rful as an old-time warrior's; with brain so fertile and vision
so clear that he fears not the future, and knows that what to weaker
ones seem dangers are in reality nothing but shadows--it will take
this kind of a man to make any "career" that is going to be made.

Very well. Such a man will be searching for his mate and finding her,
planning a home and building it before he is twenty-five; and the man
who does not, is either too weak or too selfish to do it. In either
case you need not fear him. "He will never set the world afire."

I am assuming that you are man enough to be a man--not a mere machine
of selfishness on the one hand, or an anemic imitation of masculinity
on the other hand. I am assuming that you think--and, what is more
important, feel--that Nature knows what she is about; that "God is not
mocked"; and that therefore you propose to live in harmony with
universal law.

Therefore, I am assuming that you have established, or will establish,
the new home in place of the old home. I am assuming that you will do
this before there is a gray hair in your head or a wrinkle under your
eye. These new homes which young Americans are building will be the
sources of all the power and righteousness of this Republic to-morrow,
just as the lack of them will be the source of such weakness as our
future develops.

Within these new homes which young Americans are to build, the altar
must be raised again on which the sacred fire of American ideals must
be kept burning, just as it was kept burning in the old homes which
these young Americans have left. And precisely to the extent that
these new homes are not erected will American ideals pale, and finally
perish.

It is a question, you see, which travels quite to the horizon of our
vision and beyond it, and which searches the very heart of our
national purity and power. No wonder that Bismarck considered the
perpetuation of the German home, with its elemental and joyous
productivity, as the source of all imperial puissance on the one hand,
and the purpose and end of all statesmanship on the other hand.

It would be far better for America if our public men were more
interested in these simple, vital, elemental matters than in "great
problems of statesmanship," many of which, on analysis, are found to
be imaginary and supposititious. Yes, and it would be better for the
country if our literary men would describe the healthful life of the
Nation's plain people, than tell