ot charity, I am nothing"; and you
will recall the remainder of his admirable comments on this subject.

Everybody points out to you what you can get out of college, and how
to get it; what you can get out of a "career," and how to get that.
But lest all of your getting turns to bitter emptiness in the end, you
must pay attention to that elemental manhood exalted by those
beautiful moralities that you get at but one place and at but one
period in this world. That period is the early time of your young
manhood before you enter college; and that place is the old home where
influences angelic have been at work upon your character.

It could not be otherwise. Home--the home that you leave or the home
you make--is the spot where most of your life is to be spent. Home was
the place of your birth; and if the angel of death is kind to you,
home will be the place of your farewell. It is to the home that you
bring life's wages, whether those wages are opulence, glory, or merely
daily bread.

It is the home which interprets the whole universe for you. And it is
the home which not only furnishes a reason for your existence, but in
itself constitutes the motive for all manly effort. Quite naturally,
therefore, the home is concerned with character more than it is with
grosser things.

The instruction which the American mother gives her son is a training
in honor rather than in success. Her passion for righteousness creeps
into the commonplaces of her daily speech. "Be a good boy" is what she
says to the little fellow each day as he starts to school. "Be a good
boy" is what she says to the youth when he leaves for college. "Be a
good boy" is still her sacred charge when, standing at the gate, she
gives him her blessing as he goes out into the world.

And, finally, "Be a good boy" is what her lips murmur when in after
years, rich perchance in achievement, honor, power, or wealth, the man
of the world returns to the old home to again get her benediction, and
have his weary soul refreshed by the beauty of her almost holy
presence.

For you never cease to be a boy to her; and her supreme wish and most
passionate prayer for you is not that you shall be a strong man, or a
rich man, or an able man--she wants you to be all these, of course,
and everything else that is fine--but chiefly she cares that you
should be a good man.

And so it is that home is the temple of ideals, the sanctuary of the
true, the beautiful, and the good. Or p