The Consolidated Encyclopedic Library Author:Orison Swett Marden Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A CAREER IN THE NAVY By WIN FIELD SCOTT SCHLET Rear-Admiral United States Navy I Suppose that nine out of every ten American boys would like to go in... more »to the army or the navy. This speaks well for the boys. It means that they have a wholesome spirit, the American spirit. And as a matter of fact the training at Annapolis — it is the same at West Point — is a fine thing for a boy who has good stuff in him. It strengthens and solidifies his ideas of honor. It makes a gentleman of him,— I mean a gentleman in the true sense of that fine but somewhat abused word. Over in London, a few years ago, a prize was offered for the best definition of a gentleman, and the one for which the prize was awarded is this: "A gentleman is a knight whose armor is honor and whose lance is courtesy." Th1s may sound like a somewhat fanciful definition, but it sums up the matter pretty well, I think. The young man who starts out with an armor of honor and a lance of courtesy is well equipped for life's battles. It may be that he will not win the success which comes from trampling on others, but he does not care for that kind of success. In addition to his high ideal of honor, the Annapolis cadet, of course, acquires a great deal of valuable information about guns and tactics and methods in general of subduing the enemy; but he learns something even more important than this,— he learns how to subdue himself. Winning a naval battle is often easier than winning a battle against one's own tendencies and inclinations, and as important for the latter as for the former is strict training and discipline in the period of youth, when lessons well learned are least likely to be forgotten, and character is forming for good or ill. This is why I regard the boy as fortunate who is able to go to the Naval Acad...« less