Hoots from the Archive - "A Letter to a Boy on Leaving School"

Though the date is unknown, we do know that High Master J.L. Paton penned this short booklet, a letter that consisted of advice for MGS boys on the cusp of adulthood and about to enter the world of work or University.

It gives us an insight into Paton' own moral preoccupations and worries for his former pupils, as well as the often personal relationships he had with both pupils and Old Mancunians, as they became once they left the School. The tone of the booklet, read from our 21st century vantage point, is very alien, but epitomises Paton's personal morality and character.

My dear ______, pupil no longer, but still, I hope, my friend.

You are leaving, and, so far as the curriculum of school is concerned, your education is now at an end. For your hithero development others have been responsible. For your future you are yourself responsible. You have acquired knowledge, judgment, power physical and mental. These things in themselves are nothing more than opportunities or instruments. What sort of work they are going to turn out rests with you, their possessor, to determine.

You mean to do the straight thing; you are anxious to do well, not only for your own sake, but for the sake of your people and your school; you wish them to be proud of you as you are proud of them. If that is so, then it's worth while to sit down and think out the whole situation. There are ten thousand ways of missing the bull's-eye, there is only one way of hitting it. It's not by mere desure and random effort, it is only by the strait and narrow gate that a man achieves success in any branch of life, and still more makes a success of his life itself.

You rejoice in your freedom. You are henceforward your own master. But your freedom will quickly prove a bitter mockery - no freedom, but a galling slavery - if you use it to do simply what you like. Freedom is only freedom when we use it to do what we ought. We think we are our own masters, but unless we live our lives in obedience to the one Master, we find that we are not our own masters at all - our masters are really appetite, passion and lust. Liberty is only realised in that life which, but a man's free will, is submitted to the law of order, the law of continence, and the law of the highest.

THE LAW OF ORDER. You are your own master; you may - within limits, of course - keep your own hours. But if those hours are erratic and irregular, the irregularity quickly reflects itself in your whole life. Your body, your mind, your judgment, your moral self become chaotic, morbid, out of rhythm. Fix, then, an order for your life, and keep yourself as strictly to it as if you were your own schoolmaster. That is the first condition of keeping your body in good condition; if you keep fit, it's not so hard to keep good. To keep fit you must take regular exercise, you must have fresh air. You probably live in a town and say, "It isn't easy to see how I can get either". That is nonsense. Join a gymnasium and a club for football, or cricket, or harriers, or rowing, or get a chum or two and go long tramps in the country. If there isn't such a club, find out some fellows likeminded with yourself who want to live clean, healthy lives, and start a club yourself. Let that exercise be regular and strenuous, and, as far as possible, in the open. Anyhow, keep your windows wide open night and day. Never mind if it's a bit uncomfortable at first; never mind if folk call you a maniac and say you'll catch your death of cold. You'll soon get accustomed to both one and the other. Doctors tell us they have discovered in fresh air a cure for tuberculosis; they have done more than that – they have discovered a preventive of all diseases and a new method of healthy living. To breathe stagnant air is as bad to drink stagnant water.

The law of order becomes thus identical with the law of health, and the law of health goes a long way to fulfilling the law of continence. Fill your mind and body with the joy of healthy living; there will be then no attraction, but only contempt, for the perverted pleasures of things low, and mean, and vulgar, and unclean. The man who is keeping fit drinks no alcohol. I do not say it is a thing morally wrong in itself to drink a glass of wine; but I do say that it is a better thing not to. It is not a question of absolute right and wrong; it is a question of higher and lower. Which will you choose? If you abstain, you are better in yourself. Your nerve is steadier, for Prof. Victor Horsley proves beyond a doubt that alcohol, even in small quantities, produces a temporary paralysis of the nerve-tips. You want steady sight, delicate touch, keen, hard grip, steady power of close and accurate attention. Never did young men need them more. Very well, be an abstainer; it is the only way. And, for the same reason, avoid cigarettes and all tobacco. I used to smoke when I was twelve. I thought then that I was no end of a man; I see now I was a puppy and deserved to be whipped like a puppy. The nicotine habit is not so dangerous as the alcohol habit. It does not attack, as alcohol does, (again I quote Prof. Victor Horsley), the higher part of the brain, where the moral willpower resides. It does not rob you of your self-mastery; but it is as insidious and as unwholesome as the alcohol habit. It does not attack, as alcohol does, (again I quote Prof. Victor Horsley), the higher part of the brain, where the moral willpower resides. It does not rob you of your self-mastery; but it is as insidious and as unwholesome as the alcohol habit. The man who “keeps fit” avoids both. “Ah, but,” you say, “it’s so awkward in a company, where everyone else is smoking and drinking, not to join in with the rest; it’s so unsociable.” Not a bit, I say; it’s just as unsociable for another fellow to smoke and drink when you aren’t having any, as it is for you to abstain from smoking and drinking when he is having these things. Besides, you needn’t choose such company which puts you in that position. There are many things which are not wrong, but neither are they safe. Don’t put yourself under the influence of indulgences which, you must know, provide just the atmosphere in which the germ of evil spread and flourish. Our daily prayer is, “Lead us not into temptation.” If you mean what you say, you won’t put yourself deliberately in its way. And if, by chance, you find yourself, as one must sometimes, in such company, then possibly you may feel sure enough of yourself and may join in without going too far. But, though you may feel sure enough of yourself and may join in without going too far. But, though you may feel sure of yourself, your duty is not to yourself alone, and if you just say steadily “No,” you may keep from saying “Yes” another fellow who is not so steadfast as yourself and who is only too prone after his first glass to go on to excess. It’s useful in such cases to have signed a pledge. A person who presses you to break your plighted word is no honourable man: it would not be a stretch of language to call him a cad.

