And, of course, you will not disgrace yourself by drinking.  There is absolutely nothing in it.  If you have your fling at it you will learn how surely Intoxication’s apples of gold turn to the bitterest ashes in the eating.  But when you do find how fruitless of everything but regrets dissipation is, be honest with yourself and quit it.  Be honest with the mother who is at home praying for you, and quit it.  But this is weak advice.  Be honest with that mother who is at home praying for you, and never begin it.  That’s the thing—­never begin it!

In a word, be a man; and you will be very little of a man, very little indeed, if you have got to resort to tobacco and liquor to add to your blood and conduct that touch of devilishness which you may think is a necessary part of manliness.  Indeed, between fifteen and thirty years of age your veins will be quite full enough of the untamed and desperate.  I do not object in the least to this wild mustang period in a man’s life.

Is a fellow to have no fun? you will say.  Of course, have all the fun you want; the more the better.  But if you need stimulants and tobacco to key you up to the capacity for fun, you are a solemn person indeed—­“solemn as cholera morbus” to appropriate an American newspaper’s description of one of our public men.  What I mean is that you shall do nothing that will destroy your effectiveness.  Play, sports, fun, do not do that; they increase your effectiveness.  Go in for athletics all you please; but do not forget that that is not why you are going to college.

Nobody cares how mad are the pranks you play.  Take the curb and snaffle off of the humors of your blood whenever you please; that is all right.  I never took much stock in the outcry against hazing.  We cannot change our sex, or the nature and habits of it.  A young man is a male animal after all, and those who object to his rioting like a young bull are in a perpetual quarrel with Nature.

One thing I must warn you against, and warn you supremely:  the critical habit of mind which somehow or other a college education does seem to produce.  This is especially true of the great universities of our East.  Nobody admires those splendid institutions more than I do—­the Nation is proud of them, and ought to be.  The world of learning admires them, and with reason.  Neither the English, Scotch, nor German universities surpass them.

But has not every one of us many times heard their graduates declare that a mischief had been done them while in those universities by the cultivation of a sneering attitude toward everybody—­especially toward every other young man—­whom they see doing anything actual, positive, or constructive.  One of the best of these men—­a man with a superb mind highly trained—­said to me on this very subject: 

“I confess that I came out of college with my initiative atrophied.  I was afraid to do anything.  I was afraid I would make a mistake if I did anything; afraid I was not well enough equipped to do the things that suggested themselves; afraid that if I did try to do anything everybody would criticize what I did; afraid that my old college mates would laugh at me.