one of the 
 Government surveying parties into Arizona and 
 California. As he was returning, strong and 
 well, the stage coach in which he rode was at- 
 tacked by Indians and he was instantly killed. 
 
 Frank Russell Firth, who was not one of 
 our number here, but sometimes joined us in 
 our afternoon service, the personal friend of 
 many to whom I speak, was the first boy I 
 knew among the pupils in the Technological 
 School. He distinguished himself there as he 
 did everywhere, and graduated in their first 
 
 1 Beside articles in different journals, Mr. Loring published 
 " Two College Friends," Boston, 1871. He made the plan for 
 " Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other," and contributed 
 two poems to it. Many of his poems are in "Poetry of the 
 Advocate ; " and a volume of them was published in 1871.
 
 182 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 class in 1868. He looked round for his place in 
 the world, as all young men have to, and as they 
 all wonder that they have to ; was never dis- 
 couraged, used every moment wisely and well, 
 and, when he was hardly of age, was in charge 
 of an important railroad line in Kansas and 
 Nebraska. On a tour of inspection, he sta- 
 tioned himself on the front of the engine of his 
 train, that he might note rightly the deflection of 
 a bridge which they were to pass. The bridge 
 gave way, and Frank Firth was crushed under 
 the engine. He lived scarcely long enough to see 
 his father, and to bid his friends good-by. 
 
 With him at the moment was Otis Everett 
 Allen, also known to many of you. He had 
 just graduated at Harvard College, the honored 
 son of an honored father, one of my near friends. 
 His father died just as he entered college, and 
 this boy was loyally entering on life in the manly 
 wish to do for his mother and his sister what man 
 might do. Between him and Firth there was an 
 attachment as of the heroes of romance. He had 
 joined him on his perilous post of duty, and 
 died instantly in the same fatal fall.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 183 
 
 Of these two young men a little biography- 
 has been published this winter, well worthy the 
 careful reading of every boy who hears me, and 
 who is old enough to be asking himself what is 
 to be his place in life. 1 I have read it myself 
 again and again, and I have perhaps learned as 
 much from it as from any book, as to the ques- 
 tion what our first-rate schools do for the first- 
 rate boys who go to them, and what the first-rate 
 boys mean to do for the world. I associate these 
 three lives and these three deaths, indissolubly 
 with the life and death of a fourth young man, 
 much better known to you than any of these 
 of whom I have spoken. 
 
 George Gilman Chapin was the first boy whom 
 I baptized in the public service of this church. 
 I have never forgotten the manly way in which 
 he came to me, at his father's side, nor the mod- 
 esty and intelligence of his nature, which 
 showed even then, when I supposed he was not 
 nine years old, that his interest in the whole 
 service was devout and real. It was impossible 
 
 1 " The Young Engineer." A Memoir of Frank Russell 
 Firth. With a sketch of the Life of Otis Everett Allen. 
 Boston: 1874.
 
 184 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 not to be interested in such a boy ; and never in 
 after life did he fail to make good the bright 
 omen of that morning in Whitsuntide. 
 
 He entered Harvard College, and worked 
 there with distinction, but left before graduating. 
 He was the practical and efficient secretary of 
 our Young People's Society here, ready to lend 
 a hand wherever he could be of service. It 
 was but a little after Firth and Allen died, that 
 I met him in St. Paul in Minnesota, where he 
 had established himself, and where everybody 
 honored him and respected him. I was with him 
 a great deal while I was there. There never 
 was a more beautiful instance of the way in 
 which a conscientious and highly-trained young 
 man could carry to a new community just what 
 a new community needs. I was proud of him 
 and of all that he was doing. And then, that 
 curtain dropped too. A little while after, and 
 he died almost as suddenly as the others, from a 
 violent typhoid fever. I had seen him, as it 
 seemed, for the last time. 
 
 One may well compare such losses in the 
 great investment which we are all the time mak-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 185 
 
 ing, for the building up of our country, with the 
 losses of the Civil War. Death did not come 
 then more often, more sadly, nor more suddenly, 
 when our brave boys went to battle as frankly 
 and as willingly as you boys go to a ball or to the 
 play. To us who are left, it is no little lesson 
 which we learn when such deaths arrest our 
 attention, if we can see how important is the 
 place which young men hold in social order. 
 While such men live, we are looking forward 
 to their future. It is when they die, we look 
 back and begin to count their worth. 
 
 And I observe, as I know you young men 
 observe, that in new communities the value 
 of the element of young life is apprehended. 
 When you read of the traditions of New Eng- 
 land, you will find that such or such a man, the 
 founder of a town, heard of a good man at some 
 settlement, and rode down there to see if he 
 could not secure him. He would know that his 
 town could not thrive without men, and so he 
 would go down and offer such a homestead, 
 such a mowing lot, such a stand for a black- 
 smith's shop, if only the man would come.
 
 186 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Now, you do not see in exactly the same form 
 that necessity now. But none the less is it true 
 that at this hour America differs from all the 
 rest of the world except Australia, and is for 
 real life a better country to grow up in than 
 the older parts of the world, because of, I 
 think, the larger opportunities given here to 
 young men. I am afraid that the young men 
 of cities do not recognize this. But I have no 
 doubt that it is true. More than once have I 
 heard young Americans laugh as they described 
 their first interviews with their business corre- 
 spondents in London, when they noted the 
 extreme surprise with which those elderly men 
 found out that they had been corresponding on 
 terms of equality with gentlemen who, when 
 they came in person, looked, as they would say, 
 like boys. Take our country through, there is 
 no doubt that we have this great advantage of 
 a new country. So long as every man may have 
 his own farm by going and taking it, the habit 
 or tendency of young men will be to establish 
 themselves, instead of living in what they re- 
 gard dependence. So the earlier generations
 
 WHAT CAREER? 187 
 
 here grew up, and that principle survives. 
 George "Washington was almost the Nestor of 
 the men with whom he advised in the war. 
 They are always speaking of his dignity and 
 even his venerable aspect. He was forty-three 
 when it began. Greene, his only second, was 
 thirty-five ; Pickering, his commissary-general, 
 was twenty-five ; Hamilton, his favorite aid, was 
 twenty when he was appointed to that position, 
 and Lafayette was commissioned major-general 
 when he was nineteen. Hancock was thirty- 
 nine when, as president of Congress, he signed 
 the Declaration of Independence. That sort of 
 willingness to intrust important duty to men in 
 young life has never died out of the country. 
 I find that the average age of the representa- 
 tives in Congress this year is forty-three years. 
 Almost all these men must have served in their 
 own States in trusts of importance before they 
 came to Congress. I believe the habit is readily 
 accounted for by reference to the requisitions on 
 any new country. It is the habit of a frontier, 
 of new exigencies ; and it has been and is, as I 
 believe, to this country, a constant blessing.
 
 188 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Let me read you a little passage from Mr. 
 Beecher, which I found since I wrote this 
 sermon, in a sermon of his which I wish you 
 would all read, which he calls " Manhood in 
 America." He says : 
 
 " The value of all men, without regard to 
 race or condition, is the essential, democratic, 
 American idea. The true democratic idea is 
 that ' a man 's a man for a' that,' or this or that 
 or any thing else. The real democratic Ameri- 
 can idea is, not that a man shall be on a level 
 with every other man, 'but that every man shall 
 be what God made him, without let or hin- 
 drance ; that there shall be no prejudice against 
 him if he be high, and that no disgrace shall 
 attach to him if he be low ; that he shall have 
 supreme possession of what he has and what he 
 is ; that he shall have liberty to use his forces 
 in any proper direction." 
 
 Now this is as true regarding young men as it 
 is of black men or red men, rich men or poor 
 men. They shall have liberty to use their 
 forces in any proper direction. 
 
 And that habit of the country ought to be
 
 WHAT CAREER? 189 
 
 recognized by young men who have had advan- 
 tages above the average in early training. Such 
 men have to ask themselves, What is the place 
 of young men in American life ? And I do not 
 now put that question for those who go away 
 from us into the wilderness. There are not a 
 few young men, let us be thankful, who remain 
 here at home. It is the opportunities and re- 
 sponsibilities which come before them as young 
 men, which occupy us to-day. 
 
 Well, they are prompt to say that theirs is 
 not the average American lot; that promotion 
 here is not rapid ; that it is all as if they were 
 in an old country. I believe this is only partly 
 true ; but if it were wholly true, it would not 
 affect what I have to say of their duties. 
 
 The illustrations I have taken for convenience 
 from the Revolution, are illustrations from mili- 
 tary or political life. But I should say that the 
 first lesson for a young man in Boston to learn, 
 would be that, though every man has an impor- 
 tant duty to his country, there are a thousand 
 ways to discharge that duty without fighting 
 for her, or going into, the legislature, or trying
 
 190 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 to do so. We are deceived here by the accidents 
 of present history. Probably some man is now 
 at work in Boston, studying over some chemical 
 process, or some mechanical invention, which 
 fifty years hence will be referred to as one of 
 the great social improvements of our time ; as 
 men speak of the railroad now, or of the inven- 
 tion of the sewing-machine, or of Grove's and 
 Daniell's sustaining batteries, which made the 
 telegraph possible. You and I do not know 
 who these men are who are pushing these 
 researches. No ! They do not try their ex- 
 periments in Faneuil Hall, or on the Common. 
 And so, because the people who do try their 
 experiments in public, go into print, so that 
 you and I read about them night and morning, 
 we persuade ourselves, if we are foolish, that 
 they are the most important people of our time. 
 But not if we are wise only a little wise. 
 For then we know that Robert Fulton did a 
 greater work for this country than ever James 
 Madison did ; and that Whitney, who was the 
 inventor of the cotton gin, did more to establish 
 American wealth and the prosperity of the
 
 WHAT CAREER? 191 
 
 Southern States than all the Southern orators 
 and statesmen of his time or of all time put 
 together. 
 
 I. The first lesson of any man, I should say, 
 must be that he must serve his kind, and of 
 course his country, but that this is to be in 
 the line of his own genius. That phrase is Mr. 
 Emerson's ; and if a man do not know what is 
 the line of his own genius, as most of us do not 
 know, let a man be sure that whatever advan- 
 tages he has gained in boyhood anywhere be 
 steadily improved upon. For God reigns ; and 
 it is as sure as that, that God will call, even to 
 the front, every child of his who has any service 
 to render. The standing difficulty in the long 
 run is not want of places, but want of men. 
 You find it very hard to believe this now, when 
 you see every advertisement for a clerk answered 
 by two hundred applicants. But once go be- 
 hind the scenes of practical life, once hear 
 the careful inquiry made by men of large under- 
 takings and large results, where they can find 
 men of large capacity, or men of absolute hon-
 
 192 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 esty, or men of hard perseverance, or even men 
 who, being well up in their specialty, neither 
 drink nor lie nor steal, and you will under- 
 stand what I -mean when I say the need, on the 
 whole, is the need of men. You will see a man 
 is bound in honor to improve the ability he has 
 while he can improve it, and to be ready for the 
 exigency which it is certain will come. It 
 comes sooner to one man than to another. Yes : 
 it comes to one man in the demands of a great 
 invention. It comes to another man because 
 there is a new necessity in literature. It comes 
 to another man in some new arrangement of 
 government. It comes to another man because 
 he proves to be a born apostle of some lesson in 
 the Gospel not before wrought out sufficiently. 
 It comes to another man in the horrors of civil 
 war. It comes in different ways, but to each 
 man it comes. I do not say fame comes, nor 
 money, nor comfort, nor happiness ; but I say 
 that such is the blessing of an eager young 
 country like ours, which lives a century in every 
 year, that opportunity comes to every man ; 
 opportunity to serve mankind and so to serve
 
 WHAT CAREER? 193 
 
 God ; opportunity to make two blades of grass 
 grow somewhere where only one blade grew be- 
 fore; opportunity to leave the world a better 
 world than he found it. 
 
 II. But woe to the man who is not ready for 
 the opportunity when it comes ! Here is the 
 pith and point of the parable which describes 
 the mysterious coming of the Son of God, and 
 tells how some are ready for the wedding, and 
 some have their wicks burned dry and their 
 lamps empty. In that is just the difference be- 
 tween the man who, when there is something to 
 do, is eager to try to do it, and the other man, 
 who is not all a man, who is not ready, and 
 knows he must let the moment go by. The old 
 symbolic image of Time had that one forelock 
 
 
 
 on the forehead, and one must catch at that or 
 he could catch nowhere. And, as we say every 
 day, in this country of ours, and in our civiliza- 
 tion, " Time moves more quickly fhan he ever 
 did before." That is true. And a man needs 
 to be more ready than ever before to be of use 
 when his moment does appear. And this is cer- 
 9
 
 194 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 tain, that he will not find his opportunity by 
 sitting in the reading-room of a hotel, with his 
 feet upon the window-seat, looking out into the 
 street, and seeing if the opportunity will ride 
 up the street or ride down. I do not think that 
 he will find his opportunity by going to ward 
 meetings, arranging that William shall be cho- 
 sen overseer of the poor, and John be chosen 
 school-committee man. I hope he will go to 
 the ward caucus, but I hope he will not expect 
 to find his opportunity in life there. No ; his 
 opportunity to serve the world comes as he im- 
 proves his own ability ; and, speaking generally, 
 this is to be his ability in the walk of life in 
 which he is. 
 
