Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son | Page 3

we're really sending you to Harvard for
is to get a little of the education that's so good and plenty there. When
it's passed around you don't want to be bashful, but reach right out and
take a big helping every time, for I want you to get your share. You'll
find that education's about the only thing lying around loose in this
world, and that it's about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as
he's willing to haul away. Everything else is screwed down tight and
the screw-driver lost.
I didn't have your advantages when I was a boy, and you can't have
mine. Some men learn the value of money by not having any and
starting out to pry a few dollars loose from the odd millions that are
lying around; and some learn it by having fifty thousand or so left to
them and starting out to spend it as if it were fifty thousand a year.
Some men learn the value of truth by having to do business with liars;
and some by going to Sunday School. Some men learn the cussedness
of whiskey by having a drunken father; and some by having a good
mother. Some men get an education from other men and newspapers

and public libraries; and some get it from professors and parchments--it
doesn't make any special difference how you get a half-nelson on the
right thing, just so you get it and freeze on to it. The package doesn't
count after the eye's been attracted by it, and in the end it finds its way
to the ash heap. It's the quality of the goods inside which tells, when
they once get into the kitchen and up to the cook.
You can cure a ham in dry salt and you can cure it in sweet pickle, and
when you're through you've got pretty good eating either way, provided
you started in with a sound ham. If you didn't, it doesn't make any
special difference how you cured it--the ham-tryer's going to strike the
sour spot around the bone. And it doesn't make any difference how
much sugar and fancy pickle you soak into a fellow, he's no good
unless he's sound and sweet at the core.
The first thing that any education ought to give a man is character, and
the second thing is education. That is where I'm a little skittish about
this college business. I'm not starting in to preach to you, because I
know a young fellow with the right sort of stuff in him preaches to
himself harder than any one else can, and that he's mighty often
switched off the right path by having it pointed out to him in the wrong
way.
I remember when I was a boy, and I wasn't a very bad boy, as boys go,
old Doc Hoover got a notion in his head that I ought to join the church,
and he scared me out of it for five years by asking me right out loud in
Sunday School if I didn't want to be saved, and then laying for me after
the service and praying with me. Of course I wanted to be saved, but I
didn't want to be saved quite so publicly.
When a boy's had a good mother he's got a good conscience, and when
he's got a good conscience he don't need to have right and wrong
labeled for him. Now that your Ma's left and the apron strings are cut,
you're naturally running up against a new sensation every minute, but if
you'll simply use a little conscience as a tryer, and probe into a thing
which looks sweet and sound on the skin, to see if you can't fetch up a
sour smell from around the bone, you'll be all right.

[Illustration: "Old Doc Hoover asked me right out in Sunday School if I
didn't want to be saved."]
I'm anxious that you should be a good scholar, but I'm more anxious
that you should be a good clean man. And if you graduate with a sound
conscience, I shan't care so much if there are a few holes in your Latin.
There are two parts of a college education--the part that you get in the
schoolroom from the professors, and the part that you get outside of it
from the boys. That's the really important part. For the first can only
make you a scholar, while the second can make you a man.
Education's a good deal like eating--a fellow can't always tell which
particular thing did him good, but he can usually tell which one did him
harm. After a square meal of roast beef and vegetables, and mince pie
and watermelon, you can't say just which ingredient is