{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_455/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_455","id":"gutenberg_455","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/455","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Parenthood & Family Relations","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Character","Conduct of life","Success"],"text":"The University of Hard Knocks\n\n\nby\n\nRalph Parlette\n\n\nThe School That Completes Our Education\n\n\n\n\"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God,\nand he shall be my son\"--Revelation 21:7.\n\n  \"Sweet are the uses of adversity;\n  Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,\n  Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;\n  And thus our life, exempt from public haunt,\n  Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks\n  Sermons in stones, and good in everything.\"\n        Shakespeare\n\n\n\n\nWhy It Is Printed\n\nMORE than a million people have sat in audiences in all parts of the\nUnited States and have listened to \"The University of Hard Knocks.\" It\nhas been delivered to date more than twenty-five hundred times upon\nlyceum courses, at chautauquas, teachers' institutes, club gatherings,\nconventions and before various other kinds of audiences. Ralph Parlette\nis kept busy year after year lecturing, because his lectures deal with\nuniversal human experience.\n\n\"Can I get the lecture in book form?\" That continuous question from\naudiences brought out this book in response. Here is the overflow of\nmany deliveries.\n\n\"What is written here is not the way I would write it, were I writing a\nbook,\" says Ralph Parlette. \"It is the way I say it. The lecture took\nthis unconscious colloquial form before audiences. An audience makes a\nlecture, if the lecture survives. I wish I could shake the hand of\nevery person who has sat in my audiences. And I wish I could tell the\nlecture committees of America how I appreciate the vast amount of\naltruistic work they have done in bringing the audiences of America\ntogether. For lecture audiences are not drawn together, they are pushed\ntogether.\"\n\nThe warm reception given \"The University of Hard Knocks\" by the public,\nhas encouraged the publishers to put more of Mr. Parlette's lectures\ninto book form, \"Big Business\" and \"Pockets and Paradises\" are now in\npreparation as this, the third edition of \"The University of Hard\nKnocks\" comes from the press.\n\n\n\nContents\n\nSOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS--The lecturer the delivery wagon--The sorghum\nbarrel--Audience must have place to put lecture--Why so many words\n\nThe University of Hard Knocks\n\nI. THE BOOKS ARE BUMPS--Every bump a lesson--Why the two kinds of\nbumps--Description of University--\"Sweet are the uses of\nAdversity\"--Why children are not interested\n\nII. THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS, the bumps that we bump\ninto--Getting the coffee-pot--Teaching a wilful child--Bumps make us\n\"stop, look, listen\"--Blind man learns with one bump--Going up requires\neffort--Prodigals must be bumped--The fly and the sticky\nfly-paper--\"Removed\" and \"knocked out\"\n\nIII.  THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS, the bumps that bump into us--Our\nsorrows and disappointments--How the piano was made--How the \"red mud\"\nbecomes razor-blades--The world our mirror--The cripple taught by the\nbumps--Every bump brings a blessing--You are never down and out\n\nIV. \"SHAKE THE BARREL\"--How we decide our destinies--Why the big ones\nshake up and the little ones shake down--The barrel of life sorting\npeople--How we hold our places, go down, go up--Good luck and bad\nluck--The girl who went up--The man who went down--The fatal rattle--We\nmust get ready to get--Testimonials and press notices--You cannot\nuplift people with derrick--No laws can equalize--Help people to help\nthemselves--We cannot get things till we get ready for them\n\nV. GOING UP--How we become great--We must get inside greatness--There\nis no top--We make ourselves great by service--the first step at\nhand--All can be greatest--Where to find great people--A glimpse of\nGunsaulus\n\nVI. THE PROBLEM OF \"PREPAREDNESS\"--Preparing children for life--Most\n\"advantages\" are disadvantages--Buying education for children--The\nstory of \"Gussie\" and \"Bill Whackem\"--Schools and books only give\nbetter tools for service--\"Hard knocks\" graduates--Menace of America\nnot swollen fortunes but shrunken souls--Children must have struggle to\nget strength--Not packhorse work--Helping the turkeys killed them--the\nhappiness of work we love--Amusement drunkards--Lure of the\ncity--Strong men from the country--Must save the home towns--A school\nof struggle--New School experiment\n\nVII. THE SALVATION OF A \"SUCKER\"--You can't get something for\nnothing--The fiddle and the tuning--How we know things--Trimmed at the\nshell game--My \"fool drawer\"--Getting \"selected to receive 1,000 per\ncent\"--You must earn what you own--Commencement orations--My maiden\nsermon--The books that live have been lived--Singer must live\nsongs--Successful songs written from experience--Theory and\npractice--Tuning the strings of life\n\nVIII. LOOKING BACKWARD--Memories of the price we pay--My first school\nteaching--Loaning the deacon my money--Calling the roll of my\nschoolmates--At the grave of the boy I had envied--Why Ben Hur won the\nchariot race--Pulling on the oar\n\nIX. GO ON SOUTH!--The book in the running brook--The Mississippi keeps\non going south and growing greater--We generally start well, but\nstop--Few go on south--The plague of incompetents--Today our best day,\ntomorrow to be better--Birthdays are promotions--I am just\nbeginning--Bernhardt, Davis, Edison--Moses begins at eighty--Too busy\nto bury--Sympathy for the \"sob squad\"--Child sees worst days, not\nbest--Waiting for the second table--Better days on south--Overcoming\nobstacles develops power--Go on south from principle, not praise--Doing\nduty for the joy of it--Becoming the \"Father of Waters\"--Go on south\nforever!\n\nX. GOING UP LIFE'S MOUNTAIN--The defeats that are victories--Climbing\nMount Lowe--Getting above the clouds into the sunshine--Each day we\nrise to larger vision--Getting above the night into the eternal\nday--Going south is going upward\n\n\n\n\nSome Preliminary Remarks\n\nLADIES and Gentlemen:\n\nI do not want to be seen in this lecture. I want to be heard. I am only\nthe delivery wagon. When the delivery wagon comes to your house, you\nare not much interested in how it looks; you are interested in the\ngoods it brings you. You know some very good goods are sometimes\ndelivered to you in some very poor delivery wagons.\n\nSo in this lecture, please do not pay any attention to the delivery\nwagon--how much it squeaks and wheezes and rattles and wabbles. Do not\npay much attention to the wrappings and strings. Get inside to the\ngoods.\n\nReally, I believe the goods are good. I believe I am to recite to you\nsome of the multiplication table of life--not mine, not yours alone,\nbut everybody's.\n\n\nCan Only Pull the Plug!\n\n\nEvery audience has a different temperature, and that makes a lecture go\ndifferently before every audience. The kind of an audience is just as\nimportant as the kind of a lecture. A cold audience will make a good\nlecture poor, while a warm audience will make a poor lecture good.\n\nLet me illustrate:\n\nWhen I was a boy we had a barrel of sorghum in the woodshed. When\nmother wanted to make ginger-bread or cookies, she would send me to the\nwoodshed to get a bucket of sorghum from that barrel.\n\nSome warm September day I would pull the plug from the barrel and the\nsorghum would fairly squirt into my bucket. Later in the fall when it\nwas colder, I would pull the plug but the sorghum would not squirt. It\nwould come out slowly and reluctantly, so that I would have to wait a\nlong while to get a little sorghum. And on some real cold winter day I\nwould pull the plug, but the sorghum would not run at all. It would\njust look out at me.\n\nI discovered it was the temperature.\n\nI have brought a barrel of sorghum to this audience. The name of the\nsorghum is \"The University of Hard Knocks.\" I can only pull the plug. I\ncannot make it run. That will depend upon the temperature of this\naudience. You can have all you want of it, but to get it to running\nfreely, you will have to warm up.\n\n\n\n\nDid You Bring a Bucket?\n\n\nNo matter how the sorghum runs, you have to have a bucket to get it.\nHow much any one gets out of a lecture depends also upon the size of\nthe bucket he brings to get it in. A big bucket can get filled at a\nvery small stream. A little bucket gets little at the greatest stream.\nWith no bucket you can get nothing at Niagara.\n\nThat often explains why one person says a lecture is great, while the\nnext person says he got nothing out of it.\n\n\n\n\nWhat It's All About\n\n\nHere is a great mass of words and sentences and pictures to express two\nor three simple little ideas of life, that our education is our growing\nup from the Finite to the Infinite, and that it is done by our own\npersonal overcoming, and that we never finish it.\n\nHave you noticed that no sentence, nor a million sentences, can bound\nlife? Have you noticed that every statement does not quite cover it? No\nstatement, no library, can tell all about life. No success rule can\nalone solve the problem. You must average it all and struggle up to a\nhigher vision.\n\nWe are told that the stomach needs bulk as well as nutriment. It would\nnot prosper with the necessary elements in their condensed form. So\nabstract truths in their lowest terms do not always promote mental\ndigestion like more bulk in the way of pictures and discussions of\nthese truths. Here is bulk as well as nutriment.\n\nIf you get the feeling that the first personal pronoun is being\noverworked, I remind you that this is more a confession than a lecture.\nYou cannot confess without referring to the confesser.\n\n\n\nTo Everybody in My Audience\n\n\nI like you because I am like you.\n\n\nI believe in you because I believe in myself. We are all one family. I\nbelieve in your Inside, not in your Outside, whoever you are, whatever\nyou are, wherever you are.\n\n\nI believe in the Angel of Good inside every block of human marble. I\nbelieve it must be carved out in The University of Hard Knocks.\n\n\nI believe all this pride, vanity, selfishness, self-righteousness,\nhypocrisy and human frailty are the Outside that must be chipped away.\n\n\nI believe the Hard Knocks cannot injure the Angel, but can only reveal\nit.\n\n\nI hope you are getting your Hard Knocks.\n\n\nI care little about your glorious or inglorious past. I care little\nabout your present. I care much about your future for that is to see\nmore of the Angel in you.\n\n\n\nThe University of Hard Knocks\n\nChapter I\n\nThe Books Are Bumps\n\n\nTHE greatest school is the University of Hard Knocks. Its books are\nbumps.\n\nEvery bump is a lesson. If we learn the lesson with one bump, we do not\nget that bump again. We do not need it. We have traveled past it. They\ndo not waste the bumps. We get promoted to the next bump.\n\nBut if we are \"naturally bright,\" or there is something else the matter\nwith us, so that we do not learn the lesson of the bump we have just\ngotten, then that bump must come back and bump us again.\n\nSome of us learn to go forward with a few bumps, but most of us are\n\"naturally bright\" and have to be pulverized.\n\nThe tuition in the University of Hard Knocks is not free. Experience is\nthe dearest teacher in the world. Most of us spend our lives in the\nA-B-C's of getting started.\n\nWe matriculate in the cradle.\n\nWe never graduate. When we stop learning we are due for another bump.\n\nThere are two kinds of people--wise people and fools. The fools are the\npeople who think they have graduated.\n\nThe playground is all of God's universe.\n\nThe university colors are black and blue.\n\nThe yell is \"ouch\" repeated ad lib.\n\n\n\n\nThe Need of the Bumps\n\n\nWhen I was thirteen I knew a great deal more than I do now. There was a\nsentence in my grammar that disgusted me. It was by some foreigner I\nhad never met. His name was Shakespeare. It was this:\n\n\"Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and\nvenomous, Wears yet a priceless jewel in its head; And thus our life,\nexempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in running\nbrooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.\"\n\n\n\"Tongues in trees,\" I thought. \"Trees can't talk! That man is crazy.\nBooks in running brooks! Why nobody never puts no books in no running\nbrooks. They'd get wet. And that sermons in stones! They get preachers\nto preach sermons, and they build houses out of stones.\"\n\nI was sorry for Shakespeare--when I was thirteen.\n\nBut I am happy today that I have traveled a little farther. I am happy\nthat I have begun to learn the lessons from the bumps. I am happy that\nI am learning the sweet tho painful lessons of the University of\nAdversity. I am happy that I am beginning to listen. For as I learn to\nlisten, I hear every tree speaking, every stone preaching and every\nrunning brook the unfolding of a book.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChildren, I fear you will not be greatly interested in what is to\nfollow. Perhaps you are \"naturally bright\" and feel sorry for\nShakespeare.\n\nI was not interested when father and mother told me these things. I\nknew they meant all right, but the world had moved since they were\nyoung, and now two and two made seven, because we lived so much faster.\n\nIt is so hard to tell young people anything. They know better. So they\nhave to get bumped just where we got bumped, to learn that two and two\nalways makes four, and \"whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also\nreap.\"\n\nBut if you will remember some of these things, they will feel like\npoultices by and by when the bumps come.\n\n\n\n\nThe Two Colleges\n\n\nAs we get bumped and battered on life's pathway, we discover we get two\nkinds of bumps--bumps that we need and bumps that we do not need.\n\nBumps that we bump into and bumps that bump into us.\n\nWe discover, in other words, that The University of Hard Knocks has two\ncolleges--The College of Needless Knocks and The College of Needful\nKnocks.\n\nWe attend both colleges.\n\n\n\nChapter II\n\nThe College of Needless Knocks\n\nThe Bumps That We Bump Into\n\n\nNEARLY all the bumps we get are Needless Knocks.