 Is he a manufacturer ? Let him know to the 
 bottom the chemistry, the history, and the com- 
 bination of the articles he makes. Let him 
 some day make them better. Is he a merchant? 
 Let him, at the end of this month, know 
 something about his own line of goods that he 
 did not know when the month began. Is he a 
 man of letters ? Let him fill up faster than he 
 pumps out from the cistern. The man who is
 
 WHAT CAREER? 195 
 
 always enlarging what is after all a man's real 
 capital, need not be afraid to meet the world 
 fairly. 
 
 Or it may be, of course, that it is not in a 
 man's vocation but in his avocation that he is 
 at work, getting ready to be of more service. 
 And I have no doubt that every man should 
 have a regular avocation as well as a vocation, 
 were it only for that physical relief of which 
 Brown-Sequard has been teaching us. So 
 George Livermore retired every day from his 
 business I suppose I may say at the head of 
 the wholesale wool merchants of this city and 
 in his peerless library made himself the leader 
 in the lines of delicate and difficult critical 
 study which he selected. So Nathaniel Bow- 
 ditch retired regularly from his duty in the life 
 office, and gave a fixed time to the translation 
 of La Place's "M^canique Celeste." So Ben- 
 jamin Franklin retired from the supervision of 
 the best printing-office in America, to make the 
 electrical experiments and discoveries which in 
 that line changed the science of the world. I 
 select, as my instances, Boston men, intention-
 
 196 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 ally. From my limited acquaintance here, 
 I could name a hundred men who are doing 
 something of just that sort now, in lines which 
 seem to me not less important than these 
 which I have named. But I do not think it 
 right to speak of living men. And what I 
 want to do is to try to state the principle upon 
 which they are all working. 
 
 They are determined that they will be more 
 fit to serve the king next year than they are 
 now. That is the whole story. They did not 
 " finish their education " when they left the 
 High School, or the Dwight School, or Harvard 
 College. All of them have found a post-grad- 
 uate course that they can work in. For they 
 have found out, all of them, that they are chil- 
 dren of God, and, as children of God, bound 
 to help forward somewhere in God's world. 
 
 I hear with utter satisfaction, then satisfac- 
 tion with which nothing else compares that 
 any two or three of my young friends have 
 made a little club together to study chemistry 
 or electricity, or Italian or French, or Shaks- 
 peare or Chaucer, or butterflies or beetles, or
 
 WHAT CAREER? 197 
 
 botany or geology (if it be really study) ; to read 
 "The Science of Thought," or the "Proven- 
 9al," or the " Laocoon." To know that two or 
 three young people have covenanted and agreed 
 together that they will be worth more six 
 months hence than they are to-day, it in- 
 volves almost every thing so far as they are 
 concerned. These studies themselves are not 
 to be spoken of as trifling. Limit the subjects 
 resolutely, bind each other to loyal work, and 
 you have opportunities for really important 
 results, leading farther than you know, or I. 
 But it is not for mere results that I am anxious, 
 or am forelooking. It is for those who form 
 such clubs that I speak. They gain the mutual 
 help, which is so much. There is so much less 
 danger that they will take the hand from the 
 plough. And when you really see, in a fair in- 
 stance, that such a combination has been bravely 
 and faithfully maintained, you may almost say 
 that you are sure that God will find there faith- 
 ful servants ; and that, when the bell strikes, 
 there will be among them those who can do the 
 duty and bear the burden which in his counsels 
 are imposed.
 
 198 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 Nor does this which I am saying require or 
 imply that the man I am talking about is to give 
 himself up to books after a day's work in some 
 confined employment. He may do that, or he 
 may not. The point is simply that somehow 
 and somewhere he is to enlarge his working 
 power. One man does this, as Frederic Turell 
 Gray did it, by devoting his off-time to the poor 
 around him, a study which with him went so 
 far, that from the movements set on foot by him 
 and 'others like him grew up the whole system 
 of the Benevolent Fraternity of churches here. 
 As .he and those men saw that system, and 
 looked forward to its development, it looked 
 forward to a real spiritual oversight of this 
 whole city, of every exile in it, every stranger, 
 every lonely man or woman. 
 
 That is the work of a young publisher, who 
 took this as his avocation. Some men do it in 
 perfecting a new invention. Some men do it 
 by making life tolerable to exiles who have no 
 friend but those who seek them half way. 
 " How in the world did a busy man like you 
 learn the Hungarian language ? " said I to a
 
 WHAT CAREER V 199 
 
 partner in one of the largest business firms in 
 the world. " Oh," said he, " there was a poor 
 dog of a Hungarian officer, who was starving in 
 an attic, and I found it comforted him to have 
 me come and talk with him ; and it ended in 
 our reading Hamlet together in the Hungarian 
 version." So, when the bell struck, that man 
 was ready to use the language which by what 
 you please to call accident he had learned. I 
 know a man who learned the Spanish language 
 from the barber who shaved him ; and he told 
 me that the knowledge was, as it proved, of 
 essential service to him and to other men in all 
 his after life. A young lady came to me once, 
 complaining of the sad want of good society in 
 the manufacturing town of forty thousand 
 people in which she lived. I told her she did 
 not know where to seek it. I lived in another 
 manufacturing town of half that population ; 
 and I told her that the only nobleman I had 
 ever known, of absolutely blue blood of sixteen 
 quarterings, a man whose ancestors were 
 noble before Columbus guessed at America, 
 was a man whose acquaintance I made when he
 
 200 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 came to my front door and asked if I had an old 
 coat that I could give him. An accomplished 
 gentleman he was, too, temperate, honorable, 
 and manly. But he was an exile, and in over- 
 work for his daily bread he had become blind. 
 Take these as instances of the ways wholly out- 
 side of closet study, in which a man may be 
 gaining new resources and growing more ready 
 for the duty to which it may please God to call 
 him. 
 
 And of such detail I must say no more. My 
 object, indeed, was not to speak of detail. 
 My object was to warn young men against the 
 mistake which the French and English books 
 are a little apt to inculcate, the mistake of 
 supposing that it is of no great consequence 
 where or how a man spends the years from 
 twenty to thirty. It is of infinite consequence. 
 To us in America, in every step in social order, 
 in every physical impediment, in every political 
 revolution, it is of visible, palpable importance, 
 if a man will only put out his fingers to feel, or 
 open his eyes to see. We live among revolu- 
 tions. Tremendous tilings are happening all
 
 WHAT CAREER? 201 
 
 the time. It is the Boston fire. It is the Sep- 
 tember panic. It is the destruction of Chicago. 
 It is the Civil War. It is an inundation in 
 Louisiana. Or, such convulsions apart, we live 
 a life of surprises. A city doubles its popu- 
 lation in a dozen years. The whole line of its 
 business changes in twenty. A new current 
 of emigration sets in here. A new line of ex- 
 ports opens there. All this means that America, 
 while it is America and because it is America, 
 needs all the time new men and young men. 
 It needs that these young men shall be ready. 
 
 And that readiness is not to be the alacrity 
 of the fencing-master, the deportment of the 
 manners-master, the selfishness of a Pelham, or 
 the etiquette of a Chesterfield. It is to be the 
 manliness of a man. Here is one more child 
 of God. He is a child who, when he became old 
 enough to see and to hear, opened his eyes that 
 they might see, his ears that they might hear, 
 yes, and his heart that it might understand. 
 Of his own manly free will he determined to be 
 "partaker of the divine nature." That is some- 
 thing more than to be a rival of Chesterfield, or 
 9*
 
 202 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 a disciple of Turveydrop. To be a "partaker 
 of the divine nature ;" to be as true as God 
 himself; as loving to those in need as God's 
 Son well beloved ; as ready to serve as the loyal 
 child should be to the Father who never fails. 
 This child of God thus determining, thanks 
 God first, last, always, that he has placed him 
 in a society where each can lend a hand, and 
 where no man gainsays his endeavor. Proud of 
 the ancestry who have given to him such privi- 
 leges, he is determined that to his children these 
 privileges shall go down. Then to the exiles 
 from other lands, who did not inherit such 
 privileges, he is determined that, in their own 
 despite, they shall transmit them to their chil- 
 dren ! Yes ; and he sees and knows and under- 
 stands where is the central life of all such 
 endeavor. That life came into the world when 
 the great password was spoken : " Bear ye one 
 another's burdens." That life began for the 
 world- when, in the greatest epoch of its life, 
 the world found that it was one world, of one 
 heart and of one soul. It began when men be- 
 gan to live each for each in infinite attraction,
 
 WHAT CAREER? 203 
 
 and secluded themselves no longer each alone 
 in beastly separation. He knows the law of 
 this new life. He knows the history of this 
 new life. And to the reunited world, the 
 world redeemed in it ; to the universal Church, 
 the kingdom of its God he consecrates his life 
 and his endeavor : life and endeavor never so 
 noble or so beautiful as when they are offered 
 by the young knight just as he is admitted 
 to knighthood, and laid, as the first fruits of 
 his manhood, upon the altar of his God !
 
 204 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 VIII. 
 STUDY OUTSIDE SCHOOL. 
 
 T HAVE just returned from a visit to Antioch 
 College, an institution established by the 
 Unitarian church, near a quarter of a century 
 ago, for the higher education of the young peo- 
 ple of this country, especially in the Middle 
 States. I have for some years held the post of 
 chairman of the Trustees of the funds collected 
 for this purpose. It is, therefore, my official 
 duty to attend once a year at its commence- 
 ment. 
 
 There is something very interesting, pathetic 
 indeed, in the start upon life thus made at such 
 a time by high-strung, well-taught young peo- 
 ple, quite sure that they are to conquer the 
 world ; and there is something very sweet in 
 the sympathy and confidence with which the 
 hopes of the graduates are regarded by those 
 behind them.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 205 
 
 Our class-day and college commencement, 
 and the closing exercises of all the schools, are 
 going to show us just the same thing here. 
 And so I am going to talk to you young peo- 
 ple about the use to be made of freedom from 
 school and college, in continuing the line of 
 life and study into which school or college have 
 introduced you. 
 
 For I suppose there is no time when a boy 
 or girl feels the worth of school-training as they 
 do at the moment when they leave it for ever. 
 When the chance is over, you feel that you could 
 have done more with it. When you see how 
 others have improved, you wonder why you did 
 not take the same steps as they. You pack up 
 the elementary school books, to say, " Some- 
 time and somehow, I will know more of these 
 things than the elements." Nay, even if you 
 look back with relief on the old restrictions 
 which are done with for ever, duly grateful 
 that for you study-bells and regular atten- 
 dance in the class-room exist no longer, that 
 sense of freedom suggests the resolve that the 
 free man shall use time to more advantage than
 
 206 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the boy found when he was thus hampered and 
 crippled by chains and rules. 
 
 Well, I begin with saying to my young friends 
 that the plans they form now of continuing 
 school studies on a more generous plan, less 
 cramped and more in unison with their tastes, 
 are wholly justified in the resources open to 
 them here, and in the omnipotence of their 
 period of life, if only they will hold to the hope 
 or plan with tolerable loyalty. Other dreams 
 of youth may be fallible and foolish, but the 
 determination of the boy or girl of seventeen to 
 be through life a scholar is in no sense fallible 
 or foolish in the conditions of society among us. 
 No matter who or what that boy or girl may be. 
 Printer's boy like Franklin ; bound girl in a 
 log-cabin like Mrs. Farnham ; merchant's clerk 
 like George Livermore ; shoemaker's apprentice 
 like Henry Wilson or Roger Sherman, any one 
 who determines at seventeen to use an hour each 
 morning and an hour each night in systematic 
 study, will come out at the end of twenty years 
 among the systematic scholars of the land. 
 They are not a large class, but they are a class
 
 WHAT CAREER V 207 
 
 of men and women happy, contented, and use- 
 ful ; happy and contented because useful, and 
 useful because happy and contented. 
 
 Now I am going to speak specially, to-day, 
 not of general training for life, but simply of 
 these visions and hopes of school boys and 
 school girls for keeping up mental training ; I 
 am going to speak of what I believe the best 
 methods and the necessary cautions, as far as 
 I can, from my own experience. 
 
 I. First of all, I am speaking of and I sup- 
 pose myself speaking to young people who 
 have regular work to do in this world besides 
 keeping up the studies of school. My first 
 business is to tell them that their position has 
 distinct advantages, and that their disadvantages 
 for study do not overweigh the advantages, as 
 I hope I shall show. I have, therefore, sug- 
 gested that I do not expect them to give more 
 than twelve hours a week, or two hours a day, 
 to the regular study which I suppose them to be 
 undertaking. This is more time than the average 
 professional man doctor, lawyer, clergyman,
 
 208 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 or civil engineer gives to general systematic 
 study. Any such man would be glad indeed if 
 anybody would guarantee him two hours for 
 systematic work in general study, aside from 
 what he has to give to the bread-and-butter 
 work, or hand-to-mouth work, in which he takes 
 up to-day the particular information which he 
 needs for the particular requisition of to-morrow. 
 Two hours a day of systematic study, if you 
 can get it, is all that any men, but the two or 
 three who are exceptionally favored, pretend to 
 use for it as the year goes round. 
 
