The Sunday Eight O'Clock/Introduction
PROBABLY most of the readers of these brief homilies will close the book with a smile at the little foibles or serious faults of their brother men, possibly known to them by name, at whom the gentle criticisms are pointed. Most of us will believe that we have long ago been promoted from the primer of conduct. We can enjoy the reminiscences of our youthful shortcomings called up by these chapters; the humor, the style, the human sympathy and charity that make for a better common understanding, they all appeal to us. And yet few will fail to admit, quite tacitly no doubt, that we too share the weaknesses of those who inspired the sermons, and that we can use the advice.
They are inspired indeed. For they are all documents of real experience; behind each is at least one episode fresh from the life of college students, which is quite like the life of mankind in general. The simple, homely truths of existence, the lessons of human intercourse here told us, the sound and helpful and kindly advice are not new in the world, but they must be taught over and over again, and they have not often been 80 well expressed. Because they have been well told, made real and vivid and impressive to the readers of the Daily Illini of the University of Illinois where they have appeared every Sunday for the past year or so, it has seemed desirable that they should be preserved.
Probably no one person needs the guidance or advice offered by many of these little sermons; one might react unfortunately to a reading of all of them at a sitting. But every one of them has gone home to some readers. Many of them have had surprising results. Within a few days after "The Uncertain Mail" first appeared no fewer than forty guilty consciences sought pardon from the Dean. They had never known that courteous but unsolicited notes should be answered, or they had meant to write, but . . . . And how many, secretly and ashamed, made new resolutions, not because of this one reminder only, but of others as well?
I recall the interested surprise with which Dean Clark told me of the elderly man who called, after reading one of these, to ask what was clearly to him an embarrassingly personal question.
"Dean Clark", he said, "I've lived a long while, and have eaten baked potatoes with a spoon as long as I can remember. I am chagrined, but helpless, as I read your reference to that practice of mine. How then should I eat a baked potato?"
Not all of us will be willing thus candidly to admit how often our foibles are illuminated in the pages of this book.
November, 1916
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