Don't Take My Advice Until You Give It

Dear Boo and Bubble,

There are many joys in raising children, but frustrations sometimes overwhelm them.  It's not that children seek to be frustrating....much of it has to do with human nature and the insatiable desire to see for one's self.  No matter that parents were once children themselves and have experienced a wealth of circumstances through their own lives, they will never be arbiters of knowledge for their own offspring - at least not until their children are themselves grown.  

Mark Twain said it best.  "When I was sixteen, I couldn't believe how ignorant my father was.  When I turned twenty-one, I couldn't believe how much he had learned in five years."

As you know, Captain and I are in Eufaula, Alabama trying to retrace the steps of your great, great, great, great grandfather Joseph Benson Cottrell who served as a Methodist minister in this area in the 1850's.  One of our main resources for this research is his personal journal, a copy of which Captain has owned for over thirty years.  As I transcribed it the other day into digital form, I ran across the following entry.  Apparently, Joseph Benson had the same intent that we all share as parents - to impart to our children what we know in order to make their lives easier.

Without a systematic plan of life, followed scrupulously, one cannot have the greatest success – cannot attain to the greatest excellency.  I have never lived by rule.  I lacked the early training.  I have everything to overcome. 

My education when, at 19 years of age I entered the Military Academy at Charleston, South Carolina, was nothing.  From setting type and reading newspapers in my brother’s printing office I had acquired a facility in writing tolerably the English language – but there was no accuracy in my knowledge – and in pursuing my studies there – I felt continually that I was building on the sand. 

In a class of 32, I graduated 15^th – could with a little trouble have graduated first.  Politics was my misfortune there as it has been since.  I did not acquire habits of study at the Citadel – the very thing the course is intended for.  Oh! In everything I have been unfaithful – inconstant.  I might have been with comparative ease, this night, capable of taking most any position of honor in the land; but indolence – indifference have been my undoing. 

 If I am spared, I will by the help of that God who has prolonged my unprofitable life, redeem the time.  I have a thirst for knowledge.  I have gone back to relay the foundation of an education, beginning with the English and Latin grammars, I am endeavoring to make haste slowly – building compactly, surely, trudging through that which others presume I am au fait in.  

I want to enjoy what I know – and this is impossible without accuracy.  I am a poor speller ever, and sometimes suffer after mailing a letter, lest some word has been misspelt.  One half the labor spent in studying, which is thrown away in endeavoring to hide ignorance would make scholars of many.  I have no doubts as to my capacity to learn.  

I have never been beaten in a contest, where I have contested.  As ignorant as I feel myself to be, I am still surprised at my success.  I am more highly esteemed than I deserve.  I feel it, and am often made to blush at hearing compliments which I know are not deserved – and yet to correct the impression would do no good.  I want to get to be far wiser and better than persons imagine – to surpass the ideal of the vulgar mind, and attain to heights to which they are wholly ignorant.  All that I may enjoy truth, and realize the inadequacy of my finite mind to grasp it in its entirety.  I shall then be humble.

These pages are especially intended for the eye of my precious boys, Henry, Jennings and Joe.  Oh! That they may learn to redeem every moment of time – that their hearts may be given to God – that they may keep the body under, and cultivate every virtue, and thus become complete men, qualified to serve their country and the Church efficiently.