\n\nThere comes a vivid memory of one of my early Needless Knocks as I say\nthat. It was back at the time when I was trying to run our home to suit\nmyself. I sat in the highest chair in the family circle. I was three\nyears old and ready to graduate.\n\nThat day they had the little joy and sunshine of the family in his\nhigh-chair throne right up beside the dinner table. The coffee-pot was\nwithin grabbing distance.\n\nI became enamored with that coffee-pot. I decided I needed that\ncoffee-pot in my business. I reached over to get the coffee-pot. Then I\ndiscovered a woman beside me, my mother. She was the most meddlesome\nwoman I had ever known. I had not tried to do one thing in three years\nthat that woman had not meddled into.\n\nAnd that day when I wanted the coffee-pot--I did want it. Nobody knows\nhow I desired that coffee-pot. \"One thing thou lackest,\" a\ncoffee-pot--I was reaching over to get it, that woman said, \"Don't\ntouch that!\"\n\nThe longer I thought about it the more angry I became. What right has\nthat woman to meddle into my affairs all the time? I have stood this\npetticoat tyranny three years, and it is time to stop it!\n\nI stopped it. I got the coffee-pot. I know I got the coffee-pot. I got\nit unanimously. I know when I got it and I also know where I got it. I\ngot about a gallon of the reddest, hottest coffee a bad boy ever\nspilled over himself.\n\nO-o-o-o-o-o! I can feel it yet!\n\nThere were weeks after that when I was upholstered. They put\napplebutter on me--and coal oil and white-of-an-egg and starch and\nanything else the neighbors could think of. They would bring it over\nand rub it on the little joy and sunshine of the family, who had gotten\ntemporarily eclipsed.\n\n\n\n\nTeaching a Wilful Child\n\n\nYou see, my mother's way was to tell me and then let me do as I\npleased. She told me not to get the coffee-pot and then let me get it,\nknowing that it would burn me. She would say, \"Don't.\" Then she would\ngo on with her knitting and let me do as I pleased.\n\nWhy don't mothers knit today?\n\nMother would say, \"Don't fall in the well.\" I could go and jump in the\nwell after that and she would not look at me. I do not argue that this\nis the way to raise children, but I insist that this was the most kind\nand effective way to rear one stubborn boy I know of. The neighbors and\nthe ladies' aid society often said my mother was cruel with that angel\nchild. But the neighbors did not know what kind of an insect mother was\ntrying to raise. Mother did know. She knew how stubborn and self-willed\nI was. It came from father's \"side of the house.\"\n\nMother knew that to argue with me was to flatter me. Tell me, serve\nnotice upon me, and then let me go ahead and get my coffee-pot. That\nwas the quickest and kindest way to teach me.\n\nI learned very quickly that if I did not hear mother, and heed, a\ncoffee-pot would spill upon me. I cannot remember when I disobeyed my\nmother that a coffee-pot of some kind did not spill upon me, and I got\nmy blisters. Mother did not inflict them. Mother was not much of an\ninflicter. Father attended to that in the laboratory behind the\nparsonage.\n\n\n\n\n\"Stop, Look, Listen\"\n\n\nAnd thru the bumps we learn that The College of Needless Knocks runs on\nthe same plan. The Voice of Wisdom says to each of us, \"Child of\nhumanity, do right, walk in the right path. You will be wiser and\nhappier.\" The tongues in the trees, the books in the running brooks and\nthe sermons in the stones all repeat it.\n\nBut we are not compelled to walk in the right path. We are free\nim-moral agents.\n\nWe get off the right path. We go down forbidden paths. They seem easier\nand more attractive. It is so easy to go downward. We slide downward,\nbut we have to make effort to go upward.\n\nAnything that goes downward will run itself. Anything that goes upward\nhas to be pushed.\n\nAnd going down the wrong path, we get bumped harder and harder until we\nlisten.\n\nWe are lucky if we learn the lesson with one bump. We are unlucky when\nwe get bumped twice in the same place, for it means we are making no\nprogress.\n\nWhen we are bumped, we should \"stop, look, listen.\" \"Safety first!\"\n\nOne time I paid a seeress two dollars to look into my honest palm. She\nsaid, \"It hain't your fault. You wasn't born right. You was born under\nan unlucky star.\" You don't know how that comforted me. It wasn't my\nfault--all my bumps and coffee-pots! I was just unlucky and it had to\nbe.\n\nHow I had to be bumped to learn better! Now when I get bumped I try to\nlearn the lesson of the bump and find the right path, so that when I\nsee that bump coming again I can say, \"Excuse me; it hath a familiar\nlook,\" and dodge it.\n\nThe seeress is the soothing syrup for mental infants.\n\n\n\n\nBlind Man's Fine Sight\n\n\nThe other day I watched a blind man go down the aisle of the car to get\noff the train. Did you ever study the walk of a blind man? He\n\"pussyfooted\" it along so carefully. He bumped his hand against a seat.\nThen he did what every blind man does, he lifted his hand higher and\ndidn't bump any more seats.\n\nI looked down my nose. \"Ralph Parlette,\" I said to myself, \"when are\nyou going to learn to see as well as that blind man? He learns his\nlesson with one bump, and you have to go bumping into the same things\nday after day and wonder why you have so much 'bad luck'!\"\n\n\n\n\nAre You Going Up or Down?\n\n\nLet me repeat, things that go downward will run themselves. Things that\ngo upward have to be pushed. Going upward is overcoming. Notice that\nchurches, schools, lyceums, chautauquas, reform movements--things that\ngo upward--never run themselves. They must be pushed all the time.\n\nAnd so with our own lives. Real living is conscious effort to go upward\nto larger life.\n\nIf you are making no effort in your life, if you are moving in the line\nof least resistance, depend upon it you are going downward. Look out\nfor the bumps!\n\nLook over your community. Note the handful of brave, faithful,\nunselfish souls who are carrying the community burdens and pushing\nupward. Note the multitude making little or no effort, and even getting\nin the way of the pushers.\n\nMajorities do not rule. Majorities never have ruled. It is the brave\nminority of thinking, self-sacrificing people that decides the tomorrow\nof communities that go upward. Majorities are not willing to make the\neffort to rule themselves. They are content to drift and be amused and\nfollow false gods that promise something for nothing. They must be\nled--sometimes driven--by minorities.\n\nPeople are like sheep. The shepherd can lead them to heaven--or to hell.\n\n\n\n\nBumping the Prodigals\n\n\nHuman life is the story of the Prodigal Son. We look over the fence of\ngoodness into the mystery of the great unknown world beyond and in that\nunknown realm we fondly imagine is happiness.\n\nDown the great white way of the world go the million prodigals, seeking\nhappiness where nobody ever found happiness. Their days fill up with\ndisappointment, their vision becomes dulled. They become anaemic\nfeeding upon the husks.\n\nThey just must get their coffee-pot!\n\nHow they must be bumped to think upon their ways. Every time we do\nwrong we get a Needless Knock. Every time! We may not always get bumped\non the outside, but we always get bumped on the inside. A bump on the\nconscience is worse than a bump on the \"noodle.\"\n\n\"I can do wrong and not get bumped. I have no feelings upon the\nsubject,\" somebody says, You can? You poor old sinner, you have bumped\nyour conscience numb. That is why you have no feelings on the subject.\nYou have pounded your soul into a jelly. You don't know how badly you\nare hurt.\n\nHow the old devil works day and night to keep people amused and doped\nso that they will not think upon their ways! How he keeps the music and\nthe dazzle going so they will not see they are bumping themselves!\n\n\n\n\nConsider the Sticky Flypaper\n\n\nDid you ever watch a fly get his Needless Knocks on the sticky flypaper?\n\nThe last thing Mamma Fly said as Johnny went off to the city was,\n\"Remember, son, to stay away from the sticky flypaper. That is where\nyour poor dear father was lost.\" And Johnny Fly remembers for several\nminutes. But when he sees all the smart young flies of his set go over\nto the flypaper, he goes over, too. He gazes down at his face in the\nstickiness. \"Ah! how pretty I am! This sticky flypaper shows me up\nbetter than anything at home. What a fine place to skate. Just see how\nclose I can fly over it and not get stuck a bit. Mother is such a silly\nold worryer. She means all right, of course, but she isn't up-to-date.\nWe young set of modern flies are naturally bright and have so many more\nadvantages. You can't catch us. They were too strict with me back home.\"\n\nYou see Johnny fly back and forth and have the time of his naturally\nbright young life. Afterwhile, tho, he stubs his toe and lands in the\nstickiness. \"Well, well, how nice this is on the feet, so soft and\nsoothing!\"\n\nFirst he puts one foot down and pulls it out. That is a lot of fun. It\nshows he is not a prisoner. He is a strong-minded fly. He can quit it\nor play in it, just as he pleases. After while he puts two feet down in\nthe stickiness. It is harder to pull them out. Then he puts three down\nand puts down a few more trying to pull them out.\n\n\"Really,\" says Johnny Fly bowing to his comrades also stuck around him,\n\"really, boys, you'll have to excuse me now. Good-bye!\" But he doesn't\npull loose. He feels tired and he sits down in the sticky flypaper. It\nis a fine place to stick around. All his young set of flies are around\nhim. He does like the company. They all feel the same way--they can\nplay in the sticky flypaper or let it alone, just as they please, for\nthey are strong-minded flies. They have another drink and sing, \"We\nwon't go home till morning.\"\n\nJohnny may get home, but he will leave a wing or a leg. Most of them\nstay. They just settle down into the stickiness with sleeping sickness.\n\nThe tuition in The College of Needless Knocks is very high indeed!\n\n\n\n\n\"Removed\" or \"Knocked Out\"?\n\n\nThe man who goes to jail ought to congratulate himself if he is guilty.\nIt is the man who does not get discovered who is to be pitied, for he\nmust get some more knocks.\n\nThe world loves to write resolutions of respect. How often we write,\n\"Whereas, it has pleased an all-wise Providence to remove,\" when we\nmight reasonably ask whether the victim was \"removed\" or merely\n\"knocked out.\"\n\nThere is a good deal of suicide charged up to Providence.\n\n\n\nChapter III\n\nThe College of Needful Knocks\n\nThe Bumps That Bump Into Us\n\n\nBUT occasionally all of us get bumps that we do not bump into. They\nbump into us. They are the guideboard knocks that point us to the\nhigher pathway.\n\nYou were bumped yesterday or years ago. Maybe the wound has not yet\nhealed. Maybe you think it never will heal. You wondered why you were\nbumped. Some of you in this audience are just now wondering why.\n\nYou were doing right--doing just the best you knew how--and yet some\nblow came crushing upon you and gave you cruel pain.\n\nIt broke your heart. You have had your heart broken. I have had my\nheart broken more times than I care to talk about now. Your home was\ndarkened, your plans were wrecked, you thought you had nothing more to\nlive for.\n\nI am like you. I have had more trouble than anybody else. I have never\nknown anyone who had not had more trouble than anyone else.\n\nBut I am discovering that life only gets good after we have been killed\na few times. Each death is a larger birth.\n\nWe all must learn, if we have not already learned, that these blows are\nlessons in The College of Needful Knocks. They point upward to a higher\npath than we have been traveling.\n\nIn other words, we are raw material. You know what raw material\nis--material that needs more Needful Knocks to make it more useful and\nvaluable.\n\nThe clothing we wear, the food we eat, the house we live in, all have\nto have the Needful Knocks to become useful. And so does humanity need\nthe same preparation for greater usefulness.\n\nI should like to know every person in this audience. But the ones I\nshould most appreciate knowing are the ones who have known the most of\nthese knocks--who have faced the great crises of life and have been\ntried in the crucibles of affliction. For I am learning that these\nlives are the gold tried in the fire.\n\n\n\n\nThe Sorrows of the Piano\n\n\nSee the piano on this stage? Good evening, Mr. Piano. I am glad to see\nyou. You are so shiny, beautiful, valuable and full of music, if\nproperly treated.\n\nDo you know how you got upon this stage, Mr. Piano? You were bumped\nhere. This is no reflection upon the janitor. You became a piano by the\nNeedful Knocks.\n\nI can see you back in your callow beginnings, when you were just a\ntree--a tall, green tree. You were green! Only green things grow. Did\nyou get the meaning of that, children? I hope you are green.\n\nThere you stood in the forest, a perfectly good, green young tree. You\ngot your lessons, combed your hair, went to Sunday school and were the\nbest young tree you could be.\n\nThat is why you were bumped--because you were good! There came a man\ninto the woods with an ax, and he looked for the best trees there to\nbump. He bumped you--hit you with the ax! How it hurt you! And how\nunjust it was! He kept on hitting you. \"The operation was just\nterrible.\" Finally you fell, crushed, broken, bleeding.\n\nIt is a very sad story. They took you all bumped and bleeding to the\nsawmill and they bumped and ripped you more. They cut you in pieces and\nhammered you day by day.\n\nThey did not bump the little, crooked, dissipated, cigaret-stunted\ntrees. They were not worth bumping.\n\nBut shake, Mr. Piano. That is why you are on this stage. You were\nbumped here. All the beauty, harmony and value were bumped into you.\n\n\n\n\nThe Sufferings of the Red Mud\n\n\nOne day I was up the Missabe road about a hundred miles north of\nDuluth, Minnesota, and came to a hole in the ground. It was a big\nhole--about a half-mile of hole. There were steam-shovels at work\nthrowing out of that hole what I thought was red mud.\n\n\"Kind sir, why are they throwing that red mud out of that hole?\" I\nasked a native.\n\n\"That hain't red mud. That's iron ore, an' it's the best iron ore in\nthe world.\"\n\n\"What is it worth?