Gambling flourishes under the aegis of drink, it runs drink hard at the present day as the most successful line in the devil’s business. It is dishonouring to all good sport, as though the game weren’t worth playing without these sordid adventitious excitements. It is dishonest, because it means one man takes another man’s money without earning it. And it is infinitely dangerous, for the law courts show that it is the most fruitful source of embezzlement and fraud. “Oh, but I shall know when to stop.” You may know well enough when to stop, but be absolutely powerless to do it. It is like taking hold of the handles of an electric generator: it is very easy to take hold, it is uncommonly hard to let go.

On the contrary, exact strict account for yourself of the money that you receive and spend. Keep accounts and balance up every night. This balancing up makes you give account to yourself of your own life and pass your own conduct in review. Money is, more than anything, the test of conduct. It is better to be over punctilious and careful in this matter than to be loose. If Mr. Gladstone wasn’t above doing this, you and I need not consider ourselves above it.

There will always be some fellow you admire and, more or less, choose as your leader. What sort of fellow is he? Is he clean-living? Is he one who aims high and has an earnest purpose? Does his society put some strain upon you to keep up to his level? Or does he encourage your weakness and flatter your vanity? Does he go with the swim, or has he backbone enough to have a mind of his own? Or is he a popular fellow who makes no pretence to goodness, whose views of life are lowish, whose tastes are not overrefined, whose first aim in life is to get as much enjoyment out of it as possible? Is he the young blood who “knows a thing or two,” can tell you all about the horses and where to get the best “fizz”? Above all, what is his tone while he speaks of women? Would you like him to speak of your own mother and sister as he speaks about this or that girl of his acquaintance? If not, have none of him.

I have mentioned your home. You probably never knew how much you valued your home till now you come to leave it. Cherish that feeling. You remember Wordsworth’s warrior, who, though placed in the midst of storm and turbulence and strife,

“Is yet a soul whose master-bias leans

To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes.”

Be like him; wherever you travel, let your heart untravelled be true to these.

I meant to say a word about books. Don’t let this mass of printed matter we have nowadays in such superabundant supply choke off your appetite for the best – the great standard authors – of whom we as Englishmen are so proud and so ignorant. But I have “jawed” you on this at school. I will only mention one book, the Book of books. When you pack your trunk, be sure and don’t forget it. Begin each day with it. The right beginning makes all the difference to the day. Consecrate the first moments and you will find the whole day consecrate. The lips that read over the first thing in the morning, quietly and prayerfully, a few words of this Book, will not readily shape themselves to any words that are passionate or impure or uncharitable. The thoughts that have been lifted up to heavenly places with Christ Jesus will not easily be dragged down to the miry clay and horrible pit of sin. The man who has been on his knees to God in the morning will not be brought down upon his knees by Apollyon during the rest of the day. Pray and, as you pray, review those dangers and temptations which you know will beset you, and in the heat of conflict you will keep “the law in calmness made”. Live with the Book. Let it be often before your eyes, often in your hands, and always in your heart. In the midst of your earthly calling here, it will remind you of that other calling, “the high calling of God.” Make that calling and election sure. You will have to endure hardness. Don’t shirk it; count it all joy. You may have to deny self. Is there anything more contemptible than the self-indulgent life of the rich to-day, who stand by and see the perishing of the poor? Bear your part bravely and unfalteringly in the redeeming of the world; be a fellow-worker with God in this His great purpose, and you will find that in the service of others for the sake of Christ, though you seemed to lose your life, you have gained it; though you seemed to be spending, your treasure is laid up in heaven; though you gave yourself freely, you have been growing into that highest and ideal manhood, “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

Believe me,

Yours, in all good will,

“Speaking the truth in love,”

J. LEWIS PATON