Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children
Page 27
your affectionate mother,
A. B.
Meditations Divine and Morall.
I.
THERE is no object that we see; no action that we doe; no good that we inioy; no evil that we feele, or fear, but we may make some spirituall advantage of all: and he that makes such improvment is wise, as well as pious.
II.
MANY can speak well, but few can do well. We are better scholars in the Theory then the practique part, but he is a true Christian that is a proficient in both.
III.
YOUTH is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending; a negligent youth is usually attended by an ignorant middle age, and both by an empty old age. He that hath nothing to seed on but vanity and lyes must needs lye down in the Bed of sorrow.
IV.
A SHIP that beares much saile, and little or no ballast, is easily overset; and that man, whose head hath great abilities, and his heart little or no grace, is in danger of foundering.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO WILLIAM FRANKLIN
“The resolution you have taken to use more
exercise is extremely proper . . .”
By the 1770s Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American in the world. His extremely popular Poor Richard's Almanac series and the invention of the lightning rod made his name known in households in America and abroad. From 1757 through 1775, returning to America from 1762 to 1764, Franklin served as the American agent to Great Britian and, as always, continued with his scientific pursuits and interests. Intrigued by the cause and spread of the common cold, he concluded—against the wisdom of the day: “People often catch cold from one another when shut up together in small close rooms.” Fresh air, he was certain, particularly fresh air taken during outdoor exercise, was the best preventative measure. Here, with a thoroughly modern view of physical exertion, sixty-seven-year-old Franklin responds to forty-year-old William, who had written of a recent “indisposition.”
London Augt. 19: 1772
To Governor Franklin, New Jersey
In yours of May 14th, you acquaint me with your indisposition, which gave me great concern. The resolution you have taken to use more exercise is extremely proper, and I hope you will steadily perform it. It is of the greatest importance to prevent diseases; since the cure of them by physic is so very precarious. In considering the different kinds of exercise, I have thought that the quantum of each is to be judged of, not by time or by distance, but by the degree of warmth it produces in the body: Thus when I observe if I am cold when I get into a carriage in a morning, I may ride all day without being warmed by it, that if on horse back my feet are cold, I may ride some hours before they become warm; but if I am ever so cold on foot, I cannot walk an hour briskly, without glowing from head to foot by the quickened circulation; I have been ready to say, (using round numbers without regard to exactness, but merely to mark a great difference) that there is more exercise in one mile's riding on horseback, than in five in a coach; and more in one mile's walking on foot, than in five on horseback; to which I may add, that there is more in walking one mile up and down stairs, than in five on a level floor. The two latter exercises may be had within doors, when the weather discourages going abroad; and the last may be had when one is pinched for time, as containing a great quantity of exercise in a handful of minutes. The dumb bell is another exercise of the latter compendious kind; by the use of it I have in forty swings quickened my pulse from 60 to 100 beats in a minute, counted by a second watch: And I suppose the warmth generally increases with quickness of pulse.
BENJAMIN AND JULIA RUSH TO
JOHN RUSH
“Remember at all times that while you are seeing
the world, the world will see you.”
Benjamin Rush was involved in almost everything. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and served in the Revolutionary War. He was a well-known and celebrated physician who treated all of his patients, rich and poor, with equal attention and care. He opposed slavery and capital punishment, and championed the free American public school. He was involved in the founding of five institutions of higher learning, worked for the humane treatment of the mentally ill, was the first American-born person to hold the title of professor of chemistry and for sixteen years served as the treasurer of the United States Mint. Because of his fearless, though controversial, treatment of the afflicted during Philadelphia's terrifying yellow fever epidemic of 1793, he was a popular hero.
The eldest of Benjamin and Julia Rush's thirteen children, John Rush became a surgeon. Apparently, throughout most of his adult life, John struggled with mental instability and his medical career was spotty at best. Tragically, three years before his father's death, John went insane following a duel in which he killed a friend. He was institutionalized at the Pennsylvania Hospital (Benjamin Rush's hospital) and remained there for twenty-seven years until his death in 1837.
In 1796, when Benjamin and Julia Rush wrote the following letter to their son, it seemed that John's mental troubles had not yet begun. He was twenty-one years old and, having finished a medical apprenticeship with his father, he was headed to India.
[May 18, 1796]
Directions and advice to Jno. Rush from his father and mother composed the evening before he sailed for Calcutta, May 18th, 1796.
We shall divide these directions into four heads, as they relate to morals, knowledge, health, and business.
I. Morals
1. Be punctual in committing your soul and body to the protection of your Creator every morning and evening. Implore at the same time his mercy in the name of his Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
2. Read in your Bible frequently, more especially on Sundays.
3. Avoid swearing and even an irreverent use of your Creator's name. Flee youthful lusts.
4. Be courteous and gentle in your behavior to your fellow passengers, and respectful and obedient to the captain of the vessel.
5. Attend public worship regularly every Sunday when you arrive at Calcutta.
II. Knowledge
1. Begin by studying Guthrie's Geography.
2. Read your other books through carefully, and converse daily upon the subjects of your reading.
3. Keep a diary of every day's studies, conversations, and transactions at sea and on shore. Let it be composed in a fair, legible hand. Insert in it an account of the population, manners, climate, diseases, &c., of the places you visit.
4. Preserve an account of every person's name and disease whom you attend.
III. Health
1. Be temperate in eating, more especially of animal food. Never taste distilled spirits of any kind, and drink fermented liquors very sparingly.
2. Avoid the night air in sickly situations. Let your dress be rather warmer than the weather would seem to require. Carefully avoid fatigue from all causes both of body and mind.
IV. Business
1. Take no step in laying out your money without the advice and consent of the captain or supercargo. Let no solicitations prevail with you to leave the captain and supercargo during your residence in Calcutta.
2. Keep an exact account of all your expenditures. Preserve as vouchers of them all your bills.
3. Take care of all your instruments, books, clothes, &c.
Be sober and vigilant. Remember at all times that while you are seeing the world, the world will see you. Recollect further that you are always under the eye of the Supreme Being. One more consideration shall close this parting testimony of our affection. Whenever you are tempted to do an improper thing, fancy that you see your father and mother kneeling before you and imploring you with tears in their eyes to refrain from yielding to the temptation, and assuring you at the same time that your yielding to it will be the means of hurrying them to a premature grave.
Benjn Rush
Julia Rush
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR., TO
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, III
“At the end of each week during wh
ich John has kept his accounts accurately and to Papa's satisfaction . . .”
Ever conscious of the responsibilities of his position, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., made certain his father's vast Standard Oil fortune was used for the betterment of mankind. The list of his philanthropic efforts is staggering and includes such contributions as financial support for the restoration of Versailles and the Rheims Cathedral, providing forty-six thousand acres to the United States government to establish Acadia National Park and Grand Teton National Park, preserving land along the Hudson River to forever protect the spectacular view from northern Manhattan, donating the land for the United Nations headquarters and spearheading the restoration and establishment of Colonial Williamsburg.
By 1920 the eldest John D. Rockefeller had shifted the balance of the fortune, money and burden, to his forty-six-year-old son and namesake. Here the second generation, John D. Rockfeller, Jr., lays out the financial expectations for the third generation, his son, fourteen-year-old John D. Rockefeller, III.
Memorandum between
PAPA and JOHN.
Regarding an Allowance.
1. Beginning with May 1st, John's allowance is to be at the rate of One dollar and fifty cents ($1.50) per week.
2. At the end of each week during which John has kept his accounts accurately and to Papa's satisfaction, the allowance for the succeeding week will be increased ten cents (10¢) over the week just ended, up to but not beyond a total per week of two dollars ($2.00).
3. At the end of each week during which John has not kept his accounts accurately and to Papa's satisfaction, the allowance for the succeeding week shall be reduced ten cents (10¢) from the week just ended.
4. During any week when there have been no receipts or expenditures to record the allowance shall continue at the same rate as in the preceding week.
5. During any week when the account has been correctly kept but the writing and figuring are not satisfactory the allowance shall continue at the same rate as in the preceding week.
6. Papa shall be the sole judge as to whether an increase or a decrease is to be made.
7. It is understood that at least Twenty Per cent (20%) of the allowance shall be used for benevolences.
8. It is understood that at least Twenty Per cent (20%) of the allowance shall be saved.
9. It is understood that every purchase or expenditure made is to be put down definitely and clearly.
10. It is understood that John will make no purchases, charging the same to Mama or Papa, without the special consent of Mama, Papa or Miss Scales.