\"\n\n\"It hain't worth nothin' here; that's why they're movin' it away.\"\n\nThere's red mud around every community that \"hain't worth nothin'\"\nuntil you move it--send it to college or somewhere.\n\nNot very long after this, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I saw some of\nthis same red mud. It had been moved over the Great Lakes and the rails\nto what they call a blast furnace, the technological name of which\nbeing The College of Needful Knocks for Red Mud.\n\nI watched this red mud matriculate into a great hopper with limestone,\ncharcoal and other textbooks. Then they corked it up and school began.\nThey roasted it. It is a great thing to be roasted.\n\nWhen it was done roasting they stopped. Have you noticed that they\nalways stop when anything is done roasting? If we are yet getting\nroasted, perhaps we are not done!\n\nThen they pulled the plug out of the bottom of the college and held\npromotion exercises. The red mud squirted out into the sand. It was not\nred mud now, because it had been roasted. It was a freshman--pig iron,\nworth more than red mud, because it had been roasted.\n\nSome of the pig iron went into another department, a big teakettle,\nwhere it was again roasted, and now it came out a sophomore--steel,\nworth more than pig iron.\n\nSome of the sophomore steel went up into another grade where it was\nroasted yet again and rolled thin into a junior. Some of that went on\nup and up, at every step getting more pounding and roasting and\naffliction.\n\nIt seemed as tho I could hear the suffering red mud crying out, \"O, why\ndid they take me away from my happy hole-in-the-ground? Why do they\npound me and break my heart? I have been good and faithful. O, why do\nthey roast me? O, I'll never get over this!\"\n\nBut after they had given it a diploma--a pricemark telling how much it\nhad been roasted--they took it proudly all over the world, labeled\n\"Made in America.\" They hung it in show windows, they put it in glass\ncases. Many people admired it and said, \"Isn't that fine work!\" They\npaid much money for it now. They paid the most money for what had been\nroasted the most.\n\nIf a ton of that red mud had become watch-springs or razor-blades, the\nprice had gone up into thousands of dollars.\n\nMy friends, you and I are the raw material, the green trees, the red\nmud. The Needful Knocks are necessary to make us serviceable.\n\nEvery bump is raising our price. Every bump is disclosing a path to a\nlarger life. The diamond and the chunk of soft coal are exactly the\nsame material, say the chemists. But the diamond has gone to The\nCollege of Needful Knocks more than has her crude sister of the\ncoal-scuttle.\n\nThere is no human diamond that has not been crystallized in the\ncrucibles of affliction. There is no gold that has not been refined in\nthe fire.\n\n\n\n\nCripple Taught by Bumps\n\n\nOne evening when I was trying to lecture in a chautauqua tent in\nIllinois, a crippled woman was wheeled into the tent and brought right\ndown to the foot of the platform. The subject was The University of\nHard Knocks. Presently the cripple's face was shining brighter than the\nfootlights.\n\nShe knew about the knocks!\n\nAfterwards I went to her. \"Little lady, I want to thank you for coming\nhere. I have the feeling that I spoke the words, but you are the\nlecture itself.\"\n\nWhat a smile she gave me! \"Yes, I know about the hard knocks,\" she\nsaid. \"I have been in pain most of my life. But I have learned all that\nI know sitting in this chair. I have learned to be patient and kind and\nloving and brave.\"\n\nThey told me this crippled woman was the sweetest-spirited, best-loved\nperson in the town.\n\nBut her mother petulantly interrupted me. She had wheeled the cripple\ninto the tent. She was tall and stately. She was well-gowned. She lived\nin one of the finest homes in the city. She had everything that money\ncould buy. But her money seemed unable to buy the frown from her face.\n\n\"Mr. Lecture Man,\" she said, \"why is everybody interested in my\ndaughter and nobody interested in me? Why is my daughter happy and why\nam I not happy? My daughter is always happy and she hasn't a single\nthing to make her happy. I am not happy. I have not been happy for\nyears. Why am I not happy?\"\n\nWhat would you have said? Just on the spur of the moment--I said,\n\"Madam, I don't want to be unkind, but I really think the reason you\nare not happy is that you haven't been bumped enough.\"\n\nI discover when I am unhappy and selfish and people don't use me right,\nI need another bump.\n\nThe cripple girl had traveled ahead of her jealous mother. For\nselfishness cripples us more than paralysis.\n\n\n\n\nSchools of Sympathy\n\n\nWhen I see a long row of cots in a hospital or sanitarium, I want to\ncongratulate the patients lying there. They are learning the precious\nlessons of patience, sympathy, love, faith and courage. They are\ngetting the education in the humanities the world needs more than\ntables of logarithms. Only those who have suffered can sympathize. They\nare to become a precious part of our population. The world needs them\nmore than libraries and foundations.\n\n\n\n\nThe Silver Lining\n\n\nThere is no backward step in life. Whatever experiences come to us are\ntruly new chapters of our education if we are willing to learn them.\n\nWe think this is true of the good things that come to us, but we do not\nwant to think so of the bad things. Yet we grow more in lean years than\nin fat years. In fat years we put it in our pockets. In lean years we\nput it in our hearts. Material and spiritual prosperity do not often\ntravel hand-in-hand. When we become materially very prosperous, so many\nof us begin to say, \"Is not this Babylon that I have builded?\" And\nabout that time there comes some handwriting on the wall and a bump to\nsave us.\n\nThink of what might happen to you today. Your home might burn. We don't\nwant your home to burn, but somebody's home is burning just now. A\nconflagration might sweep your town from the map. Your business might\nwreck. Your fortune might be swept away. Your good name might be\ntarnished. Bereavement might take from you the one you love most.\n\nYou would never know how many real friends you have until then. But\nlook out! Some of your friends would say, \"I am so sorry for you. You\nare down and out.\" Do not believe that you are down and out, for it is\nnot true. The old enemy of humanity wants you to believe you are down\nand out. He wants you to sympathize with yourself. You are never down\nand out!\n\nThe truth is, another chapter of your real education has been opened.\nWill you read the lesson of the Needful Knocks?\n\nA great conflagration, a cyclone, a railroad wreck, an epidemic or\nother public disaster brings sympathy, bravery, brotherhood and love in\nits wake.\n\nThere is a silver lining to every hard knocks cloud.\n\nOut of the trenches of the Great War come nations chastened by\nsacrifice and purged of their dross.\n\n\n\nChapter IV\n\n\"Shake The Barrel\"\n\nHow We Decide Our Destinies\n\n\nNOW as we learn the lessons of the Needless and the Needful Knocks, we\nget wisdom, understanding, happiness, strength, success and greatness.\nWe go up in life. We become educated. Let me bring you a picture of it.\n\nOne day the train stopped at a station to take water. Beside the track\nwas a grocery with a row of barrels of apples in front. There was one\nbarrel full of big, red, fat apples. I rushed over and got a sack of\nthe big, red, fat apples. Later as the train was under way, I looked in\nthe sack and discovered there was not a big, red, fat apple there.\n\nAll I could figure out was that there was only one layer of the big,\nred, fat apples on the top, and the groceryman, not desiring to spoil\nhis sign, had reached down under the top layer. He must have reached to\nthe bottom, for he gave me the worst mess of runts and windfalls I ever\nsaw in one sack. The things I said about the grocery business must have\nkept the recording angel busy.\n\nThen I calmed down. Did the groceryman do that on purpose? Does the\ngroceryman ever put the big apples on top and the little ones down\nunderneath?\n\nDo you? Is there a groceryman in the audience?\n\nMan of sorrows, you have been slandered. It never occurred to me until\nthat day on the train that the groceryman does not put the big ones on\ntop and the little ones down underneath. He does not need to do it. It\ndoes itself. It is the shaking of the barrel that pushes the big ones\nup and the little ones down.\n\n\n\n\nShake to Their Places\n\n\nYou laugh? You don't believe that? Maybe your roads are so good and\nsmooth that things do not shake on the road to town. But back in the\nBlack Swamp of Ohio we had corduroy roads. Did you ever see a corduroy\nroad? It was a layer of logs in the mud. Riding over it was the poetry\nof motion! The wagon \"hit the high spots.\" And as I hauled a wagon-bed\nfull of apples to the cider-mill over a corduroy road, the apples\nsorted out by the jolting. The big apples would try to get to the top.\nThe little, runty apples would try to hold a mass meeting at the bottom.\n\nI saw that for thirty years before I saw it. Did you ever notice how\nlong you have to see most things before you see them? I saw that when I\nplayed marbles. The big marbles would shake to the top of my pocket and\nthe little ones would rattle down to the bottom.\n\nYou children try that tomorrow. Do not wait thirty years to learn that\nthe big ones shake up and the little ones shake down. Put some big ones\nand some little things of about the same density in a box or other\ncontainer and shake them. You will see the larger things shake upward\nand the smaller shake downward. You will see every thing shake to the\nplace its size determines. A little larger one shakes a little higher,\nand a little smaller one a little lower.\n\nWhen things find their place, you can shake on till doomsday, but you\ncannot change the place of one of the objects.\n\nMix them up again and shake. Watch them all shake back as they were\nbefore, the largest on top and the smallest at the bottom.\n\n\n\n\nLectures in Cans\n\n\nAt this place the lecturer exhibits a glass jar more than half-filled\nwith small white beans and a few walnuts.\n\n\nLet us try that right on the platform. Here is a glass jar and inside\nof it you see two sizes of objects--a lot of little white beans and\nsome walnuts. You will pardon me for bringing such a simple and crude\napparatus before you in a lecture, but I ask your forbearance. I am\ndiscovering that we can hear faster thru the eye than thru the ear. I\nwant to make this so vivid that you will never forget it, and I do not\nwant these young people to live thirty years before they see it.\n\nIf there are sermons in stones, there must be lectures in cans. This is\na canned lecture. Let the can talk to you awhile.\n\nYou note as I shake the jar the little beans quickly settle down and\nthe big walnuts shake up. Not one bean asks, \"Which way do I go?\" Not\none walnut asks, \"Which way do I go?\" Each one automatically goes the\nright way. The little ones go down and the big ones go up.\n\nNote that I mix them all up and then shake. Note that they arrange\nthemselves just as they were before.\n\nSuppose those objects could talk. I think I hear that littlest bean\ndown in the bottom saying, \"Help me! Help me! I am so unfortunate and\nlow down. I never had no chance like them big ones up there. Help me\nup.\"\n\nI say, \"Yes, you little bean, I'll help you.\" So I lift him up to the\ntop. See! I have boosted him. I have uplifted him.\n\nSee, the can shakes. Back to the bottom shakes the little bean. And I\nhear him say, \"King's ex! I slipped. Try that again and I'll stay on\ntop.\" So I put him back again on top.\n\nThe can shakes. The little bean again shakes back to the bottom. He is\ntoo small to stay up. He cannot stand prosperity.\n\nThen I hear Little Bean say, \"Well, if I cannot get to the top, you\nmake them big ones come down. Give every one an equal chance.\"\n\nSo I say, \"Yes, sir, Little Bean. Here, you big ones on top, get down.\nYou Big Nuts get right down there on a level with Little Bean!\" And you\nsee I put them down.\n\nBut I shake the can, and the big ones go right back to the top with the\nsame shakes that send the little ones back to the bottom.\n\nThere is only one way for those objects to change their place in the\ncan. Lifting them up or putting them down will not do it. But change\ntheir size!\n\nEquality of position demands quality of size. Let the little one grow\nbigger and he will shake up. Let the big one grow smaller and he will\nshake down.\n\n\n\n\nThe Shaking Barrel of Life\n\n\nO, fellow apples! We are all apples in the barrel of life on the way to\nthe market place of the future. It is a corduroy road and the barrel\nshakes all the time.\n\nIn the barrel are big apples, little apples, freckled apples, speckled\napples, green apples, and dried apples. A bad boy on the front row\nshouted the other night, \"And rotten apples!\"\n\nIn other words, all the people of the world are in the great barrel of\nlife. That barrel is shaking all the time. Every community is shaking,\nevery place is shaking. The offices, the shops, the stores, the\nschools, the pulpits, the homes--every place where we live or work is\nshaking. Life is a constant survival of the fittest.\n\nThe same law that shakes the little ones down and the big ones up in\nthat can is shaking every person to the place he fits in the barrel of\nlife. It is sending small people down and great people up.\n\nAnd do you not see that we are very foolish when we want to be lifted\nup to some big place, or when we want some big person to be put down to\nsome little place? We are foolishly trying to overturn the eternal law\nof life.\n\nWe shake right back to the places our size determines. We must get\nready for places before we can get them and keep them.\n\nThe very worst thing that can happen to anybody is to be artificially\nboosted up into some place where he rattles.\n\nI hear a good deal about destiny. Some people seem to think destiny is\nsomething like a train and if we do not get to the depot in time our\ntrain of destiny will run off and leave us, and we will have no\ndestiny. There is destiny--that jar.\n\nIf we are small we shall have a small destiny. If we are great we shall\nhave a great destiny. We cannot dodge our destiny.