A Father’s Judgment

A young man won admission to college. Instead of writing a letter of congratulations, his father penned this note:

Now it is a good thing to put this business very plainly before you. Do not think I am going to take the trouble of writing to you long letters after every folly and failure you commit and undergo. I am certain that if you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless, unprofitable life you had during your school days, you will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of the public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence.

Lord Randolph to his son Winston Churchill