better benefit mankind than by founding a home among
your fellow men, a pure, normal, sweet, and beautiful home?

That would be getting down to business. That would be doing something
definite, something "you can put your finger on." It would be "getting
down to earth," as the saying is. You would be "benefiting humanity"
sure enough and in real earnest by taking care of some actual human
being among this great indefinite mass called mankind. The making of
a home is the beginning of human usefulness.

The Boers were a splendid type of the human animal. It took all the
power of the greatest empire on earth to crush a handful of them; and
even then Great Britain was able to subdue them only at astonishing
loss of men and money, and irreparable impairment of prestige. They
were glorious fighting men, these Boers. The blood that flowed in
their veins was unadulterated Dutch--the only unconquered blood in
history; for you will remember that even Caesar could not overcome
them, and, with the genius of the statesman-soldier that he was, he
made terms with them.

But these Boers were a good deal more than mere fighting animals; they
were perhaps the most religious people on earth. If they were mighty
creatures physically, they were also exalted beings spiritually. They
knew how to pray as well as to fight. They made their living, too, and
asked no favors. Also they builded them a state. It was a fine thing
in the English to acknowledge the high qualities of these African
Dutchmen, after the war with them was over.

It is said that there was not an unmarried man above twenty-one years
of age among them. Very generally the same thing was true of "The
Fathers" who founded this republic. Indeed, all great constructive
periods and peoples have lived in harmony with the laws of Nature. It
has been the races of marrying men that have made the heroic epochs in
human history. The point is that the man who is not enough of a man to
make a home, need not be counted. He is a "negligible quantity," as
the scientists put it.

So if your arm is not strong enough to protect a wife, and your
shoulders are not broad enough to carry aloft your children in a sort
of grand gladness, you are really not worth while. For it will take a
man with veins and arteries swollen with masculine blood pumped by a
great, big, strong heart, working as easily and joyfully as a Corliss
engine; with thews of steel wire and step as light as a tiger's and
maste