Calvin Coolidge writing his son, John: August 5, 1925.

John arrived at Camp Devens for the Citizens’ Military Training Camp on August 1. In an August 27 piece in the Boston Daily Globe, John was asked, “just why [he] got interested enough in the military game to give up the best month of his short summer vacation. He gave the secret away when he said, ‘You’d better ask my father.’”

In this letter, perhaps in response to John’s lackluster performance at Amherst his freshman year or his less-than-enthusiastic desire to be at Camp Devens, Coolidge says, “You are going to decide about now whether you will amount to anything.” Calvin warns John that if he does not “grow up to be a man… The world will pass on and leave you and you will see many boys that you do not think are very smart going right by you and leaving you behind to be ignored, pitied and despised.” Looking ahead to his sophomore year at Amherst, Coolidge says to John, “But unless you work I do not propose to pay out money to let you idle around College.”