\n\n\n\n\nKings and Queens of Destiny\n\n\nThe objects in that jar cannot change their size. But thank God, you\nand I are not helpless victims of blind fate. We are not creatures of\nchance. We have it in our hands to decide our destiny as we grow or\nrefuse to grow.\n\nWe shake down if we become small; we shake up if we become great. And\nwhen we have reached the place our size determines, we stay there so\nlong as we stay that size.\n\nIf we wish to change our place, we must first change our size. If we\nwish to go down, we must grow smaller and we shall shake down. If we\nwish to go up, we must grow greater, and we shall shake up.\n\nEach person is doing one of three things consciously or unconsciously.\n\n1. He is holding his place.\n\n2. He is going down.\n\n3. He is going up.\n\nIn order to hold his place he must hold his size. He must fill the\nplace. If he shrinks up he will rattle. Nobody can stay long where he\nrattles. Nature abhors a rattler. He shakes down to a smaller place.\n\nIn order to stay the same size he must grow enough each day to supply\nthe loss by evaporation. Evaporation is going steadily on in lives as\nwell as in liquids. If we are not growing any, we are rattling.\n\n\n\n\nWe Compel Promotion\n\n\nSo you young people should keep in mind that you will shake into the\nplaces you fit. And when you are in your places--in stores, shops,\noffices or elsewhere, if you want to hold your place you must keep\ngrowing enough to keep it tightly filled.\n\nIf you want a greater place, you simply grow greater and they cannot\nkeep you down. You do not ask for promotion, you compel promotion. You\ngrow greater, enlarge your dimensions, develop new capabilities, do\nmore than you are paid to do--overfill your place, and you shake up to\na greater place.\n\nI believe if I were so fortunate or unfortunate as to have a number of\npeople working for me, I would have a jar in my office filled with\nvarious sizes of objects. When an employee would come into the office\nand say, \"Isn't it about time I was getting a raise?\" I would say, \"Go\nshake the jar, Charlie. That is the way you get raised. As you grow\ngreater you won't need to ask to be promoted. You will promote\nyourself.\"\n\n\n\n\n\"Good Luck\" and \"Bad Luck\"\n\n\nThis jar tells me so much about luck. I have noted that the lucky\npeople shake up and the unlucky people shake down. That is, the lucky\npeople grow great and the unlucky people shrivel and rattle.\n\nNotice as I bump this jar. Two things happened. The little ones shook\ndown and the big ones shook up. The bump that was bad luck to the\nlittle ones was good luck to the big ones. The same bump was both good\nluck and bad luck.\n\nLuck does not depend upon the direction of the bump, but upon the size\nof the bump-ee!\n\n\n\n\nThe \"Lucky\" One\n\n\nSo everywhere you look you see the barrel sorting people according to\nsize. Every business concern can tell you stories like that of the\nChicago house where a number of young ladies worked. Some of them had\nbeen there for a long time. There came a raw, green Dutch girl from the\ncountry. It was her first office experience, and she got the bottom job.\n\nThe other girls poked fun at her and played jokes upon her because she\nwas so green.\n\nDo you remember that green things grow?\n\n\"Is not she the limit?\" they oft spake one to another. She was. She\nmade many blunders. But it is now recalled that she never made the same\nblunder twice. She learned the lesson with one helping to the bumps.\n\nAnd she never \"got done.\" When she had finished her work, the work she\nhad been put at, she would discover something else that ought to be\ndone, and she would go right on working, contrary to the rules of the\nunion! Without being told, mind you. She had that rare faculty the\nworld is bidding for--initiative.\n\nThe other girls \"got done.\" When they had finished the work they had\nbeen put at, they would wait--O, so patiently they would wait--to be\ntold what to do next.\n\nWithin three months every other girl in that office was asking\nquestions of the little Dutch girl. She had learned more about business\nin three months than the others had learned in all the time they had\nbeen there. Nothing ever escaped her. She had become the most capable\ngirl in the office.\n\nThe barrel did the rest. Today she is giving orders to all of them, for\nshe is the office superintendent.\n\nThe other girls feel hurt about it. They will tell you in confidence\nthat it was the rankest favoritism ever known. \"There was nothing fair\nabout it. Jennie ought to have been made superintendent. Jennie had\nbeen here four years.\"\n\n\n\n\nThe \"Unlucky\" One\n\n\nThe other day in a paper-mill I was standing beside a long machine\nmaking shiny super-calendered paper. I asked the man working there some\nquestions about the machine, which he answered fairly well. Then I\nasked him about a machine in the next room. He said, \"I don't know\nnothing about it, boss, I don't work in there.\"\n\nI asked him about another process, and he replied, \"I don't know\nnothing about it, I never worked in there.\" I asked him about the\npulpmill. He replied, \"No, I don't know nothing about that, neither. I\ndon't work in there.\" And he did not betray the least desire to know\nanything about anything.\n\n\"How long have you worked here?\"\n\n\"About twelve years.\"\n\nGoing out of the building, I asked the foreman, \"Do you see that man\nover there at the supercalendered machine?\" pointing to the man who\ndidn't know. \"Is he a human being?\"\n\nThe foreman's face clouded. \"I hate to talk to you about that man. He\nis one of the kindest-hearted men we ever had in the works, but we've\ngot to let him go. We're afraid he'll break the machine. He isn't\ninterested, does not learn, doesn't try to learn.\"\n\nSo he had begun to rattle. Nobody can stay where he rattles. It is grow\nor go.\n\n\n\n\nLife's Barrel the Leveler\n\n\nSo books could be filled with just such stories of how people have gone\nup and down. You may have noticed two brothers start with the same\nchance, and presently notice that one is going up and the other is\ngoing down.\n\nSome of us begin life on the top branches, right in the sunshine of\npopular favor, and get our names in the blue-book at the start. Some of\nus begin down in the shade on the bottom branches, and we do not even\nget invited. We often become discouraged as we look at the\ntop-branchers, and we say, \"O, if I only had his chance! If I were only\nup there I might amount to something. But I am too low down.\"\n\nWe can grow. Everybody can grow.\n\nAnd afterwhile we are all in the barrel of life, shaken and bumped\nabout. There the real people do not often ask us, \"On what branch of\nthat tree did you grow?\" But they often inquire, \"Are you big enough to\nfill this place?\"\n\n\n\n\nThe Fatal Rattle!\n\n\nNow life is mainly routine. You and I and everybody must go on doing\npretty much the same things over and over. Every day we appear to have\nabout the same round of duties.\n\nBut if we let life become routine, we are shaking down. The very\nroutine of life must every day flash a new attractiveness. We must be\nlearning new things and discovering new joys in our daily routine or we\nbecome unhappy. If we go on doing just the same things in the same way\nday after day, thinking the same thoughts, our eyes glued to\nprecedents--just turning round and round in our places and not growing\nany, pretty soon we become mere machines. We wear smaller. The joy and\njuice go out of our lives. We shrivel and rattle.\n\nThe success, joy and glory of life are in learning, growing, going\nforward and upward. That is the only way to hold our place.\n\nThe farmer must be learning new things about farming to hold his place\nthis progressive age as a farmer. The merchant must be growing into a\ngreater, wiser merchant to hold his place among his competitors. The\nminister must be getting larger visions of the ministry as he goes back\ninto the same old pulpit to keep on filling it. The teacher must be\nseeing new possibilities in the same old schoolroom. The mother must be\ngetting a larger horizon in her homemaking.\n\nWe only live as we grow and learn. When anybody stays in the same place\nyear after year and fills it, he does not rattle.\n\nUnless the place is a grave!\n\nI shiver as I see the pages of school advertisements in the journals\nlabeled \"Finishing Schools,\" and \"A Place to Finish Your Child.\" I know\nthe schools generally mean all right, but I fear the students will get\nthe idea they are being finished, which finishes them. We never finish\nwhile we live. A school finishing is a commencement, not an end-ment.\n\nI am sorry for the one who says, \"I know all there is to know about\nthat. You can't tell me anything about that.\" He is generally rattling.\n\nThe greater and wiser the man, the more anxious he is to be told.\n\nI am sorry for the one who struts around saying, \"I own the job. They\ncan't get along without me.\" For I feel that they are getting ready to\nget along without him. That noise you hear is the death-rattle in his\nthroat.\n\nBig business men keep their ears open for rattles in their machinery.\n\nI am sorry for the man, community or institution that spends much time\npointing backward with pride and talking about \"in my day!\" For it is\nmostly rattle. The live one's \"my day\" is today and tomorrow. The dead\none's is yesterday.\n\n\n\n\nWe Must Get Ready to Get\n\n\nWe young people come up into life wanting great places. I would not\ngive much for a young person (or any other person) who does not want a\ngreat place. I would not give much for anybody who does not look\nforward to greater and better things tomorrow.\n\nWe often think the way to get a great place is just to go after it and\nget it. If we do not have pull enough, get some more pull. Get some\nmore testimonials.\n\nWe think if we could only get into a great place we would be great. But\nunless we have grown as great as the place we would be a great joke,\nfor we would rattle. And when we have grown as great as the place, that\nsized place will generally come seeking us.\n\nWe do not become great by getting into a great place, any more than a\nboy becomes a man by getting into his father's boots. He is in great\nboots, but he rattles. He must grow greater feet before he gets greater\nboots. But he must get the feet before he gets the boots.\n\nWe must get ready for things before we get them.\n\nAll life is preparation for greater things.\n\nMoses was eighty years getting ready to do forty years work. The Master\nwas thirty years getting ready to do three years work. So many of us\nexpect to get ready in \"four easy lessons by mail.\"\n\nWe can be a pumpkin in one summer, with the accent on the \"punk.\" We\ncan be a mushroom in a day, with the accent on the \"mush.\" But we\ncannot become an oak that way.\n\nThe world is not greatly impressed by testimonials. The man who has the\nmost testimonials generally needs them most to keep him from rattling.\nA testimonial so often becomes a crutch.\n\nMany a man writes a testimonial to get rid of somebody. \"Well, I hope\nit will do him some good. Anyhow, I have gotten him off my hands.\" I\nheard a Chicago superintendent say to his foreman, \"Give him a\ntestimonial and fire him!\"\n\nIt is dangerous to overboost people, for the higher you boost them the\nfarther they will fall.\n\n\n\n\nThe Menace of the Press-Notice\n\n\nNow testimonials and press-notices very often serve useful ends. In\nlyceum work, in teaching, in very many lines, they are often useful to\nintroduce a stranger. A letter of introduction is useful. A diploma, a\ndegree, a certificate, a license, are but different kinds of\ntestimonials.\n\nThe danger is that the hero of them may get to leaning upon them. Then\nthey become a mirror for his vanity instead of a monitor for his\nvitality.\n\nMost testimonials and press-notices are frank flatteries. They magnify\nthe good points and say little as possible about the bad ones. I look\nback over my lyceum life and see that I hindered my progress by reading\nmy press-notices instead of listening to the verdict of my audiences. I\navoided frank criticism. It would hurt me. Whenever I heard an adverse\ncriticism, I would go and read a few press-notices. \"There, I am all\nright, for this clipping says I am the greatest ever, and should he\nreturn, no hall would be able to contain the crowd.\"\n\nAnd my vanity bump would again rise.\n\nAlas! How often I have learned that when I did return the hall that was\nfilled before was entirely too big for the audience! The editors of\nAmerica--God bless them! They are always trying to boost a home\nenterprise--not for the sake of the imported attraction but for the\nsake of the home folks who import it.\n\nWe must read people, not press-notices.\n\nWhen you get to the place where you can stand aside and \"see yourself\ngo by\"--when you can keep still and see every fibre of you and your\nwork mercilessly dissected, shake hands with yourself and rejoice, for\nthe kingdom of success is yours.\n\n\n\n\nThe Artificial Uplift\n\n\nThere are so many loving, sincere, foolish, cruel uplift movements in\nthe land. They spring up, fail, wail, disappear, only to be succeeded\nby twice as many more. They fail because instead of having the barrel\ndo the uplifting, they try to do it with a derrick.\n\nThe victims of the artificial uplift cannot stay uplifted. They rattle\nback, and \"the last estate of that man is worse than the first.\"\n\nYou cannot uplift a beggar by giving him alms. You are using the\nderrick. We must feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but that is not\nhelping them, that is propping them. The beggar who asks you to help\nhim does not want to be helped. He wants to be propped. He wants you to\nlicense him and professionalize him as a beggar.\n\nYou can only help a man to help himself. Help him to grow. You cannot\nhelp many people, for there are not many people willing to be helped on\nthe inside. Not many willing to grow up.\n\nWhen Peter and John went up to the temple they found the lame beggar\nsitting at the gate Beautiful. Every day the beggar had been \"helped.\"\nEvery day as they laid him at the gate people would pass thru the gate\nand see him. He would say, \"Help me!\" \"Poor man,\" they would reply,\n\"you are in a bad fix. Here is help,\" and they would throw him some\nmoney.\n\nAnd so every day that beggar got to be more of a beggar. The public\n\"helped\" him to be poorer in spirit, more helpless and a more hopeless\ncripple. No doubt he belonged after a few days of the \"helping\" to the\nJerusalem Beggars' Union and carried his card. Maybe he paid a\ncommission for such a choice beggars' beat.