Ontario California
Sept. 8th 1896
 

John W. Knowles, Esq.

Dear Cousin:

While I accept your invitation to write something to be read at the reunion of the Knoles family with a fair share of modesty, some misgivings and a great deal of hesitation; yet it affords me much pleasure and genuine delight to know that some of my notions and opinions are to find expression in the midst of distant friends and relatives. As this is my birthday and I am just 42 years old it may not be bad taste to devote a few lines to the family in whose honor the reunion is held.

The Knoles family is one of the largest in the United States and each separate family averages larger than any other family and yet they have the briefest and most insignificant history of almost any other family. As a rule the male portion are as meek as Moses, as patient as Job, as tired as the man, who, when his neighbors were taking him out to bury him alive, rejected a donation of corn because the corn was not shelled; yet as honest as the man that was willing for Shylock to cut out a “pound of flesh nearest his heart”. It is a large and vigorous current of blood that courses the veins of the Knoles family and not withstanding the fact that the current has been widely defused among other families it has retained the _______ _______ (this line is missing on copy used) _____ ___ ____ _____ ______ ___ on to fortune and is crowned with success, while the Knoles waits and lets slip one opportunity after another, and I presume will be waiting still when Gabriel blows his trumpet in the last day. We find all the male portion of the Knoles family afflicted with a degree of bashfulness, self consciousness and backwardness that wraps them in a characteristic humility that influences them to look upon others as possessing superior skill, capacity and endowments to themselves and in consequence whereof they are ever seeking to shirk rather than shoulder responsibility. And for these reasons none of the Knoles family have ever wreathed their brows in the honors and glories that a reasonable degree of energy and a modest amount of ambition would have assured. Good health and good sense amount to nothing unless they are first to proper, determined use. The younger families of the name must ignore self pride and with a high ideal hugged close to their breast press forward with a determination and an unswerving purpose and boundless energy when honor, wealth and glory will come to them with the same ease and grace that large families and poverty have come to us who have gone before them. Had we been taught in early youth what has been learned in the severe school of adversity and stern experience that, God is entitled to reverence, man whatever his station, to respect only, government and laws only a means of protecting the rights of man and preserving society ______ _____ _perties of sustaining unusual health, more than ordinary mental vigor and the perpetuation of life to a happy and joyous old age.

The female portion of the Knoles family have been blessed with superior endowments over the male, but on account of the sturdy habits, loftiness of purpose, limited social, business and political aspirations of the male portions of the family, home life has ever been too monotonous for the beautiful, healthy, vivacious girls and the girls assuming that all persons were possessed of the purest of motives have been too confiding and in many instances have failed to realize, possess and enjoy the full fruition of the opportunities open to them and the possibilities with in their reach.

While the Knoles family possess unusual vigor and health in both mind and body with superior powers of expression and the keenest sense of humor, all the qualities that combine to make great generals, great inventors, great writers and great orators and great financiers, yet we look in vain to find one who has risen above the ordinary, common place citizen. And Why?

It is a hard question for me to answer. May it not be that our discipline with the little fellows under 5 and 10 years of age has been too strict and our discipline and watchfulness in the teens too disinterested and limited?

With even chances a Knoles will stand enraptured and gaze with joy and delight upon an opportunity fluttering before him, but while he hesitates and admires some other person of less vigor ____ _____ ___ ___ ___ (entire page of the original letter may be missing here) ____ ____ _______ ______ _____ _____.

____ ____ ___ ___ many of us might have reached eminent positions of honor and trust, instead of being just respectable two legged animals. I do not believe now that there is any being, below an angel, that is better than I am; I used to think that every body was better. Children ought to be taught that they are as good and may be greater than any persons who have ever lived, that the avenues to honor, success and fortune are all wide open, that there is always room above in every calling, profession and vocation, that the highest pinnacle has not yet been reached and that it is within the reach of unfaltering energy, indominable perseverance and dauntless ambition. And urge them to press forward to the visible mark, for the high calling reserved to the faithful and true that shall come up from unborn generations.

The Knoles family is ‘alright’ but it must shed a lot of old narrow notions and wake up to a realization of the conditions of the age in which we live and learn to grasp an opportunity on the spot and keep abreast of an enlightened age. I long to join in the chorus of uproarious laughter which I know will spice the scenes of the day.


Yours,

T. S. Knoles
 

Words not legible on my copy of the original letter are shown as “______”  [rbn 10/21/2000]