It has indeed almost completely changed
the relation of parents and children, and teachers and scholars, so
that it is now almost as necessary to prove the reasonableness and
utility of any course of action which is required of boys as of
mature men. Persuasion has, in other words, taken the place of
command, and there is nobody left whose dictum owes much of its
weight to his years or his office. Boys as well as their elders now
expect advice to be based on personal experience, and do not listen
with any great seriousness or deference to admonitions the value of
which the utterer has not himself personally tested.
It follows, therefore, that the persons whom the young men of our
time hear most readily on the conduct of life are those who have had
practical acquaintance with the difficulties of living up to the
ideals which are so eloquently painted in the college chapel, and
who have found out in their own persons what it costs to be pure and
upright, and faithful and industrious, and persistent in the
struggle that goes on in the various callings which lie outside the
college walls.
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