\n\nBut Peter really helped him. \"Silver and gold have I none; but such as\nI have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and\nwalk.\"\n\n\n\n\nFix the People, Not the Barrel\n\n\nI used to say, \"Nobody uses me right. Nobody gives me a chance.\" But if\nchances had been snakes, I would have been bitten a hundred times a\nday. We need oculists, not opportunities.\n\nI used to work on the \"section\" and get a dollar and fifteen cents a\nday. I rattled there. I did not earn my dollar fifteen. I tried to see\nhow little I could do and look like I was working. I was the Artful\nDodger of Section Sixteen. When the whistle would blow--O, joyful\nsound!--I would leave my pick hang right up in the air. I would not\nbring it down again for a soulless corporation.\n\nI used to wonder as I passed Bill Barlow's bank on the way down to the\nsection-house, why I was not president of that bank. I wondered why I\nwas not sitting upon one of those mahogany seats instead of pumping a\nhandcar. I was naturally bright. I used to say \"If the rich wasn't\ngetting richer and the poor poorer, I'd be president of a bank.\"\n\nDid you ever hear that line of conversation? It generally comes from\nsomebody who rattles where he is.\n\nI am so glad now that I did not get to be president of the bank. They\nare glad, too! I would have rattled down in about fifteen minutes, down\nto the peanut row, for I was only a peanut. Remember, the hand-car job\nis just as honorable as the bank job, but as I was not faithful over a\nfew things, I would have rattled over many things.\n\nThe fairy books love to tell about some clodhopper suddenly enchanted\nup into a king. But life's good fairies see to it that the clodhopper\nis enchanted into readiness for kingship before he lands upon the\nthrone.\n\nThe only way to rule others is to learn to rule ourself.\n\nI used to say, \"Just wait till I get to Congress.\" I think they are all\nwaiting! \"I'll fix things. I'll pass laws requiring all apples to be\nthe same size. Yes, I'll pass laws to turn the barrel upside down, so\nthe little ones will be on the top and the big ones will be at the\nbottom.\"\n\nBut I had not seen that it wouldn't matter which end was the top, the\nbig ones would shake right up to it and the little ones would shake\ndown to the bottom.\n\nThe little man has the chance now, just as fast as he grows. You cannot\nfix the barrel. You can only fix the people inside the barrel.\n\nHave you ever noticed that the man who is not willing to fix himself,\nis the one who wants to get the most laws passed to fix other people?\nHe wants something for nothing.\n\n\n\n\nThat Cruel Fate\n\n\nO, I am so glad I did not get the things I wanted at the time I wanted\nthem! They would have been coffee-pots. Thank goodness, we do not get\nthe coffee-pot until we are ready to handle it.\n\nToday you and I have things we couldn't have yesterday. We just wanted\nthem yesterday. O, how we wanted them! But a cruel fate would not let\nus have them. Today we have them. They come to us as naturally today,\nand we see it is because we have grown ready for them, and the barrel\nhas shaken us up to them.\n\nToday you and I want things beyond our reach. O, how we want them! But\na cruel fate will not let us have them.\n\nDo you not see that \"cruel fate\" is our own smallness and unreadiness?\nAs we grow greater we have greater things. We have today all we can\nstand today. More would wreck us. More would start us to rattling.\n\nGetting up is growing up.\n\nAnd this blessed old barrel of life is just waiting and anxious to\nshake everybody up as fast as everybody grows.\n\n\n\nChapter V\n\nGoing Up\n\nHow We Become Great\n\nWE go up as we grow great. That is, we go up as we grow up. But so many\nare trying to grow great on the outside without growing great on the\ninside. They rattle on the inside!\n\nThey fool themselves, but nobody else.\n\nThere is only one greatness--inside greatness. All outside greatness is\nmerely an incidental reflection of the inside.\n\nGreatness is not measured in any material terms. It is not measured in\ninches, dollars, acres, votes, hurrahs, or by any other of the world's\nyardsticks or barometers.\n\nGreatness is measured in spiritual terms. It is education. It is life\nexpansion.\n\nWe go up from selfishness to unselfishness.\n\nWe go up from impurity to purity.\n\nWe go up from unhappiness to happiness.\n\nWe go up from weakness to strength.\n\nWe go up from low ideals to high ideals.\n\nWe go up from little vision to greater vision.\n\nWe go up from foolishness to wisdom.\n\nWe go up from fear to faith.\n\nWe go up from ignorance to understanding.\n\nWe go up by our own personal efforts. We go up by our own service,\nsacrifice, struggle and overcoming. We push out our own skyline. We\nrise above our own obstacles. We learn to see, hear, hold and\nunderstand.\n\nWe may become very great, very educated, rise very high, and yet not\nleave our kitchen or blacksmith shop. We take the kitchen or blacksmith\nshop right up with us! We make it a great kitchen or great blacksmith\nshop. It becomes our throne-room!\n\nCome, let us grow greater. There is a throne for each of us.\n\n\n\n\n\"Getting to the Top\"\n\n\n\"Getting to the top\" is the world's pet delusion. There is no top. No\nmatter how high we rise, we discover infinite distances above. The\nhigher we rise, the better we see that life on this planet is the going\nup from the Finite to the Infinite.\n\nThe world says that to get greatness means to get great things. So the\nworld is in the business of getting--getting great fortunes, great\nlands, great titles, great applause, great fame, and folderol.\nAfterwhile the poor old world hears the empty rattle of the inside, and\nwails, \"All is vanity. I find no pleasure in them. Life is a failure.\"\nAll outside life is a failure. Real life is in being things on the\ninside, not in getting things on the outside.\n\nI weary of the world's pink-sheet extras about \"Getting to the Top\" and\n\"Forging to the Front.\" Too often they are the sordid story of a few\nscrambling over the heads of the weaker ones. Sometimes they are the\nstory of one pig crowding the other pigs out of the trough and\ncornering all the swill!\n\n\n\n\nThe Secret of Greatness\n\n\nChrist Jesus was a great Teacher. His mission was to educate humanity.\n\nThere came to him those two disciples who wanted to \"get to the top.\"\nThose two sons of Zebedee wanted to have the greatest places in the new\nkingdom they imagined he would establish on earth.\n\nThey got very busy pursuing greatness, but I do not read that they were\nhalf so busy preparing for greatness. They even had their mother out\nelectioneering for them.\n\n\"O, Master,\" said the mother, \"grant that these my two sons may sit,\nthe one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.\"\n\nThe Master looked with love and pity upon their unpreparedness. \"Are ye\nable to drink of the cup?\" Then he gave the only definition of\ngreatness that can ever stand: \"Whosoever will be great among you, let\nhim be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be\nyour servant.\"\n\nThat is we cannot be \"born great,\" nor \"have greatness thrust upon\" us.\nWe must \"achieve greatness\" by developing it on the inside--developing\nability to minister and to serve.\n\nWe cannot buy a great arm. Our arm must become a great servant, and\nthus it becomes great.\n\nWe cannot buy a great mind. Our mind must become a great servant, and\nthus it becomes great.\n\nWe cannot buy a great character. It is earned in great moral service.\n\n\n\n\nThe First Step at Hand\n\n\nThis is the Big Business of life--going up, getting educated, getting\ngreatness on the inside. Getting greatness on the outside is little\nbusiness. Much of it mighty little.\n\nEverybody's privilege and duty is to become great. And the joy of it is\nthat the first step is always nearest at hand. We do not have to go off\nto New York or Chicago or go chasing around the world to become great.\nIt is a great stairway that leads from where our feet are now upward\nfor an infinite number of steps.\n\nWe must take the first step now. Most of us want to take the hundredth\nstep or the thousandth step now. We want to make some spectacular\nstride of a thousand steps at one leap. That is why we fall so hard\nwhen we miss our step.\n\nWe must go right back to our old place--into our kitchen or our\nworkshop or our office and take the first step, solve the problem\nnearest at hand. We must make our old work luminous with a new\ndevotion. We must battle up over every inch. And as fast as we solve\nand dissolve the difficulties and turn our burdens into blessings, we\nfind love, the universal solvent, shining out of our lives. We find our\nspiritual influences going upward. So the winds of earth are born; they\nrush in from the cold lands to the warm upward currents. And so as our\nproblems disappear and our life currents set upward, the world is drawn\ntoward us with its problems.  We find our kitchen or workshop or office\nbecoming a new throne of power. We find the world around us rising up\nto call us blessed.\n\nAs we grow greater our troubles grow smaller, for we see them thru\ngreater eyes. We rise above them.\n\nAs we grow greater our opportunities grow greater. That is, we begin to\nsee them. They are around us all the time, but we must get greater eyes\nto see them.\n\nGenerally speaking, the smaller our vision of our work, the more we\nadmire what we have accomplished and \"point with pride.\" The greater\nour vision, the more we see what is yet to be accomplished.\n\nIt was the sweet girl graduate who at commencement wondered how one\nsmall head could contain it all. It was Newton after giving the world a\nnew science who looked back over it and said, \"I seem to have been only\na boy playing on the seashore * * * while the great ocean of truth lay\nall undiscovered before me.\" That great ocean is before us all.\n\n\n\n\nThe Widow's Mites\n\n\nThe great Teacher pointed to the widow who cast her two mites into the\ntreasury, and then to the rich men who had cast in much more. \"This\npoor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their\nabundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath\ncast in all the living that she had.\"\n\nTho the rich men had cast in more, yet it was only a part of their\npossessions. The widow cast in less, but it was all she had. The Master\ncared little what the footings of the money were in the treasury. That\nis not why we give. We give to become great. The widow had given\nall--had completely overcome her selfishness and fear of want.\n\nBecoming great is overcoming our selfishness and fear. He that saveth\nhis life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for the advancement\nof the kingdom of happiness on earth shall find it great and glorified.\n\nOur greatness therefore does not depend upon how much we give or upon\nwhat we do, whether peeling potatoes or ruling a nation, but upon the\npercentage of our output to our resources. Upon doing with our might\nwhat our hands find to do. Quit worrying about what you cannot get to\ndo. Rejoice in doing the things you can get to do. And as you are\nfaithful over a few things you go up to be ruler over many.\n\nThe world says some of us have golden gifts and some have copper gifts.\nBut when we cast them all into the treasury of right service, there is\nan alchemy that transmutes every gift into gold. Every work is drudgery\nwhen done selfishly. Every work becomes golden when done in a golden\nmanner.\n\n\n\n\nFinding the Great People\n\n\nI do not know who fitted the boards into the floor I stand upon. I do\nnot know all the great people who may come and stand upon this floor.\nBut I do know that the one who made the floor--and the one who sweeps\nit--is just as great as anybody in the world who may come and stand\nupon it, if each be doing his work with the same love, faithfulness and\ncapability.\n\nWe have to look farther than the \"Who's Who\" and Dun and Bradstreet to\nmake a roster of the great people of a community. You will find the\ncommunity heart in the precious handful who believe that the service of\nGod is the service of man.\n\nThe great people of the community serve and sacrifice for a better\ntomorrow. They are the faithful few who get behind the churches, the\nschools, the lyceum and chautauqua, and all the other movements that go\nupward.\n\nThey are the ones who are \"always trying to run things.\" They are the\nhappy ones, happy for the larger vision that comes as they go higher by\nunselfish service. They are discovering that their sweetest pay comes\nfrom doing many things they are not paid for. They rarely get thanked,\nfor the community does not often think of thanking them until it comes\ntime to draft the \"resolutions of respect.\"\n\nI had to go to the mouth of a coal-mine in a little Illinois town, to\nfind the man the bureau had given as lyceum committeeman there. I\nwondered what the grimy-faced man from the shaft, wearing the miner's\nlamp in his cap, could possibly have to do with the lyceum course. But\nI learned that he had all to do with it. He had sold the tickets and\nhad done all the managing. He was superintendent of the Sunday school.\nHe was the storm-center of every altruistic effort in the town--the\ngreatest man there, because the most serviceable, tho he worked every\nday full time with his pick at his bread-and-butter job.\n\nThe great people are so busy serving that they have little time to\nstrut and pose in the show places. Few of them are \"prominent clubmen.\"\nYou rarely find their names in the society page. They rarely give\n\"brilliant social functions.\" Their idle families attend to such things.\n\n\n\n\nA Glimpse of Gunsaulus\n\n\nI found a great man lecturing at the chautauquas. He preaches in\nChicago on Sundays to thousands. He writes books and runs a college he\nfounded by his own preaching. He is the mainspring of so many uplift\nmovements that his name gets into the papers about every day, and you\nread it in almost every committee doing good things in Chicago.\n\nHe had broken away from Chicago to have a vacation. Many people think\nthat a vacation means going off somewhere and stretching out under\ntrees or letting the mind become a blank. But this Chicago preacher\nwent from one chautauqua town to another, and took his vacation going\nup and down the streets. He dug into the local history of each place,\nand before dinner he knew more about the place than most of the natives.