"
Let the world look to it, then, that the exalted qualities of youth
which make it indiscreet, audacious, exhilarant--yes, and spotless,
too--be not discouraged, repressed, destroyed; for these qualities are
"the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith
shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast
out, and to be trodden under foot of men."
Speaking to the world of business and of society, I therefore plead
for tolerance of all the fresh, clean, high, and splendid--absurd, if
you will--"illusions" of the young man seeking his seat at the table
where all men eat, and where all, at the end, must drink the same
hemlock cup.
For if these "illusions" are destroyed and replaced with the wisdom of
the serpent, Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" will, sure enough and in sad
reality, be replaced by the "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." Take
the young man, then, by the hand, take him to your heart, and, instead
of destroying, catch, if you can, some of the glory, the faith, the
freshness, the "illusions" of his youth; remembering that Wordsworth
uttered an ultimate note when he said:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
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