A Man Who Gave Himself

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 27, 1909

A Man Who Gave Himself.

A MAN of affairs who handles a business of millions every year, making money for his stockholders and at the same time carrying on a large constructive work of inestimable value to the community in which he lives, told this true story. Of course a writer of fiction might improve on it, but this has the merit of not being fiction. It is an experience out of life that makes us think well of our kind, and helps us to believe in generosity, in self-sacrifice, and in the goodness of men—in spite of tales of graft and of exposures of corruption and of the arraying of class against class.

This is the story in the words of the man who told it, and with a suggestion of our own about something he did not speak of; and if any one who reads it knows another story like it, these columns await that story.

“He wasn’t one of the brand of heroes that do spectacular things to the blare of brass bands or the cheering of onlookers or amid the stimulus of physical excitement. But you can judge for yourself.

“I was educated at a little freshwater college. Among the men there one of the most interesting was a farm-hand, a great, big, brawny, slow chap who had made up his mind years before that he’d get out of the day-laborer class. So he’d saved and scrimped for years upon years, had gone to the local minister and plodded doggedly along under his coaching, and finally with a few hundred hard-saved dollars had taken the entrance examinations at this college and been admitted. I never saw a man possessed with a more stubborn resolve to lift himself up a peg or two. He knew his limitations and didn’t aim too high, but he was determined to get along to be, say, a lawyer in some country town; and the path seemed open before him, tho his mental slowness and lack of early advantages meant that it would take him twice as long as it would a clever youngster.

“It happened that his roommate was the son of a country doctor, his very antithesis, clever and quick, easily the head of his class, who had been brought up in substantial comfort, with no thought on the boy’s part where the money came from.

“The two became fast friends. The doctor’s son used to help the other with his studies and the ex-farm-hand looked up to his superior quickness with sort of awed admiration which was pathetic to see.

“One day, just about the end of the first year, the doctor’s son received a letter from home. His father had died suddenly and his mother had succumbed to the shock a few hours later. It presently turned out that the father had had nothing except a good income from practise; so the boy was left high and dry. He had long talks about it with his chum, of course, and told him that it was evidently all up so far as his career was concerned: he had not the stamina which would enable him to earn his own living while going through college, and he accepted the event as meaning that he would be side-tracked, perhaps as a teacher in some out-of-the-way country place. Shortly, he had to return home to settle up some family affairs.

“A few days later he received a letter from his roommate, which ran something like this:

“ ‘DEAR JACK: I’ve been thinking things over. There’s no possible question that you’ll get more out of a college course than I could. You’ll surely make a mark in the world. I can never be more than a fourth-rate lawyer. Economically considered, therefore, to educate me and leave you out is reckless extravagance.

“ ‘I enclose a check for the amount I’ve saved, which was to give me my course. This will see you through, with strict economy.

“ ‘Of course, I know you won’t want to do this; but I’ve thought it all out, and it’s the plain common sense of the situation. Moreover, I shall disappear by the time you receive this and nobody will know where I am. So you couldn’t return the check anyhow.

“ ‘Good-by and good luck.’ ”

The speaker stopped. There was a huskiness in his voice which made the listener look up quickly.

“You must excuse me,” said he, rising from his chair and walking up and down. “The truth is, I can’t tell that story without having the tears come to my eyes.”

“Did the doctor’s son take his college course?” he was asked.

“He did. And he’s doing very well to-day—very well.”

“And he never saw his friend again?”

“Never.”

The man who listened had by this time a conviction about the identity of one character in this little drama of self-sacrifice. It

seemed that this tale was a kind of memorial, the laying of a wreath on a grave, the only tribute that could be paid to a brave man who had given up for his friend something rather more difficult to give up than life itself. And the fine thing about it all was that, without any sentimentality or fancifulness, one could see how this had changed the successful man’s whole attitude toward the world, leaving him with a sense of obligation and of a necessity to pass something on to others.—The World’s Work.