\n\n\"There is a sermon for me,\" he would exclaim every half-hour. He went\nto see people who were doing things. He went to see people who were\ndoing nothing. In every town he would discover somebody of unusual\nattainment. He made every town an unusual town. He turned the humdrum\ntravel map into a wonderland. He scolded lazy towns and praised\nenterprising ones. He stopped young fellows on the streets. \"What are\nyou going to do in life?\" Perhaps the young man would say, \"I have no\nchance.\" \"You come to Chicago and I'll give you a chance,\" the man on\nhis vacation would reply.\n\nSo this Chicago preacher was busy every day, working overtime on his\nvacation. He was busy about other people's business. He did not once\nask the price of land, nor where there was a good investment for\nhimself, but every day he was trying to make an investment in somebody\nelse.\n\nHis friends would sometimes worry about him. They would say, \"Why\ndoesn't the doctor take care of himself, instead of taking care of\neverybody else? He wears himself out for other people until he hasn't\nstrength enough left to lecture and do his own work.\"\n\nSometimes they were right about that.\n\nBut he that saveth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life\nin loving service finds it returning to him great and glorious. This\nman's preaching did not make him great. His college did not make him\ngreat. His books did not make him great. These are the by-products. His\nlife of service for others makes him great--makes his preaching, his\ncollege and his books great.\n\nThis Chicago man gives his life into the service of humanity, and it\nbecomes the fuel to make the steam to accomplish the wonderful things\nhe does. Let him stop and \"take care of himself,\" and his career would\nstop.\n\nIf he had begun life by \"taking care of himself\" and \"looking out for\nnumber one,\" stipulating in advance every cent he was to get and\nwriting it all down in the contract, most likely Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus\nwould have remained a struggling, discouraged preacher in the backwoods\nof Morrow county, Ohio.\n\n\n\n\nGive It Now\n\n\nGunsaulus often says, \"You are planning and saving and telling yourself\nthat afterwhile you are going to give great things and do great things.\nGive it now! Give your dollar now, rather than your thousands\nafterwhile. You need to give it now, and the world needs to get it now.\"\n\n\n\nChapter VI\n\nThe Problem of \"Preparedness\"\n\nPreparing Children to Live\n\nTHE problem of \"preparedness\" is the problem of preparing children for\nlife. All other kinds of \"preparedness\" fade into insignificance before\nthis. The history of nations shows that their strength was not in the\nsize of their armies and in the vastness of their population and\nwealth, but in the strength and ideals of the individual citizens.\n\nAs long as the nation was young and growing--as long as the people were\nstruggling and overcoming--that nation was strong. It was \"prepared.\"\n\nBut when the struggle stopped, the strength waned, for the strength\ncame from the struggle. When the people became materially prosperous\nand surrendered to ease and indulgence, they became fat, stall-fed\nweaklings. Then they fell a prey to younger, hardier peoples.\n\nHas the American nation reached that period?\n\nMany homes and communities have reached it.\n\nAll over America are fathers and mothers who have struggled and have\nbecome strong men and women thru their struggles, who are saying, \"Our\nchildren shall have better chances than we had. We are living for our\nchildren. We are going to give them the best education our money can\nbuy.\"\n\nThen, forgetful of how they became strong, they plan to take away from\ntheir children their birthright--their opportunity to become strong and\n\"prepared\"--thru struggle and service and overcoming.\n\nMost \"advantages\" are disadvantages. Giving a child a chance generally\nmeans getting out of his way. Many an orphan can be grateful that he\nwas jolted from his life-preserver and cruelly forced to sink or swim.\nThus he learned to swim.\n\n\"We are going to give our children the best education our money can\nbuy.\"\n\nThey think they can buy an education--buy wisdom, strength and\nunderstanding, and give it to them C. O. D! They seem to think they\nwill buy any brand they see--buy the home brand of education, or else\nsend off to New York or Paris or to \"Sears Roebuck,\" and get a\nbucketful or a tankful of education. If they are rich enough, maybe\nthey will have a private pipeline of education laid to their home. They\nare going to force this education into them regularly until they get\nthem full of education. They are going to get them fully inflated with\neducation!\n\nToll the bell! There's going to be a \"blow out.\" Those inflated\nchildren are going to have to run on \"flat tires.\"\n\nFather and mother cannot buy their children education. All they can do\nis to buy them some tools, perhaps, and open the gate and say, \"Sic\n'em, Tige!\" The children must get it themselves.\n\nA father and mother might as well say, \"We will buy our children the\nstrength we have earned in our arms and the wisdom we have acquired in\na life of struggle.\" As well expect the athlete to give them his\nphysical development he has earned in years of exercise. As well expect\nthe musician to give them the technic he has acquired in years of\npractice. As well expect the scholar to give them the ability to think\nhe has developed in years of study. As well expect Moses to give them\nhis spiritual understanding acquired in a long life of prayer.\n\nThey can show the children the way, but each child must make the\njourney.\n\nHere is a typical case.\n\n\n\n\nThe Story of \"Gussie\"\n\n\nThere was a factory town back East. Not a pretty town, but just a\ngreat, dirty mill and a lot of little dirty houses around the mill. The\nhands lived in the little dirty houses and worked six days of the week\nin the big mill.\n\nThere was a little, old man who went about that mill, often saying, \"I\nhain't got no book l'arnin' like the rest of you.\" He was the man who\nowned the mill. He had made it with his own genius out of nothing. He\nhad become rich and honored. Every man in the mill loved him like a\nfather.\n\nHe had an idolatry for a book.\n\nHe also had a little pink son, whose name was F. Gustavus Adolphus. The\nlittle old man often said, \"I'm going to give that boy the best\neducation my money can buy.\"\n\nHe began to buy it. He began to polish and sandpaper Gussie from the\nminute the child could sit up in the cradle and notice things. He sent\nhim to the astrologer, the phrenologer and all other \"ologers\" they had\naround there. When Gussie was old enough to export, he sent the boy to\none of the greatest universities in the land. The fault was not with\nthe university, not with Gussie, who was bright and capable.\n\nThe fault was with the little old man, who was so wise and great about\neverything else, and so foolish about his own boy. In the blindness of\nhis love he robbed his boy of his birthright.\n\nThe birthright of every child is the opportunity of becoming great--of\ngoing up--of getting educated.\n\nGussie had no chance to serve. Everything was handed to him on a silver\nplatter. Gussie went thru that university about like a steer from Texas\ngoes thru Mr. Armour's institute of packnology in Chicago. Did you ever\ngo over into Packingtown and see a steer receive his education?\n\nYou remember, then, that after he matriculates--after he gets the grand\nbump, said steer does not have to do another thing. His education is\nall arranged for in advance and he merely rides thru and receives it.\nThere is a row of professors with their sleeves rolled up who give him\nthe degrees. So as Mr. T. Steer of Panhandle goes riding thru on that\nendless cable from his A-B-C's to his eternal cold storage, each\nprofessor hits him a dab. He rides along from department to department\nuntil he is canned.\n\nThey \"canned\" Gussie. He had a man hired to study for him. He rode from\ndepartment to department. They upholstered him, enameled him, manicured\nhim, sugar-cured him, embalmed him. Finally Gussie was done and the\npaint was dry. He was a thing of beauty.\n\n\n\n\n\nGussie and Bill Whackem Gussie came back home with his education in the\nbaggage-car. It was checked. The mill shut down on a week day, the\nfirst time in its history. The hands marched down to the depot, and\nwhen the young lord alighted, the factory band played, \"See, the\nConquering Hero Comes.\"\n\nA few years later the mill shut down again on a week day. There was\ncrape hanging on the office door. Men and women stood weeping in the\nstreets. The little old man had been translated.\n\nWhen they next opened up the mill, F. Gustavus Adolphus was at its\nhead. He had inherited the entire plant. \"F. Gustavus Adolphus,\nPresident.\"\n\nPoor little peanut! He rattled. He had never grown great enough to fill\nso great a place. In two years and seven months the mill was a wreck.\nThe monument of a father's lifetime was wrecked in two years and seven\nmonths by the boy who had all the \"advantages.\"\n\nSo the mill was shut down the third time on a week day. It looked as\ntho it never could open. But it did open, and when it opened it had a\nnew kind of boss. If I were to give the new boss a descriptive name, I\nwould call him \"Bill Whackem.\" He was an orphan. He had little chance.\nHe had a new black eye almost every day. But he seemed to fatten on\nbumps. Every time he was bumped he would swell up. How fast he grew! He\nbecame the most useful man in the community. People forgot all about\nBill's lowly origin. They got to looking up to him to start and run\nthings.\n\nSo when the courts were looking for somebody big enough to take charge\nof the wrecked mill, they simply had to appoint Hon. William Whackem.\nIt was Hon. William Whackem who put the wreckage together and made the\nwheels go round, and finally got the hungry town back to work.\n\n\n\n\nColleges Give Us Tools\n\n\nAfter that a good many people said it was the college that made a fool\nof Gussie. They said Bill succeeded so well because he never went to\none of \"them highbrow schools.\" I am sorry to say I thought that way\nfor a good while.\n\nBut now I see that Bill went up in spite of his handicaps. If he had\nhad Gussie's fine equipment he might have accomplished vastly more.\n\nThe book and the college suffer at the hands of their friends. They say\nto the book and the college, \"Give us an education.\" They cannot do\nthat. You cannot get an education from the book and the college any\nmore than you can get to New York by reading a travelers' guide. You\ncannot get physical education by reading a book on gymnastics.\n\nThe book and the college show you the way, give you instruction and\nfurnish you finer working tools. But the real education is the journey\nyou make, the strength you develop, the service you perform with these\ninstruments and tools.\n\nGussie was in the position of a man with a very fine equipment of tools\nand no experience in using them. Bill was the man with the poor,\nhomemade, crude tools, but with the energy, vision and strength\ndeveloped by struggle.\n\n\n\n\nThe \"Hard Knocks Graduates\"\n\n\nFor education is getting wisdom, understanding, strength, greatness,\nphysically, mentally and morally. I believe I know some people\nliberally educated who cannot write their own names. But they have\nserved and overcome and developed great lives with the poor, crude\ntools at their command.\n\nIn almost every community are what we sometimes call \"hard knocks\ngraduates\"--people who have never been to college nor have studied many\nor any books. Yet they are educated to the degree they have acquired\nthese elements of greatness in their lives.\n\nThey realized how they have been handicapped by their poor mental tools.\n\nThat is why they say, \"All my life I have been handicapped by lack of\nproper preparation. Don't make my mistake, children, go to school.\"\n\nThe young person with electrical genius will make an electrical machine\nfrom a few bits of junk. But send him to Westinghouse and see how much\nmore he will achieve with the same genius and with finer equipment.\n\nGet the best tools you can. But remember diplomas, degrees are not an\neducation, they are merely preparations. When you are thru with the\nbooks, remember, you are having a commencement, not an end-ment. You\nwill discover with the passing years that life is just one series of\ngreater commencements.\n\nGo out with your fine equipment from your commencements into the school\nof service and write your education in the only book you ever can\nknow--the book of your experience.\n\nThat is what you know--what the courts will take as evidence when they\nput you upon the witness stand.\n\n\n\n\nThe Tragedy of Unpreparedness\n\n\nThe story of Gussie and Bill Whackem is being written in every\ncommunity in tears, failure and heartache. It is peculiarly a tragedy\nof our American civilization today.\n\nThese fathers and mothers who toil and save, who get great farms, fine\nhomes and large bank accounts, so often think they can give greatness\nto their children--they can make great places for them in life and put\nthem into them.\n\nThey do all this and the children rattle. They have had no chance to\ngrow great enough for the places. The child gets the blame for making\nthe wreck, even as Gussie was blamed for wrecking his father's plant,\nwhen the child is the victim.\n\nA man heard me telling the story of Gussie and Bill Whackem, and he\nwent out of my audience very indignant. He said he was very glad his\nboy was not there to hear it. But that good, deluded father now has his\nhead bowed in shame over the career of his spoiled son.\n\nI rarely tell of it on a platform that at the close of the lecture\nsomebody does not take me aside and tell me a story just as sad from\nthat community.\n\nFor years poor Harry Thaw was front-paged on the newspapers and\ngibbeted in the pulpits as the shocking example of youthful depravity.\nHe seems never to have had a fighting chance to become a man. He seems\nto have been robbed of his birthright from the cradle. Yet the father\nof this boy who has cost America millions in court and detention\nexpenses was one of the greatest business generals of the Keystone\nstate. He could plat great coal empires and command armies of men, but\nhe seems to have been pitifully ignorant of the fact that the barrel\nshakes.