 II. With regard to the subject of reading or 
 study, you begin now to find the advantage of 
 leaving school. School lays a foundation. From 
 the nature of the case it has to lay the same 
 foundation for you all. One of the wisest and 
 wittiest women of our time once put it thus 
 to me : 
 
 " At school we are taught a little botany, and 
 a little physiology, and a little chemistry, and a 
 little natural philosophy ; a little of metaphysics, 
 and a little of morals, and a little of history; a
 
 WHAT CAREER? 209 
 
 little Latin, a little French, a little Italian, a 
 little German and Greek; a little arithmetic, 
 a little algebra, a little geometry, at school 
 we are taught a little of every thing." True 
 enough ; that is precisely what the higher 
 schools are for. They are to give the scholar 
 a taste. Then let him go forward if he will, 
 where he will, and as he will. Two or three of 
 the last years of school have not been badly 
 spent, if they have given such a series of 
 glimpses round the panorama that you can 
 wisely choose which direction you will take for 
 your own journey. 
 
 Now you have the luxury of making your 
 own choice. And now you are to study, not 
 ten things at a time, but one thing. And here 
 is one of the places where your taste, your 
 fancy, what you like, may come in. The 
 rule for gratifying one's tastes in life is exact 
 here. You must do the duty next your hand, 
 that is certain ; but of ten duties next your 
 hand you are to choose that which you do most 
 happily, which suits you best, or for which 
 God fitted you. So long as you were at school,
 
 210 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 it was your duty to do what the schoolmaster 
 told you to do. Now, of this realm of reading 
 or study, it is your duty to choose first that 
 which you need most or like best. And now 
 you are to drop the effort to follow up ten lines 
 of study at a time. Now you are to select, for 
 your two hours daily, some one out of the ten. 
 
 III. And you are to choose now, no longer as 
 one playing with the elements, but as a student 
 who is going to do this thing thoroughly. 
 
 Do not ask me to choose for you. I do not 
 know. I cannot tell either what your tastes 
 are or your duties. It may be that your father 
 is an importer of drugs, that it is interesting 
 and valuable for you and for him to know of all 
 manner of plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to 
 the hyssop under the wall. In that case, I 
 should think you would study botany ; and 
 study it, not satisfied with pulling a violet to 
 pieces to count its stamens, but so to study it as 
 to learn the laws of growth, the territorial divi- 
 sion of genera and species, the relations of cli- 
 mate to growth, and again of vegetation to
 
 WHAT CAREER? 211 
 
 climate. I should think you would like to 
 enter into the heart and marrow of your father's 
 daily duty, and of what you are to hear of 
 every day of your life. 
 
 Or you may be touched by all this centennial 
 clamor, Fourth of July jubilation, Old South 
 preservation and the rest. I should think you 
 would like to know something of the real his- 
 tory of your country beneath the school-book 
 gloss ; what manner of men Hancock and the 
 Adamses, Quincy, Ward, Warren, and the other 
 Massachusetts heroes really were ; what Jeffer- 
 son, and Paine, and Dickinson, and Schuyler, 
 and Livingston were. I should think you 
 would like to study a hundred years ago in the 
 writings of a hundred years ago ; in the words, 
 I mean, of the actors, and their times. 
 
 Or in this daily talk of politics and social 
 matters deeper than politics, I should think 
 that a boy or girl of seventeen leaving school, 
 might resolve boldly to understand some of the 
 principles at the bottom of questions of hard 
 money and soft money, of free trade and pro- 
 tection ; of grangers, and eight-hour laws, and
 
 212 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 trade-unions. This would be to study sociology 
 and political economy. 
 
 Or I can understand how and why such a 
 boy or girl, not satisfied with the smattering 
 of Latin, or German, or French he has brought 
 from school, should resolve to go beyond the 
 mere elements of the language into the luxury 
 of the literature. Nor can any moment be more 
 delightful than the moment when such a person 
 at last launches loose from the ties which have 
 bound him to the dictionary, and starts over the 
 ocean of a great literature, unfettered and free, 
 conquering a new world by the magic of a new 
 language. 
 
 Choose for yourself, you who have a right to 
 choose now ; but choose one thing first, and do 
 not a^.d the second till you are certain about 
 the one. Do not let John persuade you to 
 study French, and Max to study German, and 
 Henry to study astronomy, and Walter to study 
 chemistry. Do not think because you are free 
 you can do every thing. You are to do one 
 thing at a time, if you do it well. One thing 
 well done, of course you may take another.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 213 
 
 French well mastered, take your French to 
 study chemistry. Chemical analysis well un- 
 derstood, use it in studying mineralogy. The 
 mathematics of mineralogy well compassed, 
 use it in your studies of geology. But do not 
 be trying to compass all these things at once 
 and together. 
 
 On the other hand, if you can find a com- 
 panion to do your work with you, two of you 
 together will achieve each twice as much as 
 one would do alone. I do not lay much stress 
 on the teacher. A great teacher, who will 
 inspire you, is certainly a great blessing. But 
 wonders can be done in the way of study by 
 resolute learners who have no teachers. I do 
 hope, for each of you, that you will have com- 
 panionship and sympathy. 
 
 IV. And, now, one word as to the first prac- 
 tical difficulty you are going to meet ; or, shall 
 I say, the first enemy in your way. I have sup- 
 posed that, from your household and social 
 duties, you girls are going to win two hours 
 for study ; and that, from your daily work at
 
 214 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the store, you boys are going to win two. 
 The first temptation will be to give those two 
 hours to novel-reading, to the magazines, or at 
 the least to the newspapers and reviews, on the 
 ground that they are improving. What are you 
 to do about these ? 
 
 Well, I have profited too much by novels to 
 say hard things about them. I recognize abso- 
 lutely the truth that the finest work of the 
 literature of our time has taken that form. I 
 think there is no English book of the last twenty 
 years which has a better chance with posterity 
 than George Eliot's novels. But when I see 
 the trash which boys and girls have in their 
 hands in the street cars ; when I see what peo- 
 ple buy and devour in travelling ; when I see 
 what lies about on people's tables and seashore 
 piazzas and mountain hotels, I know that 
 I must speak of the worst temptation for 
 young people let loose from school. There is 
 no such enemy to firm and intelligent study as 
 the unrestricted habit of devouring novels. Hold 
 that in check, therefore, from the beginning. 
 From the beginning, determine that for every
 
 WHAT CAREER? 215 
 
 hour of novel reading in a day, you will read 
 for an hour something of some worth beside the 
 excitement of the hour. The old ladies who 
 sent to the Dorchester Public Library a half 
 century ago, used to send for " a sermon-book 
 and another book," leaving to the librarian to 
 choose. I wish their granddaughters to-day, 
 when they send for a novel, would send for 
 " another book " as well, and never would take 
 novel number two till the "other book" had 
 been well and wisely digested. The analogy of 
 sugar-plums is perfect. Woe to the boy or girl 
 who eats candy all the time ; because a little 
 sweetmeat has its place and a very good 
 place. The solid meals of the day have their 
 place, too. And this is all that I will say. But 
 I forewarn you that, when at New Year you are 
 looking back on the resolutions about your 
 studies which you have not kept, the failure 
 will be, not that you have read nothing, but that 
 what you have read was not worth the reading. 
 
 V. Now in this whole affair the key is this : 
 your study is not for so poor an object as to
 
 216 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 please yourself ; it is, in the end, that you may 
 please those you love. Yes, I have a great re- 
 spect for the girl who studied chemistry so that 
 she might the better make the sugar-plums for 
 her younger brothers and sisters. I think her 
 chemistry was God-favored ; and I have no 
 doubt that the spirit in which she conceived her 
 task lifted her up all along and carried her 
 bravely through. To be enlarging steadily the 
 mental power God gave when you were born, 
 that you may carry out his purpose the more 
 steadily, may bring this world nearer heaven, 
 that is your object when you choose this or that 
 direction for your reading. Or, if you choose 
 modestly to define it in less terms, and to say 
 you would be a better companion to your moth- 
 er, or would serve better your little brothers in 
 their studies, I will accept that definition. I 
 only say that that means the same thing. If, in 
 the schools, the poor vision of culture for the sake 
 of culture has been haunting you, let us thank 
 God that you are out of the schools ; and let us 
 pray to him that life, with its duties and dan- 
 gers, may lay that ghost, and lay him for ever.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 217 
 
 / 
 
 I hate the word " Culture," it has been so pa- 
 raded and discussed, the theme of platforms 
 and of lectures that meant nothing. It has 
 been so mixed up with conceit and selfishness 
 that I had rather you told me any friend of 
 mine was a woman of pleasure, or a woman of 
 fashion, than that she was a person of "cult- 
 ure," as that phrase is commonly applied. An 
 indignant Western writer the other day said 
 that when the Chinook Indians wished to stamp 
 a wordy pretender with their lowest contempt ; 
 when they wanted to speak of the maximum of 
 brag with the minimum of performance ; when, 
 for instance, they would describe a young chief 
 who had never been on the war-trail, and had 
 never looted an enemy in the face, but who 
 was perfect in his war-paint, carried weapons 
 of the most elaborate make, and wore more 
 feathers than any warrior of them all, they 
 described this man by the name, "Boston 
 Cultus." 
 
 Well, you and I know what that satire 
 means, and we know where it is deserved. It 
 is deserved by the men who say the country is 
 
 10
 
 218 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 going to the dogs, and who never give a vote to 
 save it. It is deserved by the men who found 
 fault with every movement of the war, and 
 never carried a musket. It is deserved by the 
 men who say the sharpest and smartest things 
 against universal suffrage, and yet never lifted 
 a finger to welcome an emigrant, nor spent 
 a dollar to teach a negro. It is deserved by the 
 men who say the West is a horde of barbarians, 
 who yet never travelled farther west than the 
 Saratoga race-courses, nor looked face to face at 
 the pure democracy of a healthy Western town. 
 Such satire is fairly enough deserved in its 
 place ; but it has no voice against the culture 
 which makes of Boston a university ; which fills 
 it every winter with young men and women from 
 every State this side of the Pacific, who have 
 come here to study music, or language, or paint- 
 ing, or philosophy, or physical science, in 
 schools which offer them training most broadly 
 and most cheaply. And for you and me the 
 lesson, not of such easy satire only, but of 
 every living word of a loving God, is that what 
 we read or study is to be that which sooner or
 
 WHAT CAREER? 219 
 
 later wfll make us better soldiers in his service. 
 "Wide is the sweep of that service, indeed. It 
 may be to stand faithful among the faithless, 
 as Abdiel. It may be to go to tell the message 
 of his love and wisdom to the ignorant, like 
 Gabriel. It may be to be a guardian of the 
 weak, like Raphael. It may be to stand 
 guard at the gate and keep away disease and 
 pestilence, hatred and malice, from those we 
 love, to detect falsehood by its own ugliness, 
 and to know truth of our own nature, like 
 Ithuriel. It may be to be " God's eyes, that 
 run through all the heavens, or down to the 
 earth bear his swift errands," as was the service 
 of Uriel. It may be to crush and destroy his 
 enemies, as was the work of Michael. Or it may 
 be that we are of that chorus and company of 
 all saints who also serve although they stand and 
 wait. Be it where he will, we are in his service. 
 Choose what line we will, we choose to build 
 up his kingdom. We are on the side of God, 
 and throw in our lot and our endeavor with the 
 progress and purity of his world. Do not let 
 any sceptic pull you down from that high ambi-
 
 220 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 tion. Do not let any sneer make you afraid to 
 assert a claim so grand. Your voice, your pen, 
 your kindness, your patience, your sympathy, 
 and your help, shall be more able and more 
 as you rightly use and train these talents which 
 are his gift to open blind eyes and deaf ears, 
 to make homes happy, and to make deserts 
 smile. You live for him and to his glory.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 221 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE TRAINING OF MEN. 
 
 "\ T 7HEN I wag little more than a boy, I was 
 presented to Mr. John Tyler, then Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and had the advan- 
 tage of a few minutes' conversation with him. 
 He advised me as to my route in a journey I 
 proposed into Virginia. He said I should not 
 find the aspect of a large population, to which 
 I was used in Massachusetts, that their pecu- 
 liar institutions withdrew the laboring people 
 and their homes to a distance from the high- 
 ways. " Indeed," said he, " you will not see so 
 much of the evidences of material wealth in any 
 part of Virginia. But, if you will go into the 
 valley of the James 1 River, you will see the 
 great turning-places of our history. You will 
 see Jamestown, where American history began ; 
 you will see Yorktown, where colonial history 
 ended ; you will see the birth-place or the resi- 
 
 1 Pronounced " Jeems," by Old Virginia.
 
 222 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 dence of Patrick Henry, of Washington, of Jef- 
 ferson, and of Madison. In such associations 
 as these, you will be less curious about traces of 
 physical prosperity." 
 
