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diff --git a/455-h/455-h.htm b/455-h/455-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ba1b90 --- /dev/null +++ b/455-h/455-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7469 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of The University of Hard Knocks, +by Ralph Parlette +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.finis { text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The University of Hard Knocks, by Ralph Parlette + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The University of Hard Knocks + +Author: Ralph Parlette + +Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #455] +Release Date: March, 1996 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS *** + + + + + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +The University of Hard Knocks +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +by +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +Ralph Parlette +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +The School That Completes Our Education +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P> +"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, +and he shall be my son"—Revelation 21:7. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Sweet are the uses of adversity;<BR> + Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,<BR> + Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;<BR> + And thus our life, exempt from public haunt,<BR> + Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks<BR> + Sermons in stones, and good in everything."<BR> + Shakespeare<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3> +Why It Is Printed +</H3> + +<P> +MORE than a million people have sat in audiences in all parts of the +United States and have listened to "The University of Hard Knocks." It +has been delivered to date more than twenty-five hundred times upon +lyceum courses, at chautauquas, teachers' institutes, club gatherings, +conventions and before various other kinds of audiences. Ralph Parlette +is kept busy year after year lecturing, because his lectures deal with +universal human experience. +</P> + +<P> +"Can I get the lecture in book form?" That continuous question from +audiences brought out this book in response. Here is the overflow of +many deliveries. +</P> + +<P> +"What is written here is not the way I would write it, were I writing a +book," says Ralph Parlette. "It is the way I say it. The lecture took +this unconscious colloquial form before audiences. An audience makes a +lecture, if the lecture survives. I wish I could shake the hand of +every person who has sat in my audiences. And I wish I could tell the +lecture committees of America how I appreciate the vast amount of +altruistic work they have done in bringing the audiences of America +together. For lecture audiences are not drawn together, they are pushed +together." +</P> + +<P> +The warm reception given "The University of Hard Knocks" by the public, +has encouraged the publishers to put more of Mr. Parlette's lectures +into book form, "Big Business" and "Pockets and Paradises" are now in +preparation as this, the third edition of "The University of Hard +Knocks" comes from the press. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +Contents +</H2> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +<A HREF="#chap00">SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS</A>—The lecturer the delivery wagon—The sorghum +barrel—Audience must have place to put lecture—Why so many words +</P> + +<H2> +The University of Hard Knocks +</H2> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +I. <A HREF="#chap01">THE BOOKS ARE BUMPS</A>—Every bump a lesson—Why the two kinds of +bumps—Description of University—"Sweet are the uses of +Adversity"—Why children are not interested +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +II. <A HREF="#chap02">THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS, the bumps that we bump +into</A>—Getting the coffee-pot—Teaching a wilful child—Bumps make us +"stop, look, listen"—Blind man learns with one bump—Going up requires +effort—Prodigals must be bumped—The fly and the sticky +fly-paper—"Removed" and "knocked out" +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +III. <A HREF="#chap03">THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS, the bumps that bump into us</A>—Our +sorrows and disappointments—How the piano was made—How the "red mud" +becomes razor-blades—The world our mirror—The cripple taught by the +bumps—Every bump brings a blessing—You are never down and out +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +IV. <A HREF="#chap04">"SHAKE THE BARREL"</A>—How we decide our destinies—Why the big ones +shake up and the little ones shake down—The barrel of life sorting +people—How we hold our places, go down, go up—Good luck and bad +luck—The girl who went up—The man who went down—The fatal rattle—We +must get ready to get—Testimonials and press notices—You cannot +uplift people with derrick—No laws can equalize—Help people to help +themselves—We cannot get things till we get ready for them +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +V. <A HREF="#chap05">GOING UP</A>—How we become great—We must get inside greatness—There +is no top—We make ourselves great by service—the first step at +hand—All can be greatest—Where to find great people—A glimpse of +Gunsaulus +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +VI. <A HREF="#chap06">THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS"</A>—Preparing children for life—Most +"advantages" are disadvantages—Buying education for children—The +story of "Gussie" and "Bill Whackem"—Schools and books only give +better tools for service—"Hard knocks" graduates—Menace of America +not swollen fortunes but shrunken souls—Children must have struggle to +get strength—Not packhorse work—Helping the turkeys killed them—the +happiness of work we love—Amusement drunkards—Lure of the +city—Strong men from the country—Must save the home towns—A school +of struggle—New School experiment +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +VII. <A HREF="#chap07">THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER"</A>—You can't get something for +nothing—The fiddle and the tuning—How we know things—Trimmed at the +shell game—My "fool drawer"—Getting "selected to receive 1,000 per +cent"—You must earn what you own—Commencement orations—My maiden +sermon—The books that live have been lived—Singer must live +songs—Successful songs written from experience—Theory and +practice—Tuning the strings of life +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +VIII. <A HREF="#chap08">LOOKING BACKWARD</A>—Memories of the price we pay—My first school +teaching—Loaning the deacon my money—Calling the roll of my +schoolmates—At the grave of the boy I had envied—Why Ben Hur won the +chariot race—Pulling on the oar +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +IX. <A HREF="#chap09">GO ON SOUTH!</A>—The book in the running brook—The Mississippi keeps +on going south and growing greater—We generally start well, but +stop—Few go on south—The plague of incompetents—Today our best day, +tomorrow to be better—Birthdays are promotions—I am just +beginning—Bernhardt, Davis, Edison—Moses begins at eighty—Too busy +to bury—Sympathy for the "sob squad"—Child sees worst days, not +best—Waiting for the second table—Better days on south—Overcoming +obstacles develops power—Go on south from principle, not praise—Doing +duty for the joy of it—Becoming the "Father of Waters"—Go on south +forever! +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +X. <A HREF="#chap10">GOING UP LIFE'S MOUNTAIN</A>—The defeats that are victories—Climbing +Mount Lowe—Getting above the clouds into the sunshine—Each day we +rise to larger vision—Getting above the night into the eternal +day—Going south is going upward +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap00"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Some Preliminary Remarks +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +LADIES and Gentlemen: +</P> + +<P> +I do not want to be seen in this lecture. I want to be heard. I am only +the delivery wagon. When the delivery wagon comes to your house, you +are not much interested in how it looks; you are interested in the +goods it brings you. You know some very good goods are sometimes +delivered to you in some very poor delivery wagons. +</P> + +<P> +So in this lecture, please do not pay any attention to the delivery +wagon—how much it squeaks and wheezes and rattles and wabbles. Do not +pay much attention to the wrappings and strings. Get inside to the +goods. +</P> + +<P> +Really, I believe the goods are good. I believe I am to recite to you +some of the multiplication table of life—not mine, not yours alone, +but everybody's. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Can Only Pull the Plug! +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Every audience has a different temperature, and that makes a lecture go +differently before every audience. The kind of an audience is just as +important as the kind of a lecture. A cold audience will make a good +lecture poor, while a warm audience will make a poor lecture good. +</P> + +<P> +Let me illustrate: +</P> + +<P> +When I was a boy we had a barrel of sorghum in the woodshed. When +mother wanted to make ginger-bread or cookies, she would send me to the +woodshed to get a bucket of sorghum from that barrel. +</P> + +<P> +Some warm September day I would pull the plug from the barrel and the +sorghum would fairly squirt into my bucket. Later in the fall when it +was colder, I would pull the plug but the sorghum would not squirt. It +would come out slowly and reluctantly, so that I would have to wait a +long while to get a little sorghum. And on some real cold winter day I +would pull the plug, but the sorghum would not run at all. It would +just look out at me. +</P> + +<P> +I discovered it was the temperature. +</P> + +<P> +I have brought a barrel of sorghum to this audience. The name of the +sorghum is "The University of Hard Knocks." I can only pull the plug. I +cannot make it run. That will depend upon the temperature of this +audience. You can have all you want of it, but to get it to running +freely, you will have to warm up. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Did You Bring a Bucket? +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +No matter how the sorghum runs, you have to have a bucket to get it. +How much any one gets out of a lecture depends also upon the size of +the bucket he brings to get it in. A big bucket can get filled at a +very small stream. A little bucket gets little at the greatest stream. +With no bucket you can get nothing at Niagara. +</P> + +<P> +That often explains why one person says a lecture is great, while the +next person says he got nothing out of it. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +What It's All About +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Here is a great mass of words and sentences and pictures to express two +or three simple little ideas of life, that our education is our growing +up from the Finite to the Infinite, and that it is done by our own +personal overcoming, and that we never finish it. +</P> + +<P> +Have you noticed that no sentence, nor a million sentences, can bound +life? Have you noticed that every statement does not quite cover it? No +statement, no library, can tell all about life. No success rule can +alone solve the problem. You must average it all and struggle up to a +higher vision. +</P> + +<P> +We are told that the stomach needs bulk as well as nutriment. It would +not prosper with the necessary elements in their condensed form. So +abstract truths in their lowest terms do not always promote mental +digestion like more bulk in the way of pictures and discussions of +these truths. Here is bulk as well as nutriment. +</P> + +<P> +If you get the feeling that the first personal pronoun is being +overworked, I remind you that this is more a confession than a lecture. +You cannot confess without referring to the confesser. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +To Everybody in My Audience +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +I like you because I am like you. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I believe in you because I believe in myself. We are all one family. I +believe in your Inside, not in your Outside, whoever you are, whatever +you are, wherever you are. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I believe in the Angel of Good inside every block of human marble. I +believe it must be carved out in The University of Hard Knocks. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I believe all this pride, vanity, selfishness, self-righteousness, +hypocrisy and human frailty are the Outside that must be chipped away. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I believe the Hard Knocks cannot injure the Angel, but can only reveal +it. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I hope you are getting your Hard Knocks. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I care little about your glorious or inglorious past. I care little +about your present. I care much about your future for that is to see +more of the Angel in you. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +The University of Hard Knocks +</H1> + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter I +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +The Books Are Bumps +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +THE greatest school is the University of Hard Knocks. Its books are +bumps. +</P> + +<P> +Every bump is a lesson. If we learn the lesson with one bump, we do not +get that bump again. We do not need it. We have traveled past it. They +do not waste the bumps. We get promoted to the next bump. +</P> + +<P> +But if we are "naturally bright," or there is something else the matter +with us, so that we do not learn the lesson of the bump we have just +gotten, then that bump must come back and bump us again. +</P> + +<P> +Some of us learn to go forward with a few bumps, but most of us are +"naturally bright" and have to be pulverized. +</P> + +<P> +The tuition in the University of Hard Knocks is not free. Experience is +the dearest teacher in the world. Most of us spend our lives in the +A-B-C's of getting started. +</P> + +<P> +We matriculate in the cradle. +</P> + +<P> +We never graduate. When we stop learning we are due for another bump. +</P> + +<P> +There are two kinds of people—wise people and fools. The fools are the +people who think they have graduated. +</P> + +<P> +The playground is all of God's universe. +</P> + +<P> +The university colors are black and blue. +</P> + +<P> +The yell is "ouch" repeated ad lib. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Need of the Bumps +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +When I was thirteen I knew a great deal more than I do now. There was a +sentence in my grammar that disgusted me. It was by some foreigner I +had never met. His name was Shakespeare. It was this: +</P> + +<P> +"Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and +venomous, Wears yet a priceless jewel in its head; And thus our life, +exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in running +brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Tongues in trees," I thought. "Trees can't talk! That man is crazy. +Books in running brooks! Why nobody never puts no books in no running +brooks. They'd get wet. And that sermons in stones! They get preachers +to preach sermons, and they build houses out of stones." +</P> + +<P> +I was sorry for Shakespeare—when I was thirteen. +</P> + +<P> +But I am happy today that I have traveled a little farther. I am happy +that I have begun to learn the lessons from the bumps. I am happy that +I am learning the sweet tho painful lessons of the University of +Adversity. I am happy that I am beginning to listen. For as I learn to +listen, I hear every tree speaking, every stone preaching and every +running brook the unfolding of a book. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +Children, I fear you will not be greatly interested in what is to +follow. Perhaps you are "naturally bright" and feel sorry for +Shakespeare. +</P> + +<P> +I was not interested when father and mother told me these things. I +knew they meant all right, but the world had moved since they were +young, and now two and two made seven, because we lived so much faster. +</P> + +<P> +It is so hard to tell young people anything. They know better. So they +have to get bumped just where we got bumped, to learn that two and two +always makes four, and "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also +reap." +</P> + +<P> +But if you will remember some of these things, they will feel like +poultices by and by when the bumps come. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Two Colleges +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +As we get bumped and battered on life's pathway, we discover we get two +kinds of bumps—bumps that we need and bumps that we do not need. +</P> + +<P> +Bumps that we bump into and bumps that bump into us. +</P> + +<P> +We discover, in other words, that The University of Hard Knocks has two +colleges—The College of Needless Knocks and The College of Needful +Knocks. +</P> + +<P> +We attend both colleges. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter II +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +The College of Needless Knocks +<BR> +The Bumps That We Bump Into +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +NEARLY all the bumps we get are Needless Knocks. +</P> + +<P> +There comes a vivid memory of one of my early Needless Knocks as I say +that. It was back at the time when I was trying to run our home to suit +myself. I sat in the highest chair in the family circle. I was three +years old and ready to graduate. +</P> + +<P> +That day they had the little joy and sunshine of the family in his +high-chair throne right up beside the dinner table. The coffee-pot was +within grabbing distance. +</P> + +<P> +I became enamored with that coffee-pot. I decided I needed that +coffee-pot in my business. I reached over to get the coffee-pot. Then I +discovered a woman beside me, my mother. She was the most meddlesome +woman I had ever known. I had not tried to do one thing in three years +that that woman had not meddled into. +</P> + +<P> +And that day when I wanted the coffee-pot—I did want it. Nobody knows +how I desired that coffee-pot. "One thing thou lackest," a +coffee-pot—I was reaching over to get it, that woman said, "Don't +touch that!" +</P> + +<P> +The longer I thought about it the more angry I became. What right has +that woman to meddle into my affairs all the time? I have stood this +petticoat tyranny three years, and it is time to stop it! +</P> + +<P> +I stopped it. I got the coffee-pot. I know I got the coffee-pot. I got +it unanimously. I know when I got it and I also know where I got it. I +got about a gallon of the reddest, hottest coffee a bad boy ever +spilled over himself. +</P> + +<P> +O-o-o-o-o-o! I can feel it yet! +</P> + +<P> +There were weeks after that when I was upholstered. They put +applebutter on me—and coal oil and white-of-an-egg and starch and +anything else the neighbors could think of. They would bring it over +and rub it on the little joy and sunshine of the family, who had gotten +temporarily eclipsed. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Teaching a Wilful Child +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +You see, my mother's way was to tell me and then let me do as I +pleased. She told me not to get the coffee-pot and then let me get it, +knowing that it would burn me. She would say, "Don't." Then she would +go on with her knitting and let me do as I pleased. +</P> + +<P> +Why don't mothers knit today? +</P> + +<P> +Mother would say, "Don't fall in the well." I could go and jump in the +well after that and she would not look at me. I do not argue that this +is the way to raise children, but I insist that this was the most kind +and effective way to rear one stubborn boy I know of. The neighbors and +the ladies' aid society often said my mother was cruel with that angel +child. But the neighbors did not know what kind of an insect mother was +trying to raise. Mother did know. She knew how stubborn and self-willed +I was. It came from father's "side of the house." +</P> + +<P> +Mother knew that to argue with me was to flatter me. Tell me, serve +notice upon me, and then let me go ahead and get my coffee-pot. That +was the quickest and kindest way to teach me. +</P> + +<P> +I learned very quickly that if I did not hear mother, and heed, a +coffee-pot would spill upon me. I cannot remember when I disobeyed my +mother that a coffee-pot of some kind did not spill upon me, and I got +my blisters. Mother did not inflict them. Mother was not much of an +inflicter. Father attended to that in the laboratory behind the +parsonage. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +"Stop, Look, Listen" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +And thru the bumps we learn that The College of Needless Knocks runs on +the same plan. The Voice of Wisdom says to each of us, "Child of +humanity, do right, walk in the right path. You will be wiser and +happier." The tongues in the trees, the books in the running brooks and +the sermons in the stones all repeat it. +</P> + +<P> +But we are not compelled to walk in the right path. We are free +im-moral agents. +</P> + +<P> +We get off the right path. We go down forbidden paths. They seem easier +and more attractive. It is so easy to go downward. We slide downward, +but we have to make effort to go upward. +</P> + +<P> +Anything that goes downward will run itself. Anything that goes upward +has to be pushed. +</P> + +<P> +And going down the wrong path, we get bumped harder and harder until we +listen. +</P> + +<P> +We are lucky if we learn the lesson with one bump. We are unlucky when +we get bumped twice in the same place, for it means we are making no +progress. +</P> + +<P> +When we are bumped, we should "stop, look, listen." "Safety first!" +</P> + +<P> +One time I paid a seeress two dollars to look into my honest palm. She +said, "It hain't your fault. You wasn't born right. You was born under +an unlucky star." You don't know how that comforted me. It wasn't my +fault—all my bumps and coffee-pots! I was just unlucky and it had to +be. +</P> + +<P> +How I had to be bumped to learn better! Now when I get bumped I try to +learn the lesson of the bump and find the right path, so that when I +see that bump coming again I can say, "Excuse me; it hath a familiar +look," and dodge it. +</P> + +<P> +The seeress is the soothing syrup for mental infants. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Blind Man's Fine Sight +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The other day I watched a blind man go down the aisle of the car to get +off the train. Did you ever study the walk of a blind man? He +"pussyfooted" it along so carefully. He bumped his hand against a seat. +Then he did what every blind man does, he lifted his hand higher and +didn't bump any more seats. +</P> + +<P> +I looked down my nose. "Ralph Parlette," I said to myself, "when are +you going to learn to see as well as that blind man? He learns his +lesson with one bump, and you have to go bumping into the same things +day after day and wonder why you have so much 'bad luck'!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Are You Going Up or Down? +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Let me repeat, things that go downward will run themselves. Things that +go upward have to be pushed. Going upward is overcoming. Notice that +churches, schools, lyceums, chautauquas, reform movements—things that +go upward—never run themselves. They must be pushed all the time. +</P> + +<P> +And so with our own lives. Real living is conscious effort to go upward +to larger life. +</P> + +<P> +If you are making no effort in your life, if you are moving in the line +of least resistance, depend upon it you are going downward. Look out +for the bumps! +</P> + +<P> +Look over your community. Note the handful of brave, faithful, +unselfish souls who are carrying the community burdens and pushing +upward. Note the multitude making little or no effort, and even getting +in the way of the pushers. +</P> + +<P> +Majorities do not rule. Majorities never have ruled. It is the brave +minority of thinking, self-sacrificing people that decides the tomorrow +of communities that go upward. Majorities are not willing to make the +effort to rule themselves. They are content to drift and be amused and +follow false gods that promise something for nothing. They must be +led—sometimes driven—by minorities. +</P> + +<P> +People are like sheep. The shepherd can lead them to heaven—or to hell. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Bumping the Prodigals +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Human life is the story of the Prodigal Son. We look over the fence of +goodness into the mystery of the great unknown world beyond and in that +unknown realm we fondly imagine is happiness. +</P> + +<P> +Down the great white way of the world go the million prodigals, seeking +happiness where nobody ever found happiness. Their days fill up with +disappointment, their vision becomes dulled. They become anaemic +feeding upon the husks. +</P> + +<P> +They just must get their coffee-pot! +</P> + +<P> +How they must be bumped to think upon their ways. Every time we do +wrong we get a Needless Knock. Every time! We may not always get bumped +on the outside, but we always get bumped on the inside. A bump on the +conscience is worse than a bump on the "noodle." +</P> + +<P> +"I can do wrong and not get bumped. I have no feelings upon the +subject," somebody says, You can? You poor old sinner, you have bumped +your conscience numb. That is why you have no feelings on the subject. +You have pounded your soul into a jelly. You don't know how badly you +are hurt. +</P> + +<P> +How the old devil works day and night to keep people amused and doped +so that they will not think upon their ways! How he keeps the music and +the dazzle going so they will not see they are bumping themselves! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Consider the Sticky Flypaper +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Did you ever watch a fly get his Needless Knocks on the sticky flypaper? +</P> + +<P> +The last thing Mamma Fly said as Johnny went off to the city was, +"Remember, son, to stay away from the sticky flypaper. That is where +your poor dear father was lost." And Johnny Fly remembers for several +minutes. But when he sees all the smart young flies of his set go over +to the flypaper, he goes over, too. He gazes down at his face in the +stickiness. "Ah! how pretty I am! This sticky flypaper shows me up +better than anything at home. What a fine place to skate. Just see how +close I can fly over it and not get stuck a bit. Mother is such a silly +old worryer. She means all right, of course, but she isn't up-to-date. +We young set of modern flies are naturally bright and have so many more +advantages. You can't catch us. They were too strict with me back home." +</P> + +<P> +You see Johnny fly back and forth and have the time of his naturally +bright young life. Afterwhile, tho, he stubs his toe and lands in the +stickiness. "Well, well, how nice this is on the feet, so soft and +soothing!" +</P> + +<P> +First he puts one foot down and pulls it out. That is a lot of fun. It +shows he is not a prisoner. He is a strong-minded fly. He can quit it +or play in it, just as he pleases. After while he puts two feet down in +the stickiness. It is harder to pull them out. Then he puts three down +and puts down a few more trying to pull them out. +</P> + +<P> +"Really," says Johnny Fly bowing to his comrades also stuck around him, +"really, boys, you'll have to excuse me now. Good-bye!" But he doesn't +pull loose. He feels tired and he sits down in the sticky flypaper. It +is a fine place to stick around. All his young set of flies are around +him. He does like the company. They all feel the same way—they can +play in the sticky flypaper or let it alone, just as they please, for +they are strong-minded flies. They have another drink and sing, "We +won't go home till morning." +</P> + +<P> +Johnny may get home, but he will leave a wing or a leg. Most of them +stay. They just settle down into the stickiness with sleeping sickness. +</P> + +<P> +The tuition in The College of Needless Knocks is very high indeed! