Jesse Lynch Williams

“ What success is worth the price of your bodily well-being? After all, college life is only a preparation for real living and real work; but, don't you see, if you work so hard in college as to undermine your constitution, what kind of work will you be good for afterward? Think of the future! You will be graduated from college to a rest cure and from rest cures to a sanitarium, and from there to a home for incurables! Think of that, Dick! (no wonder you fidget in your chair) all because you hadn't sense enough to let good enough alone ”

“ Newspaper men see only a stunning first-page beat in what was meant for a confidence. College professors who are supposed to furnish you with an equipment to live with, sometimes go lusting after mere knowledge, and forget to acquire wisdom, for their blind spot makes them overlook the fact that the mere possession of knowledge is no more commendable than any other possession, being of no more real value to the world than a library full of books which no one reads. ”

“ So are the classic poets who sigh sentimentally over the pathetic illusions of happy youth. So are the philosophers and preachers and professors and parents who tell you how little you know about the unknown gulf of reality before you. It has even come to this: you have learned the trick of it yourselves, for I have observed certain of your own poets and orators during your class-day exercises satirically making game of their ignorance of the world they are about to enter, or sentimentalizing fondly over the ending of what they have learned to call "the happiest period of a man's life!" ”

“ As sure as you and I are looking at each other's eyes you are going to do things you'll wish you had not done before the final academic procession of your college course. They may be little, harmless things, they may be rather big and black. If you have a sincere desire to make a fool of yourself you now have copious opportunities; and nothing I can say could keep you from it. So all I have to say to you is this: Make a fool of yourself if you must, but for Heaven's sake do it honestly. Don't pretend to be what you are not. Don't be a paper sport. You won't fool anybody, not even yourself. ”

“ AN UNOFFICIAL BACCALAUREATE You may imagine that I have dropped in here this morning to remind you, with an indulgent smile, of how little you really know about this wide, wide world you are entering with such "high hopes and noble aspirations"; how many disillusionments you are bound to suffer; what hard bumps you are going to receive upon a somewhat enlarged head; what a truly pitiful and possibly absurd spectacle you young graduates present, vainly trying to set a rather solid world on fire by means of little sheep-skin diplomas tied with pretty ribbons. ”

“ And in his Senior year he was on the team, the champion football team of America. The fearless way he used to charge down the field like a fighting elephant and smash those old-fashioned flying wedges—by flopping down in front of them—is now a matter of football history. ”

“ As a preacher he could no more do what he was put here for, could no more attain his highest degree of efficiency in the world than a flower could make a success at singing or a bird at blooming. The very essence of work is one's self in action. ”

“ A disquieting story, I admit, and an extreme case, but it illustrates what I mean by the mawkish, maudlin thing in friendship, as it is sometimes depicted in books—often by men who know better but who want to make us see how lofty their ideals are. There are times when good old human nature is a better guide for our actions than the unnatural humanity of novels.
I don't see how there can be much of the real thing there when a man has to poke himself, and say, "Now, then, let's see: what is my duty as a friend?"
It would be as bad as a man's asking himself, "How ought a gentleman to act?" ”

“ Even while I was talking I was reminded that there were certain friends of mine who wouldn't feel especially jubilant if I were ever lucky enough to make a ten-strike. And yet they are bully, good fellows all the same, and I mean to keep and call them friends as long as they let me. There are flaws in all human relations. But that's no reason for not swearing by them. All we really know is that there is such a thing as real friendship. It's there. It's a great, fine thing. Some of us are lucky enough to have it. Others never can get it. You, I believe, are by way of knowing the real thing. ”

“ You have neglected opportunities which will never come again. But though much culture has not stuck to you from your studies, yet I am pleased to observe that some character has been pounded into you by your friends. It is within your power to keep up both your friends and your character. And so, when you are blue during these last months of your college course you may tell yourself that, after all, character is better than culture, and friendship than much fine learning. ”

“ What we, who are kids, want from you, who are men, is a little substantial encouragement once in a while, a little assurance that there's a fighting chance for a fellow across the great divide; not so much discounting of the future and a little more faith in it. Give us something solid to take hold of, to fasten on to, to live by—then we'll rise up and call you blessed. ”

“ He tried to make himself as well as the rest of us think he meant it, but I noticed that when any one out of pity took him up for a while he liked it so much that it always ended by his proving a nuisance to the one who tried to be decent to him—gave more than was bargained for, like a lonely dog which jumps up and licks you in the face when you only wanted to pat him. ”

“ Even if you haven't made full use of your opportunities, it is eminently worth while for the firm friendships that you form, which last a lifetime. As a wise preacher once said, "It is better to have come and loafed than never to have come at all."
But it is also a good thing to be a graduate, and there are other joys in life than winning football games or sitting in a leather chair by a dormitory fireplace, surrounded by one's best-beloved pals—though it's hard for you to believe the latter on this particular day. ”