\n\nIt is the educated, the rich and the worldly wise who blunder most in\nthe training of their children. Poverty is a better trainer for the\nrest.\n\nThe menace of America lies not in the swollen fortunes, but in the\nshrunken souls who inherit them.\n\nBut Nature's eliminating process is kind to the race in the barrel\nshaking down the rattlers. Somebody said it is only three generations\nfrom shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.\n\nHow long this nation will endure depends upon how many Gussie boys this\nnation produces. Steam heat is a fine thing, but do you notice how few\nof our strong men get their start with steam heat?\n\n\n\n\nChildren, Learn This Early\n\n\nYou boys and girls, God bless you! You live in good homes. Father and\nmother love you and give you everything you need. You get to thinking,\n\"I won't have to turn my hand over. Papa and mamma will take care of\nme, and when they are gone I'll inherit everything they have. I'm fixed\nfor life.\"\n\nNo, you are unfixed. You are a candidate for trouble. You are going to\nrattle. Father and mother can be great and you can be a peanut.\n\nYou must solve your own problems and carry your own loads to have a\nstrong mind and back. Anybody who does for you regularly what you can\ndo for yourself--anybody who gives you regularly what you can earn for\nyourself, is robbing you of your birthright.\n\nFather and mother can put money in your pocket, ideas in your head and\nfood in your stomach, but you cannot own it save as you digest it--put\nit into your life.\n\nI have read somewhere about a man who found a cocoon and put it in his\nhouse where he could watch it develop. One day he saw a little insect\nstruggling inside the cocoon. It was trying to get out of the envelope.\nIt seemed in trouble and needed help. He opened the envelope with a\nknife and set the struggling insect free. But out came a monstrosity\nthat soon died. It had an over-developed body and under-developed\nwings. He learned that helping the insect was killing it. He took away\nfrom it the very thing it had to have--the struggle. For it was this\nstruggle of breaking its own way out of that envelope that was needed\nto reduce its body and develop its wings.\n\n\n\n\nNot Packhorse Work\n\n\nBut remember there is little virtue in work unless it is getting us\nsomewhere. Just work that gets us three meals a day and a place to lie\ndown to sleep, then another day of the same grind, then a year of it\nand years following until our machine is worn out and on the junkpile,\nmeans little. \"One day nearer home\" for such a worker means one day\nnearer the scrapheap.\n\nSuch a worker is like the packhorse who goes forward to keep ahead of\nthe whip. Such a worker is the horse we used to have hitched to the\nsorghum mill. Round and round that horse went, seeing nothing, hearing\nnothing, his head down, without ambition enough to prick up his ears.\nSuch work deadens and stupefies. The masses work about that way. They\nregard work as a necessary evil. They are right--such work is a\nnecessary evil, and they make it such. They follow their nose. \"Dumb,\ndriven cattle.\"\n\nBut getting a vision of life, and working to grow upward to it, that is\nthe work that brings the joy and the greatness.\n\nWhen we are growing and letting our faculties develop, we will love\neven the packhorse job, because it is our \"meal ticket\" that enables us\nto travel upward.\n\n\n\n\n\"Helping\" the Turkeys\n\n\nOne time I put some turkey eggs under the mother hen and waited day by\nday for them to hatch. And sure enough, one day the eggs began to crack\nand the little turkeys began to stick their heads out of the shells.\nSome of the little turkeys came out from the shells all right, but some\nof them stuck in the shells.\n\n\"Shell out, little turkeys, shell out,\" I urged, \"for Thanksgiving is\ncoming. Shell out!\"\n\nBut they stuck to the shells.\n\n\"Little turkeys, I'll have to help you. I'll have to shell you by\nhand.\" So I picked the shells off. \"Little turkeys, you will never know\nhow fortunate you are. Ordinary turkeys do not have these advantages.\nOrdinary turkeys do not get shelled by hand.\"\n\nDid I help them? I killed them, or stunted them. Not one of the turkeys\nwas \"right\" that I helped. They were runts. One of them was a regular\nHarry Thaw turkey. They had too many silk socks. Too many \"advantages.\"\n\nChildren, you must crack your own shells. You must overcome your own\nobstacles to develop your own powers.\n\nA rich boy can succeed, but he has a poorer chance than a poor boy. The\ncards are against him. He must succeed in spite of his \"advantages.\"\n\nI am pleading for you to get a great arm, a great mind, a great\ncharacter, for the joy of having a larger life. I am pleading with you\nto know the joy of overcoming and having the angels come and minister\nto you.\n\n\n\n\nHappiness in Our Work\n\n\nChildren, I am pleading with you to find happiness. All the world is\nseeking happiness, but so many are seeking it by rattling down instead\nof by shaking up.\n\nThe happiness is in going up--in developing a greater arm, a greater\nmind, a greater character.\n\nHappiness is the joy of overcoming. It is the delight of an expanding\nconsciousness. It is the cry of the eagle mounting upward. It is the\nproof that we are progressing.\n\nWe find happiness in our work, not outside of our work. If we cannot\nfind happiness in our work, we have the wrong job. Find the work that\nfits your talents, and stop watching the clock and planning vacations.\n\nLoving friends used to warn me against \"breaking down.\" They scared me\ninto \"taking care\" of myself. And I got to taking such good care of\nmyself and watching for symptoms that I became a physical wreck.\n\nI saved myself by getting busier. I plunged into work I love. I found\nmy job in my work, not away from it, and the work refreshed me and\nrejuvenated me. Now I do two men's work, and have grown from a skinny,\nfretful, nervous wreck into a hearty, happy man. This has been a great\nsurprise to my friends and a great disappointment to the undertaker. I\nam an editor in the daytime and a lecturer at night.\n\nI edit all day and take a vacation lecturing at night. I lecture almost\nevery day of the year--maybe two or three times some days--and then\ntake a vacation by editing and writing. Thus every day is jam full of\nplay and vacation and good times. The year is one round of joy, and I\nought to pay people for the privilege of speaking and writing to them\ninstead of them paying me!\n\nIf I did not like my work, of course, I would be carrying a terrible\nburden and would speedily collapse.\n\nYou see, I have no time nowadays to break down. I have no time to think\nand grunt and worry about my body. And like Paul I am happy to be\n\"absent from the body and present with the Lord.\" Thus this old body\nbehaves just beautifully and wags along like the tail follows the dog\nwhen I forget all about it. The grunter lets the tail wag the dog.\n\n\n\n\n\nI have never known a case of genuine \"overwork.\" I have never known of\nanyone killing himself by working. But I have known of multitudes\nkilling themselves by taking vacations.\n\nThe people who think they are overworking are merely overworrying. This\nis one species of selfishness.\n\nTo worry is to doubt God.\n\nTo work at the things you love, or for those you love, is to turn work\ninto play and duty into privilege.\n\nWhen we love our work, it is not work, it is life.\n\n\n\n\nMany Kinds of Drunkards\n\n\nThe world is trying to find happiness in being amused. The world is\namusement-mad. Vacations, Coca Cola and moviemania!\n\nWhat a sad, empty lot of rattlers! Look over the bills of the movies,\nlook over the newsstands and see a picture of the popular mind, for\nthese places keep just what the people want to buy. What a lot of\nmental frog-pond and moral slum our boys and girls wade thru!\n\nThere are ten literary drunkards to one alcoholic drunkard. There are a\nhundred amusement drunkards to one victim of strong drink. And all just\nas hard to cure.\n\nWe have to have amusement, but if we fill our lives with nothing but\namusement, we never grow. We go thru our lives babies with new\nrattleboxes and \"sugar-tits.\"\n\nAlmost every day as I go along the street to some hall to lecture, I\nhear somebody asking, \"What are they going to have in the hall tonight?\"\n\n\"Going to have a lecture.\"\n\n\"Lecture?\" said with a shiver as tho it was \"small pox.\" \"I ain't\ngoin.' I don't like lectures.\"\n\nThe speaker is perfectly honest. He has no place to put a lecture. I am\nnot saying that he should attend my lecture, but I am grieving at what\nunderlies his remark. He does not want to think. He wants to follow his\nnose around. Other people generally lead his nose. The man who will not\nmake the effort to think is the great menace to the nation. The crowd\nthat drifts and lives for amusement is the crowd that finds itself back\nnear the caboose, and as the train of progress leaves them, they wail,\nthey \"never had no chanct.\" They want to start a new party to reform\nthe government.\n\n\n\n\nThe Lure of the City\n\n\nDo you ever get lonely in a city? How few men and women there. A jam of\npeople, most of them imitations--most of them trying to look like they\nget more salary. Poor, hungry, doped butterflies of the bright\nlights,--hopers, suckers and straphangers! Down the great white way\nthey go chasing amusement to find happiness. They must be amused every\nmoment, even when they eat, or they will have to be alone with their\nempty lives.\n\nThe Prodigal Son came to himself afterwhile and thought upon his ways.\nThen he arose and went to his father's house. Whenever one will stop\nchasing amusements long enough to think upon his ways, he will arise\nand go to his father's house of wisdom. But there is no hope for the\nperson who will not stop and think. And the devil works day and night\nshifts keeping the crowd moving on.\n\nThat is why the crowd is not furnishing the strong men and women.\n\nWe must have amusement and relaxation. Study your muscles. First they\ncontract, then they relax. But the muscle that goes on continually\nrelaxing is degenerating. And the individual, the community, the nation\nthat goes on relaxing without contracting--without struggling and\novercoming--is degenerating.\n\nThe more you study your muscles, the more you learn that while one\nmuscle is relaxing another is contracting. So you must learn that your\nreal relaxation, vacation and amusement, are merely changing over to\ncontracting another set of muscles.\n\nGo to the bank president's office, go to the railroad magnate's office,\ngo to the great pulpit, to the college chair--go to any place of great\nresponsibility in a city and ask the one who fills the place, \"Were you\nborn in this city?\"\n\nThe reply is almost a monotony. \"I born in this city? No, I was born in\nPoseyville, Indiana, and I came to this city forty years ago and went\nto work at the bottom.\"\n\nHe glows as he tells you of some log-cabin home, hillside or farmside\nwhere he struggled as a boy. Personally, I think this log-cabin\nancestry has been over-confessed for campaign purposes. Give us steam\nheat and push-buttons. There is no virtue in a log-cabin, save that\nthere the necessity for struggle that brings strength is most in\nevidence. There the young person gets the struggle and service that\nmakes for strength and greatness. And as that young person comes to the\ncity and shakes in the barrel among the weaklings of the artificial\nlife, he rises above them like the eagle soars above a lot of\nchattering sparrows.\n\nThe cities do not make their own steam. The little minority from the\nfarms controls the majority. The red blood of redemption flows from the\ncountry year by year into the national arteries, else these cities\nwould drop off the map.\n\nIf it were not for Poseyville, Indiana, Chicago would disappear. If it\nwere not for Poseyville, New York would disintegrate for lack of\nleaders.\n\n\n\n\n\"Hep\" and \"Pep\" for the Home Town\n\n\nBut so many of the home towns of America are sick. Many are dying. Many\nare dead.\n\nIt is the lure of the city--and the lure-lessness of the country. The\ntown the young people leave is the town the young people ought to\nleave. Somebody says, \"The reason so many young people go to hell is\nbecause they have no other place to go.\"\n\nWhat is the matter with the small town? Do not blame it all upon the\ncity mail order house. With rural delivery, daily papers, telephones,\ncentralized schools, automobiles and good roads, there are no more\ndelightful places in the world to live than in the country or in the\nsmall town. They have the city advantages plus sunshine, air and\nfreedom that the crowded cities cannot have.\n\nI asked the keeper who was showing me thru the insane asylum at Weston,\nWest Virginia, \"You say you have nearly two thousand insane people in\nthis institution and only a score of guards to keep them in. Aren't you\nin danger? What is to hinder these insane people from getting together,\norganizing, overpowering the few guards and breaking out?\"\n\nThe keeper was not in the least alarmed at the question. He smiled.\n\"Many people say that. But they don't understand. If these people could\nget together they wouldn't be in this asylum. They are insane. No two\nof them can agree upon how to get together and how to break out. So a\nfew of us can hold them.\"\n\nIt would be almost unkind to carry this further, but I have been\nthinking ever since that about three-fourths of the small towns of\nAmerica have one thing in common with the asylum folks--they can't get\ntogether. They cannot organize for the public good. They break up into\nlittle antagonistic social, business and even religious factions and\nneutralize each other's efforts.\n\nA lot of struggling churches compete with each other instead of massing\nfor the common good. And when the churches fight, the devil stays\nneutral and furnishes the munitions for both sides.\n\nSo the home towns stagnate and the young people with visions go away to\nthe cities where opportunity seems to beckon. Ninety-nine out of a\nhundred of them will jostle with the straphangers all their lives, mere\nwheels turning round in a huge machine. Ninety-nine out of a hundred of\nthem might have had a larger opportunity right back in the home town,\nhad the town been awake and united and inviting.