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +"Removed" or "Knocked Out"? +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The man who goes to jail ought to congratulate himself if he is guilty. +It is the man who does not get discovered who is to be pitied, for he +must get some more knocks. +</P> + +<P> +The world loves to write resolutions of respect. How often we write, +"Whereas, it has pleased an all-wise Providence to remove," when we +might reasonably ask whether the victim was "removed" or merely +"knocked out." +</P> + +<P> +There is a good deal of suicide charged up to Providence. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter III +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +The College of Needful Knocks +<BR> +The Bumps That Bump Into Us +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +BUT occasionally all of us get bumps that we do not bump into. They +bump into us. They are the guideboard knocks that point us to the +higher pathway. +</P> + +<P> +You were bumped yesterday or years ago. Maybe the wound has not yet +healed. Maybe you think it never will heal. You wondered why you were +bumped. Some of you in this audience are just now wondering why. +</P> + +<P> +You were doing right—doing just the best you knew how—and yet some +blow came crushing upon you and gave you cruel pain. +</P> + +<P> +It broke your heart. You have had your heart broken. I have had my +heart broken more times than I care to talk about now. Your home was +darkened, your plans were wrecked, you thought you had nothing more to +live for. +</P> + +<P> +I am like you. I have had more trouble than anybody else. I have never +known anyone who had not had more trouble than anyone else. +</P> + +<P> +But I am discovering that life only gets good after we have been killed +a few times. Each death is a larger birth. +</P> + +<P> +We all must learn, if we have not already learned, that these blows are +lessons in The College of Needful Knocks. They point upward to a higher +path than we have been traveling. +</P> + +<P> +In other words, we are raw material. You know what raw material +is—material that needs more Needful Knocks to make it more useful and +valuable. +</P> + +<P> +The clothing we wear, the food we eat, the house we live in, all have +to have the Needful Knocks to become useful. And so does humanity need +the same preparation for greater usefulness. +</P> + +<P> +I should like to know every person in this audience. But the ones I +should most appreciate knowing are the ones who have known the most of +these knocks—who have faced the great crises of life and have been +tried in the crucibles of affliction. For I am learning that these +lives are the gold tried in the fire. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Sorrows of the Piano +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +See the piano on this stage? Good evening, Mr. Piano. I am glad to see +you. You are so shiny, beautiful, valuable and full of music, if +properly treated. +</P> + +<P> +Do you know how you got upon this stage, Mr. Piano? You were bumped +here. This is no reflection upon the janitor. You became a piano by the +Needful Knocks. +</P> + +<P> +I can see you back in your callow beginnings, when you were just a +tree—a tall, green tree. You were green! Only green things grow. Did +you get the meaning of that, children? I hope you are green. +</P> + +<P> +There you stood in the forest, a perfectly good, green young tree. You +got your lessons, combed your hair, went to Sunday school and were the +best young tree you could be. +</P> + +<P> +That is why you were bumped—because you were good! There came a man +into the woods with an ax, and he looked for the best trees there to +bump. He bumped you—hit you with the ax! How it hurt you! And how +unjust it was! He kept on hitting you. "The operation was just +terrible." Finally you fell, crushed, broken, bleeding. +</P> + +<P> +It is a very sad story. They took you all bumped and bleeding to the +sawmill and they bumped and ripped you more. They cut you in pieces and +hammered you day by day. +</P> + +<P> +They did not bump the little, crooked, dissipated, cigaret-stunted +trees. They were not worth bumping. +</P> + +<P> +But shake, Mr. Piano. That is why you are on this stage. You were +bumped here. All the beauty, harmony and value were bumped into you. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Sufferings of the Red Mud +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +One day I was up the Missabe road about a hundred miles north of +Duluth, Minnesota, and came to a hole in the ground. It was a big +hole—about a half-mile of hole. There were steam-shovels at work +throwing out of that hole what I thought was red mud. +</P> + +<P> +"Kind sir, why are they throwing that red mud out of that hole?" I +asked a native. +</P> + +<P> +"That hain't red mud. That's iron ore, an' it's the best iron ore in +the world." +</P> + +<P> +"What is it worth?" +</P> + +<P> +"It hain't worth nothin' here; that's why they're movin' it away." +</P> + +<P> +There's red mud around every community that "hain't worth nothin'" +until you move it—send it to college or somewhere. +</P> + +<P> +Not very long after this, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I saw some of +this same red mud. It had been moved over the Great Lakes and the rails +to what they call a blast furnace, the technological name of which +being The College of Needful Knocks for Red Mud. +</P> + +<P> +I watched this red mud matriculate into a great hopper with limestone, +charcoal and other textbooks. Then they corked it up and school began. +They roasted it. It is a great thing to be roasted. +</P> + +<P> +When it was done roasting they stopped. Have you noticed that they +always stop when anything is done roasting? If we are yet getting +roasted, perhaps we are not done! +</P> + +<P> +Then they pulled the plug out of the bottom of the college and held +promotion exercises. The red mud squirted out into the sand. It was not +red mud now, because it had been roasted. It was a freshman—pig iron, +worth more than red mud, because it had been roasted. +</P> + +<P> +Some of the pig iron went into another department, a big teakettle, +where it was again roasted, and now it came out a sophomore—steel, +worth more than pig iron. +</P> + +<P> +Some of the sophomore steel went up into another grade where it was +roasted yet again and rolled thin into a junior. Some of that went on +up and up, at every step getting more pounding and roasting and +affliction. +</P> + +<P> +It seemed as tho I could hear the suffering red mud crying out, "O, why +did they take me away from my happy hole-in-the-ground? Why do they +pound me and break my heart? I have been good and faithful. O, why do +they roast me? O, I'll never get over this!" +</P> + +<P> +But after they had given it a diploma—a pricemark telling how much it +had been roasted—they took it proudly all over the world, labeled +"Made in America." They hung it in show windows, they put it in glass +cases. Many people admired it and said, "Isn't that fine work!" They +paid much money for it now. They paid the most money for what had been +roasted the most. +</P> + +<P> +If a ton of that red mud had become watch-springs or razor-blades, the +price had gone up into thousands of dollars. +</P> + +<P> +My friends, you and I are the raw material, the green trees, the red +mud. The Needful Knocks are necessary to make us serviceable. +</P> + +<P> +Every bump is raising our price. Every bump is disclosing a path to a +larger life. The diamond and the chunk of soft coal are exactly the +same material, say the chemists. But the diamond has gone to The +College of Needful Knocks more than has her crude sister of the +coal-scuttle. +</P> + +<P> +There is no human diamond that has not been crystallized in the +crucibles of affliction. There is no gold that has not been refined in +the fire. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Cripple Taught by Bumps +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +One evening when I was trying to lecture in a chautauqua tent in +Illinois, a crippled woman was wheeled into the tent and brought right +down to the foot of the platform. The subject was The University of +Hard Knocks. Presently the cripple's face was shining brighter than the +footlights. +</P> + +<P> +She knew about the knocks! +</P> + +<P> +Afterwards I went to her. "Little lady, I want to thank you for coming +here. I have the feeling that I spoke the words, but you are the +lecture itself." +</P> + +<P> +What a smile she gave me! "Yes, I know about the hard knocks," she +said. "I have been in pain most of my life. But I have learned all that +I know sitting in this chair. I have learned to be patient and kind and +loving and brave." +</P> + +<P> +They told me this crippled woman was the sweetest-spirited, best-loved +person in the town. +</P> + +<P> +But her mother petulantly interrupted me. She had wheeled the cripple +into the tent. She was tall and stately. She was well-gowned. She lived +in one of the finest homes in the city. She had everything that money +could buy. But her money seemed unable to buy the frown from her face. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Lecture Man," she said, "why is everybody interested in my +daughter and nobody interested in me? Why is my daughter happy and why +am I not happy? My daughter is always happy and she hasn't a single +thing to make her happy. I am not happy. I have not been happy for +years. Why am I not happy?" +</P> + +<P> +What would you have said? Just on the spur of the moment—I said, +"Madam, I don't want to be unkind, but I really think the reason you +are not happy is that you haven't been bumped enough." +</P> + +<P> +I discover when I am unhappy and selfish and people don't use me right, +I need another bump. +</P> + +<P> +The cripple girl had traveled ahead of her jealous mother. For +selfishness cripples us more than paralysis. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Schools of Sympathy +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +When I see a long row of cots in a hospital or sanitarium, I want to +congratulate the patients lying there. They are learning the precious +lessons of patience, sympathy, love, faith and courage. They are +getting the education in the humanities the world needs more than +tables of logarithms. Only those who have suffered can sympathize. They +are to become a precious part of our population. The world needs them +more than libraries and foundations. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Silver Lining +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +There is no backward step in life. Whatever experiences come to us are +truly new chapters of our education if we are willing to learn them. +</P> + +<P> +We think this is true of the good things that come to us, but we do not +want to think so of the bad things. Yet we grow more in lean years than +in fat years. In fat years we put it in our pockets. In lean years we +put it in our hearts. Material and spiritual prosperity do not often +travel hand-in-hand. When we become materially very prosperous, so many +of us begin to say, "Is not this Babylon that I have builded?" And +about that time there comes some handwriting on the wall and a bump to +save us. +</P> + +<P> +Think of what might happen to you today. Your home might burn. We don't +want your home to burn, but somebody's home is burning just now. A +conflagration might sweep your town from the map. Your business might +wreck. Your fortune might be swept away. Your good name might be +tarnished. Bereavement might take from you the one you love most. +</P> + +<P> +You would never know how many real friends you have until then. But +look out! Some of your friends would say, "I am so sorry for you. You +are down and out." Do not believe that you are down and out, for it is +not true. The old enemy of humanity wants you to believe you are down +and out. He wants you to sympathize with yourself. You are never down +and out! +</P> + +<P> +The truth is, another chapter of your real education has been opened. +Will you read the lesson of the Needful Knocks? +</P> + +<P> +A great conflagration, a cyclone, a railroad wreck, an epidemic or +other public disaster brings sympathy, bravery, brotherhood and love in +its wake. +</P> + +<P> +There is a silver lining to every hard knocks cloud. +</P> + +<P> +Out of the trenches of the Great War come nations chastened by +sacrifice and purged of their dross. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter IV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"Shake The Barrel" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +How We Decide Our Destinies +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +NOW as we learn the lessons of the Needless and the Needful Knocks, we +get wisdom, understanding, happiness, strength, success and greatness. +We go up in life. We become educated. Let me bring you a picture of it. +</P> + +<P> +One day the train stopped at a station to take water. Beside the track +was a grocery with a row of barrels of apples in front. There was one +barrel full of big, red, fat apples. I rushed over and got a sack of +the big, red, fat apples. Later as the train was under way, I looked in +the sack and discovered there was not a big, red, fat apple there. +</P> + +<P> +All I could figure out was that there was only one layer of the big, +red, fat apples on the top, and the groceryman, not desiring to spoil +his sign, had reached down under the top layer. He must have reached to +the bottom, for he gave me the worst mess of runts and windfalls I ever +saw in one sack. The things I said about the grocery business must have +kept the recording angel busy. +</P> + +<P> +Then I calmed down. Did the groceryman do that on purpose? Does the +groceryman ever put the big apples on top and the little ones down +underneath? +</P> + +<P> +Do you? Is there a groceryman in the audience? +</P> + +<P> +Man of sorrows, you have been slandered. It never occurred to me until +that day on the train that the groceryman does not put the big ones on +top and the little ones down underneath. He does not need to do it. It +does itself. It is the shaking of the barrel that pushes the big ones +up and the little ones down. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Shake to Their Places +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +You laugh? You don't believe that? Maybe your roads are so good and +smooth that things do not shake on the road to town. But back in the +Black Swamp of Ohio we had corduroy roads. Did you ever see a corduroy +road? It was a layer of logs in the mud. Riding over it was the poetry +of motion! The wagon "hit the high spots." And as I hauled a wagon-bed +full of apples to the cider-mill over a corduroy road, the apples +sorted out by the jolting. The big apples would try to get to the top. +The little, runty apples would try to hold a mass meeting at the bottom. +</P> + +<P> +I saw that for thirty years before I saw it. Did you ever notice how +long you have to see most things before you see them? I saw that when I +played marbles. The big marbles would shake to the top of my pocket and +the little ones would rattle down to the bottom. +</P> + +<P> +You children try that tomorrow. Do not wait thirty years to learn that +the big ones shake up and the little ones shake down. Put some big ones +and some little things of about the same density in a box or other +container and shake them. You will see the larger things shake upward +and the smaller shake downward. You will see every thing shake to the +place its size determines. A little larger one shakes a little higher, +and a little smaller one a little lower. +</P> + +<P> +When things find their place, you can shake on till doomsday, but you +cannot change the place of one of the objects. +</P> + +<P> +Mix them up again and shake. Watch them all shake back as they were +before, the largest on top and the smallest at the bottom. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Lectures in Cans +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +At this place the lecturer exhibits a glass jar more than half-filled +with small white beans and a few walnuts. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Let us try that right on the platform. Here is a glass jar and inside +of it you see two sizes of objects—a lot of little white beans and +some walnuts. You will pardon me for bringing such a simple and crude +apparatus before you in a lecture, but I ask your forbearance. I am +discovering that we can hear faster thru the eye than thru the ear. I +want to make this so vivid that you will never forget it, and I do not +want these young people to live thirty years before they see it. +</P> + +<P> +If there are sermons in stones, there must be lectures in cans. This is +a canned lecture. Let the can talk to you awhile. +</P> + +<P> +You note as I shake the jar the little beans quickly settle down and +the big walnuts shake up. Not one bean asks, "Which way do I go?" Not +one walnut asks, "Which way do I go?" Each one automatically goes the +right way. The little ones go down and the big ones go up. +</P> + +<P> +Note that I mix them all up and then shake. Note that they arrange +themselves just as they were before. +</P> + +<P> +Suppose those objects could talk. I think I hear that littlest bean +down in the bottom saying, "Help me! Help me! I am so unfortunate and +low down. I never had no chance like them big ones up there. Help me +up." +</P> + +<P> +I say, "Yes, you little bean, I'll help you." So I lift him up to the +top. See! I have boosted him. I have uplifted him. +</P> + +<P> +See, the can shakes. Back to the bottom shakes the little bean. And I +hear him say, "King's ex! I slipped. Try that again and I'll stay on +top." So I put him back again on top. +</P> + +<P> +The can shakes. The little bean again shakes back to the bottom. He is +too small to stay up. He cannot stand prosperity. +</P> + +<P> +Then I hear Little Bean say, "Well, if I cannot get to the top, you +make them big ones come down. Give every one an equal chance." +</P> + +<P> +So I say, "Yes, sir, Little Bean. Here, you big ones on top, get down. +You Big Nuts get right down there on a level with Little Bean!" And you +see I put them down. +</P> + +<P> +But I shake the can, and the big ones go right back to the top with the +same shakes that send the little ones back to the bottom. +</P> + +<P> +There is only one way for those objects to change their place in the +can. Lifting them up or putting them down will not do it. But change +their size! +</P> + +<P> +Equality of position demands quality of size. Let the little one grow +bigger and he will shake up. Let the big one grow smaller and he will +shake down. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Shaking Barrel of Life +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +O, fellow apples! We are all apples in the barrel of life on the way to +the market place of the future. It is a corduroy road and the barrel +shakes all the time. +</P> + +<P> +In the barrel are big apples, little apples, freckled apples, speckled +apples, green apples, and dried apples. A bad boy on the front row +shouted the other night, "And rotten apples!" +</P> + +<P> +In other words, all the people of the world are in the great barrel of +life. That barrel is shaking all the time. Every community is shaking, +every place is shaking. The offices, the shops, the stores, the +schools, the pulpits, the homes—every place where we live or work is +shaking. Life is a constant survival of the fittest. +</P> + +<P> +The same law that shakes the little ones down and the big ones up in +that can is shaking every person to the place he fits in the barrel of +life. It is sending small people down and great people up. +</P> + +<P> +And do you not see that we are very foolish when we want to be lifted +up to some big place, or when we want some big person to be put down to +some little place? We are foolishly trying to overturn the eternal law +of life. +</P> + +<P> +We shake right back to the places our size determines. We must get +ready for places before we can get them and keep them. +</P> + +<P> +The very worst thing that can happen to anybody is to be artificially +boosted up into some place where he rattles. +</P> + +<P> +I hear a good deal about destiny. Some people seem to think destiny is +something like a train and if we do not get to the depot in time our +train of destiny will run off and leave us, and we will have no +destiny. There is destiny—that jar. +</P> + +<P> +If we are small we shall have a small destiny. If we are great we shall +have a great destiny. We cannot dodge our destiny. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Kings and Queens of Destiny +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The objects in that jar cannot change their size. But thank God, you +and I are not helpless victims of blind fate. We are not creatures of +chance. We have it in our hands to decide our destiny as we grow or +refuse to grow. +</P> + +<P> +We shake down if we become small; we shake up if we become great. And +when we have reached the place our size determines, we stay there so +long as we stay that size. +</P> + +<P> +If we wish to change our place, we must first change our size. If we +wish to go down, we must grow smaller and we shall shake down. If we +wish to go up, we must grow greater, and we shall shake up. +</P> + +<P> +Each person is doing one of three things consciously or unconsciously. +</P> + +<P> +1. He is holding his place. +</P> + +<P> +2. He is going down. +</P> + +<P> +3. He is going up. +</P> + +<P> +In order to hold his place he must hold his size. He must fill the +place. If he shrinks up he will rattle. Nobody can stay long where he +rattles. Nature abhors a rattler. He shakes down to a smaller place. +</P> + +<P> +In order to stay the same size he must grow enough each day to supply +the loss by evaporation. Evaporation is going steadily on in lives as +well as in liquids. If we are not growing any, we are rattling. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +We Compel Promotion +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +So you young people should keep in mind that you will shake into the +places you fit. And when you are in your places—in stores, shops, +offices or elsewhere, if you want to hold your place you must keep +growing enough to keep it tightly filled. +</P> + +<P> +If you want a greater place, you simply grow greater and they cannot +keep you down. You do not ask for promotion, you compel promotion. You +grow greater, enlarge your dimensions, develop new capabilities, do +more than you are paid to do—overfill your place, and you shake up to +a greater place. +</P> + +<P> +I believe if I were so fortunate or unfortunate as to have a number of +people working for me, I would have a jar in my office filled with +various sizes of objects. When an employee would come into the office +and say, "Isn't it about time I was getting a raise?" I would say, "Go +shake the jar, Charlie. That is the way you get raised. As you grow +greater you won't need to ask to be promoted. You will promote +yourself." +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +"Good Luck" and "Bad Luck" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +This jar tells me so much about luck. I have noted that the lucky +people shake up and the unlucky people shake down. That is, the lucky +people grow great and the unlucky people shrivel and rattle. +</P> + +<P> +Notice as I bump this jar. Two things happened. The little ones shook +down and the big ones shook up. The bump that was bad luck to the +little ones was good luck to the big ones. The same bump was both good +luck and bad luck. +</P> + +<P> +Luck does not depend upon the direction of the bump, but upon the size +of the bump-ee! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The "Lucky" One +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +So everywhere you look you see the barrel sorting people according to +size. Every business concern can tell you stories like that of the +Chicago house where a number of young ladies worked. Some of them had +been there for a long time. There came a raw, green Dutch girl from the +country. It was her first office experience, and she got the bottom job. +</P> + +<P> +The other girls poked fun at her and played jokes upon her because she +was so green. +</P> + +<P> +Do you remember that green things grow? +</P> + +<P> +"Is not she the limit?" they oft spake one to another. She was. She +made many blunders. But it is now recalled that she never made the same +blunder twice. She learned the lesson with one helping to the bumps. +</P> + +<P> +And she never "got done." When she had finished her work, the work she +had been put at, she would discover something else that ought to be +done, and she would go right on working, contrary to the rules of the +union! Without being told, mind you. She had that rare faculty the +world is bidding for—initiative. +</P> + +<P> +The other girls "got done." When they had finished the work they had +been put at, they would wait—O, so patiently they would wait—to be +told what to do next. +</P> + +<P> +Within three months every other girl in that office was asking +questions of the little Dutch girl. She had learned more about business +in three months than the others had learned in all the time they had +been there. Nothing ever escaped her. She had become the most capable +girl in the office. +</P> + +<P> +The barrel did the rest. Today she is giving orders to all of them, for +she is the office superintendent. +</P> + +<P> +The other girls feel hurt about it. They will tell you in confidence +that it was the rankest favoritism ever known. "There was nothing fair +about it. Jennie ought to have been made superintendent. Jennie had +been here four years." +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The "Unlucky" One +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The other day in a paper-mill I was standing beside a long machine +making shiny super-calendered paper. I asked the man working there some +questions about the machine, which he answered fairly well. Then I +asked him about a machine in the next room. He said, "I don't know +nothing about it, boss, I don't work in there." +</P> + +<P> +I asked him about another process, and he replied, "I don't know +nothing about it, I never worked in there." I asked him about the +pulpmill. He replied, "No, I don't know nothing about that, neither. I +don't work in there." And he did not betray the least desire to know +anything about anything. +</P> + +<P> +"How long have you worked here?" +</P> + +<P> +"About twelve years." +</P> + +<P> +Going out of the building, I asked the foreman, "Do you see that man +over there at the supercalendered machine?" pointing to the man who +didn't know. "Is he a human being?" +</P> + +<P> +The foreman's face clouded. "I hate to talk to you about that man. He +is one of the kindest-hearted men we ever had in the works, but we've +got to let him go. We're afraid he'll break the machine. He isn't +interested, does not learn, doesn't try to learn." +</P> + +<P> +So he had begun to rattle. Nobody can stay where he rattles. It is grow +or go. