I am Mark Twain and here is my advice to youth. Being told I would be expected to talk here,
I inquired what sort of talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable
to youth--something didactic, instructive, or something in the nature of good advice. Very well. I have a few things in my mind that I have
often longed to say for the instruction of the young; for it is in one’s tender early
years that such things will best take root and be most enduring and most valuable. First, then. I will say to you my young friends--and I
say it beseechingly, urgingly-- Always obey your parents, when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run, because
if you don’t, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you
do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on
your own better judgment. Be respectful to your superiors, if you have
any, also to strangers, and sometimes to others. If a person offends you, and you are in doubt
as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch
your chance and hit him with a brick. That will be sufficient. If you shall find that he had not intended
any offense, come out frankly and confess yourself in the wrong when you struck him;
acknowledge it like a man and say you didn’t mean to. Yes, always avoid violence; in this age of
charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined. Go to bed early, get up early--this is wise. Some authorities say get up with the sun;
some say get up with one thing, others with another. But a lark is really the best thing to get
up with. It gives you a splendid reputation with everybody
to know that you get up with the lark; and if you get the right kind of lark, and work
at him right, you can easily train him to get up at half past nine, every time--it’s
no trick at all. Now as to the matter of lying. You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise
you are nearly sure to get caught. Once caught, you can never again be in the
eyes to the good and the pure, what you were before. Many a young person has injured himself permanently
through a single clumsy and ill finished lie, the result of carelessness born of incomplete
training. Some authorities hold that the young ought
not to lie at all. That of course, is putting it rather stronger
than necessary; still while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe
I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice
and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance, and precision which alone can make
the accomplishment graceful and profitable. Patience, diligence painstaking attention
to detail--these are requirements; these in time, will make the student perfect; upon
these only, may he rely as the sure foundation for future eminence. Think what tedious years of study, thought,
practice, experience, went to the equipment of that peerless old master who was able to
impose upon the whole world the lofty and sounding maxim that “Truth is mighty and
will prevail”- -the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has
yet achieved. For the history of our race, and each individual’s
experience, are sewn thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that
a lie well told is immortal. There is in Boston a monument of the man who
discovered anesthesia many people are aware, in these latter days, that that man didn’t
discover it at all, but stole the discovery from another man. Is this truth mighty, and will it prevail? Ah no, my hearers, the monument is made of
hardy material, but the lie it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which
you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real
permanence than an average truth. Why, you might as well tell the truth at once
and be done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not
live two years-- except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible, then of course, but
that is no merit of yours. A final word: begin your practice of this
gracious and beautiful art early--begin now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned
how. Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and suffering that have been caused
through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young! Only four days ago, right in the next farmhouse
to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one
of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson
crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years
and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading
toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost
against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right--it wasn’t. So there wasn’t any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard
of. Therefore, just the same, don’t you meddle
with old unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever
been created by man. You don’t have to take any pains at all
with them; you don’t have to have a rest, you don’t have to have any sights on the
gun, you don’t have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang
away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty
yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket
and bag his grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one
of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the
other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it make one shudder. There are many sorts of books, but good ones
are the sort for the young to read. Remember that. They are a great, an inestimable, and unspeakable
means of improvement. Therefore be careful in your selection, my
young friends; be very careful; confine yourselves exclusively to Robertson’s Sermons, Baxter’s
Saint’s Rest, The Innocents Abroad, and works of that kind. But I have said enough. I hope you will treasure up the instructions
which I have given you, and make them a guide to your feet and a light to your understanding. Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly
upon these precepts, and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and
gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else’s.