No statistician can collect and classify the instances of young lives
impaired by the heedlessness and insensibility of the mature to the
beatitudes which glorify all youth.
This attitude of the world toward young men is not caused by any
distrust of them or by any undervaluing of the high qualities of the
true, the beautiful, and the good which the young man brings to it.
Let no young man get the idea that the world of society and affairs is
"down on him," to borrow the phrasing of the people again. Let him
never for a moment feel that this world of experience and present
power does not believe in him.
For the world does believe in you, young man. It is not "down on" you.
It is busy, that is all. It is engaged with the numberless and
pressing concerns of its from-day-to-day existence. It is forgetful,
no doubt, but its apathy does not go deeper than that.
With this caution to the young man that he may not misunderstand what
is here written, I appeal to men and women, in whose faces the years
have etched the lines and wrinkles of knowledge and understanding, to
give more attention to young men; to encourage the nobilities of them;
to reach down a helping hand from your secure station on the heights
to him who struggles upward toward you.
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