young man is the future incarnate. His soul is the abiding-place
of uplifting ideals, and the world--that vast collective individuality
to which you and I belong--too often dispels those sensitive
enthusiasms by its neglect or disapproval. Do we not find in our daily
speech a certain cynicism toward youth? Does not our skeptic wisdom
paste the label "illusions" over the word "ideals" written on the
young man's brow? Is there not a refusal to recognize young manhood's
force until it compels recognition by sheer mastery?

If so, it is a fault that the world should remedy. Not that the young
man should not prove himself before the world accepts him; not that he
should not win his spurs before he is knighted. No one insists that he
shall "make good" more than I do. But in the testing of him, let us
give him the help of our kindly attention. Let us lend him the
encouragement of our applause as he rides into the lists.

Countless young men have been needlessly discouraged by the
indifference of the occupied and the sneers of the calloused. Let us
not be so chary of our sympathy. Faith in most young men is a much
safer hazard than infidelity. For all things strong and pure and
helpful to the world _may_ be possible of those young fellows who
must, in any event, very soon possess the earth.

So let not the frost of the world's unconcern fall upon young
manhood's unfolding powers. Let us beware how we extinguish the
feeblest of youth's idealisms. Let us check not the onset of his
knight-errantry. And the world does these things--not purposely, not
even knowingly, but thoughtlessly. Many a young man has had his
life's work kept back and the ardor of it chilled by rebuff at the
beginning.

Many another has had his faith in God and humanity and the
effectiveness of the eternal verities in the world's work enfeebled
and even shattered by what he felt was the world's disbelief in them.
No statistician can collect and classify the instances of young lives
impaired by the heedlessness and insensibility of the mature to the
beatitudes which glorify all youth.

This attitude of the world toward young men is not caused by any
distrust of them or by any undervaluing of the high qualities of the
true, the beautiful, and the good which the young man brings to it.
Let no young man get the idea that the world of society and affairs is
"down on him," to borrow the phrasing of the people again. Let him
never for a moment feel that this wo