11. It is understood that when John desires to make any purchases which the allowance does not cover, he will first gain the consent of either Mama, Papa or Miss Scales, who will give him sufficient money with which to pay for the specific purchases, the change from which, together with a memorandum showing what items have been bought and at what cost and what amount is returned, is to be given to the person advancing the money, before night of the day on which the purchases are made.
12. It is understood that no governess, companion or other person in the household is to be asked by John to pay for any items for him, other than carfare.
13. To any savings from the date in this account which John may from time to time deposit in his bank account, in excess of the twenty per cent (20%) referred to in Item No. 8, Papa will add an equal sum for deposit.
14. The allowance above set forth and the agreement under which it shall be arrived at are to continue in force until changed by mutual consent.
The above agreement approved and
entered into by
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John D. Rockefeller 3rd
May 1, 1920.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD TO
FRANCES SCOTT “SCOTTIE” FITZGERALD
“Things to worry about . . . Things not to worry about”
In the thirteen years following his smashing literary debut with This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's work was not very well received. His subsequent novels, including The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby, were both critical and financial disappointments.
During the summer of 1933, Fitzgerald was finishing Tender Is the Night in a rented house near the Johns Hopkins hospital where his wife, Zelda, was receiving treatment for mental illness. He was drinking heavily and Zelda was at home in what turned out to be only a brief respite from a life in psychiatric institutions.
Here Fitzgerald writes to his daughter and only child, twelve-year-old Scottie, away at summer camp.
La Paix, Rodgers' Forge,
Towson, Maryland,
August 8, 1933.
Dear Pie:
I feel very strongly about you doing duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy—but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.
All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare's in which the line occurs “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
Have had no thoughts today, life seems composed of getting up a Saturday Evening Post story. I think of you, and always pleasantly; but if you call me “Pappy” again I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?
I will arrange the camp bill.
Halfwit, I will conclude. Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Worry about . . .
Things not to worry about:
Don't worry about popular opinion
Don't worry about dolls
Don't worry about the past
Don't worry about the future
Don't worry about growing up
Don't worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don't worry about triumph
Don't worry about failures unless it comes through your own fault
Don't worry about mosquitoes
Don't worry about flies
Don't worry about insects in general
Don't worry about parents
Don't worry about boys
Don't worry about disappointments
Don't worry about pleasures
Don't worry about satisfactions
Things to think about:
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?
With dearest love,
P.S. My come-back to your calling me Pappy is christening you by the word Egg, which implies that you belong to a very rudimentary state of life and that I could break you up and crack you open at my will and I think it would be a word that would hang on if I ever told it to your contemporaries. “Egg Fitzgerald.” How would you like that to go through life with “Eggie Fitzgerald” or “Bad Egg Fitzgerald” or any form that might occur to fertile minds? Try it once more and I swear to God I will hang it on you and it will be up to you to shake it off. Why borrow trouble?
Love anyhow.
EDDIE RICKENBACKER TO
WILLIAM RICKENBACKER
“Never fail to live up to the rules of the game . . .”
Through determination and self-reliance, Eddie Rickenbacker reached acclaim in three distinct twentieth-century fields: In the early days of auto racing, Rickenbacker became a world-record-holding, Hall of Fame driver; then, under General Pershing in World War
I, he was America's top fighter pilot, the “Ace of Aces,” who destroyed twenty-six enemy aircraft and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor; later, as the president and chairman of the board of Eastern Airlines, he proved to the country that an airline company could in fact be profitable without government subsidies.
In 1941 on a government tour of World War II bases, the plane in which Rickenbacker was a passenger went down in the Pacific Ocean. He and seven of the eight others aboard survived twenty-two harrowing days adrift in a rubber raft.
Here, ten years after his crash into the Pacific and thirty-three years after Armistice Day, when he flew over the battlefield at Verdun, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker sends his twenty-four-year-old adopted son, Bill, off to the United States Air Force.
January 11, 1951
My dear Son and Pal Bill:
With your departure to enter the military services of your country as a cadet in the Air Force of the United States of America, Mother and I hope that you will remember and follow a few of the simple rules of life which will be beneficial to you as time goes on:
Always remember that a million friends are worth more than a million dollars because if you have a million friends you will never need to worry about a million dollars.
Always be respectful to your superiors and elders as it is an acknowledgement of your capacity to appreciate the benefits acquired from experience.
This was evidenced by my answer to a query recently, “What advice can you give the younger generation, based on your greatest failure?” My answer was, “Failure to evaluate and understand the advice of my elders in my youth.”