 I Ifien. learned, boy as I was, a lesson which I 
 have never forgotten. For President Tyler was 
 supposed to be susceptible to compliment, and I 
 was young enough to be in the mood to humor 
 him. I bent forward to quote the beautiful lines 
 by which Mrs. Barbauld truly describes the great- 
 ness of England. 
 
 I was on the point of saying, 
 
 " Man is the nobler growth your realms supply," 
 
 when it occurred to me, just in time, that at that 
 moment the principal trade of Virginia was the 
 exportation of men to the Louisiana sugar plan- 
 tations. She did not really care quite so much, 
 just then, for Washington or for Jefferson, as for 
 the growth of men for other purposes. The 
 men who were brought up on her corn were sold 
 as soon as they were men for the labor of Louisi- 
 ana. The quotation, therefore, 
 
 " Man is the nobler growth your realms supply,"
 
 WHAT CAREER? 223 
 
 was fatally and sadly true, in a sense other than 
 Mrs. Barbauld's ; and, at the same moment, it 
 was a fatal exposition of the cause of that pov- 
 erty in resources which the President was ac- 
 knowledging, I bit my lip, said nothing, which 
 is always wise, and the President passed on to 
 some other views of Virginian greatness. I 
 meanwhile had learned, so that I have remem- 
 bered it since, the lesson of the folly and vanity 
 of compliment. 
 
 That was thirty-three years ago, a third of 
 a century ago. In that time, I have travelled 
 often in Virginia, and every time when I have 
 gone there, I have come home haunted with the 
 remembrance of this first conversation I ever had 
 with a President of the United States; and with 
 the lesson of the value of men in the world, 
 which, though neither of us meant it, was con- 
 veyed in it. I have now come home from 
 Louisiana and Texas, from the deserts of the 
 Indian Territory and Kansas, saying just the 
 same thing, 
 
 " Man is the nobler growth our realms supply ; " 
 
 and convinced again, and more convinced than
 
 224 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 ever, that all schemes of reconstruction are hope- 
 less, all victories of armies idle, all natural lux- 
 ury of climate a snare, and all mineral wealth 
 a delusion, unless you have men to use the vic- 
 tories, men to enforce the laws, men to enjoy the 
 climate, men to subdue the earth. Again I 
 learn the eternal lesson of the vanity of things, 
 where there is no master spirit to control things. 
 It is the lesson of the nothingness of Nature, 
 unless the child of God unless man takes 
 Nature in hand to tame her. 
 
 One sits at home in our dismal climate, one 
 sees the hand-to-mouth work of our farming, 
 crops of granite and of ice for its only exports, 
 and one sighs for richer fields and warmer 
 skies. Then one travels to see those fields and 
 to enjoy those skies ; and one hears the word 
 that God said to Adam in the beginning, that 
 he bade him subdue the earth. One learns that 
 the earth is nothing unless you have the men ; 
 and one asks how and when and where the 
 noblest man the child of God most godly is 
 to be found and is to be trained. 
 
 When one finds that, he finds how the wilder-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 225 
 
 ness ft to be vanquished and the desert blossom 
 with the rose. He sees, in fact, what Isaiah 
 saw in prophetic rapture, that the desert re- 
 joices and the wilderness is glad, only when 
 they see the coming of the true Son of Man. 
 
 I. This is, of course, true, though you speak 
 of dollars and cents, of mere material wealth. 
 I need not show that land alone is not worth a 
 penny, not though it were underlaid with gold, 
 not though it bore corn and olive and vine, 
 until you can put men upon it to take its treas- 
 ure in hand. True, the Old World people, when 
 they come over here, forget this, land at home 
 seems so precious. They wonder how we can 
 afford to give away homesteads to settlers, if 
 they will only please to take them. The lesson 
 has been a lesson which our Southern friends 
 have found it hard to learn, that the poorest 
 land, if it had a thousand people to the square 
 mile, was worth a thousand times as much as 
 one of their plantation baronies without inhabi- 
 tants. It is rather a curious feature of the early 
 colonization of all our States, that the unwel- 
 10*
 
 226 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 come lesson had to be taught to all capitalists 
 that land alone is as valueless as water alone, 
 an acre of desert land as an acre of desert water. 
 It took long to persuade an earl or a duke, to 
 whom an English king had given a principality 
 as large on the map as England, that really his 
 master had given him nothing. It took long to 
 persuade the Virginia Company, to whom King 
 James gave half a continent, and the Plymouth 
 Company, to whom he gave the other half, that 
 in truth he had given them nothing. A gen- 
 eration, more or less, taught them, as the same 
 length of time taught the barons and the dukes, 
 generally at some cost, that they would be wise 
 to part, when they could, from the royal gift, and 
 bestow it on any one who would take it. Crozat 
 and Law learned the same lesson in Louisiana. 
 With such experience, whoever looks an instant 
 at the causes of wealth sees why this is so. 
 Robinson Crusoe's lump of gold had no value, 
 because on his island there were no men who 
 had need of gold. And so the worth of any 
 spot on the world's surface in the market de- 
 pends on its ease of access, on the use, that is,
 
 WHAT CAREER? 227 
 
 which can be made of it in the enterprises of 
 men. 
 
 II. That is mere matter of the exchange. 
 What interests us in our purposes is the quality 
 of the men who hold any territory. How much 
 of manliness is there in them ? Or, speaking 
 more simply, how godly are these men ? How 
 much is there in them of the spirit of the creat- 
 ing God ? Tossed on different surges of the 
 same ocean, at the same moment of the year 
 1620, were two ships working westward, one 
 to Virginia and one to New England. They 
 met the same gales ; they rejoiced in the same 
 east winds ; they reached their harbors nearly 
 at the same time; a hundred people in each 
 perhaps. Yes, but what is the quality of these 
 men? How much muscle? how much brain? 
 how much soul ? To ask the last question is to 
 ask, How much of God is there ? how near to 
 God are they ? how high in the grade of men ? 
 
 The vessel on the Southern voyage has a 
 hundred negroes from the Guinea coast. They 
 have been stolen by Dutch adventurers. They
 
 228 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 are brought to do field-labor beneath the lash on 
 this James River. They have learned nothing ; 
 they know nothing. As far as you can ever say 
 it of men, they believe nothing, remember noth- 
 ing, and hope for nothing. They hardly know 
 there was a past. They hardly look forward to 
 a future. The other vessel, the "Mayflower," 
 has a hundred English Independents, culled 
 from the best wheat of England, and trained 
 for twelve years in the midst of the best wisdom 
 of Holland. They are men who for an idea 
 have left home. For right and for God they 
 have come into the wilderness. They are men 
 who live for faith, for hope, and for love. I 
 need not make any calculation of the worth of 
 these two cargoes. I would leave it to any man 
 who is used to the work of colonization. I will 
 take the most cold-blooded estimate of any bro- 
 ker of land. Which will be worth the most in 
 the market, when ten years have gone by, the 
 sands of Plymouth, with what are left of the hun- 
 dred God-fearing men and women, or the rich 
 bottom-land of Virginia, beneath the compelled 
 labor of what are left of the hundred faithless 
 slaves ?
 
 WHAT CAREER? 229 
 
 There is a distinction, as we see at the very- 
 outset, in the quality of men. 
 
 III. So we come back to our real question, 
 How are such godly men to be found and 
 trained, how, when, and where ? I have less 
 and less faith in that convenient modern theory 
 which makes out the great gifts of godli- 
 ness and manliness to be the native fruits of 
 certain climates, or of particular physical geo- 
 graphy. I do not see that the facts sustain the 
 theory. For, in truth, very diverse facts are 
 called upon, as the theory happens to require. 
 If the inquiry is about Peter the Great, who 
 raised a barbarous State to be a first-rate power, 
 you are told that northern climates develop 
 strong characters, and make royal men. But if 
 the royal man, who has made a small State into 
 a great one, happens to be Solomon in Palestine 
 or Pericles in Athens, you are told that the lux- 
 ury of the climate of the Mediterranean gave 
 fine chance for exquisite physical development, 
 and for the mental and moral gifts which to 
 physical development belong. We in New Eng-
 
 230 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 land hear a good deal of the simple and pure 
 virtues of the Northern races, because we hap- 
 pen to belong to those races, and do not dislike 
 to paint our own pictures. Of course, our posi- 
 tion saves us from many temptations ; but what 
 is the worth of virtue which has never been 
 tempted ? When I think of such men as Tous- 
 saint, born in San Domingo ; as Napoleon, born 
 in Corsica ; as Washington, born in Virginia ; as 
 Dante, born in Florence ; as Alfred, born in Eng- 
 land ; as Epictetus, born in Phrygia ; as Socrates, 
 born in Athens ; as David, born in Bethlehem, 
 I see that moral goodness or mental greatness 
 belongs to no one climate or set of circumstances 
 more than another. And, if you speak of spe- 
 cial gifts, no man who has seen Mr. Webster 
 tame an unwilling audience and carry it along 
 with him, and has read how Demosthenes did 
 the same thing with the mob of Athens, will 
 believe that the gift of eloquence is a special 
 gift, either of the mountains of New Hampshire 
 or of the ripples of the waves of the ^Egean 
 shore. 
 
 How, when, and where, then, are we to find
 
 WHAT CAREER? 231 
 
 the most manly men, which is to say, the most 
 godly ? We must not look in a particular soil 
 for them, as if they were ground-nuts or turnips, 
 nor along a particular isothermal line, as if they 
 -were palm-trees or pines. Jesus Christ struck 
 the key-note of the answer, when he reversed 
 all superficial speculations by saying, " The last 
 shall be first ; " " He that is least among you 
 shall be greatest ; " " He that humbleth himself 
 shall be exalted ; " " He that is least in the king- 
 dom of heaven shall be greater than the prophet 
 who has the most popular surrounding, or than 
 the ascetic whose fasting is most severe." In 
 all such announcements, sometimes abruptly 
 paradoxical in form, the central truth is pro- 
 claimed that manliness is a moral quality, that 
 it belongs to spirit and the empire of spirit. It 
 is not a matter of mental fibre or physical fibre. 
 It is not to be contracted for, as you contract for 
 the staple of the wool of a sheep, for the flesh 
 on the thigh of an ox, for the speed or bottom 
 of a horse, when you go to the breeder of those 
 animals to tell him what you want, or when he 
 undertakes to supply you. " All these things
 
 232 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 ye should have done, but not have left the 
 others undone." 
 
 The physiological discoveries of recent times 
 have done a good deal to help us in these ques- 
 tions. At the least, they have confirmed the best 
 instructions of the prophets and other spiritual 
 teachers, whose boldest statements are now con- 
 firmed even by the anatomists. I said this was 
 not a matter of mental fibre or physical fibre. 
 Now, it is not 'long since the impression was 
 very widely diffused, that mental training had 
 the most intimate relation with moral force. 
 People really thought that you could argue or 
 prove your way into heaven. Because we do 
 not see the mind, people have been very fond of 
 speaking as if mere mental processes, such as 
 memory, imagination, ,and reasoning, were in 
 themselves somehow elements of original power 
 and sources of real life. People have talked as 
 if Lord Byron or La Place or Goethe or Napo- 
 leon, because of their wonderful mental faculty, 
 had any more original power, any more chance 
 for moral insight and moral victory, any more 
 sway of circumstance. No one would have
 
 WHAT CAREER? 233 
 
 said this of a giant, or a man of strong muscle, 
 of Milo of Crotona, or of some seven-foot 
 Kentuckian. But men did say it of mental 
 giants and persons of strong reasoning faculty. 
 They spoke as if such brilliant mental marvels 
 had a better chance of knowing God and doing 
 his will than some stupid old black man, who 
 could neither read nor write nor reckon. All 
 this folly ought to be set aside by recent dis- 
 coveries as to the nature of mere mental effort. 
 For it proves now that an effort of memory or 
 a train of argument takes up bodily fibre, tires 
 out and wears down the body just as much as 
 running a race does, or striking at a ball. It is 
 made almost certain, from mere physical obser- 
 vations, that the merely intellectual efforts be- 
 long with feats of bodily strength. The mere 
 mind and the mere body are to be ranked 
 together. 
 