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Life's Barrel the Leveler +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +So books could be filled with just such stories of how people have gone +up and down. You may have noticed two brothers start with the same +chance, and presently notice that one is going up and the other is +going down. +</P> + +<P> +Some of us begin life on the top branches, right in the sunshine of +popular favor, and get our names in the blue-book at the start. Some of +us begin down in the shade on the bottom branches, and we do not even +get invited. We often become discouraged as we look at the +top-branchers, and we say, "O, if I only had his chance! If I were only +up there I might amount to something. But I am too low down." +</P> + +<P> +We can grow. Everybody can grow. +</P> + +<P> +And afterwhile we are all in the barrel of life, shaken and bumped +about. There the real people do not often ask us, "On what branch of +that tree did you grow?" But they often inquire, "Are you big enough to +fill this place?" +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Fatal Rattle! +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Now life is mainly routine. You and I and everybody must go on doing +pretty much the same things over and over. Every day we appear to have +about the same round of duties. +</P> + +<P> +But if we let life become routine, we are shaking down. The very +routine of life must every day flash a new attractiveness. We must be +learning new things and discovering new joys in our daily routine or we +become unhappy. If we go on doing just the same things in the same way +day after day, thinking the same thoughts, our eyes glued to +precedents—just turning round and round in our places and not growing +any, pretty soon we become mere machines. We wear smaller. The joy and +juice go out of our lives. We shrivel and rattle. +</P> + +<P> +The success, joy and glory of life are in learning, growing, going +forward and upward. That is the only way to hold our place. +</P> + +<P> +The farmer must be learning new things about farming to hold his place +this progressive age as a farmer. The merchant must be growing into a +greater, wiser merchant to hold his place among his competitors. The +minister must be getting larger visions of the ministry as he goes back +into the same old pulpit to keep on filling it. The teacher must be +seeing new possibilities in the same old schoolroom. The mother must be +getting a larger horizon in her homemaking. +</P> + +<P> +We only live as we grow and learn. When anybody stays in the same place +year after year and fills it, he does not rattle. +</P> + +<P> +Unless the place is a grave! +</P> + +<P> +I shiver as I see the pages of school advertisements in the journals +labeled "Finishing Schools," and "A Place to Finish Your Child." I know +the schools generally mean all right, but I fear the students will get +the idea they are being finished, which finishes them. We never finish +while we live. A school finishing is a commencement, not an end-ment. +</P> + +<P> +I am sorry for the one who says, "I know all there is to know about +that. You can't tell me anything about that." He is generally rattling. +</P> + +<P> +The greater and wiser the man, the more anxious he is to be told. +</P> + +<P> +I am sorry for the one who struts around saying, "I own the job. They +can't get along without me." For I feel that they are getting ready to +get along without him. That noise you hear is the death-rattle in his +throat. +</P> + +<P> +Big business men keep their ears open for rattles in their machinery. +</P> + +<P> +I am sorry for the man, community or institution that spends much time +pointing backward with pride and talking about "in my day!" For it is +mostly rattle. The live one's "my day" is today and tomorrow. The dead +one's is yesterday. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +We Must Get Ready to Get +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +We young people come up into life wanting great places. I would not +give much for a young person (or any other person) who does not want a +great place. I would not give much for anybody who does not look +forward to greater and better things tomorrow. +</P> + +<P> +We often think the way to get a great place is just to go after it and +get it. If we do not have pull enough, get some more pull. Get some +more testimonials. +</P> + +<P> +We think if we could only get into a great place we would be great. But +unless we have grown as great as the place we would be a great joke, +for we would rattle. And when we have grown as great as the place, that +sized place will generally come seeking us. +</P> + +<P> +We do not become great by getting into a great place, any more than a +boy becomes a man by getting into his father's boots. He is in great +boots, but he rattles. He must grow greater feet before he gets greater +boots. But he must get the feet before he gets the boots. +</P> + +<P> +We must get ready for things before we get them. +</P> + +<P> +All life is preparation for greater things. +</P> + +<P> +Moses was eighty years getting ready to do forty years work. The Master +was thirty years getting ready to do three years work. So many of us +expect to get ready in "four easy lessons by mail." +</P> + +<P> +We can be a pumpkin in one summer, with the accent on the "punk." We +can be a mushroom in a day, with the accent on the "mush." But we +cannot become an oak that way. +</P> + +<P> +The world is not greatly impressed by testimonials. The man who has the +most testimonials generally needs them most to keep him from rattling. +A testimonial so often becomes a crutch. +</P> + +<P> +Many a man writes a testimonial to get rid of somebody. "Well, I hope +it will do him some good. Anyhow, I have gotten him off my hands." I +heard a Chicago superintendent say to his foreman, "Give him a +testimonial and fire him!" +</P> + +<P> +It is dangerous to overboost people, for the higher you boost them the +farther they will fall. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Menace of the Press-Notice +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Now testimonials and press-notices very often serve useful ends. In +lyceum work, in teaching, in very many lines, they are often useful to +introduce a stranger. A letter of introduction is useful. A diploma, a +degree, a certificate, a license, are but different kinds of +testimonials. +</P> + +<P> +The danger is that the hero of them may get to leaning upon them. Then +they become a mirror for his vanity instead of a monitor for his +vitality. +</P> + +<P> +Most testimonials and press-notices are frank flatteries. They magnify +the good points and say little as possible about the bad ones. I look +back over my lyceum life and see that I hindered my progress by reading +my press-notices instead of listening to the verdict of my audiences. I +avoided frank criticism. It would hurt me. Whenever I heard an adverse +criticism, I would go and read a few press-notices. "There, I am all +right, for this clipping says I am the greatest ever, and should he +return, no hall would be able to contain the crowd." +</P> + +<P> +And my vanity bump would again rise. +</P> + +<P> +Alas! How often I have learned that when I did return the hall that was +filled before was entirely too big for the audience! The editors of +America—God bless them! They are always trying to boost a home +enterprise—not for the sake of the imported attraction but for the +sake of the home folks who import it. +</P> + +<P> +We must read people, not press-notices. +</P> + +<P> +When you get to the place where you can stand aside and "see yourself +go by"—when you can keep still and see every fibre of you and your +work mercilessly dissected, shake hands with yourself and rejoice, for +the kingdom of success is yours. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Artificial Uplift +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +There are so many loving, sincere, foolish, cruel uplift movements in +the land. They spring up, fail, wail, disappear, only to be succeeded +by twice as many more. They fail because instead of having the barrel +do the uplifting, they try to do it with a derrick. +</P> + +<P> +The victims of the artificial uplift cannot stay uplifted. They rattle +back, and "the last estate of that man is worse than the first." +</P> + +<P> +You cannot uplift a beggar by giving him alms. You are using the +derrick. We must feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but that is not +helping them, that is propping them. The beggar who asks you to help +him does not want to be helped. He wants to be propped. He wants you to +license him and professionalize him as a beggar. +</P> + +<P> +You can only help a man to help himself. Help him to grow. You cannot +help many people, for there are not many people willing to be helped on +the inside. Not many willing to grow up. +</P> + +<P> +When Peter and John went up to the temple they found the lame beggar +sitting at the gate Beautiful. Every day the beggar had been "helped." +Every day as they laid him at the gate people would pass thru the gate +and see him. He would say, "Help me!" "Poor man," they would reply, +"you are in a bad fix. Here is help," and they would throw him some +money. +</P> + +<P> +And so every day that beggar got to be more of a beggar. The public +"helped" him to be poorer in spirit, more helpless and a more hopeless +cripple. No doubt he belonged after a few days of the "helping" to the +Jerusalem Beggars' Union and carried his card. Maybe he paid a +commission for such a choice beggars' beat. +</P> + +<P> +But Peter really helped him. "Silver and gold have I none; but such as +I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and +walk." +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Fix the People, Not the Barrel +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +I used to say, "Nobody uses me right. Nobody gives me a chance." But if +chances had been snakes, I would have been bitten a hundred times a +day. We need oculists, not opportunities. +</P> + +<P> +I used to work on the "section" and get a dollar and fifteen cents a +day. I rattled there. I did not earn my dollar fifteen. I tried to see +how little I could do and look like I was working. I was the Artful +Dodger of Section Sixteen. When the whistle would blow—O, joyful +sound!—I would leave my pick hang right up in the air. I would not +bring it down again for a soulless corporation. +</P> + +<P> +I used to wonder as I passed Bill Barlow's bank on the way down to the +section-house, why I was not president of that bank. I wondered why I +was not sitting upon one of those mahogany seats instead of pumping a +handcar. I was naturally bright. I used to say "If the rich wasn't +getting richer and the poor poorer, I'd be president of a bank." +</P> + +<P> +Did you ever hear that line of conversation? It generally comes from +somebody who rattles where he is. +</P> + +<P> +I am so glad now that I did not get to be president of the bank. They +are glad, too! I would have rattled down in about fifteen minutes, down +to the peanut row, for I was only a peanut. Remember, the hand-car job +is just as honorable as the bank job, but as I was not faithful over a +few things, I would have rattled over many things. +</P> + +<P> +The fairy books love to tell about some clodhopper suddenly enchanted +up into a king. But life's good fairies see to it that the clodhopper +is enchanted into readiness for kingship before he lands upon the +throne. +</P> + +<P> +The only way to rule others is to learn to rule ourself. +</P> + +<P> +I used to say, "Just wait till I get to Congress." I think they are all +waiting! "I'll fix things. I'll pass laws requiring all apples to be +the same size. Yes, I'll pass laws to turn the barrel upside down, so +the little ones will be on the top and the big ones will be at the +bottom." +</P> + +<P> +But I had not seen that it wouldn't matter which end was the top, the +big ones would shake right up to it and the little ones would shake +down to the bottom. +</P> + +<P> +The little man has the chance now, just as fast as he grows. You cannot +fix the barrel. You can only fix the people inside the barrel. +</P> + +<P> +Have you ever noticed that the man who is not willing to fix himself, +is the one who wants to get the most laws passed to fix other people? +He wants something for nothing. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +That Cruel Fate +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +O, I am so glad I did not get the things I wanted at the time I wanted +them! They would have been coffee-pots. Thank goodness, we do not get +the coffee-pot until we are ready to handle it. +</P> + +<P> +Today you and I have things we couldn't have yesterday. We just wanted +them yesterday. O, how we wanted them! But a cruel fate would not let +us have them. Today we have them. They come to us as naturally today, +and we see it is because we have grown ready for them, and the barrel +has shaken us up to them. +</P> + +<P> +Today you and I want things beyond our reach. O, how we want them! But +a cruel fate will not let us have them. +</P> + +<P> +Do you not see that "cruel fate" is our own smallness and unreadiness? +As we grow greater we have greater things. We have today all we can +stand today. More would wreck us. More would start us to rattling. +</P> + +<P> +Getting up is growing up. +</P> + +<P> +And this blessed old barrel of life is just waiting and anxious to +shake everybody up as fast as everybody grows. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter V +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Going Up +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +How We Become Great +</H3> + +<P> +WE go up as we grow great. That is, we go up as we grow up. But so many +are trying to grow great on the outside without growing great on the +inside. They rattle on the inside! +</P> + +<P> +They fool themselves, but nobody else. +</P> + +<P> +There is only one greatness—inside greatness. All outside greatness is +merely an incidental reflection of the inside. +</P> + +<P> +Greatness is not measured in any material terms. It is not measured in +inches, dollars, acres, votes, hurrahs, or by any other of the world's +yardsticks or barometers. +</P> + +<P> +Greatness is measured in spiritual terms. It is education. It is life +expansion. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from selfishness to unselfishness. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from impurity to purity. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from unhappiness to happiness. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from weakness to strength. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from low ideals to high ideals. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from little vision to greater vision. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from foolishness to wisdom. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from fear to faith. +</P> + +<P> +We go up from ignorance to understanding. +</P> + +<P> +We go up by our own personal efforts. We go up by our own service, +sacrifice, struggle and overcoming. We push out our own skyline. We +rise above our own obstacles. We learn to see, hear, hold and +understand. +</P> + +<P> +We may become very great, very educated, rise very high, and yet not +leave our kitchen or blacksmith shop. We take the kitchen or blacksmith +shop right up with us! We make it a great kitchen or great blacksmith +shop. It becomes our throne-room! +</P> + +<P> +Come, let us grow greater. There is a throne for each of us. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +"Getting to the Top" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Getting to the top" is the world's pet delusion. There is no top. No +matter how high we rise, we discover infinite distances above. The +higher we rise, the better we see that life on this planet is the going +up from the Finite to the Infinite. +</P> + +<P> +The world says that to get greatness means to get great things. So the +world is in the business of getting—getting great fortunes, great +lands, great titles, great applause, great fame, and folderol. +Afterwhile the poor old world hears the empty rattle of the inside, and +wails, "All is vanity. I find no pleasure in them. Life is a failure." +All outside life is a failure. Real life is in being things on the +inside, not in getting things on the outside. +</P> + +<P> +I weary of the world's pink-sheet extras about "Getting to the Top" and +"Forging to the Front." Too often they are the sordid story of a few +scrambling over the heads of the weaker ones. Sometimes they are the +story of one pig crowding the other pigs out of the trough and +cornering all the swill! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Secret of Greatness +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Christ Jesus was a great Teacher. His mission was to educate humanity. +</P> + +<P> +There came to him those two disciples who wanted to "get to the top." +Those two sons of Zebedee wanted to have the greatest places in the new +kingdom they imagined he would establish on earth. +</P> + +<P> +They got very busy pursuing greatness, but I do not read that they were +half so busy preparing for greatness. They even had their mother out +electioneering for them. +</P> + +<P> +"O, Master," said the mother, "grant that these my two sons may sit, +the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom." +</P> + +<P> +The Master looked with love and pity upon their unpreparedness. "Are ye +able to drink of the cup?" Then he gave the only definition of +greatness that can ever stand: "Whosoever will be great among you, let +him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be +your servant." +</P> + +<P> +That is we cannot be "born great," nor "have greatness thrust upon" us. +We must "achieve greatness" by developing it on the inside—developing +ability to minister and to serve. +</P> + +<P> +We cannot buy a great arm. Our arm must become a great servant, and +thus it becomes great. +</P> + +<P> +We cannot buy a great mind. Our mind must become a great servant, and +thus it becomes great. +</P> + +<P> +We cannot buy a great character. It is earned in great moral service. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The First Step at Hand +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +This is the Big Business of life—going up, getting educated, getting +greatness on the inside. Getting greatness on the outside is little +business. Much of it mighty little. +</P> + +<P> +Everybody's privilege and duty is to become great. And the joy of it is +that the first step is always nearest at hand. We do not have to go off +to New York or Chicago or go chasing around the world to become great. +It is a great stairway that leads from where our feet are now upward +for an infinite number of steps. +</P> + +<P> +We must take the first step now. Most of us want to take the hundredth +step or the thousandth step now. We want to make some spectacular +stride of a thousand steps at one leap. That is why we fall so hard +when we miss our step. +</P> + +<P> +We must go right back to our old place—into our kitchen or our +workshop or our office and take the first step, solve the problem +nearest at hand. We must make our old work luminous with a new +devotion. We must battle up over every inch. And as fast as we solve +and dissolve the difficulties and turn our burdens into blessings, we +find love, the universal solvent, shining out of our lives. We find our +spiritual influences going upward. So the winds of earth are born; they +rush in from the cold lands to the warm upward currents. And so as our +problems disappear and our life currents set upward, the world is drawn +toward us with its problems. We find our kitchen or workshop or office +becoming a new throne of power. We find the world around us rising up +to call us blessed. +</P> + +<P> +As we grow greater our troubles grow smaller, for we see them thru +greater eyes. We rise above them. +</P> + +<P> +As we grow greater our opportunities grow greater. That is, we begin to +see them. They are around us all the time, but we must get greater eyes +to see them. +</P> + +<P> +Generally speaking, the smaller our vision of our work, the more we +admire what we have accomplished and "point with pride." The greater +our vision, the more we see what is yet to be accomplished. +</P> + +<P> +It was the sweet girl graduate who at commencement wondered how one +small head could contain it all. It was Newton after giving the world a +new science who looked back over it and said, "I seem to have been only +a boy playing on the seashore * * * while the great ocean of truth lay +all undiscovered before me." That great ocean is before us all. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Widow's Mites +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The great Teacher pointed to the widow who cast her two mites into the +treasury, and then to the rich men who had cast in much more. "This +poor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their +abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath +cast in all the living that she had." +</P> + +<P> +Tho the rich men had cast in more, yet it was only a part of their +possessions. The widow cast in less, but it was all she had. The Master +cared little what the footings of the money were in the treasury. That +is not why we give. We give to become great. The widow had given +all—had completely overcome her selfishness and fear of want. +</P> + +<P> +Becoming great is overcoming our selfishness and fear. He that saveth +his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for the advancement +of the kingdom of happiness on earth shall find it great and glorified. +</P> + +<P> +Our greatness therefore does not depend upon how much we give or upon +what we do, whether peeling potatoes or ruling a nation, but upon the +percentage of our output to our resources. Upon doing with our might +what our hands find to do. Quit worrying about what you cannot get to +do. Rejoice in doing the things you can get to do. And as you are +faithful over a few things you go up to be ruler over many. +</P> + +<P> +The world says some of us have golden gifts and some have copper gifts. +But when we cast them all into the treasury of right service, there is +an alchemy that transmutes every gift into gold. Every work is drudgery +when done selfishly. Every work becomes golden when done in a golden +manner. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Finding the Great People +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +I do not know who fitted the boards into the floor I stand upon. I do +not know all the great people who may come and stand upon this floor. +But I do know that the one who made the floor—and the one who sweeps +it—is just as great as anybody in the world who may come and stand +upon it, if each be doing his work with the same love, faithfulness and +capability. +</P> + +<P> +We have to look farther than the "Who's Who" and Dun and Bradstreet to +make a roster of the great people of a community. You will find the +community heart in the precious handful who believe that the service of +God is the service of man. +</P> + +<P> +The great people of the community serve and sacrifice for a better +tomorrow. They are the faithful few who get behind the churches, the +schools, the lyceum and chautauqua, and all the other movements that go +upward. +</P> + +<P> +They are the ones who are "always trying to run things." They are the +happy ones, happy for the larger vision that comes as they go higher by +unselfish service. They are discovering that their sweetest pay comes +from doing many things they are not paid for. They rarely get thanked, +for the community does not often think of thanking them until it comes +time to draft the "resolutions of respect." +</P> + +<P> +I had to go to the mouth of a coal-mine in a little Illinois town, to +find the man the bureau had given as lyceum committeeman there. I +wondered what the grimy-faced man from the shaft, wearing the miner's +lamp in his cap, could possibly have to do with the lyceum course. But +I learned that he had all to do with it. He had sold the tickets and +had done all the managing. He was superintendent of the Sunday school. +He was the storm-center of every altruistic effort in the town—the +greatest man there, because the most serviceable, tho he worked every +day full time with his pick at his bread-and-butter job. +</P> + +<P> +The great people are so busy serving that they have little time to +strut and pose in the show places. Few of them are "prominent clubmen." +You rarely find their names in the society page. They rarely give +"brilliant social functions." Their idle families attend to such things. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +A Glimpse of Gunsaulus +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +I found a great man lecturing at the chautauquas. He preaches in +Chicago on Sundays to thousands. He writes books and runs a college he +founded by his own preaching. He is the mainspring of so many uplift +movements that his name gets into the papers about every day, and you +read it in almost every committee doing good things in Chicago. +</P> + +<P> +He had broken away from Chicago to have a vacation. Many people think +that a vacation means going off somewhere and stretching out under +trees or letting the mind become a blank. But this Chicago preacher +went from one chautauqua town to another, and took his vacation going +up and down the streets. He dug into the local history of each place, +and before dinner he knew more about the place than most of the natives. +</P> + +<P> +"There is a sermon for me," he would exclaim every half-hour. He went +to see people who were doing things. He went to see people who were +doing nothing. In every town he would discover somebody of unusual +attainment. He made every town an unusual town. He turned the humdrum +travel map into a wonderland. He scolded lazy towns and praised +enterprising ones. He stopped young fellows on the streets. "What are +you going to do in life?" Perhaps the young man would say, "I have no +chance." "You come to Chicago and I'll give you a chance," the man on +his vacation would reply. +</P> + +<P> +So this Chicago preacher was busy every day, working overtime on his +vacation. He was busy about other people's business. He did not once +ask the price of land, nor where there was a good investment for +himself, but every day he was trying to make an investment in somebody +else. +</P> + +<P> +His friends would sometimes worry about him. They would say, "Why +doesn't the doctor take care of himself, instead of taking care of +everybody else? He wears himself out for other people until he hasn't +strength enough left to lecture and do his own work." +</P> + +<P> +Sometimes they were right about that. +</P> + +<P> +But he that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life +in loving service finds it returning to him great and glorious. This +man's preaching did not make him great. His college did not make him +great. His books did not make him great. These are the by-products. His +life of service for others makes him great—makes his preaching, his +college and his books great. +</P> + +<P> +This Chicago man gives his life into the service of humanity, and it +becomes the fuel to make the steam to accomplish the wonderful things +he does. Let him stop and "take care of himself," and his career would +stop. +</P> + +<P> +If he had begun life by "taking care of himself" and "looking out for +number one," stipulating in advance every cent he was to get and +writing it all down in the contract, most likely Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus +would have remained a struggling, discouraged preacher in the backwoods +of Morrow county, Ohio. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Give It Now +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Gunsaulus often says, "You are planning and saving and telling yourself +that afterwhile you are going to give great things and do great things. +Give it now! Give your dollar now, rather than your thousands +afterwhile. You need to give it now, and the world needs to get it now." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter VI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +The Problem of "Preparedness" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Preparing Children to Live +</H3> + +<P> +THE problem of "preparedness" is the problem of preparing children for +life. All other kinds of "preparedness" fade into insignificance before +this. The history of nations shows that their strength was not in the +size of their armies and in the vastness of their population and +wealth, but in the strength and ideals of the individual citizens. +</P> + +<P> +As long as the nation was young and growing—as long as the people were +struggling and overcoming—that nation was strong. It was "prepared." +</P> + +<P> +But when the struggle stopped, the strength waned, for the strength +came from the struggle. When the people became materially prosperous +and surrendered to ease and indulgence, they became fat, stall-fed +weaklings. Then they fell a prey to younger, hardier peoples. +</P> + +<P> +Has the American nation reached that period? +</P> + +<P> +Many homes and communities have reached it. +</P> + +<P> +All over America are fathers and mothers who have struggled and have +become strong men and women thru their struggles, who are saying, "Our +children shall have better chances than we had. We are living for our +children. We are going to give them the best education our money can +buy." +</P> + +<P> +Then, forgetful of how they became strong, they plan to take away from +their children their birthright—their opportunity to become strong and +"prepared"—thru struggle and service and overcoming. +</P> + +<P> +Most "advantages" are disadvantages. Giving a child a chance generally +means getting out of his way. Many an orphan can be grateful that he +was jolted from his life-preserver and cruelly forced to sink or swim. +Thus he learned to swim. +</P> + +<P> +"We are going to give our children the best education our money can +buy." +</P> + +<P> +They think they can buy an education—buy wisdom, strength and +understanding, and give it to them C. O. D! They seem to think they +will buy any brand they see—buy the home brand of education, or else +send off to New York or Paris or to "Sears Roebuck," and get a +bucketful or a tankful of education. If they are rich enough, maybe +they will have a private pipeline of education laid to their home. They +are going to force this education into them regularly until they get +them full of education. They are going to get them fully inflated with +education! +</P> + +<P> +Toll the bell! There's going to be a "blow out." Those inflated +children are going to have to run on "flat tires." +</P> + +<P> +Father and mother cannot buy their children education. All they can do +is to buy them some tools, perhaps, and open the gate and say, "Sic +'em, Tige!" The children must get it themselves. +</P> + +<P> +A father and mother might as well say, "We will buy our children the +strength we have earned in our arms and the wisdom we have acquired in +a life of struggle." As well expect the athlete to give them his +physical development he has earned in years of exercise. As well expect +the musician to give them the technic he has acquired in years of +practice. As well expect the scholar to give them the ability to think +he has developed in years of study. As well expect Moses to give them +his spiritual understanding acquired in a long life of prayer. +</P> + +<P> +They can show the children the way, but each child must make the +journey. +</P> + +<P> +Here is a typical case. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Story of "Gussie" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +There was a factory town back East. Not a pretty town, but just a +great, dirty mill and a lot of little dirty houses around the mill. The +hands lived in the little dirty houses and worked six days of the week +in the big mill. +</P> + +<P> +There was a little, old man who went about that mill, often saying, "I +hain't got no book l'arnin' like the rest of you." He was the man who +owned the mill. He had made it with his own genius out of nothing. He +had become rich and honored. Every man in the mill loved him like a +father. +</P> + +<P> +He had an idolatry for a book. +</P> + +<P> +He also had a little pink son, whose name was F. Gustavus Adolphus. The +little old man often said, "I'm going to give that boy the best +education my money can buy." +</P> + +<P> +He began to buy it. He began to polish and sandpaper Gussie from the +minute the child could sit up in the cradle and notice things. He sent +him to the astrologer, the phrenologer and all other "ologers" they had +around there. When Gussie was old enough to export, he sent the boy to +one of the greatest universities in the land. The fault was not with +the university, not with Gussie, who was bright and capable. +</P> + +<P> +The fault was with the little old man, who was so wise and great about +everything else, and so foolish about his own boy. In the blindness of +his love he robbed his boy of his birthright. +</P> + +<P> +The birthright of every child is the opportunity of becoming great—of +going up—of getting educated. +</P> + +<P> +Gussie had no chance to serve. Everything was handed to him on a silver +platter. Gussie went thru that university about like a steer from Texas +goes thru Mr. Armour's institute of packnology in Chicago. Did you ever +go over into Packingtown and see a steer receive his education? +</P> + +<P> +You remember, then, that after he matriculates—after he gets the grand +bump, said steer does not have to do another thing. His education is +all arranged for in advance and he merely rides thru and receives it. +There is a row of professors with their sleeves rolled up who give him +the degrees. So as Mr. T. Steer of Panhandle goes riding thru on that +endless cable from his A-B-C's to his eternal cold storage, each +professor hits him a dab. He rides along from department to department +until he is canned. +</P> + +<P> +They "canned" Gussie. He had a man hired to study for him. He rode from +department to department. They upholstered him, enameled him, manicured +him, sugar-cured him, embalmed him. Finally Gussie was done and the +paint was dry. He was a thing of beauty. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +Gussie and Bill Whackem Gussie came back home with his education in the +baggage-car. It was checked. The mill shut down on a week day, the +first time in its history. The hands marched down to the depot, and +when the young lord alighted, the factory band played, "See, the +Conquering Hero Comes." +</P> + +<P> +A few years later the mill shut down again on a week day. There was +crape hanging on the office door. Men and women stood weeping in the +streets. The little old man had been translated. +</P> + +<P> +When they next opened up the mill, F. Gustavus Adolphus was at its +head. He had inherited the entire plant. "F. Gustavus Adolphus, +President." +</P> + +<P> +Poor little peanut! He rattled. He had never grown great enough to fill +so great a place. In two years and seven months the mill was a wreck. +The monument of a father's lifetime was wrecked in two years and seven +months by the boy who had all the "advantages." +</P> + +<P> +So the mill was shut down the third time on a week day. It looked as +tho it never could open. But it did open, and when it opened it had a +new kind of boss. If I were to give the new boss a descriptive name, I +would call him "Bill Whackem." He was an orphan. He had little chance. +He had a new black eye almost every day. But he seemed to fatten on +bumps. Every time he was bumped he would swell up. How fast he grew! He +became the most useful man in the community. People forgot all about +Bill's lowly origin. They got to looking up to him to start and run +things. +</P> + +<P> +So when the courts were looking for somebody big enough to take charge +of the wrecked mill, they simply had to appoint Hon. William Whackem. +It was Hon. William Whackem who put the wreckage together and made the +wheels go round, and finally got the hungry town back to work. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Colleges Give Us Tools +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +After that a good many people said it was the college that made a fool +of Gussie. They said Bill succeeded so well because he never went to +one of "them highbrow schools." I am sorry to say I thought that way +for a good while. +</P> + +<P> +But now I see that Bill went up in spite of his handicaps. If he had +had Gussie's fine equipment he might have accomplished vastly more. +</P> + +<P> +The book and the college suffer at the hands of their friends. They say +to the book and the college, "Give us an education." They cannot do +that. You cannot get an education from the book and the college any +more than you can get to New York by reading a travelers' guide. You +cannot get physical education by reading a book on gymnastics. +</P> + +<P> +The book and the college show you the way, give you instruction and +furnish you finer working tools. But the real education is the journey +you make, the strength you develop, the service you perform with these +instruments and tools. +</P> + +<P> +Gussie was in the position of a man with a very fine equipment of tools +and no experience in using them. Bill was the man with the poor, +homemade, crude tools, but with the energy, vision and strength +developed by struggle. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The "Hard Knocks Graduates" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +For education is getting wisdom, understanding, strength, greatness, +physically, mentally and morally. I believe I know some people +liberally educated who cannot write their own names. But they have +served and overcome and developed great lives with the poor, crude +tools at their command. +</P> + +<P> +In almost every community are what we sometimes call "hard knocks +graduates"—people who have never been to college nor have studied many +or any books. Yet they are educated to the degree they have acquired +these elements of greatness in their lives. +</P> + +<P> +They realized how they have been handicapped by their poor mental tools. +</P> + +<P> +That is why they say, "All my life I have been handicapped by lack of +proper preparation. Don't make my mistake, children, go to school." +</P> + +<P> +The young person with electrical genius will make an electrical machine +from a few bits of junk. But send him to Westinghouse and see how much +more he will achieve with the same genius and with finer equipment. +</P> + +<P> +Get the best tools you can. But remember diplomas, degrees are not an +education, they are merely preparations. When you are thru with the +books, remember, you are having a commencement, not an end-ment. You +will discover with the passing years that life is just one series of +greater commencements. +</P> + +<P> +Go out with your fine equipment from your commencements into the school +of service and write your education in the only book you ever can +know—the book of your experience. +</P> + +<P> +That is what you know—what the courts will take as evidence when they +put you upon the witness stand. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Tragedy of Unpreparedness +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The story of Gussie and Bill Whackem is being written in every +community in tears, failure and heartache. It is peculiarly a tragedy +of our American civilization today. +</P> + +<P> +These fathers and mothers who toil and save, who get great farms, fine +homes and large bank accounts, so often think they can give greatness +to their children—they can make great places for them in life and put +them into them. +</P> + +<P> +They do all this and the children rattle. They have had no chance to +grow great enough for the places. The child gets the blame for making +the wreck, even as Gussie was blamed for wrecking his father's plant, +when the child is the victim. +</P> + +<P> +A man heard me telling the story of Gussie and Bill Whackem, and he +went out of my audience very indignant. He said he was very glad his +boy was not there to hear it. But that good, deluded father now has his +head bowed in shame over the career of his spoiled son. +</P> + +<P> +I rarely tell of it on a platform that at the close of the lecture +somebody does not take me aside and tell me a story just as sad from +that community. +</P> + +<P> +For years poor Harry Thaw was front-paged on the newspapers and +gibbeted in the pulpits as the shocking example of youthful depravity. +He seems never to have had a fighting chance to become a man. He seems +to have been robbed of his birthright from the cradle. Yet the father +of this boy who has cost America millions in court and detention +expenses was one of the greatest business generals of the Keystone +state. He could plat great coal empires and command armies of men, but +he seems to have been pitifully ignorant of the fact that the barrel +shakes. +</P> + +<P> +It is the educated, the rich and the worldly wise who blunder most in +the training of their children. Poverty is a better trainer for the +rest. +</P> + +<P> +The menace of America lies not in the swollen fortunes, but in the +shrunken souls who inherit them. +</P> + +<P> +But Nature's eliminating process is kind to the race in the barrel +shaking down the rattlers. Somebody said it is only three generations +from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves. +</P> + +<P> +How long this nation will endure depends upon how many Gussie boys this +nation produces. Steam heat is a fine thing, but do you notice how few +of our strong men get their start with steam heat? +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Children, Learn This Early +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +You boys and girls, God bless you! You live in good homes. Father and +mother love you and give you everything you need. You get to thinking, +"I won't have to turn my hand over. Papa and mamma will take care of +me, and when they are gone I'll inherit everything they have. I'm fixed +for life." +</P> + +<P> +No, you are unfixed. You are a candidate for trouble. You are going to +rattle. Father and mother can be great and you can be a peanut. +</P> + +<P> +You must solve your own problems and carry your own loads to have a +strong mind and back. Anybody who does for you regularly what you can +do for yourself—anybody who gives you regularly what you can earn for +yourself, is robbing you of your birthright. +</P> + +<P> +Father and mother can put money in your pocket, ideas in your head and +food in your stomach, but you cannot own it save as you digest it—put +it into your life. +</P> + +<P> +I have read somewhere about a man who found a cocoon and put it in his +house where he could watch it develop. One day he saw a little insect +struggling inside the cocoon. It was trying to get out of the envelope. +It seemed in trouble and needed help. He opened the envelope with a +knife and set the struggling insect free. But out came a monstrosity +that soon died. It had an over-developed body and under-developed +wings. He learned that helping the insect was killing it. He took away +from it the very thing it had to have—the struggle. For it was this +struggle of breaking its own way out of that envelope that was needed +to reduce its body and develop its wings. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Not Packhorse Work +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +But remember there is little virtue in work unless it is getting us +somewhere. Just work that gets us three meals a day and a place to lie +down to sleep, then another day of the same grind, then a year of it +and years following until our machine is worn out and on the junkpile, +means little. "One day nearer home" for such a worker means one day +nearer the scrapheap. +</P> + +<P> +Such a worker is like the packhorse who goes forward to keep ahead of +the whip. Such a worker is the horse we used to have hitched to the +sorghum mill. Round and round that horse went, seeing nothing, hearing +nothing, his head down, without ambition enough to prick up his ears. +Such work deadens and stupefies. The masses work about that way. They +regard work as a necessary evil. They are right—such work is a +necessary evil, and they make it such. They follow their nose. "Dumb, +driven cattle." +</P> + +<P> +But getting a vision of life, and working to grow upward to it, that is +the work that brings the joy and the greatness. +</P> + +<P> +When we are growing and letting our faculties develop, we will love +even the packhorse job, because it is our "meal ticket" that enables us +to travel upward. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +"Helping" the Turkeys +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +One time I put some turkey eggs under the mother hen and waited day by +day for them to hatch. And sure enough, one day the eggs began to crack +and the little turkeys began to stick their heads out of the shells. +Some of the little turkeys came out from the shells all right, but some +of them stuck in the shells. +</P> + +<P> +"Shell out, little turkeys, shell out," I urged, "for Thanksgiving is +coming. Shell out!" +</P> + +<P> +But they stuck to the shells. +</P> + +<P> +"Little turkeys, I'll have to help you. I'll have to shell you by +hand." So I picked the shells off. "Little turkeys, you will never know +how fortunate you are. Ordinary turkeys do not have these advantages. +Ordinary turkeys do not get shelled by hand." +</P> + +<P> +Did I help them? I killed them, or stunted them. Not one of the turkeys +was "right" that I helped. They were runts. One of them was a regular +Harry Thaw turkey. They had too many silk socks. Too many "advantages." +</P> + +<P> +Children, you must crack your own shells. You must overcome your own +obstacles to develop your own powers. +</P> + +<P> +A rich boy can succeed, but he has a poorer chance than a poor boy. The +cards are against him. He must succeed in spite of his "advantages." +</P> + +<P> +I am pleading for you to get a great arm, a great mind, a great +character, for the joy of having a larger life. I am pleading with you +to know the joy of overcoming and having the angels come and minister +to you. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Happiness in Our Work +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Children, I am pleading with you to find happiness. All the world is +seeking happiness, but so many are seeking it by rattling down instead +of by shaking up. +</P> + +<P> +The happiness is in going up—in developing a greater arm, a greater +mind, a greater character. +</P> + +<P> +Happiness is the joy of overcoming. It is the delight of an expanding +consciousness. It is the cry of the eagle mounting upward. It is the +proof that we are progressing. +</P> + +<P> +We find happiness in our work, not outside of our work. If we cannot +find happiness in our work, we have the wrong job. Find the work that +fits your talents, and stop watching the clock and planning vacations. +</P> + +<P> +Loving friends used to warn me against "breaking down." They scared me +into "taking care" of myself. And I got to taking such good care of +myself and watching for symptoms that I became a physical wreck. +</P> + +<P> +I saved myself by getting busier. I plunged into work I love. I found +my job in my work, not away from it, and the work refreshed me and +rejuvenated me. Now I do two men's work, and have grown from a skinny, +fretful, nervous wreck into a hearty, happy man. This has been a great +surprise to my friends and a great disappointment to the undertaker. I +am an editor in the daytime and a lecturer at night. +</P> + +<P> +I edit all day and take a vacation lecturing at night. I lecture almost +every day of the year—maybe two or three times some days—and then +take a vacation by editing and writing. Thus every day is jam full of +play and vacation and good times. The year is one round of joy, and I +ought to pay people for the privilege of speaking and writing to them +instead of them paying me! +</P> + +<P> +If I did not like my work, of course, I would be carrying a terrible +burden and would speedily collapse. +</P> + +<P> +You see, I have no time nowadays to break down. I have no time to think +and grunt and worry about my body. And like Paul I am happy to be +"absent from the body and present with the Lord." Thus this old body +behaves just beautifully and wags along like the tail follows the dog +when I forget all about it. The grunter lets the tail wag the dog. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +I have never known a case of genuine "overwork." I have never known of +anyone killing himself by working. But I have known of multitudes +killing themselves by taking vacations. +</P> + +<P> +The people who think they are overworking are merely overworrying. This +is one species of selfishness. +</P> + +<P> +To worry is to doubt God. +</P> + +<P> +To work at the things you love, or for those you love, is to turn work +into play and duty into privilege. +</P> + +<P> +When we love our work, it is not work, it is life. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Many Kinds of Drunkards +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The world is trying to find happiness in being amused. The world is +amusement-mad. Vacations, Coca Cola and moviemania! +</P> + +<P> +What a sad, empty lot of rattlers! Look over the bills of the movies, +look over the newsstands and see a picture of the popular mind, for +these places keep just what the people want to buy. What a lot of +mental frog-pond and moral slum our boys and girls wade thru! +</P> + +<P> +There are ten literary drunkards to one alcoholic drunkard. There are a +hundred amusement drunkards to one victim of strong drink. And all just +as hard to cure. +</P> + +<P> +We have to have amusement, but if we fill our lives with nothing but +amusement, we never grow. We go thru our lives babies with new +rattleboxes and "sugar-tits." +</P> + +<P> +Almost every day as I go along the street to some hall to lecture, I +hear somebody asking, "What are they going to have in the hall tonight?" +</P> + +<P> +"Going to have a lecture." +</P> + +<P> +"Lecture?" said with a shiver as tho it was "small pox." "I ain't +goin.' I don't like lectures." +</P> + +<P> +The speaker is perfectly honest. He has no place to put a lecture. I am +not saying that he should attend my lecture, but I am grieving at what +underlies his remark. He does not want to think. He wants to follow his +nose around. Other people generally lead his nose. The man who will not +make the effort to think is the great menace to the nation. The crowd +that drifts and lives for amusement is the crowd that finds itself back +near the caboose, and as the train of progress leaves them, they wail, +they "never had no chanct." They want to start a new party to reform +the government. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Lure of the City +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Do you ever get lonely in a city? How few men and women there. A jam of +people, most of them imitations—most of them trying to look like they +get more salary. Poor, hungry, doped butterflies of the bright +lights,—hopers, suckers and straphangers! Down the great white way +they go chasing amusement to find happiness. They must be amused every +moment, even when they eat, or they will have to be alone with their +empty lives. +</P> + +<P> +The Prodigal Son came to himself afterwhile and thought upon his ways. +Then he arose and went to his father's house. Whenever one will stop +chasing amusements long enough to think upon his ways, he will arise +and go to his father's house of wisdom. But there is no hope for the +person who will not stop and think. And the devil works day and night +shifts keeping the crowd moving on. +</P> + +<P> +That is why the crowd is not furnishing the strong men and women. +</P> + +<P> +We must have amusement and relaxation. Study your muscles. First they +contract, then they relax. But the muscle that goes on continually +relaxing is degenerating. And the individual, the community, the nation +that goes on relaxing without contracting—without struggling and +overcoming—is degenerating. +</P> + +<P> +The more you study your muscles, the more you learn that while one +muscle is relaxing another is contracting. So you must learn that your +real relaxation, vacation and amusement, are merely changing over to +contracting another set of muscles. +</P> + +<P> +Go to the bank president's office, go to the railroad magnate's office, +go to the great pulpit, to the college chair—go to any place of great +responsibility in a city and ask the one who fills the place, "Were you +born in this city?" +</P> + +<P> +The reply is almost a monotony. "I born in this city? No, I was born in +Poseyville, Indiana, and I came to this city forty years ago and went +to work at the bottom." +</P> + +<P> +He glows as he tells you of some log-cabin home, hillside or farmside +where he struggled as a boy. Personally, I think this log-cabin +ancestry has been over-confessed for campaign purposes. Give us steam +heat and push-buttons. There is no virtue in a log-cabin, save that +there the necessity for struggle that brings strength is most in +evidence. There the young person gets the struggle and service that +makes for strength and greatness. And as that young person comes to the +city and shakes in the barrel among the weaklings of the artificial +life, he rises above them like the eagle soars above a lot of +chattering sparrows. +</P> + +<P> +The cities do not make their own steam. The little minority from the +farms controls the majority. The red blood of redemption flows from the +country year by year into the national arteries, else these cities +would drop off the map. +</P> + +<P> +If it were not for Poseyville, Indiana, Chicago would disappear. If it +were not for Poseyville, New York would disintegrate for lack of +leaders. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +"Hep" and "Pep" for the Home Town +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +But so many of the home towns of America are sick. Many are dying. Many +are dead. +</P> + +<P> +It is the lure of the city—and the lure-lessness of the country. The +town the young people leave is the town the young people ought to +leave. Somebody says, "The reason so many young people go to hell is +because they have no other place to go." +</P> + +<P> +What is the matter with the small town? Do not blame it all upon the +city mail order house. With rural delivery, daily papers, telephones, +centralized schools, automobiles and good roads, there are no more +delightful places in the world to live than in the country or in the +small town. They have the city advantages plus sunshine, air and +freedom that the crowded cities cannot have. +</P> + +<P> +I asked the keeper who was showing me thru the insane asylum at Weston, +West Virginia, "You say you have nearly two thousand insane people in +this institution and only a score of guards to keep them in. Aren't you +in danger? What is to hinder these insane people from getting together, +organizing, overpowering the few guards and breaking out?" +</P> + +<P> +The keeper was not in the least alarmed at the question. He smiled. +"Many people say that. But they don't understand. If these people could +get together they wouldn't be in this asylum. They are insane. No two +of them can agree upon how to get together and how to break out. So a +few of us can hold them." +</P> + +<P> +It would be almost unkind to carry this further, but I have been +thinking ever since that about three-fourths of the small towns of +America have one thing in common with the asylum folks—they can't get +together. They cannot organize for the public good. They break up into +little antagonistic social, business and even religious factions and +neutralize each other's efforts. +</P> + +<P> +A lot of struggling churches compete with each other instead of massing +for the common good. And when the churches fight, the devil stays +neutral and furnishes the munitions for both sides. +</P> + +<P> +So the home towns stagnate and the young people with visions go away to +the cities where opportunity seems to beckon. Ninety-nine out of a +hundred of them will jostle with the straphangers all their lives, mere +wheels turning round in a huge machine. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of +them might have had a larger opportunity right back in the home town, +had the town been awake and united and inviting. +</P> + +<P> +We must make the home town the brightest, most attractive, most +promising place for the young people. No home town can afford to spend +its years raising crops of young people for the cities. That is the +worst kind of soil impoverishment—all going out and nothing coming +back. That is the drain that devitalizes the home towns more than all +the city mail order houses. +</P> + +<P> +America is to be great, not in the greatness of a few crowded cities, +but in the greatness of innumerable home towns. +</P> + +<P> +The slogan today should be, For God and Home and the Home Town! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +A School of Struggle +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Dr. Henry Solomon Lehr, founder of the Ohio Northern University at Ada, +Ohio, one of Ohio's greatest educators, used to say with pride, "Our +students come to school; they are not sent." +</P> + +<P> +He encouraged his students to be self-supporting, and most of them were +working their way thru school. He made the school calendar and courses +elastic to accommodate them. He saw the need of combining the school of +books with the school of struggle. He organized his school into +competing groups, so that the student who had no struggle in his life +would at least have to struggle with the others during his schooling. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He pitted class against class. He organized great literary and debating +societies to compete with each other. He arranged contests for the +military department. His school was one surging mass of contestants. +Yet each student felt no compulsion. Rather he felt that he was +initiating an individual or class effort to win. The literary societies +vied with each other in their programs and in getting new members, +going every term to unbelievable efforts to win over the others. They +would go miles out on the trains to intercept new students, even to +their homes in other states. Each old student pledged new students in +his home country. The military companies turned the school into a +military camp for weeks each year, scarcely sleeping while drilling for +a contest flag. +</P> + +<P> +Those students went out into the world trained to struggle. I do not +believe there is a school in America with a greater alumni roll of men +and women of uniformly greater achievement. +</P> + +<P> +I believe the most useful schools today are schools of struggle schools +offering encouragement and facilities for young people to work their +way thru and to act upon their own initiative. