Yes, certainly:
Read books that come to stay--the kind of books you would like to be
as a man.
The Rubaiyat would deserve mention but for the danger of
misunderstanding its message. Rightly read Omar Khayyam's lesson is
serenity and poise and that power and happiness which come from these.
The disciple of the tent-maker is not apt to lose his bearings. He no
longer regards to-day as eternity, no longer looks at the world and
the universe from himself as a center. Reject the Persian poet's
apotheosis of wine, absorb his philosophy of calmness, and you will do
your duty regardless of consequences. And that is the chief thing, is
it not?
Do your duty, have the courage of your thought, and walk off with the
old fatalist's verse soothing your soul and brain, and let the
disturbed ones clamor. The clamor will cease in time and turn to
applause. And whether it does or not is a matter of absolutely no
importance if you have done right.
There is nothing which will more conserve the nervous forces of any
serious-minded young man, nothing which will give him so much of that
composure of mind and necessary concentration of powers, as the
resolution to do his best and let it go at that, whether the world
applaud, or laugh, or rage.
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