 All this observation makes simpler and more 
 interesting all the set of studies, which show 
 how the man himself, the living soul, is to con- 
 trol the mind and to control the body. The 
 theory of the Dark Ages and of the Fathers of
 
 234 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the Reformation is exploded, which taught that 
 the man would gain vital power if he only 
 understood about the Vicarious Atonement, or 
 if he committed to memory a theory of the Fall 
 of Man, or if he said that he believed one or 
 another theory of the Trinity. The training 
 of the mind and the training of the body must 
 henceforth be regarded as on the same plane. 
 And all men who believe there is a soul, espe- 
 cially all who believe that this soul survives the 
 body, will see that the man gains in strength in 
 proportion as the soul of man subdues body and 
 mind together. And it is made certain, for such 
 questions as we are trying to solve, that if we 
 only have manhood enough in the men and 
 womanhood enough in the women, they will 
 control body and mind, whatever climate or soil, 
 latitude or longitude. They will become mon- 
 archs even of the wilderness, and will compel it 
 to blossom. 
 
 Force inheres in moral quality. Mind and 
 body are its tools, and nothing more. Now, 
 because moral quality, and the finest moral 
 quality, may appear anywhere among the chil-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 235 
 
 dren of God, may appear in " Uncle Tom," in 
 his cabin ; in Jeanne of Orleans, in her peasant's 
 hut ; in Grace Darling, on the lonely storm-beat 
 shore, you must arrange the steps of promo- 
 tion for everybody, you must arrange your uni- 
 versal training for everybody, keep watch and 
 ward that every child of God may have a chance 
 as good as the best. When the lily of the field 
 germinates, there must be no heavy slate-stone 
 over its head to throw it back into darkness for 
 ever, while tares and whiteweed are flaunting 
 all around in sunlight and air, and scattering 
 their pestilent seeds for the destruction of future 
 harvests. This is the distinct and central rule 
 of Christian civilization. Give every child of 
 God the best that you can give in the way of 
 training ; let him share equally with all the oth- 
 ers. No matter if he come rushing in at the 
 eleventh hour. If he have neglected, or if oth- 
 ers of his race have neglected, all the golden 
 opportunities of dawn or glorious noon, still, for 
 all that, do you, who are only stewards of God's 
 bounty, give him the same penny that you give 
 to those who have wrought with you all day.
 
 236 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 For he is God's child as well as they, and so has 
 the unstinted, untaxed, uncompared treasure 
 of the very fulness of God's love. This is the 
 meaning of that parable. 
 
 And in this fundamental axiom of the life of 
 a republic, that it must keep open to the top 
 every line of promotion, is that remark confuted 
 which we sometimes hear in whispers, that pop- 
 ular education is to be limited to the elements 
 of learning only. People say in whispers what 
 they are not so apt to say when they are candi- 
 dates, that the State should only pay for reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic. It should not pay, they 
 say, for Greek and Latin, for history, and a 
 knowledge of fine art, because these are for the 
 few who can pay for them, while the elements 
 only are for all. This heresy starts on the mis- 
 take that it is for their own good only that the 
 State trains them. In truth, the State trains 
 them for her own good, first of all. Then the 
 heresy supposes that the few who can pay for the 
 higher training are the few who need it. But 
 no man can tell where or in what class of society 
 Jenny Lind is to be born, or Florence Nightin-
 
 WHAT CAREER? 237 
 
 gale, or Robert Fulton, or Abraham Lincoln ; and 
 we must not risk the loss of any one who would 
 help the world by withholding at the right time 
 the right culture. For the State's sake, we must 
 offer it open-handed to them all. 
 
 But there need be no real danger from this 
 heresy, nor from any of the short-sighted here- 
 sies of the old schools of politics, which were 
 bred in castes or classes. If we can bear in 
 mind always that the whole object of the State, 
 of constitutions of government, of systems 
 of education, is to make men and women who 
 deserve those names, all our questions will be 
 answered easily. All law, all policies, must be 
 subordinated to this training of the citizen. 
 All social order and all its machinery must serve 
 the same great aim. For instance, fine art, the 
 picture-gallery, the opera and the theatre, sys- 
 tems of trade, tariffs, and commercial regula- 
 tions, school systems and college systems, all 
 these at bottom must be administered and must 
 be planned so that you may gain the highest pos- 
 sible quality of manhood and of womanhood in 
 all your citizens. I read every day discussions
 
 238 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 of free trade and tariffs which make me sick. 
 People argue as if the great object of our race 
 were to make iron cheaper, or cotton cloth, or 
 kerseys. You would think Magna Charta and 
 the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, the American Revolution and the 
 Civil War, had all been ordered that the price 
 of calicoes might be low in comparison with the 
 price of gold. Now, in truth, these great eras 
 of human society, these martyr struggles of 
 brave men, have had objects and results wor- 
 thy of martyrdom. The State exists, and its 
 methods are improved, with the one design, 
 which is God's own design, of making manly 
 men and womanly women. A true State adopts 
 that system of revenue and protection which 
 best develops and best educates every man, 
 woman, and child born within her border. 
 
 So I hear the new Art Education of England 
 praised, which gives to every boy who will op- 
 portunity to use rule, crayon, pencil, brush, and 
 graver. I praise it. I hope we may see it here. 
 But it is not because I care so much for the pat- 
 terns of our calicoes or our paper-hangings. It
 
 WHAT CAREER? 239 
 
 is because, for the child of God born yesterday 
 in a hovel, I would have ready the best possible 
 training for his best development ; that his soul 
 and heart, his conscience and affections, the part 
 of him which is infinite and immortal, may use 
 the best tools child of God can use, and win the 
 highest victory child of God can win : for this 
 the State lays her designs. 
 
 Your whole political or social problem of re- 
 construction becomes thus a problem of moral 
 education. That the land just now redeemed 
 a land which, though redeemed, is still a wil- 
 derness may blossom with the rose. How 
 shall that be ? Never, but around the homes of 
 womanly women ; never, but beneath the spade- 
 blows of manly men. 
 
 In the Old World, the Church timidly obeys 
 the direction of the State in such affairs. It 
 educates only a few choir-boys in Rome, because 
 the Church needs no wider education. In other 
 countries it goes further, as the temporal ruler 
 may permit. But everywhere, outside of Switz- 
 erland, the reign of classes must be maintained 
 and taught, as the English Prayer-book says,
 
 240 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 " To do my duty in that state of life unto which 
 it shall please God to call me." It is our higher 
 blessing that with us the Church owns no earthly 
 master. In the great work of bringing all to the 
 stature of a perfect man, we know no let or hin- 
 drance. In that great work, where Christ leads 
 the way, of making men and women to be more 
 like God, we may follow freely. We call the 
 halt, the blind, the deaf, and the dumb. We 
 will teach them all, encourage them all, uplift 
 them all. We will inspire them all, so that no 
 man shall be content with the state of- life he is 
 in to-day, but each man shall pray and strive to 
 find himself nearer God to-morrow. We must 
 consecrate them all, that no man shall say that 
 any thing he has is his own, but rather that each 
 man shall hold as a trustee for the highest good 
 of all. The State will never be satisfied with 
 any thing she has attained. She will always 
 forget the thing that is behind ; and, always 
 looking forward for worship more free, for com- 
 munion more intimate, and for faith more firm, 
 she will lift men to higher duty and success 
 more abundant. Such men are each worth a
 
 WHAT CAREER? 241 
 
 thousand Persian legionaries, worth a thousand 
 frightened slaves. Those men live in the life 
 of God. They breathe the spirit of God. They 
 work with the help of God, beneath God's own 
 direction. It is in answer to the prayers of 
 women thus trained, and to the work of men 
 thus inspired, that deserts, but just now dis- 
 covered, become prosperous commonwealths, 
 that the prairie of yesterday is the harvest-field 
 of to-day. Ah ! more than this : it will be when 
 such men and such women control it, that the 
 land just -now wasted by slavery, and trodden 
 down, fulfils the promises which God Almighty 
 seemed to write on it in its soil and climate in 
 the very beginning. 
 
 And not till then ! 
 
 It is rather more than half a century since 
 this country, without knowing it, drifted into 
 the great experiment of universal suffrage. The 
 men of the American Revolution hardly dreamed 
 of so bold a theory. They gave the suffrage 
 only to those who had some permanent interest 
 in the land. It was afterwards, by steps but 
 little thought of, that the supreme power was 
 11
 
 242 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 given in equal shares to each man who lived 
 under our sky. So soon as the country knew 
 what it had done, the shrewd good sense of the 
 country compelled the better school-education 
 of the people, of all the people. On that 
 wave we have been swimming for fifty years. I 
 do not say nor think that we have yet done the 
 best we shall do in the line of mental education. 
 But I hope we are learning a better lesson yet. 
 I hope we are learning that what the people 
 must have, if the land is to live, is moral educa- 
 tion as the basis and ruling power of the whole. 
 We must resolve on manhood and on woman- 
 hood fit to use these athletic bodies and to 
 direct these cultivated minds. The country 
 must learn that this great word, " Education," 
 means a great deal more than the training of 
 men's wits. It means a great deal more than 
 the training of their muscles. It means the 
 training of the soul of man. Unless he is more 
 than an athlete, unless he is more than a reader, 
 writer, or reckoner, he is not fit to be trusted 
 with the use of such instruments as body or 
 mind. And the State will perish if it rely on 
 his suffrage, or that of men like him.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 243 
 
 For this moral training the Church, in its 
 thousand organizations, is of course responsible. 
 Yet the cool good sense of the people has been 
 right in its demand that the ordained officers of 
 the Church meaning its formal functionaries 
 
 shall not interfere in the day-schools, lest 
 they carry there their professional jealousies 
 and bigotries: so much more religious, at the 
 bottom, is the whole people, than any one clan 
 or section is apt to be. This exclusion, how- 
 ever, does not mean that the work of a common 
 school, though it were a school for reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic, shall not, first, last, and 
 always top, bottom, and middle be devoted 
 to making the boys manly and the girls womanly, 
 
 devoted all through to their moral training. 
 It is the wisdom from on high which the land 
 is after, and must have, if it is to be a nation. 
 This wisdom is first pure, then peaceable and 
 gentle ; it is full of mercy and good fruits ; it 
 is without partiality and without hypocrisy. 
 No wisdom is good for any thing which does 
 not include this wisdom. And the schools and 
 colleges are not worth even what the men are
 
 244 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 paid who sweep their floors, if they do not 
 inculcate this wisdom through and through. 
 The old statement about Harvard College if 
 it be still true, as I hope it is, in the profoundest 
 sense of the words is founded on a complete 
 appreciation of what a college is for. "It is 
 not so much," men used to say half a century 
 ago, " what things the college teaches, or what 
 it does not teach. It is that it takes in every 
 year fifty cubs, and sends out every year fifty 
 gentlemen." If the gentleman be a gentleman 
 according to St. James's standard, or St. Paul's, 
 one could have no higher description of the 
 work of a college. 
 
 But I should have very little hope for the 
 real moral education of the land, if I supposed 
 it must be left on the chances of the schools of 
 the land. When, with their eyes open, our 
 fathers took the government of America out of 
 the hands of the House of Brunswick, and took 
 it on themselves, they really pledged themselves 
 to God Almighty that the people of this land 
 should, in every public ordinance and organiza- 
 tion, be trained in their eternal life, trained
 
 WHAT CAREER? 245 
 
 to be kings and priests, as the Bible squarely 
 puts it. In point of fact, a high-toned town 
 meeting or ward meeting, under the true gov- 
 ernment of a republic, is a school for the higher 
 life, in which every day-laborer, sweating from 
 the forge or dirty from the spade, may be lifted 
 to higher life and conscientious duty. The 
 theatre, when you can have stockholders or 
 other owners who had rather die than that the 
 State should suffer harm, may be made, often is 
 made, a nurse for morals and the eternal life, 
 whose successes any single church may envy. 
 A high-toned journal, which would rather sink 
 with its colors flying than wound a boy's purity, 
 or puzzle an innocent girl by a coarse word, is 
 one of the voices which, if only by its steady 
 iteration, finds a way which no oracle could 
 command. Then there are such lessons as 
 those of Starr King, Orville Dewey, Wendell 
 Phillips, and Waldo Emerson, in the lecture- 
 room. A thousand people do not go to their 
 homes after they have been hushed and en- 
 tranced for an hour under the spell of one of 
 these magicians, without seeing something of
 
 246 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the higher life ; yes, and entering where these 
 men point the way. Such are some of the 
 methods of the moral training of this people 
 which their own good sense, working under the 
 inspiration of a present God, have appointed 
 and created. Thank God, then, the beginning 
 need not be made ! But if this nation is to 
 endure, if this country is to be a country worth 
 living for and worth dying for, it needs vastly 
 more than a beginning. This country needs to 
 learn through and through, from the Presi- 
 dent and Governor at one end, round to the 
 meanest pauper, whose taxes are paid for him by 
 a liquor dealer, at the other end, that behind 
 and beneath its education in fine art, music, or 
 drawing, geography, geology, history, reading, 
 writing, and arithmetic, is its training in man- 
 hood and womanhood, its moral education. As 
 Mr. Speaker Long said so well the other day, a 
 prison must be a place where the man who stole 
 must be taught not to steal ; the man who drank 
 must be taught not to drink. A Board of 
 Overseers of the Poor must be a board which 
 shall make unmanly men manly, and make
 
 WHAT CAREER? 247 
 
 unwomanly women womanly. Excises are to 
 be collected and tariffs levied on the principles 
 of social life which shall best train men and 
 women. Amusements are to be licensed or re- 
 pressed, liquor is to be bought and sold, public 
 lands are to be given away, emigration to be 
 encouraged or repressed, on systems which shall 
 make men and women purer and nobler. Gov- 
 ernment is to learn that this is What government 
 in the end is for. It is not to make people rich. 
 It is not to make them comfortable merely. It 
 is to make men who are worthy of the name of 
 man, and women who are worthy of the name 
 of woman. 
 
