The
Lord's Prayer is still in his mind; his mother taught it to him. The
glorious fable of Washington and the cherry-tree is still in his
heart; his mother taught it to him. A beautiful honor that makes him
very foolish on the stock exchange and causes the shrewd ones to say,
"He will know more after a while"--the splendid honor that makes him
throw over what the world calls "advantages"--still glorifies his
soul; his mother taught him that honor. The confidence that God is
just, and that success is surely his if he will but do right, still
beautifies him like the rose-tinted clouds of morning; it is the
influence of his mother's teaching.

Let the world understand that these qualities with which the mother
labors to endow her child, from the time the blessing of maternity is
hers to the time the bright-eyed young fellow steps out from the old
home, are more valuable to the world itself than all its gold-mines,
all its scientific discoveries, all its electric railroads, all its
games of politics, all its commerce. "Il mondo va da se," said a
cynical Italian statesman--"the world goes by itself." But it does
not.

If the world were not each year renewed, refreshed, glorified by the
magnificent honor and fine expectancies of its young men, it would
soon become simply fiendish in its sordidness, selfishness, and
baseness. Let the world, then, preserve these fine qualities at which
it too often idly sneers; not for the young man's sake--no, that is
not to be expected--but for its own sake.

Let the world turn to the Master and think of what he said: "Except ye
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven." I am pleading for the tolerance of what, by a certain class
of men, are called impracticable business defects in youthful
character, which in reality are the vital blood by which the world is
kept morally alive.

The first attitude that the world ought really to take toward the
young man is charity. How parrot-like one is! Charity! "And now
abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these
is charity." I defy any man who talks about the practical affairs of
this life to get away from the Bible.

Let the world then have charity for the young man. Let it realize that
for the particular moment there is nothing conceivable so helpless as
he. He is just as helpless as, in time, he will become irresistible. I
have already earnestly advised every young man, as a practical ma