For our Young Men

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 15 April 1909, Page 570

For our Young Men

1 Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil .if me.' So said the (momentarily) conscience-stricken Falstaff to his f riend Bardolpl in the" play. Even the elegant pagan, Lord Chesterfield, realised how much a young man's life is shaped by the company he keeps. ' The next thing td the choice of your friends,' said he in his twenty-third letter to his son, . ' is the, choice of your company. Endeayor, as much as you can,' added he, 'to keep company with people above you.' And by ' people above you 'he meant people superior in merit and manners and virtue. In a book for young men, recently noticed in our columns (Four Square, or i..c Cardinal Virtues), Father Bickaby, S. J., touches upon this question of companionships with the robust good sense and the incisive clearness that make his works a charm for ever. ' A pair of friends,' says he ' are not often of equal power. Usually one or the other leads and the other is led, though under protest. It is a responsibility' to lead, it is a risk to be led. Besponsibility and risk should lie both taken up with prudence. Therefore be prudent in making friends. And what shall I say of prudence in making love? Not to make it to one who can never be your wife, or who, yoii are resolved, shall never be your -wife, ,is a point of prudence and one or two other virtues besides. ' . . On this whole matter there is a proverb to bear in mind, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure." ' Here is another ' wisdom ' from the same work, which our young men would do well to cut out and paste inside the orown of their hats : * Aim at being too busy for temptation to settle on you; labor hard in your profession, have hobbies, take exercise, be manly, and play outdoor games. But remember — be this ''said by way of warning, -not of reprobation — for the matter of purity, athletes have clangers all their own.'

In this connection we might usefully quote another wise caution from Canon Moyes' Introduction -to Monsignor John S. Vaughan's book, Bangers of To-day, just published by the Aye Maria Press : ' A certain writer describes how artillery mules, having brought then* pieces into action, are often found to graze quietly on the turf, concerned only in whisking away the flies with their tails, while shot and shell are ploughing furrows in the ground all around them. The mule is not brave, but merely dangerblind. A man may be found who, witliout any motive to compensate the -risk, will balance himself on the edge of a. precipice, or pirouette upon the summit of a chimneystack. The man is not brave : he is merely stupid. In moments of self-examination, when the light is more fully turned on, we may discover that there is a fair measure of mulishness and foolishness in the way in which we deal with temptations or habits of sin, or other sources of grave spiritual peril. We allow ourselves to become fretful over the flies which disturb our comfort, when danger of death and eternal destruction is" terribly close to us. We walk on the" brink of the precipice, and try to find __ a mock security in turning away our eyes, and in seeking to forget the depth of the abyss which yawns beneath us. Such forgetfulness is neither brave nor rational. Far from lessening, it adds to the risks that we are running. 1

To the -writer of those quoted lines we might apply the words of Ruskin — to the effect tiat he who couches in happy phrase a useful and helpful thought, does more real service to his fellow-men than does the man who made three blades of grass grow where only one grew before.