'YOUNG MANHOOD:
It's Relations to a Worthy Future.'
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BY
William E. Matthews, Esq,\
WASHINGTON, D. C.
No.
PRIVATE LIBRARY
— OF —
W. S. SCARBOROUGH.
"Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask
if a college has been through him; if he is a walking
University."
"The true University of these days is a collection of
books."
ADDRESS.
|||||HIS supreme hour, so unimportant to the great world,
is to you fraught with special interest. To you this
day has a weighty significance; for you now go
forth from the period of discipline and drill to try the
temper of your steel in the hard arena of actual life. Its
manifold competitions, struggles and temptations are
upon you. There is no retreat. You must conquer or
die. What defeats or victories shall reward or sadden
you in this inevitable warfare, we may not know; but
there are laws which will limit and condition all your ac¬
tivity, from whose action there is no escape. Of some
of these I want to speak to you, aind so have chosen for a
theme u Young Manhood ; Its Relation to a Worthy Fu¬
ture," hoping that the occasion will give it an emphasis
more powerful than can come from any utterances of
mine.
It is a grand thing to come into the world, to live,
move and have our being. It is a grand thing to be
a man, but I think the grandest sight in the world is a
clear headed, well equipped young man, teeming with life,
imagination and hope.
One standing on the dome of the Capitol at Washing¬
ton can have a magnificent sweep of vision, taking in not
only the city with its spires, houses, and broad Avenues
radiating from a common center, but the silver thread of
the Potomac, the rising hills of Arlington, the Virginia
shore and much of the State of Maryland, and those who
have stood upon the silent pyramids have felt that great
were the memories that came up from the valleys'where
had moved kings and their millions of subjects thou¬
sands of years before, and beneath the shadow of which
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Napoleon had fought some of his mightiest battles. Rut
what are these gazes, looking from these heights, com¬
pared with the young man standing on the pedestal of
his early manhood, and looking forward and around, can
say, "Life is before me." and then to have the great
throbbing question coming from his heart to his hps,
" What shall I do with it?" Aye, that is the question.
To have the next forty or fifty years lying at your feet,
reaching onward to 1920 and 1930, is to look upon a pros¬
pect more pregnant with thought than any battle
ploughed land, whether it- be beside the murmurs of the
Potomac or the turbid waters of the Nile.
The young man under thirty-five may not realize it,
but his position is simply sublime.
The next thirty years is to make him a beneficient char¬
acter, shouldering responsibilities, sending forth influences
in the school, in the church, in the commonwealth or
broken in health, shipwrecked in character, friendless
and despised, the saddest sight in the world, a pitiable old
man with none so poor as to do him reverence, and there¬
fore as a wise architect is very particular about the foun¬
dation, to have it broad and safe and strong, so that the
superstructure may not be imperiled. Ts it not the part of
wisdom to see to it while we may that the foundations of
our lives be sure and steadfast, and bear with ease and
grace the burdens of a life ?
Young manhood is the critical time ol life, the period
when plans and resolutions are made which lift us to
grander heights or sink us to lower depths. It is the
time of imagination, of enthusiasm, of hope and strength.
The mind, then, if ever, is acquisitive, intense, eager and
keen, assimilating facts, formulating theories and con¬
verting knowledge into power and teeming with that
joyous fullness of life which radiates thought and aspires
to those achievements which bless mankind and dignify
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human nature. But youth is wild and impetuous, and
demands training and regulation, and the safety of the
young man is certainly not in frivolity and pleasure, but
in a certain soberness and wise mindedness. Now this
wise mindedness will easily find three fields for action
and may briefly be enumerated as: 1st, Wisdom in indus¬
try ; 2nd, Wisdom in thought; and, 3rd, Wisdom in
achievement. A few thoughts on the first, wisdom in in¬
dustry. By this I mean that faculty by which man works
not only that he may live, but also that he may save. So
much of success depends upon this acquisition of property,
that that life would be badly planned which bestowed no
wisdom upon the accumulation and judicious expenditure
of money.
