Life — June 26, 1890 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“Mile there's Life there's Hope.” VOL. XV. JUNE 26, 1890, 28 West Twenty-tTHirp Street, New York. Published every Thursday. §s.00 a year in advance, postage free. Single Rack numbers can be had by applying to this office. ‘coples, 10 cents, te $ Vol. ind, vIX.x bound, $13.00; Vols. VIL. XII and XIV., bound or in fat numbers, at regular rates. + Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied bya stamped and directed envelope. Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. ELCOME, Mr. New College Graduate into the world. It is true of the world, as the Complete Angler suggested of the strawberry, that God may have made a better one, but not for our immediate use, for he hasn't put us in it. The world is a good enough place if you play fair and pay attention to the rules. Money is a handy thing in it Mr. Carnegie has been saying that you are spoilt already for money-making on a very large scale. He doesn’t think your chance of making eminent business men is as good as it might be if you already had three or four years of shop-boy experience to start with. Mr, Carnegie may live to change his mind about that, but never mind, even if he is right. A lot of you who are to be doctors and lawyers and editors, and possibly ministers, his disparagements do not affect at all, and for the rest of you who are going into business, there is cer- tainly this for consolation, that even if the sort of education you have got has lessened your chances of becoming million- aires, it has certainly improved your chances of making a reasonable living. It will surprise no one ten or fifteen years from now to find you earning from two to ten thousand a year, but if the century goes out and leaves you driving a street-car in New Orleans, or waiting on table in a San Francisco restaurant, it will be thought remarkable enough to warrant extended notices in half the newspapers in the United States. You see the great majority of college graduates eventually make a fair living, and people are so much in the habit of expecting that they will, that if they do not it makes talk. . . . BYE though you might have been richer if you had never been to college, your chance of having fun is better as it is. A bachelor of arts who cannot have a better time on five thousand a year than an average self-made millionaire can have on fifty thousand, has misused his time. So far as Ltre’s observation goes, millionaires donot have such tremendous fun as to make them superlatively enviable. Mr. Carnegie has a rattling good time, it is true, but then Mr. Carnegie is not only very rich but exceedingly intelligent His mind is so active that his money-making concerns don't half occupy it. He writes books, reels off magazine articles by the dozen, has time to go off coaching with such clever companions as Mr. Blaine, founds libraries, get married, and is full of turns and variegated activity. But he is an excep- tional case since he is smart (American smart) about so many other things besides money-making. It isn't so with all the millionaires by a good deal. There's Mr. Wanamaker. ‘Teaching Sunday School is about the best amusement he has and that only comes once a week; Mr. Rockefeller has some little fun starting Baptist Colleges; Mr. Armour is a pretty good giver too, when a good chance comes to him. Other millionaires go to Washington. Go to the Senate when you are there again and look at them, poor things! Others go to Europe, and you know how mortified we all are because their daughters are so set on getting married over there to worthless princes, ‘The million- aires as a rule find their principal fun in making more money and don’t have so good a time that people of moderate means need be discouraged. Was it the Commodore or William H. who said: “I have money enough but board and clothes is all I get out of it?” * . . NE point where you ought to beat the self-made rich, is the ability you should have already acquired to com- mand playmates. You probably start out with a much better assortment of pals than the average nascent millionaire had at your age, and your chance of affiliating with congenial com- panions all your life through is better than his ever was. ‘That is one thing that college should have done for you, and another is that it should have helped you to make companions of books, Pleasant people are the pleasantest thing in the world, and pleasant books are the next pleasantest. Both of these you ought to have learned already to choose and enjoy, and if you have, don’t doubt but that your time has been well spent. Professor Everett used to say fifteen years ago — “ When Horace says ‘beatus' he doesn’t mean ‘ happy,’ he means ‘rich; translate it ‘rich.’ We confuse “rich” and “happy” in these days too, but they are not the same thing. No! Oh,no! Not at all. . . . HE only talker in the world fit to be compared with Prince Bismark is our own Tecumseh. A fine old pair of chartered scolds they are. Not since the days of the Iron Duke has there been a European reputation that would stand as much conversational indiscretion as the Iron Chan- comicbooks.com