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By David McCullough
Excerpts from a commencement
address at the Boston College, May 19,2008
For many of you of the graduating
class, the love of learning has already taken hold. For others it
often happens later and often by surprise, as history has shown time
and again. That’s part of the magic.
Consider the example of Charles
Sumner, the great Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, whose statue
stands in the Boston Public Garden facing Boylston Street. As a boy
in school Charles Sumner had shown no particular promise. Nor did he
distinguish himself as an undergraduate at Harvard. He did love
reading, however, and by the time he finished law school, something
overcame him. Passionate to know more, learn more, he put aside the
beginnings of a law practice and sailed for France on his own and on
borrowed money, in order to attend lectures at the Sorbonne. It was
a noble adventure in independent scholarship, if ever there was.
Everything was of interest to him. He attended lectures on natural
history, geology, Egyptology, criminal law, the history of
philosophy, and pursued a schedule of classical studies that would
have gladdened the heart of the legendary Father Thayer of Boston
College. He attended lectures at the Paris medical schools. He went
to the opera, the theater, the Louvre, all the while pouring out his
excitement in the pages of his journal and in long letters home.
Trying to express what he felt on seeing the works of Raphael and
Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre, he wrote, “They touched my mind,
untutored as it is, like a rich strain of music.”
But perhaps, overall, John Adams
is as shining an example of the transforming miracle of education as
we have. John Adams came from the humblest of beginnings. His father
was a plain Braintree farmer and shoemaker. His mother was almost
certainly illiterate. Because a scholarship made possible a college
education, the boy discovered books. “I discovered books and read
forever,” he later wrote and it was hardly an exaggeration. At age
80, we know, he was happily embarking on a 16-volume history of
France.
When I set out to write the life
of John Adams, 1wanted not only to read what he and Abigail wrote,
but to read as much as possible of what they read. We’re all what
we read to a very considerable degree.
So there I was past age sixty
taking up once again, for the first time since high school and
college English classes, the essays of Samuel Johnson and works of
Pope, Swift and Laurence Sterne. I read Samuel Richardson’s
Clarisa, which was Abigail’s favorite novel; and Cervantes—Don
Quixote—for the first time in my life. What a joy!
Cervantes is part of us, whether
we know it or not. Declare you’re in a pickle; talk of birds of a
feather flocking together; vow to turn over a new leaf; give the
devil his due, or insist that mum’s the word, and you’re quoting
Cervantes every time.
“I cannot live without
books,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Adams late in life, knowing
Adams would understand perfectly. Adams read
everything—Shakespeare and the Bible over and over, and the Psalms
especially. He read poetry, fiction, history. Always carry a book
with you on your travels he advised his son, John Quincy. “You
will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”
In a single year, according to
the US Department of Education, among all Americans with a college
education, fully a third read not one novel or short story or poem.
Don’t be one of those, you of the Class of 2008.
Make the love of learning central
to your life. What a difference it can mean. If your experience is
anything like mine, the books that will mean the most to you, books
that will change your life, are still to come. And remember, as
someone said, even the oldest book is brand new for the reader who
opens it for the first time.
You have had the great privilege
of attending one of the finest colleges in the nation, where
dedication to classical learning and to the arts and sciences has
long been manifest. If what you have learned here makes you want to
learn more, well that’s the point.
Read. Read, read! Read the
classics of American literature that you’ve never opened. Read
your country’s history. How can we profess to love our country and
take no interest in its history? Read into the history of Greece and
Rome. Read about the great turning points in the history of science
and medicine and ideas.
Read for pleasure, to be sure. I
adore a good thriller or a first-rate murder mystery. But take
seriously—read closely—books that have stood the test of time.
Study a masterpiece, take it apart, study its architecture, its
vocabulary, its intent. Underline, make notes in the margins, and
after a few years, go back and read it again.
Make use of the public libraries.
Start your own personal library and see it grow. Talk about the
books you’re reading. Ask others what they’re reading. You’ll
learn a lot.
And please, please, do what you
can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among
your generation. I’m talking about the relentless, wearisome use
of the words, “like,” and “you know,” and “awesome,” and
“actually.” Listen to yourselves as you speak.
Just imagine if in his inaugural
address John F. Kennedy had said, “Ask not what your country can,
you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country
actually.”
The energetic part so many of you
are playing in this year’s presidential race is marvelous. Keep at
it, down to the wire. Keep that idealism alive. Make a difference.
Set an example for all of us.
Go out and get the best jobs you
can and go to work with spirit. Don’t get discouraged. And don’t
work just for money. Choose work you believe in, work you enjoy.
Money enough will follow. Believe me, there’s nothing like turning
to every day to do work you love.
Walk with your heads up. And
remember, honesty is the best policy; and yes that, too, is from
Cervantes.
Travel as much as you can, and
wherever you go, before checking out of a hotel or motel, always
remember to tip the maid.
My warmest congratulations. In
the words of the immortal Jonathan Swift, “May you live all the
days of your life.”
The American historian and
biographer David McCullough is twice winner of the National Book
Award and twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His books are
remarkable for their narrative sweep, scholarship and literary
touch. A gifted speaker, he has lectured at the White House and is
one of the few private citizens to speak before a joint session of
Congress.
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