All the good things of the world representtoil. The
books of the thinker and of the poet, the works of
the artist, the houses in which we dwell, the furniture,
the brie a brae, the food for the table, all confe from and
are the result of labor. They will not be given us—they
must be bought. Money then stands for all the material
things in this world and is the medium by which we ex¬
change the toil of self for the toil of others. It has a
high mission to perform and by as much as it is ex¬
hausted upon more pleasure, vanity or low appetite it is
prostituted to folly and waste.
Certainly, then, every young man should start out with
the idea that he will honestly earn money. Yes, but
the mere earning is not enough—he must not only earn
but save. According to all the facts in the case sub¬
mitted by all who have written on the subject, success in
property does not necessarily follow high wages. It is
not what you earn, but what you save. The young man
who at twenty can save ten dollars per month will at
thirty have just sixteen hundred dollars with interest at
4
six per cent., and it is simply this little sum in addition
which many young people of to-day refuse to learn.
The great law of life is by the sweat of thy brow, shalt
thou eat bread. Toil therefore, either of mind or body, is
our lot. Let us accept it gladly, remembering that in¬
dustry is the ticket with which we must be admitted to
the world's great feasts.
I must, hasten to the second proposition : the wisdom
of thought.
It is said an hour a day of reading will at last 'trans¬
form a youth into a philosopher. Be this as it may, to
have thirty or forty years before one in a world teeming
with the mighty record of itself, the record of its science,
its poetry, its arts, its:literature, its politics, its religion,
is surely a grand situation to be placed in. To rise above
the bondage of frivolity and find, happiness in mental
worth and intellectual investigation is an opportunity of¬
fered to a taan only once, and then only when he is young.
It is painful to think that nature never twice offers any
good to us. She comes once with youth, once with buoy¬
ancy, once with romance and hope, and having offered
them, she seldom, if ever, returns. The school house, with
its years of enthusiasm, comes to us but once in al] our
pilgrimage.
By wisdom of thought I of course mean something
broader and deeper than what is commonly known as ed¬
ucation.
Thought, I take it, is something more than the mere
acquisition of truth. It is more a building up of facts
from principle, that we should become so wise-minded, so
broad as to know the meaning of State and Church,
Pleasure and Study, Work and Rest—these mighty words
from the lexicon of life.
The third and last element of our subject is wisdom of
achievement, and here it is that the young man looms up
5
before us in magnificent pioportions* All history is
merely the record of the progress of the young man, nor
is it a marvel tbatut is so. It would be strange were it
otherwise. The highest quality of mind—the quality
which stamps it as an immortal essence; the grand fac¬
ulty which sends its eagle glance over a whole field of
particulars, penetrating and grasping all related objects
in one devouring conception, and by an insight almost
divine, seeing the only right thing to be done amid a
thousand possible cause's of action ; the power which gives
confidence to will, because it gives certainty to vision, and
is as much removed from recklessness as irresolution ; this
sublime power belongs to the young man, and it is for
this reason that the torches which have illumined the
world have generally been found in his hand. The in¬
vention of new methods,, the discovery of new truths, and
the creation of new beauty all belong to that thoroughly
liv; condition of mind which we call youth.
Nearly all the conquests in the annals of war have been
achieved by young men. Scipio was twenty-nine when he
gained the battle of Zana. At thirty-six Scipio the younger
was the conqueror of Carthage. At thirty-six Cortes was
conqueror of Mexico. At thirty Charlemagne was the
master of France and Germany. At thirty-two Lord
Clive had established British power in India. Hannibal,
the great Carthaginian commander, was only thirty when,
at Cannae, he dealt an almost annihilating blow to the
republic of Rome; and Napoleon was only twenty-one
when, on the plains of Italy, he out-generalled and de¬
feated one after another of the veteran marshals of Austria.
You all know of the great character whose life blazed and
burned and threw its glare over a world. Alexander of
Macedon, a colossal soul who conquered the world and
could find nothing on our planet capable of withstanding
his power died at the age of thirty-two, the master of an
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empire overleaping seas and covering two continents.
Yon remember the incident of his life—a type of his char¬
acter which has passed into a familiar proverb. When,
in his invasion of Asia, he arrived at Gordium, he was
arrested, not by an army, but by a superstition. Here
was the rude wagon of Gordius, the yoke of which was
fastened to the pole by a cord so tangled that no human
wit or patience could untie it; yet the oracle had declared
that the empire of Asia was reserved to him only by whom
it should be untied. After vainly attempting to overcome
the difficulties with his fingers, Alexander impatiently
cut it with his sword. The multitude applauded the solu¬
tion, as the multitude will continue to applaud young
men who annihilate seemingly hopeless perplexities by
cutting Gordian knots!
Not only in war, but also in the calmer and serener
walks of literature, art, science, and even philosophy,
the young man has been torch-bearer and poineer. Indeed,
it is said that, allowing for some individual exceptions,
the whole history of the human intellect will bear out the
general attention that the power in which great natures
culminate and which fixes fatal limits to their loftier as¬
pirations, namely, that conceptive and combining genius
which force and insight into an executive intelli¬
gence, which seizes salient points and centrol ideas, which
dart in an instant along the whole line of analogies and
relations, which leaps with joyous daring th> vast mental
space that separates confused facts from harmonizing
laws—that this power, to say the least, rarely grows after
forty. Thus Shakspeare completed Hamlet, the greatest
of all his plays, at thirty-six. Mozart, the grandest of
composers, died at thirty-six. Raphael, the greatest
painter the world has known, died at thirty-seven. New¬
ton saw the apple fall at twenty-five, though he did not
formulate the law of gravitation until he was forty. The
7
principal of the steam engine was invented by James
Watt before he was thirty, and by that invention Eng¬
land was furnished with an additional productive power
equal to her millions of workmen—-an invention by which
a single district in England is enabled to produce fabrics
representing the labor of tw«nty-one millions of men ;
an invention which in England alone annually weaves
into cloth a length of cotton thread equal to five thousand
millions of miles. These are a few of the triumphs of
young men who have filled the world with the splendor
of their names. But I am free to confess that there are
some exceptions to the rule I have laid down, the best
work being done in early life. Chaucer was sixty when
he began his " Canterbury Tales." Milton's Paradise
Lost was written when he was nearly sixty. Dante's great
vision was the work of his maturity. Homer was an old
man when he wrote the '^Illiad." But who shall say
that these works were not organized around an early man¬
hood, and were co-extensive with the whole growth and
development of their creations ?
As Oliver Wendell Holmes has so truly said in his
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," " Any new formula
which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its root
in long trains of thought; it is virtually Qld when it first
makes its appearance among the required growths of the
intellect," and the point I make is that if these great
masters in letters had not written at thirty, they certainly
would not have enriched the world at sixty and seventy.
These are some of the trimphs of the young manhood
of the world, and who shall put a girdle on its possibili¬
ties ? The forces which have impelled the world have
been and will continue to be the youthful spirit of health
and hope and energy and great-heartedness. One by one
the old guard fall. Soon they will be with us no more.
Sumner, Chase, Stevens, Grerritt Smith, Garrison, all
8-
gone. Frederick Douglas, Wendell Phillips, Bishops
Payne, Campbell, Shorter and Waymanhave passed their
three-score years. Are we to be left alone, or shall our
glad vision behold the joyous tumult of the oncoming host
of young men of high impulse and noble aims, with grand
and generous affections, whose hearts shall be filled from
the never-failing fountains of trutli, and whose arms shall
be made strong battling in the holy cause of Right.
And now, how can we become the worthy followers of
such a galaxy of mind ? By simply doing as they did,,
living up to our highest ideal, especially in the cultiva¬
tion of character. I here want to say a few words upon
character, which I take as merely another word for soul-
culture ; for life building ; the forces which make us
strong, true and great, that sublime energy by which the
soul is smitten with a love for toil, for virtue, for high
achievement, the mark and index of superior worth, the
royal impress of the Most High on the' nobility of our
manhood ; what we are in ourselves in contradistinction
to what people think we are.
I will not undertake to say that it is a quality innate,
for I believe it can be cultivated to an indefinate degree;
but I will say that the humblest of us are not without it;
we may smother it, but the divine spark is within, wait¬
ing only to be fanned by the energy of our will into a
blazing flame that will fire us for action and lift us from
our dead selves to higher things.
Among the most important elements of character are
strength and decision. Learning, speculation, and not
even culture is the chief end of man, but rather action,
success, achievement. Education may help us to think
correctly and talk grammatically and fluently, but when
we go out into the world full armed and equipped to
fight our battle of life ; if we are weak and undecided
9
and falter and fail; if, in a word, we lack character, we
are indeed poor and pitiable.
Character, then, I take it, is the dividing line between
weak men and strong men, between those who triumph
in the battle and those who are vanquished.
Decision of character enables us to see an end for which
we choose to live and then to bend our every power and
faculty to its attainment. It is the predominant trait of
all great men. It was this element more than any intel¬
lectual superiority which made Luther the regenerator of
modern Europe Energy of will was the soul of the re¬
formation, expressed in that famous answer to the friends
who advised him not to go to the "Diet of Worms." '' I
am lawfully called to appear at Worms and thither I
will go in the name of the most High God though as
many devils as there are tiles on the house tops were
there combined against me." It was this same strength
and decision of character that enabled stumbling, stutter¬
ing Demosthenes to shut himself up in his subteranean
study until he emerged the most consummate orator of
all time, and it is the same trait which makes Grant
stand out as the one grand collosal figure of our civil war.
111 will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,"
or when Disraeli was hissed down in Parliament for his
bad oratory, was made strong to say, u I will sit down now,
but the day will come when you will listen to me." All
these are samples of that dogged determination and that
intensity of will which will not down and which we call
stamina, character; without it we are but infants crying
in the night and with no language but. a cry ; armed with
it we are omnipotent Therefore higher than all else and
more important is this hard pan of grit which makes
men strong, heroic, and god-like, and it is well worth
our time to consider the cause of the failure of so many
who enter upon life seemingly so well prepared to grap-
10
pie with it, and' the success of others who have all the
odds of bad training, or worse still, no training on their
side.
The line of battle is formed ; the great battle of life is
about to begin ; the drums beat and the trumpets sound
the charge, and lo, the soldier turns pale and refuses to
rush into the breach and dare, and if need be, die for the
cause he has espoused. Such a man, no matter what his
opportunities and his culture, is a failure, for at the
crucial moment when he should be strong and brave, he
faints and falls. Abraham Lincoln was a good example
of my "meaning. I will give you the picture Lowell has so
justly painted of him. "A civilian during times of the
most captivating military achievements, awkward, with
no skill in the lower technicalities of manner, he left be¬
hind him a fame beyond that of any conqueror, the mem¬
ory of a grace higher than that of outward person, and a
gentlemanliness deeper than mere feeling. Never before
that startled April morning did such multitudes of men
shed tears for the death of one they had never seen, as if
with him a friendly presence had been taken away from
their lives, leaving them colder and darker, their com¬
mon manhood had lost a kinsman," and this great hold
on the popular heart had been secured not by brilliancy
or dash ; but by sagacity and character ; or take Oliver
Cromwell "who believed in his God, believed in himself
and believed in his ironside, clothing spiritual faith in
physical force and backing' dogmas and prayers with
spike and cannon, anxious at once that his troops should
trust in Grod and keep their powder dry, or as has been so
tersely said, seeking the kingdom of heaven, but deter¬
mined to take the kingdom of England by the way."
This, then, is my idea of the power and influence of a
well directed character. It gives a tnan power o.ver his
own nature, over destiny itself, and calls to his aid all
11
good agencies, all civilizing forces, whatsoever are eman¬
ations of this power. All inspirations are addressed to it.
All ambitions have root in it. I doubt whether any of
us can define the word character, although we all know
what it means. It is more easily imagined than de¬
scribed. It is not genius, it is not talent, it is not ac¬
quisition, it is not accomplishment. It is not either, but
all of them. It is a combination of dispositions, senti¬
ments and habits of action, which either fit or unfit a
man for the relations, the duties, the trials, the enjoy¬
ments and the business of life, and make ( ,rtall men sun
crowned, who. live above the fog in public duty and in
private thinking."
