James A. Hamilton, one of Alexander Hamilton’s sons, writes in his autobiorgraphy:
In 1804 a student in Columbia College being required to deliver a speech at one of the exhibitions, I asked my father to prepare one for me. With his usual kindness he complied, and a few days before the fatal duel handed me a manuscript with a note:
My Dear James, I have prepared for you a Thesis on Discretion. You may need it. God bless you. Your affectionate father.
Emphasis in the original. James was 16 at the time. The thesis itself is... well. The basic idea is that discretion helps you in life because even if you are not very talented and smart, “a prudent silence will frequently be taken for wisdom, and a sentence or two cautiously thrown in will sometimes gain the palm of knowlege—while a man well informed but indiscreet and unreserved will not uncommonly talk himself out of all consideration and weight.” (Talk less.) And even if you are talented, the lack of discretion can overshadow the talents and achievements, and make you a lot of enemies. You don’t say, Ham.
Also, in the last paragraph, he says: “Discretion is the mentor which ought to accompany every Young Telemachus in his journey through life...” While it’s supposedly generic here, stand-in for any young man, the choice of a character is telling: Telemachus, the son of Odysseus and Penelope, protected his mother during his father’s extended absence. (And his journey was in search of his father, whom he found in the end and help him kill off his mother’s suitors, but that would probably take the metaphor too far.)