 And we have all seen small communities, 
 where we were close enough to the work of 
 training to know that this was done, and to 
 know how it was done. It has been well said 
 of our small country towns, that they train the 
 men and the women who are to lead the Bostons 
 and the Chicagos. Where a whole community, 
 led by its best members, rises in protest against 
 every nuisance or cause of injury ; where every 
 widow and orphan become the wards, so to
 
 248 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 speak, of the tenderness of the whole ; where 
 society, almost of necessity, envelops and in- 
 volves poor and rich, high and low, in one small 
 and simple coterie or organism, then good has 
 its own chance to overcome evil, and light its 
 , own chance to dispel darkness. What a well- 
 led village does, really so simply, is model or 
 suggestion for what a great city might try for, 
 and what, with its thousand advantages, it 
 might attain, in some points, better than the 
 little village. It does not become us who live 
 in cities to fall in with the old complaint that 
 they are always dangers to the common weal. 
 In the outset of modern history, cities were the 
 birthplace of freedom. 
 
 We never come to- any crisis in history a 
 war, a conflagration, or a great election with- 
 out wishing that we had done more in this work 
 of training men ; without grieving for the 
 chances we have lost, and rejoicing for the 
 chances we have used. I heard a wise man from 
 the West say last week that the tie which held 
 the West to the East when the war came was, 
 first of all, the result of the care with which
 
 WHAT CAREER? 249 
 
 the East had built Western schools, churches, 
 and colleges. I know that a year ago no man 
 was sorry that he had helped honest men estab- 
 lish their homes in Florida. Your crises in 
 Washington of silver, of greenbacks, of elec- 
 toral colleges, of reconstruction, or of secession. 
 all set you back to wishing, not that the 
 nation were stronger in wealth, not that it were 
 more highly educated in letters or in arts, but 
 that it had more good men and women, that 
 it had higher moral training. 
 
 And the promise of the Saviour to his own 
 was simply that they should triumph, because, 
 as he said, they rested on the rock. " Your 
 Father shall give you the kingdom." You are 
 not to fear unless you lack in moral force. For 
 all things are added to the moral power which 
 that little flock supplies. At what moment it 
 allies itself to the arm of flesh, it fails ; as in 
 Italy the Church has failed because it chose to 
 rule by soldiers and by statesmen. At what 
 moment it allies itself to the arts of the intellect, 
 it fails ; as all Protestantism has always failed 
 when it relied on its logical systems or its syllo-
 
 250 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 gisms. But where and when it relies on truth, 
 justice, righteousness, love, then and there it 
 succeeds. Other things round it crumble, burn 
 to ashes, or blow away in dust ; but the pure 
 gold stands. The land which trains its people 
 .in such eternal life endures. It is to such 
 a land that God gives the kingdom.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 251 
 
 X. 
 
 EXERCISE. 
 
 'THWO friends are in a boat in the Mozam- 
 bique Channel. A sudden flaw of wind 
 upsets the boat. Before they can right her, she 
 fills with water, and sinks ; and the two men 
 are swimming for their lives. " Ah, well ! " 
 says one of them to the other, *' it is a long pull 
 to the shore ; but the water is warm, and we 
 are strong. We will hold by each other, and all 
 will go well." " No," says his friend. " I have 
 lost my breath already : each wave that strikes 
 us knocks it from my body. If you reach the 
 shore, and God grant you may ! tell my 
 wife I remembered her as I died. Good-by ! 
 God bless you ! " and he is gone. There is 
 nothing his companion can do for him. For 
 himself, all he can do is to swim, and then float, 
 and rest himself, and breathe ; to swim again, 
 and then float, and rest again, hour after
 
 252 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 hour, to swim and float, swim and float, with 
 that steady, calm determination that he will go 
 home ; that no blinding spray shall stifle him, 
 and no despair weaken him, hour after hour, 
 till at last the palm-trees show distinct upon the 
 shore, and then the tall reeds, and then the 
 figures of animals. Will one never feel bot- 
 tom ? Yes, at last his foot touches the coral, 
 and with that touch he is safe. 
 
 That story that man told me. 
 
 Now, what is the difference between those 
 two men ? Why does one give up the contest 
 at once, and resign himself to what people call 
 his fate, while the other fights the circumstances 
 for hours, and wins the battle ? On shipboard 
 one was as strong as the other ; he was as brave ; 
 he was as prudent as the other. " What if he 
 were?" you say. Strength and bravery and 
 prudence were all needed in the crisis ; but 
 something else was needed also. The man had 
 never trained himself to swim. He knew how 
 to swim, if knowing a method were of much 
 use, where one has not trained himself to the 
 habit. But that training he had never given.
 
 WHAT CAREER? 253 
 
 Take that as a precise illustration, where no- 
 Ibody questions the answer, of the difference 
 wrought in two men merely by exercise, or the 
 steadiness of training. In matters like this, of 
 pure bodily exercise, everybody sees and owns 
 its work and its result. 
 
 We are beginning in our time to acknowledge 
 the same work and the same results in other 
 victories and in their companion failures. A 
 country town sends two men to the legislature, 
 one because he understands all about the 
 flowing of the meadows on their river, which is 
 the great interest of that year ; and another 
 well, because he has made a good speech at the 
 town-meeting. But every one understands that 
 the first is worth five times as much as the 
 second, and that his opinion is of fivefold value. 
 Yes, so it is, in a certain sense. But, when the 
 great day comes, when that meadow business is 
 to be explained to the House, our solid friend, 
 laden with facts and figures, tries to explain it ; 
 and he begins at the wrong end. He takes for 
 granted just what the House does not know, 
 and he tells them just what they do know. He
 
 254 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 empties the hall; and he sits down, with his 
 speech only half spoken, ready to weep for 
 mortification. It is then that his fresh, good- 
 natured, ready colleague whispers him out into 
 a committee-room, takes the manuscript of the 
 unspoken speech, and reads it ; fixes in his mind 
 the four essential things, and makes sure that 
 he is not confused about them ; goes back into 
 the House ; waits till the right moment ; and 
 then, just before the debate is closed, speaks for 
 ten minutes only. And then, all this which 
 was so dull becomes interesting to us all, and 
 that which was so obscure becomes perfectly 
 clear ; and the whole business of the meadows 
 is set right for a century. What is the differ- 
 ence between those two men? You have to 
 confess there, that training, thorough exercise, 
 applies not only to swimming and fencing, and 
 playing the piano, and other matters of muscle 
 and nerve, it applies also, it seems, to memory 
 and reasoning and imagination. It gives this 
 young fellow confidence and presence of mind 
 in face of an unfriendly audience, just as it 
 gave the other confidence and perseverance in
 
 WHAT CAREEK? 255 
 
 face of blinding spray. Whatever memory is, 
 whether it be, as I suppose it is, simply a me- 
 chanical adjustment of fibres of the brain, or 
 whether it be some inexplicable process of the 
 spirit, whatever the faculty of reasoning is, 
 and whatever the faculty of the imagination is, 
 you find on any field-day, when the several 
 recruits of God's army are reviewed, that those 
 who have been exercised or drilled in the use of 
 their faculties are, in that very training, the su- 
 periors of those who have let such drilling or exer- 
 cise go by. And so of other mental powers. 
 
 It is when we leave the domains of reasoning, 
 of memory, or imagination, and come into lines 
 of life even more difficult, if they be more 
 familiar, that people begin to talk wildly, and 
 fail to understand what one of the masters 
 meant when he spoke of those " who have their 
 faculties trained to the knowledge of good 
 and "evil." Granted that swimming must be 
 learned ; granted that the arts of the orator 
 must be learned. Yes ; but people say, care- 
 lessly, that every man knows the difference be- 
 tween right and wrong ; and therefore it is said
 
 256 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 there is no need of training there. "We are 
 outside the domain of the body," it is said. 
 " We are in the impalpable and viewless domain 
 of the spirit." Impalpable and viewless, 
 granted ; but not without law because viewless 
 and impalpable. The great law of life comes 
 in there as everywhere, that " practice makes 
 perfect," and that nothing else makes perfect. 
 It is not enough to know the right. That poor 
 fellow who sank in the Mozambique Channel 
 knew how to swim ; but he had not that steady 
 familiarity with the water, and that godlike 
 confidence in his own power, which comes from 
 practice in swimming, and from that alone. 
 That worthy man who broke down before his 
 audience knew what he wanted to say ; nay, it 
 was all written on the paper in his hand ; nay, 
 between his tears of mortification, he could tell 
 it all to the other when they retired. What he 
 wanted was not the knowledge of the thing, but 
 practice, habit, and experience in saying it. 
 And these simple illustrations are enough to 
 show how fatuous and short-sighted is the cool, 
 off-hand statement which says, that, because we
 
 WHAT CAREER? 257 
 
 all know the right, we shall, of course, equal 
 each other in our capacity for doing it in an 
 emergency. 
 
 Dr. Watts struck on the true statement when 
 he described those 
 
 " Who know what's right ; not only so, 
 But also p-ac-TiSE what they know." 
 
 One of our most distinguished teachers, the 
 late Francis Gardner, said, that in the case of 
 two thousand or more boys who had passed 
 under his care, no parent forgave him if he said, 
 "Your boy is not quick or bright; but he is 
 thoroughly pure and true and good." They 
 did not forgive him for saying so, because they 
 took it for granted that the goodness could be 
 attained in any odd hour or so ; but the bright- 
 ness or quickness seemed of much larger im- 
 portance. On the other hand, if the teacher 
 said, " Your boy learns every lesson, and recites 
 it well ; he is at the head of his class, and will 
 take any place he chooses in any school," nine 
 parents, he said, out of ten, were satisfied, though 
 he should have to add, " I wish I were as sure 
 that he were honest, pure, and unselfish. But in
 
 258 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 the truth the other boys do not like him ; and I 
 am afraid there is something wrong." To that 
 warning, he said, people reply, " Ah, well, I was 
 a little wild myself when I was a boy. That 
 will all come right in time." " Will come 
 right," as if that were the one line of life which 
 took care of itself, which needed no training ; 
 the truth being, that this is the only thing which 
 does not come right in time. It is the one thing 
 which requires eternity for its correction, if the 
 work of time have not been eagerly and care- 
 fully, and with prayer, wrought through. 
 
 When, then, we say, as we have to say so 
 often, that one of two men has been taken for a 
 higher preferment, has been promoted to a no- 
 bler career, and that the other has been left, or, 
 BO to speak, set aside, we are sure to find, if we 
 can only reach a high enough point of view to 
 look down on the map or ground-plan of the two 
 lives, that there has been a very sufficient " law 
 of selection," which has governed the taking or 
 the rejection. The man who learned to swim 
 has swum. The man who learned to speak has 
 spoken. And it is as true that the man who
 
 WHAT CAREER? 259 
 
 has trained his conscience assiduously and loy- 
 ally, as a man of honor does, is not tempted, no, 
 not a hair's breadth, by any thing which un- 
 trained men call temptation. This is simply as 
 a truly trained gentleman does not so much as 
 think of the possibility of saying what is not 
 true. 
 
 The truth is that exercise is just as essential 
 in the creation of character or its preservation 
 as it is in accomplishments, whether of mind or 
 of body. In simpler times, this was owned in 
 the forms of familiar language ; and in such 
 times daily " exercise " was the chief business 
 of the man. King Richard, Cceur de Lion, 
 did not expect to maintain his prowess without 
 steady exercise in the arts which went to it. 
 Because he rode well when he was a squire, he 
 did not give up his daily exercise in riding when 
 he was knight or when he was king. Because, 
 the day he was knighted, he could strike his 
 adversary's helmet in tilting, he did not suppose 
 he could keep his hand in practice unless the 
 steady exercise of the tilting-yard, regularly and 
 of system, added to the education of his boy-
 
 260 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 hood. What was at first a difficult accomplish- 
 ment became thus an easy feat, then a matter of 
 course, and, last, an unconscious habit or knack 
 of hand, arm, foot, and eye. But he would have 
 lost the habit had he lost the daily exercise. 
 
 This is just what they meant, therefore, in 
 such simpler times, when they say that a man 
 was a proficient in all manly exercise, or that he 
 kept up his daily exercises of piety and prayer, 
 or that he exercised himself in conversation, in 
 argument, in poetry, or in oratory. 
 
 In our time, for better, for worse, we have 
 undertaken to transfer the business of education 
 from youthful and mature life, and throw it all 
 upon children. A girl of seventeen tells you 
 that she has " finished her education ; " and a 
 boy of fourteen tells you that he hopes to finish 
 his next week, so that he may " go into a store." 
 
