d whether the moral character
of the young men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in
their fourth collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the
custom, if it involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was
generally sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the
class,--whether there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry,
high-breeding,--to make the omission of this party-giving unnoticeable,
or not unpleasant. I by no means say, that the inability of a portion
of the students to entertain their friends sumptuously should prevent
those who are able from doing so. As the world is, some will be rich
and some will be poor. This is a fact which they have to face the
moment they go out into the world; and the sooner they grapple with it,
and find out its real bearings and worth, or worthlessness, the better.
Boys are usually old enough by the time they are graduated to
understand and take philosophically such a distinction. Nor do I admit
that poor people have any right to be sore on the subject of their
poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot comprehend, with which I
have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and of which I have no
tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. It is an essentially vulgar
feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has any real elevation of
character, any self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a
shame. One may be annoyed at the inconveniences, and impatient of the
restraints of poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be
thought poor, to resort to shifts, not for the sake of being
comfortable or elegant, but of seeming to be above the necessity of
shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, whether it dwell in
prince or in peasant. The man who does it shows that he has not in his
own opinion character enough to stand alone. He must be supported by
adventitious circumstances, or he must fall. Nobody, therefore, need
ever expect to receive sympathy from me in recounting the social pangs
or slights of poverty. You never can be slighted, if you do not slight
yourself. People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have no barb.
You turn it all into natural history. It is a psychological phenomenon,
a study, something to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent
to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you;
it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious
and valuable: