these chats are the pleasurable results of the many little confidential ones i have given at boys’ and young men’s clubs and at preparatory schools.
it has been my fortune—for so i consider it—to have been brought into intimate relations with men who are failures. not the down and out men, but those who are struggling along dissatisfied with what they are doing—what false and wrong training has forced them to do.
many of these despondent and useless men have been guided into places where they fit—where there is conservation of energy, happiness and results. these are the factors for a mentally and physically balanced man—provided he has had early instruction in some vital matters.
the impulse to have the future fathers in a position to guide and live in close confidential relations with their sons, is the reason for this book.
professional experience has proven to my[viii] complete satisfaction that the many failures, misfits, despondents and diseased in our present generation were not fundamentally ill fitted to battle with life, but that they had never been started right, physically, mentally, vocationally.
physical instructors built muscle, teachers forced much useful and also useless stuff into unwilling brain cells, fathers furnished the money—as a rule i find that this latter was about all the parents did furnish; and thought this all-sufficient.
the results have been deplorable. wasted energies, disgust for study in lines that never appealed, misdirected powers, and exhausted vigor is what i have daily seen for twenty-five years.
and most of these conditions are avoidable.
how frequently have i heard the remark, after explaining to a young man who came to me a complete failure: “why didn’t my father see all this?” or “i wanted to do that, doctor, but they said that i didn’t know my own mind; so they made me study things that i hated.” then the vital facts which every boy should early have confidentially and chummily told him:—“oh, doctor, if i had only known these things ten years ago! what a different man i would be to-day!”
yes, and your sons can benefit from your[ix] experience, for it has forced me to “chat” with them in these pages.
my plan as outlined is to give the boy and youth the information which will enable him to conserve his energies, increase his vigor and learn just what his mental endowment and powers are. then to concentrate upon these constantly, allowing deviations only so far as they broaden the horizon surrounding his vocation.
there also is much to say upon physical conservation—the storing of physical vigor which in emergencies can be called upon without injury to the working capital. this vital matter has seldom been touched in the training of our youths; and as men we find them working up to the last degree of power and when the call comes for extra power there is none—the man then goes to the human dump pile. there is no excuse for this sad state of affairs—the cause is ignorance of man’s vital resources and how to conserve them.
boys, i have been a repairer of human machines all my life; machines sent out on the road not properly adjusted, they have been returned to my shop, and with most of them i could only point out certain parts which were weak and let them go again, taking care not to put too great a strain on these parts.
now i want you all to start out with every[x] part—brain, body and soul—equally adjusted, all of the same strong material, well fitted to work in peace, happiness and health—these factors working in harmony means success—no matter what line you take up for life’s work.
william lee howard.