“ Our team was overtrained. They tried too hard. There's a limit to the degree to which one should strain for success if one wishes to win success rather than sympathy. This limit can usually be seen by the simple process of standing off at a distance and looking at things calmly until we discern their true-proportions.
I'm inclined to believe that at least one-half the young men, especially the college graduates I meet on the street in business hours, are straining too hard; they are over-trained. They are missing the fun of the sport. ”

“ You will do the square thing, the kind thing, the generous thing—not because a scowling sense of duty says "must," but because you want to, because that's the way you will get your fun. And so when certain critical moments come you will not find it so outlandishly hard to do perhaps the noble thing, the occasional act of self-sacrifice—because it will seem to you to be the only thing to do, the thing you expect of yourself, and the way to get your zest. ”

“ But remember what it means if you ever make a fool of yourself again. Remember who will be made to suffer for it. That is the reason I ask you not to let it happen again. And that is the reason, and the only reason, I believe you won't let it happen again. Your "sense of oughtness" wouldn't keep you straight any more than the fear of filling a drunkard's grave or ruining your health, or even the fear of being ridiculous like Poler Stacy. ”

“ Once upon a time during the old days of free, untrammelled hazing—real hazing, I mean, not mere persiflage and pamphlets containing formal Freshman-year restrictions—there was a certain professor's son. And he thought his father was a greater man than the President—the President of the college, I mean, for the president of the country was a mere Philistine and did not count. The son should not be blamed for this, because the father would have been inclined to agree with him. I should add that not all professors take themselves so hard. ”

“ We used to sit very still and try to look duly impressed as became our youth and inexperience. But sometimes I couldn't help thinking, suppose we did not know our place, suppose instead of holding our peace and filing out modestly while he beamed down upon us with a patronizing smirk, pronouncing us a fine, manly, modest lot—just suppose we were to let loose and say, "Hi there! Fatty, don't judge us by yourself. Simply because you happened to be a conceited prig in college it does not necessarily follow that all of us are. You were a young man at the most artificial period of the century. ”

“ A scramble, a struggle?—assuredly, but so is football, and both are worth it for the thrill of the contest, even if you cannot win the championship. And those cares? responsibilities? Yes, they are there in abundance, but all as normal parts of the game. Bucking up against them adds to the zest, and losing is better than not playing on the team at all. And if you are disabled and carried off the field—hard luck, but that's nothing against the game itself. ”

“ You can't pick up a newspaper at this season of the year without finding a joke about the little graduate and the big world; every comic periodical has its perennial cartoon about the conceited ignorance of the fresh crops of college men and their unwieldy academic degrees. Comic artists make them because they are so easy to sell to editors. ”

“ I'm only telling you kid stories, for you are still a good deal of a kid, though a pseudo-college man. You can draw morals from them or not as best meets your requirements. You know your requirements better than I do. You aren't so bad—in fact, you have behaved yourself pretty well—for a Freshman—better than I anticipated in some respects. But you still have a lot to learn about being a college man. So I am just telling you about college men and college kids I have known. ”

“ Naturally the world won't show its best side at first. Freshman year is seldom the pleasantest. It's no cinch, this required course in real living, with its work and worry, strain and struggle, loving and hoping, marrying and rearing children, burying some of them, supporting the others, paying their bills, trying to be and do the square thing toward your fellow-man, trying to believe a great many things that you can't know, and finally trying to render a fairly decent account of yourself at the end. ”

“ Sometimes it takes several years out of college to get over it; more than once I've seen a young man sort of wake up suddenly, when he has found himself, rub his eyes and seem to say, "Well, for Heaven's sake! why didn't I realize this before!"
Just between you and me there is a great deal more Simon-pure overweening conceit among men of my age, or, say, when they're a little older and have begun to take on fat. ”

“ This maudlin world is pretty generous in its sympathy with your sorrows, if you will but voice them loud enough; but you get precious little of it for your triumphs—even when you say nothing about 'em. A mere acquaintance will supply sympathy for your troubles. Some people find all they want of it in smoking-cars. But it takes a real friend to be glad when you are glad. ”

“ You fellows are keen enough about spotting symptoms of swelled head in one another. Sometimes you overdo the thing. Now, there was Chesty Chisholm.
A charming fellow; not prominent, like you—that's right, blush and dodge behind yourself—but a nice, normal chap, of more than average intelligence and breeding, who had an efficient sense of humor and therefore a fairly adequate appreciation of the mutual attitude and interrelations of himself and the universe. But he had an odd gait, carried his shoulders with a conceited swing, looked chesty. So they called him "Chesty." ”

“ They try to be fair, but professors are human, many of them. There was the old General of my day, professor of German. He's dead now, lasted through two foreign revolutions and one American war, with narrow escapes from prison on the eve of execution and all that sort of thing, only to die of apoplexy one day on a New York ferry-boat, like a mere corpulent commuter. The old General was very human, and the way Jimmy Westerfield, a classmate of mine, used to get around him was beautiful. There was an offensively studious man in the class, who wasn't human at all ”