e
to be in the Navy or the Army, and that such a career is the one in
which you will take a really heart-felt interest--far more so than any
other--and that your greatest chance for happiness and usefulness
will lie in doing this one work to which you feel yourself especially
drawn--why, under such circumstances, I have but little to say. But I am
not satisfied that this is really your feeling. It seemed to me more as
if you did not feel drawn in any other direction, and wondered what you
were going to do in life or what kind of work you would turn your hand
to, and wondered if you could make a success or not; and that you are
therefore inclined to turn to the Navy or Army chiefly because you would
then have a definite and settled career in life, and could hope to go
on steadily without any great risk of failure. Now, if such is your
thought, I shall quote to you what Captain Mahan said of his son when
asked why he did not send him to West Point or Annapolis. "I have too
much confidence in him to make me feel that it is desirable for him to
enter either branch of the service."

I have great confidence in you. I believe you have the ability and,
above all, the energy, the perseverance, and the common sense, to
win out in civil life. That you will have some hard times and some
discouraging times I have no question; but this is merely another way of
saying that you will share the common lot. Though you will have to work
in different ways from those in which I worked, you will not have to
work any harder, nor to face periods of more discouragement. I trust in
your ability, and especially your character, and I am confident you will
win.

In the Army and the Navy the chance for a man to show great ability and
rise above his fellows does not occur on the average more than once in a
generation. When I was down at Santiago it was melancholy for me to see
how fossilized and lacking in ambition, and generally useless, were most
of the men of my age and over, who had served their lives in the Army.
The Navy for the last few years has been better, but for twenty years
after the Civil War there was less chance in the Navy than in the Army
to practise, and do, work of real consequence. I have actually known
lieutenants in both the Army and the Navy who were grandfathers--men
who had seen their children married before they themselves attained the
grade of captain. Of course the chance may come at any time when the
man of West Point o