{"id":39469,"date":"2019-06-11T01:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T05:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39469"},"modified":"2019-06-10T08:22:51","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T12:22:51","slug":"qotd-advice-to-young-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/06\/11\/qotd-advice-to-young-men\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Advice to young men"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><div id=\"attachment_48842\" style=\"width: 425px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/H.L.-Mencken-1928.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-48842\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/H.L.-Mencken-1928-415x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"415\" height=\"600\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-48842\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/H.L.-Mencken-1928-415x600.jpg 415w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/H.L.-Mencken-1928-104x150.jpg 104w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/H.L.-Mencken-1928-443x640.jpg 443w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/H.L.-Mencken-1928.jpg 709w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 415px) 100vw, 415px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-48842\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">H.L. Mencken in 1928.<br \/>Photo by Ben Pinchot for <em>Theatre Magazine<\/em>, August 1928.<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nSince Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, published his celebrated letters to his morganatic son, in 1744, there has been no adequate book, in English, of advice to young men. I say adequate, and the adjective tells the whole story. There is not, of course, a college president or a boss Y.M.C.A. secretary, or an uplifting preacher in the United States who has not written such a book, but all of them are alike filled with bilge. They depict and advocate a life that no normal young man wants to live, or could live without ruin if he wanted to. They are full of Sunday-school platitudes and Boy Scout snuffling. If they were swallowed by the youth of today the Republic of tomorrow would be a nation of idiots.<\/p>\n<p>H.L. Mencken, &#8220;Another Long-Awaited Book&#8221;, <em>Chicago Tribune<\/em>, 1926-09-12.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, published his celebrated letters to his morganatic son, in 1744, there has been no adequate book, in English, of advice to young men. I say adequate, and the adjective tells the whole story. There is not, of course, a college president or a boss Y.M.C.A. secretary, or an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,57,41,13],"tags":[591,424,134],"class_list":["post-39469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-humour","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-hlmencken","tag-morality","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-agB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39469"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48844,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39469\/revisions\/48844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}