 If it be understood on all hands that this 
 change is only a change in the use of that word 
 "education," why, there is no reason to com- 
 plain. In Milton's time, in Raleigh's time, edu- 
 cation meant the steady unfolding of all that
 
 WHAT CAREER? 261 
 
 there is manly in man and womanly in woman. 
 It was, therefore, steady advance from knowl- 
 edge to higher knowledge, from capacity to 
 higher capacity, from life to higher life. It 
 meant the leading along the baby till he became 
 
 % 
 
 the quick, honest, and fearless boy ; the leading 
 along the boy till he became the true, simple, 
 and modest youth ; the leading along the youth 
 till he became the hardy, brave, and unselfish 
 man ; the leading along the man till he could 
 put the stamp of age on what manhood had 
 mined ; and then it meant the leading along of 
 this ripened man from this life to another life 
 which is higher. That was what the word " ed- 
 ucation " used to mean. No harm, if we choose 
 now to apply it only to certain exercises of 
 childhood, of text-book, and of school-room, if 
 we are well aware that we have shifted its old 
 sense. Then we shall provide some other word 
 for a great necessity. The necessity is for boy, 
 girl, man, or woman to .keep all of good that 
 they have gained, and to gain more. This ne- 
 cessity compels their daily exercise. 
 
 One would be glad to illustrate this in the
 
 262 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 discussion of details, which would require more 
 space than can be here given to them. This 
 must be said, on the central principle involved, 
 we are all, in a large degree, slaves to what 
 is called the "division of labor." The shoe- 
 maker, it is said, therefore, need know nothing 
 of farming, nor the farmer of the making of 
 shoes. To this division nobody will object, so 
 long as it is held within its legitimate limits. 
 But it certainly passes those limits, if it prevent 
 any man daily from getting fair exercise in each 
 of the three great subdivisions of human life. 
 Each man must have, every day, exercise in 
 bodily strength, in intellectual accomplishments, 
 and in moral and spiritual life. He has no right 
 to commit suicide of one set of faculties more 
 than another. He has no more right so to live 
 that his intellectual faculties shall die out of 
 him, or his spiritual faculties shall die out of 
 him, than he has to take the slow poison, or to 
 strike the coward blow by which his bodily 
 faculties shall die. 
 
 The life of each man must have, every day, 
 its fair share of physical, of mental, and of
 
 WHAT CAREER? 263 
 
 moral exercise. Retaining these great classes, 
 you may subdivide them as you please. You 
 may take for your bodily culture your exercise 
 in your garden and orchard, and in travelling to 
 and fro, and leave to other men the building of 
 your house and barns, and the cultivation of 
 your food ; but full bodily exercise you must 
 have. Or I may take such branch of mental 
 culture as I please, and leave to other men the 
 rest. They may study the stars, may discuss 
 politics, may pore over past history, while I con- 
 tent myself with some simpler walk ; but some 
 walk or other of mental culture I must have. 
 So I may leave to other men their peculiar pref- 
 erences in spiritual life. They may sit wrapt 
 in meditation on the unseen glories of an unseen 
 God, while I am playing jack-straws on the floor 
 with my children ; but some spiritual exercise, 
 exercise of the affections, I must have. There 
 is no division of labor which will enable me to 
 save my soul by proxy. 
 
 The definition of exercise, then, is a threefold 
 matter ; and we are not to consider the subject
 
 264 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 as if it related simply to the gymnasium, or the 
 training of the body. 
 
 I can only attempt this general classification, 
 simply calling attention once more to the close- 
 ness of the relations which bodily exercise, men- 
 tal exercise, and the exercise of the affections 
 bear to each other. It is, of course, impossible 
 to lay down rules for all readers. 
 
 The man whose daily vocation is active em- 
 ployment in the open air has his bodily exercise 
 largely provided for. He needs to consider and 
 plan rather for his exercises of mind and soul. 
 
 On the other hand, the man or woman whose 
 constant duty is intellectual, who is engaged on 
 books or figures, needs to plan out physical ex- 
 ercise with special effort ; and also must see all 
 the time that, in the daily duty, there is room 
 and chance for the exercises of faith, of hope, 
 and of love. 
 
 " We do not pay much attention to arithmetic 
 in our schools," said some Japanese gentlemen, 
 not long ago. "We think arithmetic makes 
 men sordid." Perhaps it does ; perhaps it does 
 not. Whether it does or does not depends on
 
 WHAT CAREER? 265 
 
 the amount of " exercise " of the affections, 
 which is mingled with the intellectual training. 
 
 Of the physical exercises, it is more pleasant 
 to speak than it was twenty years ago. The 
 war has called attention to the scandalous neg- 
 lect of them which was prevalent before. This 
 nation called together a chosen army of seventy- 
 five thousand men when the war began. The 
 advance on Bull Run proved that those picked 
 men could only move six miles a day in their 
 first advance upon their enemy ; this after near 
 three months of discipline in camp. Compare 
 that against a well-authenticated story of the 
 movement of one of Wellington's divisions, 
 which, in twenty-four hours, marched sixty 
 miles in Spain ; or compare it with Gen. Ord's 
 advance in the last week of the war, when 
 Sheridan telegraphed that, if things were 
 pushed, the end had come. Grant replied, 
 " Push things ; " and then he pushed them. 
 
 Physical exercise is beginning to be expected 
 of young men and young women. The time 
 may come when it shall be respectable for men 
 and women past thirty. 
 12
 
 266 "WHAT CAREER? 
 
 For persons whose daily business is sedentary, 
 exercise of the body seems to come in more easily 
 in the line of their amusements. Spirited games, 
 in simple times and simple nations, filled out a 
 great necessity. The illustration of the game of 
 croquet, which keeps people in the open air, shows 
 what such amusements can do. An English- 
 man's shooting and riding after the hounds have 
 had a great deal to do with the fine physical 
 health of the upper classes among the English. 
 The constitution is inherited even by girls born 
 from such fathers ; and the taste for open-air 
 exercise continues in the next generation, even 
 with women who would consider it unwomanly 
 to shoot, or, perhaps, to ride after the hounds. 
 Cricket, as it is played by the cricket-clubs, is 
 reduced to too solemn a game to be of much use 
 as amusement or as exercise. Biit the cricket 
 of a village -green, where there is not much 
 science, and where there is a great deal of fun, 
 answers a much better purpose. Base-ball has 
 much more amiable qualities. With us, it is 
 just now being ruined by the American ex- 
 travagances, which make it what people call a
 
 WHAT CAREER? 267 
 
 u sporting game," a game of " professionals," as 
 the popular slang calls them. Still, we ought 
 not to permit the gamblers to drive us from an 
 amusement which is our right. The fair devel- 
 opment of this game is doing a good deal to res- 
 cue open-air amusements from their degradation. 
 
 Women have not paid as much attention to 
 base-ball as perhaps they will. A great master 
 in open-air games tells me that our women do 
 not know the resource and amusement, for coun- 
 try or for indoor life, of battle-door and shuttle- 
 cock. He tells me that there are, at least, eight 
 varieties of this game, some of them highly com- 
 plicated, which may be played by a party of 
 thirty people together. It has, of course, the 
 great advantage of giving thorough exercise to 
 chest, neck, and arms. 
 
 The same advantage is to be found in sweep- 
 ing: if the windows of the room be open, the 
 exercise of sweeping can hardly be rivalled. I 
 am not sure whether I am to speak of it as 
 amusement. It is certainly recreation. 
 
 Mr. Nathaniel Parker Willis, who, with a very 
 delicate constitution, led a literary life, and main-
 
 268 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 tained himself in active pursuits, gave his ver- 
 dict for horseback riding as the physical exercise 
 most profitable for literary men. It gives air, 
 chance for command, and exercise for lungs and 
 arms. No one who thoroughly enjoys riding 
 will dissent from him ; but there are those who 
 do not enjoy it. There is also one serious draw- 
 back on it which affects many of us, namely, that 
 it always requires the existence and presence of 
 a horse. Granting the horse, the horseman or 
 horsewoman needs also a companion ; for there 
 is danger that the solitary horseman will carry 
 his ledger with him in the front of his head and 
 repeat his calculations as he rides, or turn over 
 again that ugly letter which he received from a 
 disappointed correspondent, or plan out for the 
 tenth time the closing argument by which he is 
 to reply to the defendant's counsel after they 
 have closed. Granting the horse, granting good 
 companionship, granting a good seat, and a pleas- 
 ant day, a horseback ride certainly does unite all 
 the requisites for healthful exercise. 
 
 Military drill stands very high among the 
 various manly exercises. If the women secure
 
 WHAT CAREER? 269 
 
 the ballot, of course it will rank among womanly 
 exercises ; for it is very clear that no one should 
 give a vote which, when the time comes, she is 
 not prepared to defend. The special advantage 
 is that the tired brain rests almost wholly, while 
 the manual of arms, or the marching under orders, 
 goes on. Therecruit is wholly free from respon- 
 sibility. I recollect the short periods of my own 
 military service as periods of almost complete 
 rest, though I was in high bodily activity. Such 
 a comfort for an hour, or indeed for a series of 
 hours, to have another man take the weight of 
 direction ! In the ancient systems of Greece 
 and Rome, as in the training of Richard and 
 of Raleigh, these exercises found important 
 place. 
 
 The various schools of gymnastic exercises 
 may safely be left to explain their own proc- 
 esses, the heavy weights, the light weights, 
 and the German gymnasia. This is certain, that 
 all arrangements should be as social as possible ; 
 and that the arrangements which most resemble 
 those of a family, bringing together all ages and 
 both sexes, are, so far, the best of all. And let
 
 270 WHAT CAREER? 
 
 us avoid the exaggerations which the teachers 
 fall into. What we want is rightly to divide 
 effort, that spirit, soul, and body may be trained. 
 In the lives of most of us, great promptness and 
 celerity are the qualities most desirable. As I 
 once heard Mr. Starr King say : " I do not want 
 to lift eight hundred pounds ; I never did want 
 to. I do not want to be trained to draw three 
 tons on the high road. What I want is to be 
 able to go at 2.40." 
 
 Mr. Webster, who was a great worker, used 
 to say that he could do more in six hours than 
 he could in eight. He meant that, by rightly 
 throwing in two hours of exercise in the open 
 air, fishing in the bay at Marshfield, or fol- 
 lowing a trout-brook at Boscawen, he could 
 make the remaining six hours of more use than 
 all the eight together. That system was the 
 secret of the Greek and Roman physical train- 
 ing. Physical training was not a thing for boys 
 alone, but for men, and, in Sparta, for women 
 also. 
 
 In our climate, and in all climates milder than 
 ours, swimming, for the season when it is prac-
 
 WHAT CA11EER? 271 
 
 ticable, seems the exercise most efficient for men 
 and for women. I believe it is still against the 
 law for any person to go into the waters which 
 wash the city of Boston. But as the city has 
 provided bathing-places in which a hundred 
 thousand people freely bathed last year, I sup- 
 pose we may consider that ordinance virtually 
 repealed. And we who live in Boston must 
 look on the arrangement most gratefully, as the 
 beginning of a system for hearty and sensible 
 physical exercise of the people. 
 
 To speak of mental exercises in detail is to 
 go over the whole compass of study involved in 
 liberal culture. To discuss such "exercises," 
 retaining the use of the word as it would have 
 been familiar to Raleigh or to Milton, is the 
 work not of the end of an essay, but of a 
 volume. 
 
 Such a discussion I hope to enter upon 
 although only in an elementary way in the 
 next volume of this little series. 
 
 THE END.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 IN HIS NAME. 
 
 A Story of the Waldenses, Seven Hundred Years Ago. 
 
 BY E. E. HALE. 
 Square iSmo. Price $1.00. 
 
 From the Liberal Christian. 
 
 " One of the most helpful, pure, and thoroughly Christian books of which we 
 have any knowledge. It has the mark of no sect, creed, or denomination upon it, 
 but the spirit pervading it is the Christly spirit. . . . We might well speak of the 
 author's great success in giving an air of quaintness to the style, befitting a story 
 of life 'seven hundred years ago.' We do not know exactly what lends to it this 
 flavor of antiquity, but the atmosphere is full of some subtle quality which removes 
 the tale from our nineteenth century commonplace. In this respect, and in its 
 dramatic vividness of action, ' In His Name,' perhaps, takes as high a rank as any 
 of Mr. Ilale's literary work." 
 
 From the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 " A touching, almost a thrilling, tale is this by E. E. Hale, in its pathetic sim- 
 plicity and its deep meaning. It is a story of the Waldenses in the days when 
 Richard Cceur de Lion and his splendid following wended their way to the Cru- 
 sades, and when the name of Christ inspired men who dwelt in palaces, and men 
 who sheltered themselves in the forests of France. 'In his Name' was the 
 * Open Sesame ' to the hearts of such as these, and it is to illustrate the power of 
 this almost magical phrase that the story is written. That it is charmingly writ- 
 ten, follows from its authorship. There is in fact no little book that we have seen 
 of late that offers so much of so pleasant reading in such little space, and con- 
 veys so apt and pertinent a lesson of pure religion." 
 
