Mike Reads Letter from the Earl of Chesterfield

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – If you really want to educate yourselves and your sons, gentlemen, I want you to pick a copy up — it’s free of charge at the Gutenberg Press or at MikeChurch.com — the Earl of Chesterfield’s wonderful work of letters to his son on how to become a gentleman of the world and a statesman.  Every morning I make it a ritual now, I read a letter from John Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield.  There’s a reason why this work has survived 400 years and influenced Thomas Stonewall Jackson. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  If you really want to educate yourselves and your sons, gentlemen, I want you to pick a copy up — it’s free of charge at the Gutenberg Press or at MikeChurch.com — the Earl of Chesterfield’s wonderful work of letters to his son on how to become a gentleman of the world and a statesman.  Every morning I make it a ritual now, I read a letter from John Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield.  There’s a reason why this work has survived 400 years and influenced Thomas Stonewall Jackson.

[reading]

“Like words congealed in northern air,” to a vulgar notion, that in Greenland words were frozen in their utterance; and that upon a thaw, a very mixed conversation was heard in the air, all of those words set at liberty.  This conversation was, I presume, too various and extensive to be much attended to: and may not that be the case of half a dozen of my longer letters, when you receive them all at once?  I think that I can, eventually, answer that question, thus: If you consider my letters in their true light, as conveying to you the advice of a friend, who sincerely wishes your happiness, and desires to promote your pleasure, you will both read and attend to them; but, if you consider them in their opposite, and very false light, as the dictates of a morose and sermonizing father, I am sure they will be not only unattended to, but unread.  Which is the case, you can best tell me.  Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.  [Mike: Are you catching the prose here and the little pearls of wisdom he’s passing onto this 15-year-old?]  I hope that your want of experience, of which you must be conscious, will convince you, that you want advice; and that your good sense will incline you to follow it.

[end reading]

Mike:  Read this work and share it with your sons, gentlemen.  Read it yourself and share it with your sons.  I don’t think you will be disappointed.  I think you will thank the Earl of Chesterfield and yours truly for discovering this so late in my life and passing it on to you.

End Mike Church Show Transcript