Letter from Alfred E. Stearns to Charles Sun, London December 26, 1929
Dublin Core
Title
Letter from Alfred E. Stearns to Charles Sun, London December 26, 1929
Subject
Letter from Alfred E. Stearns to Charles Sun, London December 26, 1929
Transcription
December 26, 1929
Dear Charlie:
I have read with a good deal of interest and some amusement and lots of sympathy your good letter of December 12. It is mighty nice of you to keep me so thoroughly posted as to your new surroundings and prospects and feelings. Don't get over-pessimistic, however, at the start. As you become adjusted to the new surroundings, the colder houses, and the English diet, to say nothing of the weather. I really believe that the outlook will brighten up. Every one who goes to England for the first time is pretty sure to have an experience and reactions similar to yours.
Miss Clemons I know will be delighted to look you up if she goes to London. Further, I am sure that Marjorie would be more than pleased to have a chance to see you, and as she occasionally goes to London, I imagine that you ought to be able to get together some time.
Tom was here two or three days ago and had lunch with me. He is about as distressed over his immediate future as you are over yours, for he feels that his father's wish to have him study for a degree is not going to get him very far, and he is further convinced that it is going to be terribly difficult for him to go back to China and swing into the old ways. Tom seems to have done remarkably well at Middlebury and has earned the high regard of students, faculty, and townspeople alike. His development has been a source of real satisfaction to me, for as you know, it took him a good while to get really started.
I am delighted to know that Dr. Sze shares my own feelings about your father's desire to have you get another degree. [Illegible] degrees, which in themselves, at least, mean so little. What you accomplish and what you are yourself are the things that count in live [sic] and not the degrees that you happen to be able to tack on to your name. I do wish your father could appreciate this, for I am sure that more than one Chinese student who has come to this country and been forced to work for a degree and hence look on it with undue reverence has been actually injured in the process and far less able to do his real job in the world as a result.
I know it is going to be difficult to make your father realize all this, but I am going to try my best to put the situation to him tactfully and beg him to let you do something more worth while. If Dr. Sze is willing to cooperate to the extent of writing your father in the same vein, I am sure it would help mightily. Naturally I do not expect too much from anything I may say, for I doubt if your father has fully forgiven me yet for urging him to allow Mary to give up her college course, which in her case was little more than a farce, and to take up the nursing in which she is naturally so efficient and in which also she is evidently finding keen delight. Certainly if you are to do a real job in London, you can't be expected to find the time and strength to invest on the outside in the hunt for a degree. That, at least, year father should realize.
So keep up your courage and take care of your health. We will work this thing out, and right, in the end if we stick to it and be patient.
Wishing you an increasingly happy and prosperous New Year, and with warm personal regards, believe me
Very faithfully yours,
Dear Charlie:
I have read with a good deal of interest and some amusement and lots of sympathy your good letter of December 12. It is mighty nice of you to keep me so thoroughly posted as to your new surroundings and prospects and feelings. Don't get over-pessimistic, however, at the start. As you become adjusted to the new surroundings, the colder houses, and the English diet, to say nothing of the weather. I really believe that the outlook will brighten up. Every one who goes to England for the first time is pretty sure to have an experience and reactions similar to yours.
Miss Clemons I know will be delighted to look you up if she goes to London. Further, I am sure that Marjorie would be more than pleased to have a chance to see you, and as she occasionally goes to London, I imagine that you ought to be able to get together some time.
Tom was here two or three days ago and had lunch with me. He is about as distressed over his immediate future as you are over yours, for he feels that his father's wish to have him study for a degree is not going to get him very far, and he is further convinced that it is going to be terribly difficult for him to go back to China and swing into the old ways. Tom seems to have done remarkably well at Middlebury and has earned the high regard of students, faculty, and townspeople alike. His development has been a source of real satisfaction to me, for as you know, it took him a good while to get really started.
I am delighted to know that Dr. Sze shares my own feelings about your father's desire to have you get another degree. [Illegible] degrees, which in themselves, at least, mean so little. What you accomplish and what you are yourself are the things that count in live [sic] and not the degrees that you happen to be able to tack on to your name. I do wish your father could appreciate this, for I am sure that more than one Chinese student who has come to this country and been forced to work for a degree and hence look on it with undue reverence has been actually injured in the process and far less able to do his real job in the world as a result.
I know it is going to be difficult to make your father realize all this, but I am going to try my best to put the situation to him tactfully and beg him to let you do something more worth while. If Dr. Sze is willing to cooperate to the extent of writing your father in the same vein, I am sure it would help mightily. Naturally I do not expect too much from anything I may say, for I doubt if your father has fully forgiven me yet for urging him to allow Mary to give up her college course, which in her case was little more than a farce, and to take up the nursing in which she is naturally so efficient and in which also she is evidently finding keen delight. Certainly if you are to do a real job in London, you can't be expected to find the time and strength to invest on the outside in the hunt for a degree. That, at least, year father should realize.
So keep up your courage and take care of your health. We will work this thing out, and right, in the end if we stick to it and be patient.
Wishing you an increasingly happy and prosperous New Year, and with warm personal regards, believe me
Very faithfully yours,
Creator
Alfred E. Stearns
Publisher
Phillips Academy
Date
December 26, 1929
Rights
All Rights Reserved by Phillips Academy
Language
English
Type
Correspondence