But the point is, that your usefulness in every direction will be
increased by a knowledge of the languages. The other things that you
study in college you will largely forget, anyhow; and, besides, you
study them principally for the mental discipline in them. But if you
get a language, and get it correctly, thoroughly, you can find enough
use for it to keep brushed up on it. And of course you can read it all
the time, whether you have a chance to talk it or not.
It is impossible to use words sufficiently emphatic in urging the
study of history. _You cannot get too much history in college and out
of it._ Sir William Hamilton was right--history is the study of
studies. The man who occupies the chair of history in any college
ought to be not only an able man, he ought to be a great man. If ever
you find such a professor, make yourself agreeable to him, absorb him,
possess yourself of him.
This final word: Mingle with your fellow students. Talk with people,
with real people; those who are living real lives, doing real things
under normal and natural conditions. Do all this in order that you may
keep human; for you must not get the habit of keeping to your room and
believing that all wisdom is confined to books.
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