Explore "Letters from a Father to His Son Entering College" by Charles Franklin Thwing on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I write to you, my boy, out of the experience and observation of thirty years in which I have followed as best I could the careers of graduates of many of our colleges. The other afternoon I set down the names of some of these graduates of the two colleges which I know best. Among them were men who, fifteen or thirty years after their graduation, are doing first-rate work. They are lawyers, editors, physicians, judges, clergymen, teachers, merchants, manufacturers, architects and writers. As I have looked at the list with a mind somewhat inquisitive I have asked myself what are the qualities or conditions which have contributed to the winning of the great results which these men have won.
The answers which I have given myself are manifold. For it is always difficult in personal matters to differentiate and to determine causes. In mechanical concerns it is not difficult. But in the calculation of causes which constitute the value of a person as a working force one often finds oneself baffled. The result frequently seems either more or less than an equivalent of the co-operating forces. The personal factor, the personal equation counts immensely. These values we cannot measure in scales or figure out by the four processes of arithmetic.