“How does ——­ get along with his father?” was asked of a certain young man of great distinction in letters.  “Oh, they are great friends!” was the answer.  “Friends through duty or comradery?” persisted the querist.  “Comradery, affection, affinity.  They are the greatest chums in the world,” was the answer.

I wish I could give you the name of that man.  It is known in every civilized country.  No wonder he became the great power into which he has developed.  His whole life is a blessing and a benediction to all with whom he comes in contact—­parents, wife, children, countrymen, the world.  No wonder his brain is canny with resourceful wisdom; no wonder that good red human blood pours at full tide through artery and vein.

The man I have in mind, and whom I am describing, is a great man, and his father before him was a great man too.  His success has been monumental.  Yet his is no candy manhood.  His is no smooth conduct.  He is “neither sugar nor salt, nor somebody’s honey,” to get down (or up) to the picturesque phrase of the common household.

He is the sort of man who would confound sharp practises of the crafty; or “call the bluff” of financial gamester; or walk unconcerned where physical danger calls for nerve of steel and lion’s heart; or fling at affected fop rapier sentences that cut deep through the very quick of his pretenses.

I cite this example merely to show you that you lose nothing of independence or daring, or any of those qualities which young men so prize (and properly prize), by being on terms of intellectual and heart partnership with your father.

Don’t tell us that he won’t let you be on such terms with him.  Show yourself willing and worth while, and your father would rather spend his extra hours with you than at the theater.  But you have got to show yourself worth while.  No whining willingness, no soft and pretended desire, no affected making up to “the governor,” will answer at all.

You have got to “make good” with the American father, young man.

He has “been through the mill,” until the softness is pretty well ground out and little remains but the granite-like muscle of manhood.  He is a pretty stern proposition; and if there is anything he won’t stand it is pretense, make-believe.  But show yourself worthy of him and willing for his comradeship, and you have begun life with the best, readiest, bravest partner you will ever have.

From all of this you have yourself deduced the fact that you do not “know more than the old folks.”  If you have not, go ahead and deduce it right now; for you do not know more than they do.  They have lived so much longer than you have that the accretion of daily experience has given them a variety of information beside which your book knowledge is a sort of wooden learning, lifeless and artificial.

The very fact that they have had you for a child and brought you along safely thus far is proof enough of this.  You have no right to challenge the knowledge or judgment of either of your parents until you demonstrate that you can do as well or better than they.  And that will be some years yet, will it not?  No, decidedly, don’t “get too smart for father.”