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Men Needed More Than Millions +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +We are trying a new educational experiment today. +</P> + +<P> +The old "deestrick" school is passing, and with it the small academies +and colleges, each with its handful of students around a teacher, as in +the old days of the lyceum in Athens, when the pupils sat around the +philosopher in the groves. +</P> + +<P> +From these schools came the makers and the preservers of the nation. +</P> + +<P> +Today we are building wonderful public schools with equally wonderful +equipment. Today we are replacing the many small colleges with a few +great centralized state normal schools and state universities. We are +spending millions upon them in laboratories, equipment and maintenance. +Today we scour the earth for specialists to sit in the chairs and speak +the last word in every department of human research. +</P> + +<P> +O, how the students of the "dark ages" would have rejoiced to see this +day! Many of them never saw a germ! +</P> + +<P> +But each student has the same definite effort to make in assimilation +today as then. Knowing and growing demand the same personal struggle in +the cushions of the "frat" house as back on the old oak-slab bench with +its splintered side up. +</P> + +<P> +I am anxiously awaiting the results. I am hoping that the boys and +girls who come out in case-lots from these huge school plants will not +be rows of lithographed cans on the shelves of life. I am hoping they +will not be shorn of their individuality, but will have it stimulated +and unfettered. I am anxious that they be not veneered but inspired, +not denatured but discovered. +</P> + +<P> +All this school machinery is only machinery. Back of it must be +men—great men. I am anxious that the modern school have the modern +equipment demanded to serve the present age. But I am more anxious that +each student come in vital touch with great men. We get life from life, +not from laboratories, and we have life more abundantly as our lives +touch greater lives. +</P> + +<P> +A school is vastly more than machinery, methods, microscopes and +millions. +</P> + +<P> +Many a small school struggling to live thinks that all it needs is +endowment, when the fact is that its struggle for existence and the +spirit of its teachers are its greatest endowment. And sometimes when +the money endowment comes the spiritual endowment goes in fatty +degeneration. Some schools seem to have been visited by calamities in +the financial prosperity that has engulfed them. +</P> + +<P> +Can we keep men before millions, and keep our ideals untainted by +foundations? That is the question the age is asking. +</P> + +<P> +You and I are very much interested in the answer. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter VII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +The Salvation of a "Sucker" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Fiddle and the Tuning +</H3> + +<P> +HOW long it takes to learn things! I think I was thirty-four years +learning one sentence, "You can't get something for nothing." I have +not yet learned it. Every few days I stumble over it somewhere. +</P> + +<P> +For that sentence utters one of the fundamentals of life that underlies +every field of activity. +</P> + +<P> +What is knowing? +</P> + +<P> +One day a manufacturer took me thru his factory where he makes fiddles. +Not violins—fiddles. +</P> + +<P> +A violin is only a fiddle with a college education. +</P> + +<P> +I have had the feeling ever since that you and I come into this world +like the fiddle comes from the factory. We have a body and a neck. That +is about all there is either to us or to the fiddle. We are empty. We +have no strings. We have no bow—yet! +</P> + +<P> +When the human fiddles are about six years old they go into the primary +schools and up thru the grammar grades, and get the first string—the +little E string. The trouble is so many of these human fiddles think +they are an orchestra right away. They want to quit school and go +fiddling thru life on this one string! +</P> + +<P> +We must show these little fiddles they must go back into school and go +up thru all the departments and institutions necessary to give them the +full complement of strings for their life symphonies. +</P> + +<P> +After all this there comes the commencement, and the violin comes forth +with the E, A, D and G strings all in place. Educated now? Why is a +violin? To wear strings? Gussie got that far and gave a lot of discord. +The violin is to give music. +</P> + +<P> +So there is much yet to do after getting the strings. All the book and +college can do is to give the strings—the tools. After that the violin +must go into the great tuning school of life. Here the pegs are turned +and the strings are put in tune. The music is the knowing. Learning is +tuning. +</P> + +<P> +You do not know what you have memorized, you know what you have +vitalized, what you have written in the book of experience. +</P> + +<P> +Gussie says, "I have read it in a book." Bill Whackem says, "I know!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Reading and Knowing +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +All of us are Christopher Columbuses, discovering the same new-old +continents of Truth. That is the true happiness of life—discovering +Truth. We read things in a book and have a hazy idea of them. We hear +the preacher utter truths and we say with little feeling, "Yes, that is +so." We hear the great truths of life over and over and we are not +excited. Truth never excites—it is falsehood that excites—until we +discover it in our lives. Until we see it with our own eyes. Then there +is a thrill. Then the old truth becomes a new blessing. Then the +oldest, driest platitude crystallizes into a flashing jewel to delight +and enrich our consciousness. This joy of discovery is the joy of +living. +</P> + +<P> +There is such a difference between reading a thing and knowing a thing. +We could read a thousand descriptions of the sun and not know the sun +as in one glimpse of it with our own eyes. +</P> + +<P> +I used to stand in the row of blessed little rascals in the "deestrick" +school and read from McGuffey's celebrated literature, +"If—I-p-p-play—with—the—f-f-f-i-i-i-i-r-r-e—I—will—g-e-e-et +—my-y-y-y-y—f-f-f-f—ingers—bur-r-r-rned—period!" +</P> + +<P> +I did not learn it. I wish I had learned by reading it that if I play +with the fire I will get my fingers burned. I had to slap my hands upon +hot stoves and coffee-pots, and had to get many kinds of blisters in +order to learn it. +</P> + +<P> +Then I had to go around showing the blisters, boring my friends and +taking up a collection of sympathy. "Look at my bad luck!" Fool! +</P> + +<P> +This is not a lecture. It is a confession! It seems to me if you in the +audience knew how little I know, you wouldn't stay. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +"You Can't Get Something for Nothing" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Yes, I was thirty-four years learning that one sentence. "You can't get +something for nothing." That is, getting it in partial tune. It took me +so long because I was naturally bright. It takes that kind longer than +a human being. They are so smart you cannot teach them with a few +bumps. They have to be pulverized. +</P> + +<P> +That sentence takes me back to the days when I was a "hired man" on the +farm. You might not think I had ever been a "hired man" on the farm at +ten dollars a month and "washed, mended and found." You see me here on +this platform in my graceful and cultured manner, and you might not +believe that I had ever trained an orphan calf to drink from a copper +kettle. But I have fed him the fingers of this hand many a time. You +might not think that I had ever driven a yoke of oxen and had said the +words. But I have! +</P> + +<P> +I remember the first county fair I ever attended. Fellow sufferers, you +may remember that at the county fair all the people sort out to their +own departments. Some people go to the canned fruit department. Some go +to the fancywork department. Some go to the swine department. Everybody +goes to his own department. Even the "suckers"! Did you ever notice +where they go? That is where I went—to the "trimming department." +</P> + +<P> +I was in the "trimming department" in five minutes. Nobody told me +where it was. I didn't need to be told. I gravitated there. The barrel +always shakes all of one size to one place. You notice that—in a city +all of one size get together. +</P> + +<P> +Right at the entrance to the "local Midway" I met a gentleman. I know +he was a gentleman because he said he was a gentleman. He had a little +light table he could move quickly. Whenever the climate became too +sultry he would move to greener pastures. On that table were three +little shells in a row, and there was a little pea under the middle +shell. I saw it there, being naturally bright. I was the only naturally +bright person around the table, hence the only one who knew under which +shell the little round pea was hidden. +</P> + +<P> +Even the gentleman running the game was fooled. He thought it was under +the end shell and bet me money it was under the end shell. You see, +this was not gambling, this was a sure thing. (It was!) I had saved up +my money for weeks to attend the fair. I bet it all on that middle +shell. I felt bad. It seemed like robbing father. And he seemed like a +real nice old gentleman, and maybe he had a family to keep. But I would +teach him a lesson not to "monkey" with people like me, naturally +bright. +</P> + +<P> +But I needn't have felt bad. I did not rob father. Father cleaned me +out of all I had in about five seconds. +</P> + +<P> +I went over to the other side of the fairgrounds and sat down. That was +all I had to do now—just go, sit down. I couldn't see the mermaid now +or get into the grandstand. +</P> + +<P> +Sadly I thought it all over, but I did not get the right answer. I said +the thing every fool does say when he gets bumped and fails to learn +the lesson from the bump. I said, "Next time I shall be more careful." +</P> + +<P> +When anybody says that he is due for a return date. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +I Bought the Soap +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Learn? No! Within a month I was on the street a Saturday night when +another gentleman drove into town. He stopped on the public square and +stood up in his buggy. "Let the prominent citizens gather around me, +for I am going to give away dollars." +</P> + +<P> +Immediately all the prominent "suckers" crowded around the buggy. +"Gentlemen, I am introducing this new medicinal soap that cures all +diseases humanity is heir to. Now just to introduce and advertise, I am +putting these cakes of Wonder Soap in my hat. You see I am wrapping a +ten-dollar bill around one cake and throwing it into the hat. Now who +will give me five dollars for the privilege of taking a cake of this +wonderful soap from my hat—any cake you want, gentlemen!" +</P> + +<P> +And right on top of the pile was the cake with the ten wrapped around +it! I jumped over the rest to shove my five (two weeks' farm work) in +his hands and grab that bill cake. But the bill disappeared. I never +knew where it went. The man whipped up his horse and also disappeared. +I never knew where he went. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +My "Fool Drawer" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +I grew older and people began to notice that I was naturally bright and +therefore good picking. They began to let me in on the ground floor. +Did anybody ever let you in on the ground floor? I never could stick. +Whenever anybody let me in on the ground floor it seemed like I would +always slide on thru and land in the cellar. +</P> + +<P> +I used to have a drawer in my desk I called my "fool drawer." I kept my +investments in it. I mean, the investments I did not have to lock up. +You get the pathos of that—the investments nobody wanted to steal. And +whenever I would get unduly inflated I would open that drawer and "view +the remains." +</P> + +<P> +I had in that drawer the deed to my Oklahoma corner-lots. Those lots +were going to double next week. But they did not double I doubled. They +still exist on the blueprint and the Oklahoma metropolis on paper is +yet a wide place in the road. +</P> + +<P> +I had in that drawer my deed to my rubber plantation. Did you ever hear +of a rubber plantation in Central America? That was mine. I had there +my oil propositions. What a difference, I have learned, between an oil +proposition and an oil well! The learning has been very expensive. +</P> + +<P> +I used to wonder how I ever could spend my income. I do not wonder now. +I wonder how I will make it. +</P> + +<P> +I had in that drawer my "Everglade" farm. Did you ever hear of the +"Everglades"? I have an alligator ranch there. It is below the +frost-line, also below the water-line. I will sell it by the gallon. +</P> + +<P> +I had also a bale of mining stock. I had stock in gold mines and silver +mines. Nobody knows how much mining stock I have owned. Nobody could +know while I kept that drawer shut. As I looked over my gold and silver +mine stock, I often noticed that it was printed in green. I used to +wonder why they printed it in green—wonder if they wanted it to +harmonize with me! And I would realize I had so much to live for—the +dividends. I have been so near the dividends I could smell them. Only +one more assessment, then we will cut the melon! I have heard that all +my life and never got a piece of the rind. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Getting "Selected" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Why go farther? I am not half done confessing. Each bump only increased +my faith that the next ship would be mine. Good, honest, retired +ministers would come periodically and sell me stock in some new +enterprise that had millions in it—in its prospectus. I would buy +because I knew the minister was honest and believed in it. He was +selling it on his reputation. Favorite dodge of the promoter to get the +ministers to sell his shares. +</P> + +<P> +I was also greatly interested in companies where I put in one dollar +and got back a dollar or two of bonds and a dollar or two of stock. +That was doubling and trebling my money over night. An old banker once +said to me, "Why don't you invest in something that will pay you five +or six per cent. and get it?" +</P> + +<P> +I pitied his lack of vision. Bankers were such "tightwads." They had no +imagination! Nothing interested me that did not offer fifty or a +hundred per cent.—then. Give me the five per cent. now! +</P> + +<P> +By the time I was thirty-four I was a rich man in worthless paper. It +would have been better for me if I had thrown about all my savings into +the bottom of the sea. +</P> + +<P> +Then I got a confidential letter from a friend of our family I had +never met. His name was Thomas A. Cleage, and he was in the Rialto +Building, St. Louis, Missouri. He wrote me in extreme confidence, "You +have been selected." +</P> + +<P> +Were you ever selected? If you were, then you know the thrill that rent +my manly bosom as I read that letter from this man who said he was a +friend of our family. "You have been selected because you are a +prominent citizen and have a large influence in your community. You are +a natural leader and everybody looks up to you." +</P> + +<P> +He knew me! He was the only man who did know me. So I took the cork +clear under. +</P> + +<P> +"Because of your tremendous influence you have been selected to go in +with us in the inner circle and get a thousand per cent. dividends." +</P> + +<P> +Did you get that? I hope you did. I did not! But I took a night train +for St. Louis. I was afraid somebody might beat me there if I waited +till next day. I sat up all night in a day coach to save money for Tom, +the friend of our family. But I see now I need not have hurried so. +They would have waited a month with the sheep-shears ready. Lambie, +lambie, lambie, come to St. Louis! +</P> + +<P> +I don't get any sympathy from this crowd. You laugh at me. You respect +not my feelings. I am not going to tell you a thing that happened in +St. Louis. It is none of your business! +</P> + +<P> +O, I am so glad I went to St. Louis. Being naturally bright, I could +not learn it at home, back in Ohio. I had to go clear down to St. Louis +to Tom Cleage's bucket-shop and pay him eleven hundred dollars to +corner the wheat market of the world. That is all I paid him. I could +not borrow any more. I joined what he called a "pool." I think it must +have been a pool, for I know I fell in and got soaked! +</P> + +<P> +That bump set me to thinking. My fever began to reduce. I got the +thirty-third degree in financial suckerdom for only eleven hundred +dollars. +</P> + +<P> +I have always regarded Tom as one of my great school teachers. I have +always regarded the eleven hundred as the finest investment I had made +up to that time, for I got the most out of it. I do not feel hard +toward goldbrick men and "blue sky" venders. I sometimes feel that we +should endow them. How else can we save a sucker? You cannot tell him +anything, because he is naturally bright and knows better. You simply +have to trim him till he bleeds. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +I Am Cured +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +It is worth eleven hundred dollars every day to know that one sentence, +You cannot get something for nothing. Life just begins to get juicy +when you know it. Today when I open a newspaper and see a big ad, +"Grasp a Fortune Now!" I will not do it! I stop my subscription to that +paper. I simply will not take a paper with that ad in it, for I have +graduated from that class. +</P> + +<P> +I will not grasp a fortune now. Try me, I dare you! Bring a fortune +right up on this platform and put it down there on the floor. I will +not grasp it. Come away, it is a coffee-pot! +</P> + +<P> +Today when somebody offers me much more than the legal rate of interest +I know he is no friend of our family. +</P> + +<P> +If he offers me a hundred per cent. I call for the police! +</P> + +<P> +Today when I get a confidential letter that starts out, "You have been +selected—" I never read farther than the word "selected." Meeting is +adjourned. I select the waste-basket. Here, get in there just as quick +as you can. I was selected! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +O, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son! Learn it early in life. The law of +compensation is never suspended. You only own what you earn. You can't +get something for nothing. If you do not learn it, you will have to be +"selected." There is no other way for you, because you are naturally +bright. When you get a letter, "You have been selected to receive a +thousand per cent. dividends," it means you have been selected to +receive this bunch of blisters because you look like the biggest sucker +on the local landscape. +</P> + +<P> +The other night in a little town of perhaps a thousand, a banker took +me up into his office after the lecture in which I had related some of +the above experiences. "The audience laughed with you and thought it +very funny," said he. "I couldn't laugh. It was too pathetic. It was a +picture of what is going on in our own little community year after +year. I wish you could see what I have to see. I wish you could see the +thousands of hard-earned dollars that go out of our community every +year into just such wildcat enterprises as you described. The saddest +part of it is that the money nearly always goes out of the pockets of +the people who can least afford to lose it." +</P> + +<P> +Absalom, wake up! This is bargain night for you. I paid eleven hundred +dollars to tell you this one thing, and you get it for a dollar or two. +This is no cheap lecture. It cost blood. +</P> + +<P> +Learn that the gambler never owns his winnings. The man who accumulates +by sharp practices or by undue profits never owns it. Even the young +person who has large fortune given him does not own it. We only own +what we have rendered definite service to bound. The owning is in the +understanding of values. +</P> + +<P> +This is true physically, mentally, morally. You only own what you have +earned and stored in your life, not merely in your pocket, stomach or +mind. +</P> + +<P> +I often think if it takes me thirty-four years to begin to learn one +sentence, I see the need of an eternity. +</P> + +<P> +To me that is one of the great arguments for eternal life—how slowly I +learn, and how much there is to learn. It will take an eternity! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Those Commencement Orations +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The young person says, "By next June I shall have finished my +education." Bless them all! They will have put another string on their +fiddle. +</P> + +<P> +After they "finish" they have a commencement, not an end-ment, as they +think. This is not to sneer, but to cheer. Isn't it glorious that life +is one infinite succession of commencements and promotions! +</P> + +<P> +I love to attend commencements. The stage is so beautifully decorated +and the joy of youth is everywhere. There is a row of geraniums along +the front of the stage and a big oleander on the side. There is a +long-whiskered rug in the middle. The graduates sit in a semicircle +upon the stage in their new patent leather. I know how it hurts. It is +the first time they have worn it. +</P> + +<P> +Then they make their orations. Every time I hear their orations I like +them better, because every year I am getting younger. Damsel Number One +comes forth and begins: +</P> + +<P> +"Beyond the Alps (sweep arms forward to the left, left arm leading) +lieth Italy!" (Bring arms down, letting fingers follow the wrist. How +embarrassing at a commencement for the fingers not to follow the wrist! +It is always a shock to the audience when the wrist sweeps downward and +the fingers remain up in the air. So by all means, let the fingers +follow the wrist, just as the elocution teacher marked on page 69.) +</P> + +<P> +Applause, especially from relatives. +</P> + +<P> +Sweet Girl Graduate Number 2, generally comes second. S. G. G. No. 2 +stands at the same leadpencil mark on the floor, resplendent in a filmy +creation caught with something or other. +</P> + +<P> +"We (hands at half-mast and separating) are rowing (business of +propelling aerial boat with two fingers of each hand, head inclined). +We are not drifting (hands slide downward)." +</P> + +<P> +Children, we are not laughing at you. We are laughing at ourselves. We +are laughing the happy laugh at how we have learned these great truths +that you have memorized, but not vitalized. +</P> + +<P> +You get the most beautiful and sublime truths from Emerson's essays. +(How did they ever have commencements before Emerson?) But that is not +knowing them. You cannot know them until you have lived them. It is a +grand thing to say, "Beyond the Alps lieth Italy," but you can never +really say that until you know it by struggling up over Alps of +difficulty and seeing the Italy of promise and victory beyond. It is +fine to say, "We are rowing and not drifting," but you cannot really +say that until you have pulled on the oar. +</P> + +<P> +O, Gussie, get an oar! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +My Maiden Sermon +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Did you ever hear a young preacher, just captured, just out of a +factory? Did you ever hear him preach his "maiden sermon"? I wish you +had heard mine. I had a call. At least, I thought I had a call. I think +now I was "short-circuited." The "brethren" waited upon me and told me +I had been "selected": Maybe this was a local call, not long distance. +</P> + +<P> +They gave me six weeks in which to load the gospel gun and get ready +for my try-out. I certainly loaded it to the muzzle. +</P> + +<P> +But I made the mistake I am trying to warn you against. Instead of +going to the one book where I might have gotten a sermon—the book of +my experience, I went to the books in my father's library. "As the poet +Shakespeare has so beautifully said," and then I took a chunk of +Shakespeare and nailed it on page five of my sermon. "List to the poet +Tennyson." Come here, Lord Alfred. So I soldered these fragments from +the books together with my own native genius. I worked that sermon up +into the most beautiful splurges and spasms. I bedecked it with +metaphors and semaphores. I filled it with climaxes, both wet and dry. +I had a fine wet climax on page fourteen, where I had made a little +mark in the margin which meant "cry here." This was the spilling-point +of the wet climax. I was to cry on the lefthand side of the page. +</P> + +<P> +I committed it all to memory, and then went to a lady who taught +expression, to get it expressed. You have to get it expressed. +</P> + +<P> +I got the most beautiful gestures nailed into almost every page. You +know about gestures—these things you make with your arms in the air as +you speak. You can notice it on me yet. +</P> + +<P> +I am not sneering at expression. Expression is a noble art. All life is +expression. But you have to get something to express. Here I made my +mistake. I got a lot of fine gestures. I got an express-wagon and got +no load for it. So it rattled. I got a necktie, but failed to get any +man to hang it upon. I got up before a mirror for six weeks, day by +day, and said the sermon to the glass. It got so it would run itself. I +could have gone to sleep and that sermon would not have hesitated. +</P> + +<P> +Then came the grand day. The boy wonder stood forth and before his +large and enthusiastic concourse delivered that maiden sermon more +grandly than ever to a mirror. Every gesture went off the bat according +to the blueprint. I cried on page fourteen! I never knew it was in me. +But I certainly got it all out that day! +</P> + +<P> +Then I did another fine thing, I sat down. I wish now I had done that +earlier. I wish now I had sat down before I got up. I was the last man +out of the church—and I hurried. But they beat me out—all nine of +them. When I went out the door, the old sexton said as he jiggled the +key in the door to hurry me, "Don't feel bad, bub, I've heerd worse +than that. You're all right, bub, but you don't know nothin' yet." +</P> + +<P> +I cried all the way to town. If he had plunged a dagger into me he +would not have hurt me so much. It has taken some years to learn that +the old man was right. I had wonderful truth in that sermon. No sermon +ever had greater truth, but I had not lived it. The old man meant I did +not know my own sermon. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +So, children, when you prepare your commencement oration, write about +what you know best, what you have lived. If you know more about peeling +potatoes than about anything else, write about "Peeling Potatoes," and +you are most likely to hear the applause peal from that part of your +audience unrelated to you. +</P> + +<P> +Out of every thousand books published, perhaps nine hundred of them do +not sell enough to pay the cost of printing them. As you study the +books that do live, you note that they are the books that have been +lived. Perhaps the books that fail have just as much of truth in them +and they may even be better written, yet they lack the vital impulse. +They come out of the author's head. The books that live must come out +of his heart. They are his own life. They come surging and pulsating +from the book of his experience. +</P> + +<P> +The best part of our schooling comes not from the books, but from the +men behind the books. +</P> + +<P> +We study agriculture from books. That does not make us an +agriculturist. We must take a hoe and go out and agricult. That is the +knowing in the doing. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +You Must Live Your Song +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "There was never a picture painted,<BR> + There was never a poem sung,<BR> + But the soul of the artist fainted,<BR> + And the poet's heart was wrung."