David McCullough, best-selling historian and biographer, addressed the graduating Class of 2006 at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, on May 28. Here’s an excerpt:
“Choose work you love. Work hard. Take your work seriously, not yourself. Don’t let setbacks or skeptics get you down. And, when as is bound to happen, some supposedly all-knowing somebody says to you, `Well, welcome to the real world,’ remember that Bates College, too, is the real world. Remember that Shakespeare and Cervantes, Botticelli and Tchaikovsky are the real world.
“However little television you watch, watch less.
“Read. Read for pleasure. Read for happiness. Read the works of the great poets, John Adams advised his young son, John Quincy. It was the boy’s happiness that the father was thinking of. `Read somewhat in the English poets every day,’ he wrote. `You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life. You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.’
“Maine’s own Edwin Arlington Robinson is a choice I recommend. Read where your interests lead you. Read biography. If you haven’t already, read William Bunting’s `A Day’s Work,’ one of the best of all books ever written about Maine. Read Willa Cather and Flannery O’Connor and Wallace Stegner. Read books that have stood the test of time. For your summer list let me recommend just three, none long, all marvelous: `Wind, Sand and Stars,’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, about the pioneer days in aviation and about responsibility as the core of morality; `The Lives of a Cell,’ by Lewis Thomas, which is about fish and bats and social insects, birdsong, and the miracle of language; and read the funny, very wise essay on the devil and his ways called `The Screwtape Letters,’ by C.S. Lewis.
“Read history. History, history, history, for insights into human nature and as an aid to navigation in turbulent times. If you are to be leaders, which surely many of you will be, you must read history. And if you are anything like your contemporaries, all across the country, you have a lot of catching up to do and a lot of wonderful reading ahead of you.
“If your experience is to be anything like mine, the most important books of your life are still ahead of you.
“See as much of the world as you possibly can, and keep your eyes open, soak it all up. And wherever you go, when stopping at a hotel or motel, make it a rule to always tip the maid.”
