The eyes of the untrained man under thirty-five are never taken off himself.  They are always turned in.  He is studying himself first and foremost, and the world at large is interesting to him only inasmuch as it bears relation to himself as the pivotal point.  He fully indorses Pope’s line, “The proper study of mankind is man,” and he is that man.  Join in his pursuit if you will; show the wildest enthusiasm in his golf record or how many lumps of sugar he takes in his coffee, and he will evince neither surprise nor gratitude for your interest.  You are only showing your good taste.

Try to talk to the untrained man under thirty-five upon any subject except himself.  Bait him with different topics of universal interest, and try to persuade him to leave his own point of view long enough to look through the eyes of the world.  And then notice the hopeless persistence with which he avoids your dexterous efforts and mentally lies down to worry his Ego again, like a dog with a bone.

The conceit of one of these men is the most colossal specimen of psychological architecture in existence.  As a social study, when I have him under the microscope, I can enjoy this.  I revel in it, just as I do in a view of the ocean or the heavens at night—­anything so vast that I cannot see to the end of it.  It suggests eternity or space.  But oh! what I have suffered from a mental contact with this phase of him in society!  Sometimes he really is ignorant—­has no brains at all—­and then my suffering is lingering.  Sometimes he really knows a great deal—­has the making of a man in him, only it lies fallow for want of training—­and then my suffering is acute.  When success—­business or social or athletic or literary or artistic—­comes to the untrained man under thirty-five, it comes pitifully near being his ruin.  The adulation of the world is more intoxicating and more deadly than to drink absinthe out of a stein; more insidious than opium; more fatal than poison.  It unsettles the steadiest brain and feeds the too-ravenous Ego with a food which at first he deemed nectar and ambrosia, but which he soon comes to feel is the staff of life, and no more than he deserves.  With success should come the determination, be you man or woman, to fall upon your knees every day and pray Heaven for strength to keep from believing what people tell you, so that you still may be bearable to your friends and livable to your family.

I know that all this will fall unkindly upon the ears of many a worthy man under thirty-five whose charm is still in embryo, and that, unless he is very clever, he will be mortally offended, and never believe my solemn assertion that I am the stanchest friend the man of possibilities has.  Let him take care how he resents my amiable brutality, or how he denounces me as his enemy, for if I were not interested in the untrained man under thirty-five I wouldn’t bother with him, would I?