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +So many young people think because they have a good voice and they have +cultivated it, they are singers. All this cultivation and irritation +and irrigation and gargling of the throat are merely symptoms of a +singer—merely neckties. Singers look better with neckties. +</P> + +<P> +They think the song comes from the diaphragm. But it comes from the +heart, chaperoned by the diaphragm. You cannot sing a song you have not +lived. +</P> + +<P> +Jessie was singing the other day at a chautauqua. She has a beautiful +voice, and she has been away to "Ber-leen" to have it attended to. She +sang that afternoon in the tent, "The Last Rose of Summer." She sang it +with every note so well placed, with the sweetest little trills and +tendrils, with the smile exactly like her teacher had taught her. +Jessie exhibited all the machinery and trimmings for the song, but she +had no steam, no song. She sang the notes. She might as well have sung, +"Pop, Goes the Weasel." +</P> + +<P> +The audience politely endured Jessie. That night a woman sang in the +same tent "The Last Rose of Summer." She had never been to Berlin, but +she had lived that song. She didn't dress the notes half so beautifully +as Jessie did, but she sang it with the tremendous feeling it demands. +The audience went wild. It was a case of Gussie and Bill Whackem. +</P> + +<P> +All this was gall and wormwood to Jessie. "Child," I said to her, "this +is the best singing lesson you have ever had. Your study is all right +and you have a better voice than that woman, but you cannot sing "The +Last Rose of Summer" yet, for you do not know very much about the first +rose of summer. And really, I hope you'll never know the ache and +disappointment you must know before you can sing that song, for it is +the sob of a broken-hearted woman. Learn to sing the songs you have +lived." +</P> + +<P> +Why do singers try to execute songs beyond the horizon of their lives? +That is why they "execute" them. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Success of a Song-Writer +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The guest of honor at a dinner in a Chicago club was a woman who is one +of the widely known song-writers of this land. As I had the good +fortune to be sitting at table with her I wanted to ask her, "How did +you get your songs known? How did you know what kind of songs the +people want to sing?" +</P> + +<P> +But in the hour she talked with her friends around the table I found +the answer to every question. "Isn't it good to be here? Isn't it great +to have friends and a fine home and money?" she said. "I have had such +a struggle in my life. I have lived on one meal a day and didn't know +where the next meal was coming from. I know what it is to be left alone +in the world upon my own resources. I have had years of struggle. I +have been sick and discouraged and down and out. It was in my little +back-room, the only home I had, that I began to write songs. I wrote +them for my own relief. I was writing my own life, just what was in my +own heart and what the struggles were teaching me. No one is more +surprised and grateful that the world seems to love my songs and asks +for more of them." +</P> + +<P> +The woman was Carrie Jacobs-Bond, who wrote "The Perfect Day," "Just a +Wearyin' for You," "His Lullaby" and many more of those simple little +songs so full of the pathos and philosophy of life that they tug at +your heart and moisten your eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Anybody could write those songs—just a few simple words and notes. No. +Books of theory and harmony and expression only teach us how to write +the words and where to place the notes. These are not the song, but +only the skeleton into which our own life must breathe the life of the +song. +</P> + +<P> +The woman who sat there clad in black, with her sweet, expressive face +crowned with silvery hair, had learned to write her songs in the +University of Hard Knocks. She here became the song philosopher she is +today. Her defeats were her victories. If Carrie Jacobs-Bond had never +struggled with discouragement, sickness, poverty and loneliness, she +never would have been able to write the songs that appeal to the +multitudes who have the same battles. +</P> + +<P> +The popular song is the song that best voices what is in the popular +heart. And while we have a continual inundation of popular songs that +are trashy and voice the tawdriest human impulses, yet it is a tribute +to the good elements in humanity that the wholesome, uplifting +sentiments in Carrie Jacobs-Bond's songs continue to hold their +popularity. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Theory and Practice +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +My friends, I am not arguing that you and I must drink the dregs of +defeat, or that our lives must fill up with poverty or sorrow, or +become wrecks. But I am insisting upon what I see written all around me +in the affairs of everyday life, that none of us will ever know real +success in any line of human endeavor until that success flows from the +fullness of our experience just as the songs came from the life of +Carrie Jacobs-Bond. +</P> + +<P> +The world is full of theorists, dreamers, uplifters, reformers, who +have worthy visions but are not able to translate them into practical +realities. They go around with their heads in the clouds, looking +upward, and half the time their feet are in the flower-beds or +trampling upon their fellow men they dream of helping. Their ideas must +be forged into usefulness available for this day upon the anvil of +experience. +</P> + +<P> +Many of the most brilliant theorists have been the greatest failures in +practice. +</P> + +<P> +There are a thousand who can tell you what is the matter with things to +one person who can give you a practical way to fix them. +</P> + +<P> +I used to have respect amounting to reverence for great readers and +book men. I used to know a man who could tell in what book almost +anything you could think of was discussed, and perhaps the page. He was +a walking library index. I thought him a most wonderful man. Indeed, in +my childhood I thought he was the greatest man in the world. +</P> + +<P> +He was a remarkable man—a great reader and with a memory that retained +it all. That man could recite chapters and volumes. He could give you +almost any date. He could finish almost any quotation. His conversation +was largely made up of classical quotations. +</P> + +<P> +But he was one of the most helpless men I have ever seen in practical +life. He seemed to be unable to think and reason for himself. He could +quote a page of John Locke, but somehow the page didn't supply the one +sentence needed for the occasion. The man was a misfit on earth. He was +liable to put the gravy in his coffee and the gasoline in the fire. He +seemed never to have digested any of the things in his memory. Since I +have grown up I always think of that man as an intellectual cold +storage plant. +</P> + +<P> +The greatest book is the textbook of the University of Hard Knocks, the +Book of Human Experience the "sermons in stones" and the "books in +running brooks." Most fortunate is he who has learned to read +understandingly from it. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +Note the sweeping, positive statements of the young person. +</P> + +<P> +Note the cautious, specific statements of the person who has lived long +in this world. +</P> + +<P> +Our education is our progress from the sweeping, positive, wholesale +statements we have not proved, to the cautious, specific statements we +have proved. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Tuning the Strings of Life +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Many audiences are gathered into this one audience. Each person here is +a different audience, reading a different page in the Book of Human +Experience. Each has a different fight to make and a different burden +to carry. Each one of us has more trouble than anybody else! +</P> + +<P> +I know there are chapters of heroism in the lives of you older ones. +You have cried yourselves to sleep, some of you, and walked the floor +when you could not sleep. You have learned that "beyond the Alps lieth +Italy." +</P> + +<P> +A good many of you were bumped today or yesterday, or maybe years ago, +and the wound has not healed. You think it never will heal. You came +here thinking that perhaps you would forget your trouble for a little +while. I know there are people in this audience in pain. +</P> + +<P> +Never do this many gather but what there are some with aching hearts. +</P> + +<P> +And you young people here with lives like June mornings, are not much +interested in this lecture. You are polite and attentive because this +is a polite and attentive neighborhood. But down in your hearts you are +asking, "What is this all about? What is that man talking about? I +haven't had these things and I'm not going to have them, either!" +</P> + +<P> +Maybe some of you are naturally bright! +</P> + +<P> +You are going to be bumped. You are going to cry yourselves to sleep. +You are going to walk the floor when you cannot sleep. Some of you are +going to know the keen sorrow of having the one you trust most betray +you. Maybe, betray you with a kiss. You will go through your +Gethsemane. You will see your dearest plans wrecked. You will see all +that seems to make life livable lost out of your horizon. You will say, +"God, let me die. I have nothing more to live for." +</P> + +<P> +For all lives have about the same elements. Your life is going to be +about like other lives. +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P> +And you are going to learn the wonderful lesson thru the years, the +bumps and the tears, that all these things somehow are necessary to +promote our education. +</P> + +<P> +These bumps and hard knocks do not break the fiddle—they turn the pegs. +</P> + +<P> +These bumps and tragedies and Waterloos draw the strings of the soul +tighter and tighter, nearer and nearer to God's great concert pitch, +where the discords fade from our lives and where the music divine and +harmonies celestial come from the same old strings that had been +sending forth the noise and discord. +</P> + +<P> +Thus we know that our education is progressing, as the evil and +unworthy go out of our lives and as peace, harmony, happiness, love and +understanding come into our lives. +</P> + +<P> +That is getting in tune. +</P> + +<P> +That is growing up. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter VIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Looking Backward +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Memories of the Price We Pay +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +WHAT a price we pay for what we know! I laugh as I look backward—and +weep and rejoice. +</P> + +<P> +I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, altho it is quite +evident that I could have handled a pretty good-sized spoon. But father +being a country preacher, we had tin spoons. We never had to tie a red +string around our spoons when we loaned them for the ladies' aid +society oyster supper. We always got our spoons back. Nobody ever +traded with us by mistake. +</P> + +<P> +Do you remember the first money you ever earned? I do. I walked several +miles into the country those old reaper days and gathered sheaves. That +night I was proud when that farmer patted me on the head and said, "You +are the best boy to work, I ever saw." Then the cheerful old miser put +a nickel in my blistered hand. That nickel looked bigger than any money +I have since handled. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +That "Last Day of School" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Yet I was years learning it is much easier to make money than to handle +it, hence the tale that follows. +</P> + +<P> +I was sixteen years old and a school teacher. Sweet sixteen—which +means green sixteen. But remember again, only green things grow. There +is hope for green things. I was so tall and awkward then—I haven't +changed much since. I kept still about my age. I was several dollars +the lowest bidder. They said out that way, "Anybody can teach kids." +That is why I was a teacher. +</P> + +<P> +I had never studied pedagogy, but I had whittled out three rules that I +thought would make it go. My first rule was, Make 'em study. My second, +Make, em recite. That is, fill 'em up and then empty 'em. +</P> + +<P> +My third and most important rule was, Get your money! +</P> + +<P> +I walked thirteen miles a day, six and a half miles each way, most of +the time, to save money. I think I had all teaching methods in use. +With the small fry I used a small paddle to win their confidence and +arouse their enthusiasm for an education. With the pupils larger and +more muscular than their teacher I used love and moral suasion. +</P> + +<P> +We ended the school with an "exhibition." Did you ever attend the old +back-country "last day of school exhibition"? The people that day came +from all over the township. They were so glad our school was closing +they all turned out to make it a success. They brought great baskets of +provender and we had a feast. We covered the school desks with boards, +and then covered the boards with piles of fried chicken, doughnuts and +forty kinds of pie. +</P> + +<P> +Then we had a "doings." Everybody did a stunt. We executed a lot of +literature that day. Execute is the word that tells what happened to +literature in District No. 1, Jackson Township, that day. I can shut my +eyes and see it yet. I can see my pupils coming forward to speak their +"pieces." I hardly knew them and they hardly knew me, for we were +"dressed up." Many a head showed father had mowed it with the +sheepshears. Mother had been busy with the wash-rag—clear back of the +ears! And into them! So many of them wore collars that stuck out all +stiff like they had pushed their heads on thru their big straw hats. +</P> + +<P> +I can see them speaking their "pieces." I can see "The Soldier of the +Legion lay dying in Algiers." We had him die again that day, and he had +a lingering end as we executed him. I can see "The boy stood on the +burning deck, whence all but he had fled." I can see "Mary's little +lamb" come slipping over the stage. I see the tow-headed patriot in +"Give me liberty or give me death." I feel now that if Patrick Henry +had been present, he would have said, "Give me death." +</P> + +<P> +There came a breathless hush as "teacher" came forward as the last act +on the bill to say farewell. It was customary to cry. I wanted to yell. +Tomorrow I would get my money! I had a speech I had been saying over +and over until it would say itself. But somehow when I got up before +that "last day of school" audience and opened my mouth, it was a great +opening, but nothing came out. It came out of my eyes. Tears rolled +down my cheeks until I could hear them spatter on my six-dollar suit. +</P> + +<P> +And my pupils wept as their dear teacher said farewell. Parents wept. +It was a teary time. I only said, "Weep not for me, dear friends. I am +going away, but I am coming back." I thought to cheer them up, but they +wept the more. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Next day I drew my money. I had it all in one joyous wad—$240. I was +going home with head high and aircastles even higher. But I never got +home with the money. Talk about the fool and his money and you get very +personal. +</P> + +<P> +For on the way home I met Deacon K, and he borrowed it all. Deacon K +was "such a good man" and a "pillar of the church." I used to wonder, +tho, why he didn't take a pillow to church. I took his note for $240, +"due at corncutting," as we termed that annual fall-time paying up +season. I really thought a note was not necessary, such was my +confidence in the deacon. +</P> + +<P> +For years I kept a faded, tear-spattered, yellow note for $240, "due at +corncutting," as a souvenir of my first schoolteaching. Deacon K has +gone from earth. He has gone to his eternal reward. I scarcely know +whether to look up or down as I say that. He never left any forwarding +address. +</P> + +<P> +I was paid thousands in experience for that first schoolteaching, but I +paid all the money I got from it—two hundred and forty +thirteen-mile-a-day dollars to learn one thing I could not learn from +the books, that it takes less wisdom to make money, than it does to +intelligently handle it afterwards. Incidentally I learned it may be +safer to do business with a first-class sinner than with a second-class +saint. +</P> + +<P> +Which is no slap at the church, but at its worst enemies, the foes of +its own household. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Calling the Class-Roll +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +A lyceum bureau once sent me back to my home town to lecture. I imagine +most lecturers have a hard time lecturing in the home town. Their +schoolmates and playmates are apt to be down there in the front rows +with their families, and maybe all the old scores have not yet been +settled. The boy he fought with may be down there. Perhaps the girl who +gave him the "mitten" is there. +</P> + +<P> +And he has gotten his lecture out of that home town. The heroes and +villains live there within striking distance. Perhaps they have come to +hear him. "Is not this the carpenter's son?" Perhaps this is why some +lecturers and authors are not so popular in the home town until several +generations pass. +</P> + +<P> +I went back to the same hall to speak, and stood upon the same platform +where twenty-one years before I had stood to deliver my graduating +oration, when in impassioned and well modulated tones I had exclaimed, +"Greece is gone and Rome is no more, but fe-e-e-e-ear not, for I will +sa-a-a-a-ave you!" or words to that effect. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Then I went back to the little hotel and sat up alone in my room half +the night living it over. Time was when I thought anybody who could +live in that hotel was a superior order of being. But the time had come +when I knew the person who could go on living in any hotel has a +superior order of vitality. +</P> + +<P> +I held thanksgiving services that night. I could see better. I had a +picture of the school in that town that had been taken twenty-one years +before, just before commencement. I had not seen the picture these +twenty-one years, for I could not then afford to buy one. The price was +a quarter. +</P> + +<P> +I got a truer perspective of life that night. Did you ever sit alone +with a picture of your classmates taken twenty-one years before? It is +a memorable experience. +</P> + +<P> +A class of brilliant and gifted young people went out to take charge of +the world. They were so glad the world had waited so long on them. They +were so willing to take charge of the world. They were going to be +presidents and senators and authors and authoresses and scientists and +scientist-esses and geniuses and genius-esses and things like that. +</P> + +<P> +There was one boy in the class who was not naturally bright. It was not +the one you may be thinking of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He had no +brilliant career in view. He was dull and seemed to lack intellect. He +was "conditioned" into the senior class. We all felt a little sorry for +Jim. +</P> + +<P> +As commencement day approached, the committee of the class appointed +for that purpose took Jim back of the schoolhouse and broke the news to +him that they were going to let him graduate, but they were not going +to let him speak, because he couldn't make a speech that would do +credit to such a brilliant class. They hid Jim on the stage back of the +oleander commencement night. +</P> + +<P> +Shake the barrel! +</P> + +<P> +The girl who was to become the authoress became the helloess in the +home telephone exchange, and had become absolutely indispensable to the +community. The girl who was to become the poetess became the goddess at +the general delivery window and superintendent of the stamp-licking +department of the home postoffice. The boy who was going to Confess was +raising the best corn in the county, and his wife was speaker of the +house. +</P> + +<P> +Most of them were doing very well even Jim Lambert. Jim had become the +head of one of the big manufacturing plants of the South, with a lot of +men working for him. The committee that took him out behind the +schoolhouse to inform him he could not speak at commencement, would now +have to wait in line before a frosted door marked, "Mr. Lambert, +Private." They would have to send up their cards, and the watchdog who +guards the door would tell them, "Cut it short, he's busy!" before they +could break any news to him today. +</P> + +<P> +They hung a picture of Mr. Lambert in the high school at the last +alumni meeting. They hung it on the wall near where the oleander stood +that night. +</P> + +<P> +Dull boy or girl—you with your eyes tear-dimmed sometimes because you +do not seem to learn like some in your classes can you not get a bit of +cheer from the story of Jim? +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Hours pass, and still as I sat in that hotel room I was lost in that +school picture and the twenty-one years. There were fifty-four young +people in that picture. They had been shaken these years in the barrel, +and now as I called the roll on them, most of them that I expected to +go up had shaken down and some that I expected to stay down had shaken +up. +</P> + +<P> +Out of that fifty-four, one had gone to a pulpit, one had gone to +Congress and one had gone to the penitentiary. Some had gone to +brilliant success and some had gone down to sad failure. Some had found +happiness and some had found unhappiness. It seemed as tho almost every +note on the keyboard of human possibility had been struck by the one +school of fifty-four. +</P> + +<P> +When that picture was taken the oldest was not more than eighteen, yet +most of them seemed already to have decided their destinies. The +twenty-one years that followed had not changed their courses. +</P> + +<P> +The only changes had come where God had come into a life to uplift it, +or where Mammon had entered to pull it down. And I saw better that the +foolish dreams of success faded before the natural unfolding of +talents, which is the real success. I saw better that "the boy is +father to the man." +</P> + +<P> +The boy who skimmed over his work in school was skimming over his work +as a man. The boy who went to the bottom of things in school was going +to the bottom of things in manhood. Which had helped him to go to the +top of things! +</P> + +<P> +Jim Lambert had merely followed the call of talents unseen in him +twenty-one years before. +</P> + +<P> +The lazy boy became a "tired" man. The industrious boy became an +industrious man. The sporty boy became a sporty man. The domineering +egotist boy became the domineering egotist man. +</P> + +<P> +The boy who traded knives with me and beat me—how I used to envy him! +Why was it he could always get the better of me? Well, he went on +trading knives and getting the better of people. Now, twenty-one years +afterwards, he was doing time in the state penitentiary for forgery. He +was now called a bad man, when twenty-one years ago when he did the +same things on a smaller scale they called him smart and bright. +</P> + +<P> +The "perfectly lovely" boy who didn't mix with the other boys, who +didn't whisper, who never got into trouble, who always had his hair +combed, and said, "If you please," used to hurt me. He was the +teacher's model boy. All the mothers of the community used to say to +their own reprobate offspring, "Why can't you be like Harry? He'll be +President of the United States some day, and you'll be in jail." But +Model Harry sat around all his life being a model. I believe Mr. +Webster defines a model as a small imitation of the real thing. Harry +certainly was a successful model. He became a seedy, sleepy, helpless +relic at forty. He was "perfectly lovely" because he hadn't the energy +to be anything else. It was the boys who had the hustle and the energy, +who occasionally needed bumping—and who got it—who really grew. +</P> + +<P> +I have said little about the girls of the school. Fact was, at that age +I didn't pay much attention to them. I regarded them as in the way. But +I naturally thought of Clarice, our social pet of the class—our real +pretty girl who won the vase in the home paper beauty contest. Clarice +went right on remaining in the social spotlight, primping and flirting. +She outshone all the rest. But it seemed like she was all out-shine and +no in-shine. She mistook popularity for success. The boys voted for +her, but did not marry her. Most of the girls who shone with less +social luster became the happy homemakers of the community. +</P> + +<P> +But as I looked into the face of Jim Lambert in the picture, my heart +warmed at the sight of another great success—a sweet-faced irish lass +who became an "old maid." She had worked day by day all these years to +support a home and care for her family. She had kept her grace and +sweetness thru it all, and the influence of her white, loving life +radiated far. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Boy I Had Envied +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Frank was the boy I had envied. He had everything—a fine home, a +loving father, plenty of money, opportunity and a great career awaiting +him. And he was bright and lovable and talented. Everybody said Frank +would make his mark in the world and make the town proud of him. +</P> + +<P> +I was the janitor of the schoolhouse. Some of my classmates will never +know how their thoughtless jeers and jokes wounded the sensitive, +shabby boy who swept the floors, built the fires and carried in the +coal. After commencement my career seemed to end and the careers of +Frank and the rest of them seemed to begin. They were going off to +college and going to do so many wonderful things. +</P> + +<P> +But the week after commencement I had to go into a printing office, +roll up my sleeves and go to work in the "devil's corner" to earn my +daily bread. Seemed like it took so much bread! +</P> + +<P> +Many a time as I plugged at the "case" I would think of Frank and +wonder why some people had all the good things and I had all the hard +things. +</P> + +<P> +How easy it is to see as you look backward. But how hard it is to see +when you look forward. +</P> + +<P> +Twenty-one years afterward as I got off the train in the home town, I +asked, "Where is he?" We went out to the cemetery, where I stood at a +grave and read on the headstone, "Frank." +</P> + +<P> +I had the story of a tragedy—the tragedy of modern unpreparedness. It +was the story of the boy who had every opportunity, but who had all the +struggle taken out of his life. He never followed his career, never +developed any strength. He disappointed hopes, spent a fortune, broke +his father's heart, shocked the community, and finally ended his wasted +life with a bullet fired by his own hand. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Why Ben Hur Won +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +It revived the memory of the story of Ben Hur. +</P> + +<P> +Do you remember it? The Jewish boy is torn from his home in disgrace. +He is haled into court and tried for a crime he never committed. Ben +Hur did not get a fair trial. Nobody can get a fair trial at the hands +of this world. That is why the great Judge has said, judge not, for you +have not the full evidence in the case. I alone have that. +</P> + +<P> +Then they condemn him. They lead him away to the galleys. They chain +him to the bench and to the oar. There follow the days and long years +when he pulls on the oar under the lash. Day after day he pulls on the +oar. Day after day he writhes under the sting of the lash. Years of the +cruel injustice pass. Ben Hur is the helpless victim of a mocking fate. +</P> + +<P> +That seems to be your life and my life. In the kitchen or the office, +or wherever we work we seem so often like slaves bound to the oar and +pulling under the sting of the lash of necessity. Life seems one +futureless round of drudgery. We wonder why. We often look across the +street and see somebody who lives a happier life. That one is chained +to no oar. See what a fine time they all have. Why must we pull on the +oar? +</P> + +<P> +How blind we are! We can only see our own oar. We cannot see that they, +too, pull on the oar and feel the lash. Most likely they are looking +back at us and envying us. For while we envy others, others are envying +us. +</P> + +<P> +But look at the chariot race in Antioch. See the thousands in the +circus. See Messala, the haughty Roman, and see! Ben Hur from the +galleys in the other chariot pitted against him. Down the course dash +these twin thunderbolts. The thousands hold their breath. "Who will +win?" "The man with the stronger forearms," they whisper. +</P> + +<P> +There comes the crucial moment in the race. See the man with the +stronger forearms. They are bands of steel that swell in the forearms +of Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into the inner ring. Ben +Hur wins the race! Where got the Jew those huge forearms? From the +galleys! +</P> + +<P> +Had Ben Hur never pulled on the oar, he never could have won the +chariot race. +</P> + +<P> +Sooner or later you and I are to learn that Providence makes no +mistakes in the bookkeeping. As we pull on the oar, so often lashed by +grim necessity, every honest effort is laid up at compound interest in +the bank account of strength. Sooner or later the time comes when we +need every ounce. Sooner or later our chariot race is on—when we win +the victory, strike the deciding blow, stand while those around us +fall—and it is won with the forearms earned in the galleys of life by +pulling on the oar. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +That is why I thanked God as I stood at the grave of my classmate. I +thanked God for parents who believed in the gospel of struggle, and for +the circumstances that compelled it. +</P> + +<P> +I am not an example of success. +</P> + +<P> +But I am a very grateful pupil in the first reader class of The +University of Hard Knocks. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter IX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Go On South! +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Book in the Running Brook +</H3> + +<P> +THERE is a little silvery sheet of water in Minnesota called Lake +Itasca. There is a place where a little stream leaps out from the lake. +</P> + +<P> +"Ole!" you will exclaim, "the lake is leaking. What is the name of this +little creek?" +</P> + +<P> +"Creek! It bane no creek. It bane Mississippi river." +</P> + +<P> +So even the Father of Waters has to begin as a creek. We are at the +cradle where the baby river leaps forth. We all start about alike. It +wabbles around thru the woods of Minnesota. It doesn't know where it is +going, but it is "on the way." +</P> + +<P> +It keeps wabbling around, never giving up and quitting, and it gets to +the place where all of us get sooner or later. The place where Paul +came on the road to Damascus. The place of the "heavenly vision." +</P> + +<P> +It is the place where gravity says, "Little Mississippi, do you want to +grow? Then you will have to go south." +</P> + +<P> +The little Mississippi starts south. He says to the people, "Goodbye, +folks, I am going south." The folks at Itascaville say, "Why, +Mississippi, you are foolish. You hain't got water enough to get out of +the county." That is a fact, but he is not trying to get out of the +county. The Mississippi is only trying to go south. +</P> + +<P> +The Mississippi knows nothing about the Gulf of Mexico. He does not +know that he has to go hundreds of miles south. He is only trying to go +south. He has not much water, but he does not wait for a relative to +die and bequeath him some water. That is a beautiful thought! He has +water enough to start south, and he does that. +</P> + +<P> +He goes a foot south, then another foot south. He goes a mile south. He +picks up a little stream and he has some more water. He goes on south. +He picks up another stream and grows some more. Day by day he picks up +streamlets, brooklets, rivulets. Business is picking up! He grows as he +flows. Poetry! +</P> + +<P> +My friends, here is one of the best pictures I can find in nature of +what it seems to me our lives should be. I hear a great many orations, +especially in high school commencements, entitled, "The Value of a Goal +in Life." But the direction is vastly more important than the goal. +Find the way your life should go, and then go and keep on going and +you'll reach a thousand goals. +</P> + +<P> +We do not have to figure out how far we have to go, nor how many +supplies we will need along the way. All we have to do is to start and +we will find the resources all along the way. We will grow as we flow. +All of us can start! And then go on south! +</P> + +<P> +Success is not tomorrow or next year. Success is now. Success is not at +the end of the journey, for there is no end. Success is every day in +flowing and growing. The Mississippi is a success in Minnesota as well +as on south. +</P> + +<P> +You and I sooner or later hear the call, "Go on south." If we haven't +heard it, let us keep our ear to the receiver and live a more natural +life, so that we can hear the call. We are all called. It is a divine +call—the call of our unfolding talents to be used. +</P> + +<P> +Remember, the Mississippi goes south. If he had gone any other +direction he would never have been heard of. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Three wonderful things develop as the Mississippi goes on south. +</P> + +<P> +1. He keeps on going on south and growing greater. +</P> + +<P> +2. He overcomes his obstacles and develops his power. +</P> + +<P> +3. He blesses the valley, but the valley does not bless him. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Go On South and Grow Greater +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +You never meet the Mississippi after he starts south, but what he is +going on south and growing greater. You never meet him but what he +says, "Excuse me, but I must go on south." +</P> + +<P> +The Mississippi gets to St. Paul and Minneapolis. He is a great river +now—the most successful river in the state. But he does not retire +upon his laurels. He goes on south and grows greater. He goes on south +to St. Louis. He is a wonderful river now. But he does not stop. He +goes on south and grows greater. +</P> + +<P> +Everywhere you meet him he is going on south and growing greater. +</P> + +<P> +Do you know why the Mississippi goes on south? To continue to be the +Mississippi. If he should stop and stagnate, he would not be the +Mississippi river, he would become a stagnant, poisonous pond. +</P> + +<P> +As long as people keep on going south, they keep on living. When they +stop and stagnate, they die. +</P> + +<P> +That is why I am making it the slogan of my life—GO ON SOUTH AND GROW +GREATER! I hope I can make you remember that and say it over each day. +I wish I could write it over the pulpits, over the schoolrooms, over +the business houses and homes—GO ON SOUTH AND GROW GREATER. For this +is life, and there is no other. This is education—and religion. And +the only business of life. +</P> + +<P> +You and I start well. We go on south a little ways, and then we retire. +Even young people as they start south and make some little knee-pants +achievement, some kindergarten touchdown, succumb to their press +notices. Their friends crowd around them to congratulate them. "I must +congratulate you upon your success. You have arrived." +</P> + +<P> +So many of those young goslings believe that. They quit and get canned. +They think they have gotten to the Gulf of Mexico when they have not +gotten out of the woods of Minnesota. Go on south! +</P> + +<P> +We can protect ourselves fairly well from our enemies, but heaven +deliver us from our fool friends. +</P> + +<P> +Success is so hard to endure. We can endure ten defeats better than one +victory. Success goes to the head and defeat goes to "de feet." It +makes them work harder. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Plague of Incompetents +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Civilization is mostly a conspiracy to keep us from going very far +south. +</P> + +<P> +The one who keeps on going south defies custom and becomes unorthodox. +</P> + +<P> +But contentment with present achievement is the damnation of the race. +</P> + +<P> +The mass of the human family never go on south far enough to become +good servants, workmen or artists. The young people get a smattering +and squeeze into the bottom position and never go on south to +efficiency and promotion. They wonder why their genius is not +recognized. They do not make it visible. +</P> + +<P> +Nine out of ten stenographers who apply for positions can write a few +shorthand characters and irritate a typewriter keyboard. They think +that is being a stenographer, when it is merely a symptom of a +stenographer. They mangle the language, grammar, spelling, +capitalization and punctuation. Their eyes are on the clock, their +minds on the movies. +</P> + +<P> +Nine out of ten workmen cannot be trusted to do what they advertise to +do, because they have never gone south far enough to become efficient. +Many a professional man is in the same class. +</P> + +<P> +Half of our life is spent in getting competents to repair the botchwork +of incompetents. +</P> + +<P> +No matter how well equipped you are, you are never safe in your job if +you are contented to do today just what you did yesterday. Contented to +think today what you thought yesterday. +</P> + +<P> +You must go on south to be safe. +</P> + +<P> +I used to know a violinist who would say, "If I were not a genius, I +could not play so well with such little practice." The poor fellow did +not know how poor a fiddler he really was. Well did Strickland +Gillilan, America's great poet-humorist, say, "Egotism is the opiate +that Nature administers to deaden the pains of mediocrity." +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +This Is Our Best Day +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Just because our hair gets frosty or begins to rub off in spots, we are +so prone to say, "I am aging rapidly." It pays to advertise. We always +get results. See the one shrivel who goes around front-paging his age. +Age is not years; age is grunts. +</P> + +<P> +We say, "I've seen my best days." And the undertaker goes and greases +his buggy. He believes in "preparedness." +</P> + +<P> +Go on south! We have not seen our best days. This is the best day so +far, and tomorrow is going to be better on south. +</P> + +<P> +We are only children in God's great kindergarten, playing with our +A-B-C's. I do not utter that as a bit of sentiment, but as the great +fundamental of our life. I hope the oldest in years sees that best. I +hope he says, "I am just beginning. Just beginning to understand. Just +beginning to know about life." +</P> + +<P> +We are not going on south to old age, we are going on south to eternal +youth. It is the one who stops who "ages rapidly." Each day brings us a +larger vision. Infinity, Eternity, Omnipotence, Omniscience are all on +south. +</P> + +<P> +We have left nothing behind but the husks. I would not trade this +moment for all the years before it. I have their footings at compound +interest! They are dead. This is life. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Birthdays and Headmarks +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Yesterday I had a birthday. I looked in the glass and communed with my +features. I saw some gray hairs coming. Hurrah! +</P> + +<P> +You know what gray hairs are? Did you ever get a headmark in school? +Gray hairs are silver headmarks in our education as we go on south. +</P> + +<P> +You children cheer up. Your black hair and auburn hair and the other +first reader hair will pass and you'll get promoted as you go on south. +</P> + +<P> +Don't worry about gray hair or baldness. Only worry about the location +of your gray hair or baldness. If they get on the inside of the head, +worry. Do you know why corporations sometimes say they do not want to +employ gray-headed men? They have found that so many of them have quit +going on south and have gotten gray on the inside—or bald. +</P> + +<P> +These same corporations send out Pinkertons and pay any price for +gray-headed men—gray on the outside and green on the inside. They are +the most valuable, for they have the vision and wisdom of many years +and the enthusiasm and "pep" and courage of youth. +</P> + +<P> +The preacher, the teacher—everyone who gets put on the retired list, +retires himself. He quits going on south. +</P> + +<P> +The most wonderful person in the world is the one who has lived years +and years on earth and has perhaps gotten gray on the outside, but has +kept young and fresh on the inside. Put that person in the pulpit, in +the schoolroom, in the office, behind the ticket-window or on the +bench—or under the hod—and you find the whole world going to that +person for direction, advice, vision, help, sympathy, love. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I am happy today as I look back over my life. I have been trying to +lecture a good while. I am almost ashamed to tell you how long, for I +ought to know more about it by this time. But when anybody says, "I +heard you lecture twenty years ago over at——" I stop him. "Please +don't throw it up to me now. I am just as ashamed of it as you are. I +am trying to do better now." +</P> + +<P> +O, I want to forget all the past, save its lessons. I am just beginning +to live. If anybody wants to be my best friend, let him come to me and +tell me how to improve—what to do and what not to do. Tell me how to +give a better lecture. +</P> + +<P> +Years ago a bureau representative who booked me told me my lectures +were good enough. I told him I wanted to get better lectures, for I was +so dissatisfied with what little I knew. He told me I could never get +any better. I had reached my limit. Those lectures were the "limit." I +shiver as I think what I was saying then. I want to go on south +shivering about yesterday. These years I have noticed the people on the +platform who were contented with their offerings, were not trying to +improve them, and were lost in admiration of what they were doing, did +not stay long on the platform. I have watched them come and go, come +and go. I have heard their fierce invectives against the bureaus and +ungrateful audiences that were "prejudiced" against them. +</P> + +<P> +Birthdays are not annual affairs. Birthdays are the days when we have a +new birth. The days when we go on south to larger visions. I wish I +could have a birthday every minute! +</P> + +<P> +Some people seem to string out to near a hundred years with mighty few +birthdays. Some people spin up to Methuselahs in a few years. +</P> + +<P> +From what I can learn of Methuselah, he never grew past copper-toed +boots. He just hibernated and "chawed on." +</P> + +<P> +The more birthdays we have, the nearer we approach eternal youth! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Bernhardt, Davis and Edison +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +The spectacle of Sarah Bernhardt, past seventy, thrilling and gripping +audiences with the fire and brilliancy of youth, is inspiring. No +obstacle can daunt her. Losing a leg does not end her acting, for she +remains the "Divine Sarah" with no crippling of her work. She looks +younger than many women of half her years. "The years are nothing to +me." +</P> + +<P> +Senator Henry Gassaway Davis, West Virginia's Grand Old Man, at +ninety-two was working as hard and hopefully as any man of the +multitudes in his employ. He was an ardent Odd Fellow, and one day at +ninety-two—just a short time before his passing—he went out to the +Odd Fellows' Home near Elkins, where he lived. On the porch of the home +was a row of old men inmates. The senator shook hands with these men +and one by one they rose from the bench to return his hearty greetings. +</P> + +<P> +The last man on the bench did not rise. He helplessly looked up at the +senator and said, "Senator, you'll have to excuse me from getting up. +I'm too old. When you get as old as I am, you'll not get up, either." +</P> + +<P> +"That's all right. But, my man, how old are you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Senator, I'm old in body and old in spirit. I'm past sixty." +</P> + +<P> +"My boy," laughed Senator Davis, "I was an Odd Fellow before you were +born." +</P> + +<P> +The senator at ninety-two was younger than the man "past sixty," +because he was going on south. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +When I was a little boy I saw them bring the first phonograph that Mr. +Edison invented into the meeting at Lakeside, Ohio. The people cheered +when they heard it talk. +</P> + +<P> +You would laugh at it today. It had a tinfoil cylinder, it screeched +and stuttered. You would not have it in your barn today to play to your +ford! +</P> + +<P> +But the people said, "Mr. Edison has succeeded." There was one man who +did not believe that Mr. Edison had succeeded. His name was Thomas Alva +Edison. He had gotten to St. Paul, and he went on south. A million +people would have stopped there and said, "I have arrived." They would +have put in their time litigating for their rights with other people +who would have gone on south with the phonograph idea. +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Edison has said that his genius is mainly his ability to keep on +south. A young lady succeeded in getting into his laboratory the other +day, and she wrote me that the great inventor showed her one invention. +"I made over seven thousand experiments and failed before I hit upon +that." +</P> + +<P> +"Why make so many experiments?" +</P> + +<P> +"I know more than seven thousand ways now that won't work." +</P> + +<P> +I doubt if there are ten men in America who could go on south in the +face of seven thousand failures. Today he brings forth a +diamond-pointed phonograph. I am sure if we could bring Mr. Edison to +this platform and ask him, "Have you succeeded?" he would say what he +has said to reporters and what he said to the young lady, "I have not +succeeded. I am succeeding. All I have done only shows me how much +there is yet to do." +</P> + +<P> +That is success supreme. Not "succeeded" but "succeeding." +</P> + +<P> +What a difference between "ed" and "ing"! The difference between death +and life. Are you "ed-ing" or "ing-ing"? +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Moses Begins at Eighty +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Moses, the great Hebrew law-giver, was eighty years old before he +started south. It took him eighty years to get ready. Moses did not +even get on the back page of the Egyptian newspapers till he was +eighty. He went on south into the extra editions after that! +</P> + +<P> +If Moses had retired at seventy-nine, we'd never have heard of him. If +Moses had retired to a checkerboard in the grocery store or to pitching +horseshoes up the alley and talking about "ther winter of fifty-four," +he would have become the seventeenth mummy on the thirty-ninth row in +the green pickle-jar! +</P> + +<P> +Imagine Moses living today amidst the din of the high school orations +on "The Age of the Young Man" and the Ostler idea that you are going +down hill at fifty. Imagine Moses living on "borrowed time" when he +becomes the leader of the Israelite host. +</P> + +<P> +I would see his scandalized friends gather around him. "Moses! Moses! +what is this we hear? You going to lead the Israelites to the Promised +Land? Why, Moses, you are an old man. Why don't you act like an old +man? You are liable to drop off any minute. Here is a pair of slippers. +And keep out of the night air. It is so hard on old folks." +</P> + +<P> +I think I would hear Moses say, "No, no, I am just beginning to see +what to do. Watch things happen from now on. Children of Israel, +forward, march!" +</P> + +<P> +I see Moses at eighty starting for the Wilderness so fast Aaron can +hardly keep up. Moses is eighty-five and busier and more enthusiastic +than ever. The people say, "Isn't Moses dead?" "No." "Well, he ought to +be dead, for he is old enough." +</P> + +<P> +They appoint a committee to bury Moses. You cannot do anything in +America without a committee. The committee gets out the invitations and +makes all the arrangements for a gorgeous funeral next Thursday. They +get ready the resolutions of +respect—"Whereas,—Whereas,—Resolved,—Resolved." +</P> + +<P> +Then I see the committee waiting on Moses. That is what a committee +does—it "waits" on something or other. And this committee goes up to +General Moses' private office. It is his busy day. They have to stand +in line and wait their turn. When they get up to Moses' desk, the great +prophet says, "Boys, what is it? Cut it short, I'm busy." +</P> + +<P> +The committee begins to weep. "General Moses, you are a very old man. +You are eighty-five years old and full of honors. We are the committee +duly authorized to give you gorgeous burial. The funeral is to be next +Thursday. Kindly die." +</P> + +<P> +I see Moses look over his appointments. "Next Thursday? Why, boys, +every hour is taken next Thursday. I simply cannot attend my funeral +next Thursday." +</P> + +<P> +They cannot bury Moses. He cannot attend. You cannot bury anybody who +is too busy to attend his own funeral! You cannot bury anybody until he +consents. It is bad manners! The committee is so mortified, for all the +invitations are out. It waits. +</P> + +<P> +Moses is eighty-six and the committee 'phones over, "Moses, can you +attend next Thursday?" And Moses says, "No, boys, you'll just have to +hold that funeral until I get this work pushed off so I can attend it. +I haven't even time to think about getting old." +</P> + +<P> +The committee waits. Moses is ninety and rushed more than ever. He is +doing ten men's work and his friends all say he is killing himself. But +he makes the committee wait. +</P> + +<P> +Moses is ninety-five and burning the candle at both ends. He is a +hundred. And the committee dies! +</P> + +<P> +Moses goes right on shouting, "Onward!" He is a hundred and ten. He is +a hundred and twenty. Even then I read, "His eye was not dim, nor his +natural force abated." He had not time to stop and abate. +</P> + +<P> +So God buried him. The committee was dead. O, friends, this is not +irreverence. It is joyful reverence. It is the message to all of us, Go +on south to the greater things, and get so enthused and absorbed in our +going that we'll fool the "committee." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +All the multitudes of the Children of Israel died in the Wilderness. +They were afraid to go on south. Only two of them went on south—Joshua +and Caleb. They put the giants out of business. +</P> + +<P> +The Indians once owned America. But they failed to go on south. So +another crop of Americans came into the limelight. If we modern +Americans do not go on south we will join the Indians, the auk and the +dodo. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The "Sob Squad" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +I am so sorry for the folks who quit, retire, "get on the shelf" or +live on "borrowed time." +</P> + +<P> +They generally join the "sob squad." +</P> + +<P> +They generally discover the world is "going to the dogs." They cry on +my shoulder, no matter how good clothes I wear. +</P> + +<P> +They tell me nobody uses them right. The person going on south has not +time to look back and see how anybody uses him. +</P> + +<P> +They say nobody loves them. Which is often a fact. Nobody loves the +clock that runs down. +</P> + +<P> +They say, "Only a few more days of trouble, only a few more +tribulations, and I'll be in that bright and happy land." What will +they do with them when they get them there? They would be dill pickles +in the heavenly preserve-jar. +</P> + +<P> +They say, "I wish I were a child again. I was happy when I was a child +and I'm not happy now. Them was the best days of my life childhood's +palmy days." +</P> + +<P> +Wake up! Your clock has run down. Anybody who wants to be a child again +is confessing he has lost his memory. Anybody who can remember the +horrors of childhood could not be hired to live it over again. +</P> + +<P> +If there is anybody who does not have a good time, if there is anybody +who gets shortchanged regularly, it is a child. I am so sorry for a +child. Hurry up and go on south. It is better on south. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Waiting till the "Second Table" +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +I wish I could forget many of my childhood memories. I remember the +palmy days. And the palm! +</P> + +<P> +I often wonder how I ever lived thru my childhood. I would not take my +chances living it thru again. I am not ungrateful to my parents. I had +advantages. I was born in a parsonage and was reared in the nurture and +admiration of the Lord. I am not just sure I quoted that correctly, but +I know I was reared in a parsonage. About all I inherited was a Godly +example and a large appetite. That was about all there was to inherit. +I cannot remember when I was not hungry. I used to go around feeling +like the Mammoth Cave, never thoroly explored. +</P> + +<P> +I never sit down as "company" at a dinner and see some little children +going sadly into the next room to "wait till the second table" that my +heart does not go out to them. I remember when I did that. +</P> + +<P> +I can only remember about four big meals in a year. That was "quart'ly +meeting day." We always had a big dinner on "quart'ly meeting day." +Elder Berry would stay for dinner. His name was Berry, but being +"presiding elder," we called him Elder Berry. +</P> + +<P> +Elder Berry always stayed for dinner. He was one of the easiest men to +get to stay for dinner I ever saw. +</P> + +<P> +Mother would stay home from "quart'ly meeting" to get the big dinner +ready. She would cook up about all the "brethren" brought in at the +last donation. We had one of those stretchable tables, and mother would +stretch it clear across the room and put on two table-cloths. She would +lap them over in the middle, where the hole was. +</P> + +<P> +I would watch her get the big dinner ready. I would look over the long +table and view the "promised land." I would see her set on the jelly. +We had so much jelly—red jelly, and white jelly, and blue jelly. I +don't just remember if they had blue jelly, but if they had it we had +it on that table. All the jelly that ever "jelled" was represented. I +didn't know we had so much jelly till "quart'ly meeting" day. I would +watch the jelly tremble. Did you ever see jelly tremble? I used to +think it ought to tremble, for Elder Berry was coming for dinner. +</P> + +<P> +I would see mother put on the tallest pile of mashed potatoes you ever +saw. She would make a hollow in the top and fill it with butter. I +would see the butter melt and run down the sides, and I would say, +"Hurry, mother, it is going to spill!" O, how I wanted to spill it! I +could hardly hold out faithful. +</P> + +<P> +And then Elder Berry would sit down at the table, at the end nearest +the fried chicken. The "company" would sit down. I used to wonder why +we never could have a big dinner but what a lot of "company" had to +come and gobble it up. They would fill the table and father would sit +down in the last seat. There was no place for me to sit. Father would +say, "You go into the next room, my boy, and wait. There's no room for +you at the table." +</P> + +<P> +The hungriest one of that assemblage would have to go in the next room +and hear the big dinner. Did you ever hear a big dinner when you felt +like the Mammoth Cave? I used to think as I would sit in the next room +that heaven would be a place where everybody would eat at the first +table. +</P> + +<P> +I would watch them thru the key-hole. It was going so fast. There was +only one piece of chicken left. It was the neck. O, Lord, spare the +neck! And I would hear them say, "Elder Berry, may we help you to +another piece of the chicken?" +</P> + +<P> +And Elder Berry would take the neck! +</P> + +<P> +Many a time after that, Elder Berry would come into the room where I +was starving. He would say, "Brother Parlette, is this your boy?" He +would come over to the remains of Brother Parlette's boy. He would +often put his hand in benediction upon my head. +</P> + +<P> +My head was not the place that needed the benediction. +</P> + +<P> +He would say, "My boy, I want you to have a good time now." Now! When +all the chicken was gone and he had taken the neck! "My boy, you are +seeing the best days of your life right now as a child." +</P> + +<P> +The dear old liar! I was seeing the worst days of my life. If there is +anybody shortchanged—if there is anybody who doesn't have a good time, +it's a child. Life has been getting better ever since, and today is the +best day of all. Go on south! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +It's Better on South +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Seeing your best days as a child? No! You are seeing your worst days. +Of course, you can be happy as a child. A boy can be happy with fuzz on +his upper lip, but he'll be happier when his lip feels more like mine +like a piece of sandpaper. There are chapters of happiness undreamed of +in his philosophy. +</P> + +<P> +A child can be full of happiness and only hold a pint. But afterwhile +the same child will hold a quart. +</P> + +<P> +I think I hold a gallon now. And I see people in the audience who must +hold a barrel! Go on south. Of course, I do not mean circumference. But +every year we go south increases our capacity for joy. Our life is one +continual unfolding as we go south. Afterwhile this old world gets too +small for us and we go on south into a larger one. +</P> + +<P> +So we cannot grow old. Our life never stops. It goes on and on forever. +Anything that does not stop cannot grow old or have age. Material +things will grow old. This stage will grow old and stop. This hall will +grow old and stop. This house we live in will grow old and stop. This +flesh and blood house we live in will grow old and stop. This lecture +even will grow old—and stop! But you and I will never grow old, for +God cannot grow old. You and I will go on living as long as God lives. +</P> + +<P> +I am not worried today over what I do not know. I used to be worried. I +used to say, "I have not time to answer you now!" But today it is such +a relief to look people in the face and say, "I do not know." +</P> + +<P> +And I have to say that to many questions, "I do not know." I often +think if people in an audience only knew how little I know, they would +not stay to hear me. +</P> + +<P> +But some day I shall know! I patiently wait for the answer. Every day +brings the answer to something I could not answer yesterday. +</P> + +<P> +It will take an eternity to know an infinity! +</P> + +<P> +What a wonderful happiness to go on south to it! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Overcoming Obstacles Develops Power +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +As the Mississippi River goes on south he finds obstacles along the +way. You and I find obstacles along our way south. What shall we do? +</P> + +<P> +Go to Keokuk, Iowa, for your answer. +</P> + +<P> +They have built a great concrete obstacle clear across the path of the +river. It is many feet high, and many, many feet long. The river cannot +go on south. Watch him. He rises higher than the obstacle and sweeps +over it on south. +</P> + +<P> +Over the great power dam at Keokuk sweeps the Mississippi. And then you +see the struggle of overcoming the obstacle develops light and power to +vitalize the valley. A hundred towns and cities radiate the light and +power from the struggle. The great city of St. Louis, many miles away, +throbs with the victory. +</P> + +<P> +So that is why they spent the millions to build the obstacle—to get +the light and the power. The light and the power were latent in the +river, but it took the obstacle and the overcoming to develop it and +make it useful. +</P> + +<P> +That is exactly what happens when you and I overcome our obstacles. We +develop our light and power. We are rivers of light and power, but it +is all latent and does no good until we overcome obstacles as we go on +south. +</P> + +<P> +Obstacles are the power stations on our way south! +</P> + +<P> +And where the most obstacles are, there you find the most power to be +developed. So many of us do not understand that. We look southward and +we see the obstacles in the road. "I am so unfortunate. I could do +these great things, but alas! I have so many obstacles in the way." +</P> + +<P> +Thank God! You are blessed of Providence. They do not waste the +obstacles. The presence of the obstacles means that there is a lot of +light and power in you to be developed. If you see no obstacles, you +are confessing to blindness. +</P> + +<P> +I hear people saying, "I hope the time may speedily come when I shall +have no more obstacles to overcome!" When that time comes, ring up the +hearse, for you will be a "dead one." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Life is going on south, and overcoming the obstacles. Death is merely +quitting. +</P> + +<P> +The fact that we are not buried is no proof that we are alive. Go along +the street in almost any town and see the dead ones. There they are +decorating the hitching-racks and festooning the storeboxes. There they +are blocking traffic at the postoffice and depot. There they are in the +hotel warming the chairs and making the guests stand up. There they +are—rows of retired farmers who have quit work and moved to town to +block improvements and die. But they will never need anything more than +burying. +</P> + +<P> +For they are dead from the ears up. They have not thought a new thought +the past month. Sometimes they sit and think, but generally they just +sit. They have not gone south an inch the past year. +</P> + +<P> +Usually the deadest loafer is married to the livest woman. Nature tries +to maintain an equilibrium. +</P> + +<P> +They block the wheels of progress and get in the way of the people +trying to go on south. They say of the people trying to do things. "Aw, +he's always tryin' to run things." +</P> + +<P> +They do not join in to promote the churches and schools and big brother +movements. They growl at the lyceum courses and chautauquas, because +they "take money outa town." They do not take any of their money "outa +town." Ringling and Barnum & Bailey get theirs. +</P> + +<P> +I do not smile as I refer to the dead. I weep. I wish I could squirt +some "pep" into them and start them on south. +</P> + +<P> +But all this lecture has been discussing this, so I hurry on to the +last glimpse of the book in the running brook. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Go on South From Principle +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Here we come to the most wonderful and difficult thing in life. It is +the supreme test of character. That is, Why go on south? Not for +blessing nor cursing, not for popularity nor for selfish ends, not for +anything outside, but for the happiness that comes from within. +</P> + +<P> +The Mississippi blesses the valley every day as he goes on south and +overcomes. But the valley does not bless the river in return. The +valley throws its junk back upon the river. The valley pours its foul, +muddy, poisonous streams back upon the Mississippi to defile him. The +Mississippi makes St. Paul and Minneapolis about all the prosperity +they have, gives them power to turn their mills. But the Twin Cities +merely throw their waste back upon their benefactor. +</P> + +<P> +The Mississippi does not resign. He does not tell a tale of woe. He +does not say, "I am not appreciated. My genius is not understood. I am +not going a step farther south. I am going right back to Lake Itasca." +No, he does not even go to live with his father-in-law. +</P> + +<P> +He says, "Thank you. Every little helps, send it all along." Go a few +miles below the Twin Cities and see how, by some mysterious alchemy of +Nature, the Mississippi has taken over all the poison and the +defilement, he has purified it and clarified it, and has made it a part +of himself. And he is greater and farther south! +</P> + +<P> +He fattens upon bumps. Kick him, and you push him farther south. "Hand +him a lemon," and he makes lemonade. +</P> + +<P> +Civilization conspires to defeat the Mississippi. Chicago's drainage +canal pollutes him. The flat, lazy Platte, three miles wide and three +inches deep; the peevish, destructive Kaw, and all those streams that +unite to form the treacherous, sinful, irresponsible lower Missouri; +the big, muddy Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red, the black and the blue +floods—all these pour into the Mississippi. +</P> + +<P> +Day by day the Father of Waters goes on south, taking them over and +purifying them and making them a part of himself. Nothing can +discourage, divert nor defile him. No matter how poisonous he becomes, +he goes a few miles on south and he is all pure again. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Wonderful the book in the running brook! We let our life stream become +poisoned by bitter memories and bitter regrets. We carry along such a +heart full of the injuries that other people have done us, that +sometimes we are bank to bank full of poison and a menace to those +around us. We say, "I can forgive, but I cannot forget." +</P> + +<P> +Oh, forget it! Drop it all. Purify your life and go on south all sweet +again. We forget what we ought to remember and remember what we ought +to forget. We need schools of memory, but we need schools of +forgettery, even more. +</P> + +<P> +As you go on south and bless your valley, do you notice the valley does +not bless you very much? Have you sadly noted that the people you help +the most often are the least grateful in return? +</P> + +<P> +Don't wait to be thanked. Hurry on to avoid the kick! Do good to others +because that is the way to be happy, but do not wait for a receipt for +your goodness; you will need a poultice every time you wait. I know, +for I have waited! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +We get so discouraged. We say, "I have gone far enough south." There is +nobody who does not have that to meet. The preacher, the teacher, the +editor, the man in office, the business man, the father and +mother—every one who tries to carry on the work of the church, the +school, the lyceum and chautauqua, the work that makes for a better +community, gets discouraged at times. +</P> + +<P> +We fail to see what we are doing or why we are doing it. Sometimes we +sit down completely discouraged and say, "I'm done. I'm going to quit. +I have done my share. Nobody appreciates what I do. Let somebody else +do it awhile." +</P> + +<P> +Stop! You are not saying that. The evil one is whispering that into +your heart. His business is to stop you from going south. His most +successful tool is discouragement, which is a wedge, and if he can get +the sharp edge started into your thought, he is going to drive it +deeper. +</P> + +<P> +You do not go south and overcome your obstacles and bless the valley +for praise or blame, for appreciation or lack of it. You do it to live. +You do it to remain a living river and not a stagnant, unhappy pond or +swamp. +</P> + +<P> +YOU ARE SAVING YOURSELF BY SAVING OTHERS. GO ON SOUTH! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Almost everybody is deceived. We work from mixed motives. We fool +ourselves that we are working to do good, when as we do the good, if we +are not praised or thanked for it, if people do not present us a medal +or resolutions, we want to quit. That is why there are so many +disappointed and disgruntled people in the world. They worked for +outside thanks instead of inside thanks. They were trying to be +personal saviours. They say this is an ungrateful world. +</P> + +<P> +O, how easy it is to say these things, and how hard it is to do them! +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Reaching the Gulf +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +But because the Mississippi does these things, one day the train I was +riding stopped in Louisiana. We had come to a river so great science +has not yet been able to put a bridge across it. +</P> + +<P> +I watched them pile the steel train upon a ferry-boat. I watched the +boat crossing a river more than a mile wide. Standing upon the +ferry-boat, I could look down into the lordly river and then far north +perhaps fifteen hundred miles to the little struggling streamlet +starting southward thru the forests of Minnesota, there writing the +first chapter of this wonderful book in the running brook. +</P> + +<P> +I thank God that I had gone a little farther southward in my own life. +Father of Waters, you have fought a good fight. You are conquering +gloriously. You bear upon your bosom the commerce of many nations. I +know why. I saw you born, saw your struggles, saw you get in the right +channel, saw you learn the lessons of your knocks, and saw that you +never stopped going southward. +</P> + +<P> +And may we read it into our own lives. May we get the vision of which +way to go, and then keep on going south—on and on, overcoming, getting +the lessons of the bumps, the strength from the struggle and thus +making it a part of ourselves, and thus growing greater. +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Go on South Forever! +</H3> + +<BR> + +<P> +Where shall we stop going south? At the Gulf of Mexico? +</P> + +<P> +The Mississippi knows nothing about the gulf. He goes on south until he +reaches the gulf. Then he pushes right on into the gulf as tho nothing +had happened. So he pushes his physical banks on south many miles right +out into the gulf. +</P> + +<P> +And when he comes to the end of his physical banks, he pushes on south +into the gulf, and goes on south round and round the globe. +</P> + +<P> +When you and I come to our Gulf of Mexico, we must push right on south. +So we push our physical banks years farther into the gulf. And when +physical banks fail, we go on south beyond this mere husk, into the +great Gulf of the Beyond, to go on south unfolding thru eternity. +</P> + +<P> +WE NEVER STOP GOING SOUTH. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Chapter X +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +Going Up Life's Mountain +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Defeats that are Victories +</H3> + +<P> +HOW often we say, "I wish I had a million!" Perhaps it is a blessing +that we have not the million. Perhaps it would make us lazy, selfish +and unhappy. Perhaps we would go around giving it to other people to +make them lazy, selfish and unhappy. +</P> + +<P> +O, the problem is not how to get money, but how to get rid of money +with the least injury to the race! +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps getting the million would completely spoil us. Look at the wild +cat and then look at the tabby cat. The wild cat supports itself and +the tabby cat has its million. So the tabby cat has to be doctored by +specialists. +</P> + +<P> +If the burden were lifted from most of us we would go to wreck. +Necessity is the ballast in our life voyage. +</P> + +<P> +When you hear the orator speak and you note the ease and power of his +work, do you think of the years of struggle he spent in preparing? Do +you ever think of the times that orator tried to speak when he failed +and went back to his room in disgrace, mortified and broken-hearted? +Thru it all there came the discipline, experience and grim resolve that +made him succeed. +</P> + +<P> +When you hear the musician and note the ease and grace of the +performance, do you think of the years of struggle and overcoming +necessary to produce that finish and grace? That is the story of the +actor, the author and every other one of attainment. +</P> + +<P> +Do you note that the tropics, the countries with the balmiest climates, +produce the weakest peoples? Do you note that the conquering races are +those that struggle with both heat and cold? The tropics are the +geographical Gussielands. +</P> + +<P> +Do you note that people grow more in lean years than in fat years? Crop +failures and business stringencies are not calamities, but blessings in +disguise. People go to the devil with full pockets; they turn to God +when hunger hits them. "Is not this Babylon that I have builded?" says +the Belshazzar of material prosperity as he drinks to his gods. Then +must come the Needful and Needless Knocks handwriting upon the wall to +save him. +</P> + +<P> +You have to shoot many men's eyes out before they can see. You have to +crack their heads before they can think, knock them down before they +can stand, break their hearts before they can sing, and bankrupt them +before they can be rich. +</P> + +<P> +Do you remember that they had to lock John Bunyan in Bedford jail +before he would write his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress"? It may be that +some of us will have to go to jail to do our best work. +</P> + +<P> +Do you remember that one musician became deaf before he wrote music the +world will always hear? Do you remember that one author became blind +before writing "Paradise Lost" the world will always read? +</P> + +<P> +Do you remember that Saul of Tarsus would have never been remembered +had he lived the life of luxury planned for him? He had to be blinded +before he could see the way to real success. He had to be scourged and +fettered to become the Apostle to the Gentiles. He, too, had to be sent +to prison to write his immortal messages to humanity. What throne-rooms +are some prisons! And what prisons are some throne-rooms! +</P> + +<P> +Do you not see all around you that success is ever the phoenix rising +from the ashes of defeat? +</P> + +<P> +Then, children, when you stand in the row of graduates on commencement +day with your diplomas in your hands, and when your relatives and +friends say, "Success to you!" I shall take your hand and say, "Defeat +to you! And struggles to you! And bumps to you!" +</P> + +<P> +For that is the only way to say, "Success to you!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<H3> +Go Up the Mountain +</H3> + +<P> +O UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS, we learn to love you more with each +passing year. We learn that you are cruel only to be kind. We learn +that you are saving us from ourselves. But O, how most of us must be +bumped to see this! +</P> + +<P> +I know no better way to close this lecture than to tell you of a great +bump that struck me one morning in Los Angeles. It seemed as tho twelve +years of my life had dropped out of it, and had been lost. +</P> + +<P> +Were you ever bumped so hard you were numb? I was numb. I wondered why +I was living. I thought I had nothing more to live for. When a dog is +wounded he crawls away alone to lick his wounds. I felt like the +wounded dog. I wanted to crawl away to lick my wounds. +</P> + +<P> +That is why I climbed Mount Lowe that day. I wanted to get alone. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It is a wonderful experience to climb Mount Lowe. The tourists go up +half a mile into Rubio Canyon, to the engineering miracle, the +triangular car that hoists them out of the hungry chasm thirty-five +hundred feet up the side of a granite cliff, to the top of Echo +Mountain. +</P> + +<P> +Here they find that Echo Mountain is but a shelf on the side of Mount +Lowe. Here they take an electric car that winds five miles on towards +the sky. There is hardly a straight rail in the track. Every minute a +new thrill, and no two thrills alike. Five miles of winding and +squirming, twisting and ducking, dodging and summersaulting. +</P> + +<P> +There are places where the tourist wants to grasp his seat and lift. +There is a wooden shelf nailed to the side of the perpendicular +rockwall where his life depends upon the honesty of the man who drove +the nails. He may wonder if the man was working by the day or by the +job! He looks over the edge of the shelf downward, and then turns to +the other side to look at the face of the cliff they are hugging, and +discovers there is no place to resign! +</P> + +<P> +The car is five thousand feet high where it stops on that last shelf, +Alpine Tavern. One cannot ride farther upward. This is not the summit, +but just where science surrenders. There is a little trail that winds +upward from Alpine Tavern to the summit. It is three miles long and +rises eleven hundred feet. +</P> + +<P> +To go up that last eleven hundred feet and stand upon the flat rock at +the summit of Mount Lowe is to get a picture so wonderful it cannot be +described with this poor human vocabulary. It must be lived. On a pure, +clear day one looks down this sixty-one hundred feet, more than a mile, +into the orange belt of Southern California. It spreads out below in +one great mosaic of turquoise and amber and emerald, where the miles +seem like inches, and where his field-glass sweeps one panoramic +picture of a hundred miles or more. +</P> + +<P> +Just below is Pasadena and Los Angeles. To the westward perhaps forty +miles is the blue stretch of the Pacific Ocean, on westward the faint +outlines of Catalina Islands. The ocean seems so close one could throw +a pebble over into it. How a mountain does reduce distances. You throw +the pebble and it falls upon your toes! +</P> + +<P> +And Mount Lowe is but a shelf on the side of the higher Sierras. The +granite mountains rise higher to the northward, and to the east rises +"Old Baldy," twelve thousand feet high and snow eternally on his head. +</P> + +<P> +This is one of the workshops of the infinite! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +All alone I scrambled up that three-mile trail to the summit. All alone +I stood upon the flat rock at the summit and looked down into the +swimming distances. I did not know why I had struggled up into that +mountain sanctuary, for I was not searching for sublimity. I was +searching for relief. I was heartsick. +</P> + +<P> +I saw clouds down in the valley below me. I had never before looked +down upon clouds. I thought of the cloud that had covered me in the +valley below, and dully watched the clouds spread wider and blacker. +</P> + +<P> +Afterwhile the valley was all hidden by the clouds. I knew rain must be +falling down there. The people must be saying, "The sun doesn't shine. +The sky is all gone." But I saw the truth—the sun was shining. The sky +was in place. A cloud had covered down over that first mile. The sun +was shining upon me, the sky was all blue over me, and there were +millions of miles of sunshine above me. I could see all this because I +had gone above the valley. I could see above the clouds. +</P> + +<P> +A great light seemed to break over my stormswept soul. I am under the +clouds of trouble today, BUT THE SUN IS SHINING! +</P> + +<P> +I must go on up the mountain to see it. +</P> + +<P> +The years have been passing, the stormclouds have many times hidden my +sun. But I have always found the sun shining above them. No matter how +black and sunless today, when I have struggled on up the mountain path, +I have gotten above the clouds and found the sun forever shining and +God forever in His heavens. +</P> + +<P> +Each day as I go up the mountain I get a larger vision. The miles that +seem so great down in the valley, seem so small as I look down upon +them from higher up. Each day as I look back I see more clearly the +plan of a human life. The rocks, the curves and the struggles fit into +a divine engineering plan to soften the steepness of the ascent. The +bumps are lifts. The things that seem so important down in the smudgy, +stormswept valley, seem so unimportant as we go higher up the mountain +to more important things. +</P> + +<P> +Today I look back to the bump that sent me up Mount Lowe. I did not see +how I could live past that bump. The years have passed and I now know +it was one of the greatest blessings of my life. It closed one gate, +but it opened another gate to a better pathway up the mountain. +</P> + +<P> +Late that day I was clambering down the side of Mount Lowe. Down in the +valley below me I saw shadows. Then I looked over into the southwest +and I could see the sun going down. I could see him sink lower and +lower until his red lips kissed the cheek of the Pacific. The glory of +the sunset filled sea and sky with flames of gold and fountains of +rainbows. Such a sunset from the mountain-side is a promise of heaven. +</P> + +<P> +The shadows of sunset widened over the valley. Presently all the valley +was black with the shadow. It was night down there. The people were +saying, "The sun doesn't shine." But it was not night where I stood. I +was farther up the mountain. I turned and looked up to the summit. The +beams of the setting sun were yet gilding Mount Lowe's summit. It was +night down in the valley, but it was day on the mountain top! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Go on south! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +That means, go on up! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Child of humanity, are you in the storm? Go on upward. Are you in the +night? Go on upward. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +For the peace and the light are always above the storm and the night, +and always in our reach. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I am going on upward. Take my hand and let us go together. Mount Lowe +showed the way that dark day. There I heard the "sermons in stones." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Some day my night will come. It will spread over all this valley of +material things where the storms have raged. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +But I shall be on the mountain top. I shall look down upon the night, +as I am learning to climb and look down upon the storms. I shall be in +the new day of the mountain-top, forever above the night. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I shall find this mountain-top just another shelf on the side of the +Mountain of Infinite Unfolding. I shall have risen perhaps only the +first mile. I shall have millions of miles yet to rise. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +This will be another Commencement Day and Master's Degree. Infinite the +number on up. "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered +into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that +love Him." +</P> + +<P> +We are not growing old. We are going up to Eternal Life. +</P> + +<P> +Rejoice and Go Upward! +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<HR ALIGN="center" WIDTH="60%"> + +<BR><BR> + + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ANOTHER BEGINNING +</H3> + +<BR> + +<H3> +The Big Business of Life Turning work Into Play +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +By Ralph Parlette +</P> + +<P> +This book proves that the real big business is that of getting our +happiness now in our work, and not tomorrow for our work. +</P> + +<P> +Judge Ben B. Lindsey, the kids' Judge, says: "It is a great big boost +for everybody who will read it. People ought to buy them by the gross +and send them to their friends." +</P> + +<P> +Dr. J. G. Crabbe, President of the State Teachers College, Greeley, +Colo., says: "The Big Business of Life is a real joy to read. It is big +and ought to be read today and tomorrow and forevermore every where. It +is truly 'A Book of Rejoicing'." +</P> + +<P> +The Augsberg Teacher, a Magazine for Teachers, says: "In The Big +Business of Life we have the practical philosophy that it is everyone's +business to abolish work and turn this world into a playground. Who +will not confess that many mortals take their work too seriously, and +that to them it is a joyless, cheerless thing? To be able to find +happiness, and to find it when we are bending to our duties is to +possess the secret of living to the full. And happiness is to be sought +within, and not among the things that lie at our feet. The book before +us is wholesome and vivacious. It provokes many a smile, and beneath +each one is a bit of wisdom it would do us a world of good to learn. It +recalls the saying of the wise man 'A merry heart doeth good like a +medicine'." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Many who have read The Big Business of Life write us that they think it +is even better than "The University of Hard Knocks," which, they add, +is mighty hard to beat. +</P> + +<BR> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +It's Up To You!<BR> +Are You Shaking Up or Rattling Down? +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Go On South!<BR> +The Best is Yet to Come +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +The Salvation of a Sucker<BR> +You Can't Get Something for Nothing +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +These booklets by Ralph Parlette are short stories adapted from +chapters in "The University of Hard Knocks." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +John C. Carroll, President of the Hyde Park State Bank of Chicago, +bought 1000 copies of the booklet "It's Up to You!" and of it he says, +"Parlette's Beans and Nuts is just as good as the Message to Garcia and +will be handed around just us much. I have handed the book to business +men, to young fellows, bond salesmen and such, to our own vice +president, and they all want another copy to send to some friend. I +would rather be author of it than president of the bank." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Employers in every line of business are buying quantities of "It's Up +to You!" for their workers. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +William Jennings Bryan says of the booklet "Go On South": "It is one of +the great stories of the day." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Charles Grilk of Davenport, says: "My two children and I read the +Mississippi River story together and we were thoroly delighted." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Instruct us to send one of these booklets to your friends. It will +delight them more than any small present you can make. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The University of Hard Knocks, by Ralph Parlette + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS *** + +***** This file should be named 455-h.htm or 455-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/5/455/ + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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