present whenever that
young man's work was mentioned. No matter whether the old banker's
caution was justified; no matter whether this sensitiveness to the
language which the young man used is reasonable or not--the young man
needs all the respect and confidence he can possibly get. It is a good
thing for him to have the admiration of those among whom he dwells,
but their respect and confidence he must have. He cannot get along
without that. Let him be clean of speech, therefore.

This growing prejudice against profanity is not unreasonable. Oaths
indicate a poverty of language--of ideas. The thief, the burglar, the
low-class criminal everywhere, expresses all his emotions by oaths.
Are they angry? They swear. Surprised? They swear. Delighted? They
swear. Every conception of the mind, every impulse of the blood, is
expressed in the narrow and base vocabulary of profanity. So that the
first thing an oath indicates is that he who uses it has limited
intellectual resources, otherwise he would not employ so commonplace a
method of expressing himself.

Then, too, we quite unconsciously connect the swearing man with the
class which habitually employs profanity as the staple of its talk;
and so he who uses an oath in our presence automatically sinks to a
little lower level in our esteem. We cannot help it. We do not reason
out the why and wherefore of it, but we know it is so.

Do not justify yourself by talking about Washington raging at
Monmouth, or Paul Jones boarding the _Serapis_, or Erskine climaxing
his greatest effort for justice with an appeal to the Father of the
universe. These men all swore, and swore mightily on those occasions,
but their oaths were oaths indeed.

Liberty or tyranny, life or death, justice or infamy, hung in the
balance, and their oaths were prayers as earnest as ever ascended to
the Throne. But that is no example for you, young man. If you will
agree never to use an oath until you have the provocation of treason,
and your country thereby endangered, as Washington had at Monmouth,
there are a million chances to one that the Sacred Name will never
pass your lips in vain.

I knew a man in the logging-camps twenty-eight years ago. He there
acquired that lurid speech which was the language by which oxen,
horses, and men themselves were in those times driven in those rude
camps of rugged industry. My friend did not remain a logger. He became
a lawyer and achieved some distinction and success, bu