I am not wise enough to advise you concerning the
helps to the formation of character. I gladly leave that
portion to the superior wisdom of those around me, but
my own experience is, that contact and reading, good
friends, and good books aid us more than all else beside.
Many of us I fear are prone to undervalue the influence
for good or evil of association, and how important it is to
the right development of character, that we should choose
our friends aright and permit our intimacies to be with
those only who can strengthen and benefit us, and there
is much wisdom in the couplet "friends, like our books,
should be few and well chosen." All of us recognize the
influence of books in the formation and development of
character, and next to the living, loving influence of good
friends, I should name good books ; they give to us the
mighty thoughts, the best inspi'ations of the noblest and
mightest minds of the race. As Dr. Channing has said,
" Grod be thanked for books, they are the voices of the
distant, and the dead, and make us heirs of all the past.
No matter how poor I am ; no matter if the prosperous of
my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the
sacred Dante will enter and take up his abode under my
12
roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of
Paradise and Shakespeare to open to me the worlde of im¬
agination and the workings of the human heart, and
Franklin to teach me with his practical wisdom, I shall
not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and may
become a cultivated man though excluded from what is
called the best society."
These, then—books and friends, contact and reading,
coupled with strong sense and strong will, give us that
character that will make us forces for good in the world.
In what I have said I have given to you some of the
possibilities and the achievements of youth. I have tried
to place in your hands some of the equipments of warfare.
I have held up to you the power and influence of money,
but no wealth is good for its possessor and others unless
it is preserved by liberalty and diffusion. Of what use is
the sharp edge of a sword or the keen sight of the rifle
unless you have an arm made strong and skillful by train¬
ing or an eye rendered acute and a nerve steadied by prac¬
tice and cultivation? Great riches are a power for good
chiefly to him who has a large soul, a fortified will and
a truly cultivated nature. For this end I have exhorted you
to the mastery of high aims, and have set before you ex¬
amples of those who have achieved them. Study of these
eminent persons helps us because the atom is governed by
the same laws as the globe and the brook observes the
same principles as the river. Men, however great, are but
men. When you have learned the secret of success or fail¬
ure in one man's life or a portion of his career, that will
serve either as a guide or a warning, inspiration, or guide
in the conduct of your own affairs. We admire the
courage, tact, persistence, imagination ,descriptive powers,
or genius of certain men; bat royal worth must be
crowned only in those who embrace within their sacred
and invincible purpose the glory of God. If one can be
13
dominated by this aim as the habit of lite, if he can be
haunted by this object, then he has before him a sublime
career. To those who enter into life thus fortified, pos¬
sessed by this conviction, no one need preach the glory of
living.
Some of you before me, now go forth from the seclusion
of a period of study and discipline to encounter the stern
conflicts of a life of action. Until now your friends and
teachers have been satisfied with promise of capacity and
grounds for hope. Hereafter they will look for a fruitful
and manly use of capacity, for a justification of the hopes
which they have cherished. Up to this time your life
has been one of promise only, now it must be one of per¬
formance or of disastrous and possibly disgraceful failure.
Time, labor, and thought have been spent in your edu¬
cation. The intellectual wealth of the ages has been laid
at your feet. Discoveries which centuries of labor have
painfully reached, you have been able to master in a day,
critical study has cleared difficulties from your path which
have baffled the genius of the greatest scholars who have
gone before you.
But the world into which you enter is richer in capacity
for production, in resources, physical and mental, than
any which your predecessors have known. Your future
career must determine whether these unprecedented ad¬
vantages have been bestowed upon you in vain ; for the
obligations which rest upon the present generation of
scholars are such as Divine Providence never imposed upon
man before. To them to whom much is given, of them
much shall be required.
There is an uncertainty attending the future of the young
which excites a peculiar interest in the thoughtful mind.
Those who are older belong to the past. There is no fu¬
ture of magnificent possibilities for them. If they have
not already done good work for the world, it is too late
14
for repentance or for new struggles and victories. Their
fellow-men have taken the measure of their intellectual
stature ; have tried their strength ; their time of growth
and promise and hope is gone forever. They may labor
yet a little longer in their uncompleted tasks of life and
duty, hut nothing new nor brilliant, nor startling display
of hidden or undeveloped power is expected from them.