 ' The very loveliest Christmas Story ever written. It has the rin>; of an old 
 Troubadour in it." 
 
 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, 
 by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 OUR NEW CRUSADE. 
 
 A TEMPERANCE STORY. 
 
 BY E. E. HALK. 
 Square iSmo. Price $1.00. 
 
 From the Southern Churchman, 
 
 " It has all the characteristics of its brilliant author, unflagging entertain- 
 ment, helpfulness, suggestive, practical hints, and a contagious vitality that sets 
 one's blood tingling. Whoever has read 'Ten Times One is Ten' will know just 
 what we mean. The fact that thirty thousand copies of this last-named volume 
 have been sold gives one some idea of its hold on the popular mind. We predict 
 that the new volume, as being a more charming story, will have quite as great a 
 parish of readers. The gist of the book is to show how possible it is for the best 
 spirits of a community, through wise organization, to form themselves into a level 
 by means of which the whole tone of the social status may be elevated, and the 
 good and highest happiness of the helpless many be attained through the self- 
 denying exertions of the powerful few." 
 
 From the Louisville Daily Ledger. 
 
 " Mr. Hale thinks, rightly, that this movement of the women of the land to 
 put down an undeniable evil was not a wisely directed one. He is willing enough 
 to have a Crusade, but let it be more in the line of women's work, and let it ap- 
 peal to all the best instincts of our nature, not the resistant ones. Men are not 
 going to be brow-beaten into being good, especially by the sex that has hitherto 
 been styled the ' gentler ;' and we don't much wonder at it. To come and for- 
 cibly take possession of a man's place of business, and insist upon praying and 
 singing him out of it, may have, at bottom, a very commendable motive to insti- 
 gate it ; but there is a right and a wrong way of doing every thing. This is the 
 wrong way. Now, in his ' New Crusade,' Mr. Hale gives us the clew to a much 
 better, more reasonable, and altogether more popular way of exalting the social 
 status in any given community." 
 
 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid^ by 
 the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 MADAME RECAMIER AND HER FRIENDS. 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF MADAME LENORMANT, BY THE 
 TRANSLATOR OF " MADAME R^CAMIER'S MEMOIRS." 
 
 One volume, uniform with " Madame Re'camier's Memoirs." Price $1.50. 
 
 From the A ttantic Monthly. 
 
 This volume comes to supplement the " Memoirs and Correspondence of 
 Madame Re'camier," which, although a lively and exceedingly entertaining sketch 
 of the society of the Abbaye-aux-Bois, occasioned very general dissatisfaction 
 among both its French and American readers; for, being made up of letters which 
 were written to her, and not of those which she had herself penned, it did not 
 leave upon the mind any clear, definite impression of the real character of Ma- 
 dame Re'camier, into whose secret history all the world was curious to inquire. 
 The failure of that copious work in its main purpose is the ostensible cause of the 
 existence of this after volume, in which are introduced over forty of the private 
 notes and letters of Madame Re'camier ; these are as graceful, genial, and chatty 
 as any of the gossip, legitimized under the name of memoirs, recollections, cor- 
 respondence, or what not, which we have met with, but they hardly fill the gap 
 which was left in the previous volumes. 
 
 From the Unitarian Review. 
 
 We think this book in many respects much more valuable than the last. How- 
 ever charming the other was, we cannot resist the feeling that it must have been 
 injurious to woman of society with us, in giving them a longing after unreal 
 pleasures . . . We believe in the friendships of men and women. But when the 
 blandishments and artificialities of fashionable society come in, there is danger 
 that the dignity of the sentiment will be lost in the passion of love. This second 
 volume shows more of this true kind of friendship. Madame Re'camier was in 
 misfortune ; she had lost her health ; she showed patience, courage, disinterested- 
 ness for her friends. We are taken captive like all the rest of the world. Her 
 devotion to her niece was touching ; her power of loving beautiful. Her friends 
 are noble men like Camille Jordan and Mathieu de Montmorency, the one warn- 
 ing her against coquetry, the other recommending to her the joys of religion. 
 Chateaubriand does not inspire our respect, and she betrays again her early love 
 of conquest in keeping the young and passionate Ampere so long at her side. 
 We must not, however, compare Madame Re'camier with our highest American 
 or English ideal of what a woman in distinguished social position should be, but 
 with the voluptuous and ambitious women of her day and race, and we shall see 
 her standing forth a bright and charming and beloved vision, far transcending 
 them ail. 
 
 Sold everywhere by all Booksellers. Mulled, postpaid, by 
 the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers* Publications. 
 
 A NILE JOURNAL. BY THOMAS- G. APPLETON. 
 Square I2mo. Cloth. Price $2.25. 
 
 " The account furnished by Mr. Appleton of his winter on the Nile will proba- 
 bly be pleasant reading to those who have already passed through the same 
 scenes. It gives a vivid photograph of that wonderful East, for whose shores we 
 all have a reverent longing. The journal, kept by a man of varied experiences, 
 and large and many-sided intelligence and knowledge, cultivated by travel and 
 study, is a far better way of conveying even to the casual reader a real picture of 
 what is most striking and characteristic than a mere dry recital of facts and figures, 
 such as can be pieced out of guide-book and professed histories. It is by his skill 
 in selection that Mr. Appleton has made a book that is especially rich in local 
 color. Instead of giving a learned catalogue of the most striking remains, he 
 furnishes a well-digested reference table of the books best worth reading. There 
 is little of statistics, less of the frequent discussion of the questions of Eastern 
 politics, nothing at all of Egyptian industry, but there is a glowing word painting 
 of the scenes daily opened to a watchful traveller ; and, when prose fails, poetry 
 serves to fill in the needful touches that make the picture perfect." Philadelphia 
 Ledger. 
 
 " We cannot follow this genial author any further. While we don't find any 
 thing very heroic or daring in going down a well-known river in a canoe, we find 
 a great deal that is of surpassing interest. He sees with the eye of an artist, and 
 therefore always seizes upon the most salient points. He never tires us; and, 
 when we have read on to the end of his book, we wish there were more, or that 
 another book in the same vein would soon make its appearance." San Fratf 
 cisco Evening Bulletin. 
 
 A SHEAF OF PAPERS. BY. T. G. A. Square 
 
 I2mo. Cloth. Gilt top. Price $1.50. 
 
 ik 
 
 "These initials will be readily recognized as those of one of our best-known 
 Boston wits, many of whose quaint sayings have already become proverbial. . . . 
 In them [the papers], every reader will recognize a strong basis of common sense, 
 a lively fancy, and a keen wit. The book is one to take up in any idle hour, and to 
 put in one's pocket for a travelling companion ; and one cannot help wishing 
 that the writer had also included in it some of the poems which were privately 
 printed several months ago." Boston Transcript. 
 
 '' A very pleasant and thoughtful book, which we who are not of Boston do not 
 like any less, but rather more, because it has an eminently Bostonish flavor ; and 
 it affects us somewhat as ' a fine last century face.' These papers could not have 
 been written from any other motive than the joy of writing them. They have an 
 air of quiet about them that is wonderfully refreshing. Their talk of 'Art and 
 Artists is particularly pleasant." Christian Register. 
 
 " He is one of the few Americans who have written too little, Mr. Emerson 
 being the most conspicuous of that smalj band. A man of native wit, and now <rf 
 world wide experience, too little of which, perhaps, is practical, he cannot write 
 otherwise than pleasantly, and often with a profound wisdom which takes on a 
 superficial air only from the gayety of his style. He can write as lightly as a 
 Frenchman, as seriously as a German, and yet with all his culture and his foreign 
 anecdotes is simply an American, even a Bostonian, malgri lui." Spring- 
 field Republican. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by the 
 Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 REASON, FAITH. AND DUTY. 
 
 Sermons preached chiefly in the College Chapel. By 
 JAMES WALKER, D.D., LL.D., late President of Harvard 
 College. With a new likeness of Dr. Walker engraved ex- 
 pressly for this book. Square I2mo. Cloth. Price $2.00. 
 
 From ihe ffevt York Tribune. 
 
 The late President Walker is held in affectionate and reverent memory by a 
 wide circle of pupils, and a numerous company of friends who were daily wit- 
 nesses of the blended charm and energy of his character. He was a man who 
 made a deep impression on all with whom he came in contact. The austerity of 
 his intellect was combined with a gracious sweetness of demeanor rarely found 
 together in the same person. The leading feature of his nature was a sense of 
 justice which in his mind was identical with a passion for truth. This quality 
 seasoned and animated the whole course of his life. 
 
 From the Unitarian Review. 
 
 Dr. Walker was pre-eminently a preacher for preachers to study. He was strong 
 exactly where the usual pulpit style of address is weak ; and to this is to be as- 
 cribed the influence of his sermons over the very classes whom preaching finds 
 most difficulty in affecting. Young men full of impatience at the conventional, 
 and quick to scorn shams and empty words, hung on his speech ; clear-headed 
 and hard-headed business men recognized in him a master of the secrets of human 
 nature ; souls of the most earnest piety found in his few simple words renewal 
 and inspiration. 
 
 From the Boston. Transcript. 
 
 There can scarce be a religious person of any style or school, a philosopher 
 even, or a moralist, or a simple lover of earnest, lucid, and vigorous intellectual 
 power, given to didactic discoursing in preaching or in ethics, but will detect and 
 own and feel the master's sway in this volume. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the 
 Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 WAYS OF THE SPIRIT, 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 The Way of History ; The Way of Religion ; The Way 
 of Historic Christianity ; The Way of Historic Atonement ; 
 The Natural History of Theism ; Critique of Proofs of the 
 Being of God; On the Origin of Things ; The God of Re- 
 ligion, or the Human God ; Dualism and Optimism ; Pan- 
 theism ; The Two Religions ; The Mythical Element in the 
 New Testament ; Incarnation and Transubstantiation ; The 
 Human Soul. 
 
 SQUARE I2MO. CLOTH. PRICE $2.00. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by the Pub- 
 lishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Ptiblications. 
 
 LAST SERIES 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF FAITH 
 AND DUTY. 
 
 Discourses by JOHN JAMES TAYLER, Late Principal of 
 Manchester New College, London. Square I2tno. Cloth. 
 Price $2.00. 
 
 From the Christian Register. 
 
 Twenty-six sermons, mostly preached within the last ten 
 years of the author's life, are here selected and arranged by his 
 daughter, who has been assisted by Rev. James Martineau. 
 This is not a volume for sensation hunters, but for those who 
 hunger and thirst after righteousness. The high and serious 
 mind of John James Tayler could treat no pulpit theme 
 except with reference to the deep and unutterable wants of 
 the human soul. He welcomes " every new discovery of 
 science, and every fresh result of scholarship, as phenomena 
 which themselves become religious through the light cast on 
 them by the soul." He thus puts all nature in harmony with 
 " the spirit of Christ, whose image is ever before him as an 
 embodiment of true religiousness." The volume fitly closes 
 with a sermon on "The Immortal Future Mercifully Veiled 
 to Us by God," the last pulpit discourse of Mr. Tayler, 
 who died in 1869, in his seventy-second year. 
 
 From the Boston Globe. 
 
 Tender in their sympathy, gentle in their thoughtfulness, 
 yet strong and brave in their assertion of the vital truths of 
 religion and morality, these discourses are worthy of a place 
 in the library of every Christian. Their breadth and liberal- 
 ity of tone show the high plane of endeavor which the author 
 has sought and attained. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Af ailed, postpaid, by the Pub- 
 lishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
 
 Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 QUIET HOURS. 
 
 A COLLECTION OF POEMS, MEDITATIVE 
 AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 "Under this modest title we have here about a hundred and fifty of the best 
 short poems in the language. The compiler, whoever she is, has a rare taste, and 
 also, what is equally valuable, good judgment. The poems are on all subjects. 
 This dainty little volume is just the book for a Christmas or New Year's girt." 
 Peterson s Magazine. 
 
 " Such a book as this seems to us much better adapted than any formal book 
 of devotion to beget a calm and prayerful spirit in the reader. It will no doubt 
 become a dear companion to many earnestly religious people " Christian 
 Register. 
 
 " ' Quiet Hours ' is the appropriate title which some unnamed compiler has given 
 to a collection of musings of many writers a nosegay made up of some slighter, 
 choicer, and more delicate flowers from the garden of the poets. Emerson, 
 Chadwick, Higginson, Arnold, Whittier, and Clough, are represented, as well as 
 Coleridge, Browning, Wordsworth, and Tennyson ; and the selections widely 
 vary in character, ranging from such as relate to the moods and aspects of na- 
 ture, to voices of the soul when most deeply stirred." Cottgregatumalist. 
 
 i8mo, cloth, red edges. Price $1.00. Sold by all Book- 
 sellers. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, 
 
 Boston.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.