But for you everything is possible. A strange mystery
hangs over the life that is before you. Parents see in you
a reproduction of their own youth, and dream that your
lives will supplement all that has been deficient in their
own. Even the cold and cautious world, which knows
only your opportunities and youth, is ready to give credit
for capacity and character, and open to you a career am¬
ple enough for their completest test and trial. The pos¬
session by you of a capital stock of talent, industry and
trustworthiness is taken for granted. But remember that
this career which the world opens ; the hope and confi¬
dence of friends, are loans to be repaid^ and from friend
and foe alike principal and interest will be exacted. Re¬
member also that in the great struggle for existence none
but the fit survive. How many among you will emerge
unscathed from the terrible ordeal ? Will any of you be
rolled up as moral wrecks on the sands of time? God
forbid ! But in this hour of hope and joy I would not be
a prophet of evil; but I avail myself of the occasion to im¬
press you with an adequate conception of the severity of
the test through which you must all pass. Society is a
hard master. Your fellow-men will sift you as wheat.
That you may pass the ordeal in triumph, you must
choose your career in life wisely. For this end study
your own tastes and tendencies. Aim at the practical and
possible ; measure your strength according to the abilities
G-od has given you. Your powers may not be great;
your sphere in life narrow. Only the select pen secures a
15
niche in the " Valhallas " of earthly fame ; but if he is a
benefactor of his race, who succeeds in making two blades
of grass grow where but one grew before, you may hope
in some degree to make the world better and happier.
And now may the Good Father be with you to bless
and direct you in the achievement of your life work ! may
you acquit yourselves like men, and hew close to the line
of duty ! and I believe, if you are but true to your best in¬
spirations and highest opportunities, my prayer will prove
my prophecy ; and there will go forth from this grand
centre of learning a magnificent influence that will make
this world of ours healthier, happier, sweeter, and more
deeply colored by the divine flashes of human excellence
and achievement.
Go forth, then, in the power of your strength, fight
well and valiantly your battle of life, and the time will
come when your faces, radiant with light, and your ban¬
ners, resplendent with victory, you will have learned the
great lesson that—
" * * in all lands and through all human story
The path of duty is the way to glory."
CORRESPONDENCE.
[From Rev. Dan'l A. Payne, D. D., LL. D., Senior Bishop A. M. E. Church.]
"Evergreen College,"
Willberforce, Ohio,Jnue 18, 1880.
To William E. Matthews, Esq.:
My Dear Sir : I need . not tell you that the effect of your ad¬
dress before the students on Tuesday evening last was a most
happy and helpful one, enjoyed not only by the societies before
whom you spoke, but by the President, faculty and all who heard
it. I take great pleasure in transmitting to you the enclosed com¬
munication and to add my own hope that you will put the ad¬
dress in permanent form for larger circulation and greater useful¬
ness. Fraternally, PAYNE.
Wilberforce University, June 16, 1880.
William E. Matthews, Esq.
Dear Sir; We beg to assure you of the deep obligation we are
under to you for the very instructive and eloquent address de¬
livered before our societies on commencement-eve, and we do
most respectfully and earnestly request you to put it in pamphlet
form.
We do this in order that the valuable address may be placed in
the hands of the masses of our young people, believing that it
will inspire all who read it with a loftier standard of life and a
mighter resolution to achieve.
Hoping that your usefulness may continue to increase and that
your manly influence may spread far and wide, we subscribe our¬
selves very respectfully yours.
M. H. VAUGHN,
T. M. GILMAN,
*J. R. GIBSON,
I. M. BURGAN,
Committee on Publication.
Wilberforce, Ohio,June 23, 1880.
William E. Matthews, Esq.
My Dear Sir : It is the unanimous wish of the friends and
members of the societies who heard your interesting and instruc¬
tive address, that you be requested to publish the same in pam-
nhlet form. We hope, my dear sir, that you will decide at once
to r'ive your valuable manuscript to the press, that the public may
enjo)" what a select few had the privilege of listening to.
With bsst wishes, I am, yours very sincerely,
W. S. SCARBOROUGH,
Professor Latin and Greek.