\n\nWe must make the home town the brightest, most attractive, most\npromising place for the young people. No home town can afford to spend\nits years raising crops of young people for the cities. That is the\nworst kind of soil impoverishment--all going out and nothing coming\nback. That is the drain that devitalizes the home towns more than all\nthe city mail order houses.\n\nAmerica is to be great, not in the greatness of a few crowded cities,\nbut in the greatness of innumerable home towns.\n\nThe slogan today should be, For God and Home and the Home Town!\n\n\n\n\nA School of Struggle\n\n\nDr. Henry Solomon Lehr, founder of the Ohio Northern University at Ada,\nOhio, one of Ohio's greatest educators, used to say with pride, \"Our\nstudents come to school; they are not sent.\"\n\nHe encouraged his students to be self-supporting, and most of them were\nworking their way thru school. He made the school calendar and courses\nelastic to accommodate them. He saw the need of combining the school of\nbooks with the school of struggle. He organized his school into\ncompeting groups, so that the student who had no struggle in his life\nwould at least have to struggle with the others during his schooling.\n\n\nHe pitted class against class. He organized great literary and debating\nsocieties to compete with each other. He arranged contests for the\nmilitary department. His school was one surging mass of contestants.\nYet each student felt no compulsion. Rather he felt that he was\ninitiating an individual or class effort to win. The literary societies\nvied with each other in their programs and in getting new members,\ngoing every term to unbelievable efforts to win over the others. They\nwould go miles out on the trains to intercept new students, even to\ntheir homes in other states. Each old student pledged new students in\nhis home country. The military companies turned the school into a\nmilitary camp for weeks each year, scarcely sleeping while drilling for\na contest flag.\n\nThose students went out into the world trained to struggle. I do not\nbelieve there is a school in America with a greater alumni roll of men\nand women of uniformly greater achievement.\n\nI believe the most useful schools today are schools of struggle schools\noffering encouragement and facilities for young people to work their\nway thru and to act upon their own initiative.\n\n\n\n\nMen Needed More Than Millions\n\n\nWe are trying a new educational experiment today.\n\nThe old \"deestrick\" school is passing, and with it the small academies\nand colleges, each with its handful of students around a teacher, as in\nthe old days of the lyceum in Athens, when the pupils sat around the\nphilosopher in the groves.\n\nFrom these schools came the makers and the preservers of the nation.\n\nToday we are building wonderful public schools with equally wonderful\nequipment. Today we are replacing the many small colleges with a few\ngreat centralized state normal schools and state universities. We are\nspending millions upon them in laboratories, equipment and maintenance.\nToday we scour the earth for specialists to sit in the chairs and speak\nthe last word in every department of human research.\n\nO, how the students of the \"dark ages\" would have rejoiced to see this\nday! Many of them never saw a germ!\n\nBut each student has the same definite effort to make in assimilation\ntoday as then. Knowing and growing demand the same personal struggle in\nthe cushions of the \"frat\" house as back on the old oak-slab bench with\nits splintered side up.\n\nI am anxiously awaiting the results. I am hoping that the boys and\ngirls who come out in case-lots from these huge school plants will not\nbe rows of lithographed cans on the shelves of life. I am hoping they\nwill not be shorn of their individuality, but will have it stimulated\nand unfettered. I am anxious that they be not veneered but inspired,\nnot denatured but discovered.\n\nAll this school machinery is only machinery. Back of it must be\nmen--great men. I am anxious that the modern school have the modern\nequipment demanded to serve the present age. But I am more anxious that\neach student come in vital touch with great men. We get life from life,\nnot from laboratories, and we have life more abundantly as our lives\ntouch greater lives.\n\nA school is vastly more than machinery, methods, microscopes and\nmillions.\n\nMany a small school struggling to live thinks that all it needs is\nendowment, when the fact is that its struggle for existence and the\nspirit of its teachers are its greatest endowment. And sometimes when\nthe money endowment comes the spiritual endowment goes in fatty\ndegeneration. Some schools seem to have been visited by calamities in\nthe financial prosperity that has engulfed them.\n\nCan we keep men before millions, and keep our ideals untainted by\nfoundations? That is the question the age is asking.\n\nYou and I are very much interested in the answer.\n\n\n\nChapter VII\n\nThe Salvation of a \"Sucker\"\n\nThe Fiddle and the Tuning\n\nHOW long it takes to learn things! I think I was thirty-four years\nlearning one sentence, \"You can't get something for nothing.\" I have\nnot yet learned it. Every few days I stumble over it somewhere.\n\nFor that sentence utters one of the fundamentals of life that underlies\nevery field of activity.\n\nWhat is knowing?\n\nOne day a manufacturer took me thru his factory where he makes fiddles.\nNot violins--fiddles.\n\nA violin is only a fiddle with a college education.\n\nI have had the feeling ever since that you and I come into this world\nlike the fiddle comes from the factory. We have a body and a neck. That\nis about all there is either to us or to the fiddle. We are empty. We\nhave no strings. We have no bow--yet!\n\nWhen the human fiddles are about six years old they go into the primary\nschools and up thru the grammar grades, and get the first string--the\nlittle E string. The trouble is so many of these human fiddles think\nthey are an orchestra right away. They want to quit school and go\nfiddling thru life on this one string!\n\nWe must show these little fiddles they must go back into school and go\nup thru all the departments and institutions necessary to give them the\nfull complement of strings for their life symphonies.\n\nAfter all this there comes the commencement, and the violin comes forth\nwith the E, A, D and G strings all in place. Educated now? Why is a\nviolin? To wear strings? Gussie got that far and gave a lot of discord.\nThe violin is to give music.\n\nSo there is much yet to do after getting the strings. All the book and\ncollege can do is to give the strings--the tools. After that the violin\nmust go into the great tuning school of life. Here the pegs are turned\nand the strings are put in tune. The music is the knowing. Learning is\ntuning.\n\nYou do not know what you have memorized, you know what you have\nvitalized, what you have written in the book of experience.\n\nGussie says, \"I have read it in a book.\" Bill Whackem says, \"I know!\"\n\n\n\n\nReading and Knowing\n\n\nAll of us are Christopher Columbuses, discovering the same new-old\ncontinents of Truth. That is the true happiness of life--discovering\nTruth. We read things in a book and have a hazy idea of them. We hear\nthe preacher utter truths and we say with little feeling, \"Yes, that is\nso.\" We hear the great truths of life over and over and we are not\nexcited. Truth never excites--it is falsehood that excites--until we\ndiscover it in our lives. Until we see it with our own eyes. Then there\nis a thrill. Then the old truth becomes a new blessing. Then the\noldest, driest platitude crystallizes into a flashing jewel to delight\nand enrich our consciousness. This joy of discovery is the joy of\nliving.\n\nThere is such a difference between reading a thing and knowing a thing.\nWe could read a thousand descriptions of the sun and not know the sun\nas in one glimpse of it with our own eyes.\n\nI used to stand in the row of blessed little rascals in the \"deestrick\"\nschool and read from McGuffey's celebrated literature,\n\"If--I-p-p-play--with--the--f-f-f-i-i-i-i-r-r-e--I--will--g-e-e-et\n--my-y-y-y-y--f-f-f-f--ingers--bur-r-r-rned--period!\"\n\nI did not learn it. I wish I had learned by reading it that if I play\nwith the fire I will get my fingers burned. I had to slap my hands upon\nhot stoves and coffee-pots, and had to get many kinds of blisters in\norder to learn it.\n\nThen I had to go around showing the blisters, boring my friends and\ntaking up a collection of sympathy. \"Look at my bad luck!\" Fool!\n\nThis is not a lecture. It is a confession! It seems to me if you in the\naudience knew how little I know, you wouldn't stay.\n\n\n\n\n\"You Can't Get Something for Nothing\"\n\n\nYes, I was thirty-four years learning that one sentence. \"You can't get\nsomething for nothing.\" That is, getting it in partial tune. It took me\nso long because I was naturally bright. It takes that kind longer than\na human being. They are so smart you cannot teach them with a few\nbumps. They have to be pulverized.\n\nThat sentence takes me back to the days when I was a \"hired man\" on the\nfarm. You might not think I had ever been a \"hired man\" on the farm at\nten dollars a month and \"washed, mended and found.\" You see me here on\nthis platform in my graceful and cultured manner, and you might not\nbelieve that I had ever trained an orphan calf to drink from a copper\nkettle. But I have fed him the fingers of this hand many a time. You\nmight not think that I had ever driven a yoke of oxen and had said the\nwords. But I have!\n\nI remember the first county fair I ever attended. Fellow sufferers, you\nmay remember that at the county fair all the people sort out to their\nown departments. Some people go to the canned fruit department. Some go\nto the fancywork department. Some go to the swine department. Everybody\ngoes to his own department. Even the \"suckers\"! Did you ever notice\nwhere they go? That is where I went--to the \"trimming department.\"\n\nI was in the \"trimming department\" in five minutes. Nobody told me\nwhere it was. I didn't need to be told. I gravitated there. The barrel\nalways shakes all of one size to one place. You notice that--in a city\nall of one size get together.\n\nRight at the entrance to the \"local Midway\" I met a gentleman. I know\nhe was a gentleman because he said he was a gentleman. He had a little\nlight table he could move quickly. Whenever the climate became too\nsultry he would move to greener pastures. On that table were three\nlittle shells in a row, and there was a little pea under the middle\nshell. I saw it there, being naturally bright. I was the only naturally\nbright person around the table, hence the only one who knew under which\nshell the little round pea was hidden.\n\nEven the gentleman running the game was fooled. He thought it was under\nthe end shell and bet me money it was under the end shell. You see,\nthis was not gambling, this was a sure thing. (It was!) I had saved up\nmy money for weeks to attend the fair. I bet it all on that middle\nshell. I felt bad. It seemed like robbing father. And he seemed like a\nreal nice old gentleman, and maybe he had a family to keep. But I would\nteach him a lesson not to \"monkey\" with people like me, naturally\nbright.\n\nBut I needn't have felt bad. I did not rob father. Father cleaned me\nout of all I had in about five seconds.\n\nI went over to the other side of the fairgrounds and sat down. That was\nall I had to do now--just go, sit down. I couldn't see the mermaid now\nor get into the grandstand.\n\nSadly I thought it all over, but I did not get the right answer. I said\nthe thing every fool does say when he gets bumped and fails to learn\nthe lesson from the bump. I said, \"Next time I shall be more careful.\"\n\nWhen anybody says that he is due for a return date.\n\n\n\n\nI Bought the Soap\n\n\nLearn? No! Within a month I was on the street a Saturday night when\nanother gentleman drove into town. He stopped on the public square and\nstood up in his buggy. \"Let the prominent citizens gather around me,\nfor I am going to give away dollars.\"\n\nImmediately all the prominent \"suckers\" crowded around the buggy.\n\"Gentlemen, I am introducing this new medicinal soap that cures all\ndiseases humanity is heir to. Now just to introduce and advertise, I am\nputting these cakes of Wonder Soap in my hat. You see I am wrapping a\nten-dollar bill around one cake and throwing it into the hat. Now who\nwill give me five dollars for the privilege of taking a cake of this\nwonderful soap from my hat--any cake you want, gentlemen!\"\n\nAnd right on top of the pile was the cake with the ten wrapped around\nit! I jumped over the rest to shove my five (two weeks' farm work) in\nhis hands and grab that bill cake. But the bill disappeared. I never\nknew where it went. The man whipped up his horse and also disappeared.\nI never knew where he went.\n\n\n\n\nMy \"Fool Drawer\"\n\n\nI grew older and people began to notice that I was naturally bright and\ntherefore good picking. They began to let me in on the ground floor.\nDid anybody ever let you in on the ground floor? I never could stick.\nWhenever anybody let me in on the ground floor it seemed like I would\nalways slide on thru and land in the cellar.\n\nI used to have a drawer in my desk I called my \"fool drawer.\" I kept my\ninvestments in it. I mean, the investments I did not have to lock up.\nYou get the pathos of that--the investments nobody wanted to steal. And\nwhenever I would get unduly inflated I would open that drawer and \"view\nthe remains.\"\n\nI had in that drawer the deed to my Oklahoma corner-lots. Those lots\nwere going to double next week. But they did not double I doubled. They\nstill exist on the blueprint and the Oklahoma metropolis on paper is\nyet a wide place in the road.\n\nI had in that drawer my deed to my rubber plantation. Did you ever hear\nof a rubber plantation in Central America? That was mine. I had there\nmy oil propositions. What a difference, I have learned, between an oil\nproposition and an oil well! The learning has been very expensive.\n\nI used to wonder how I ever could spend my income. I do not wonder now.\nI wonder how I will make it.\n\nI had in that drawer my \"Everglade\" farm. Did you ever hear of the\n\"Everglades\"? I have an alligator ranch there. It is below the\nfrost-line, also below the water-line. I will sell it by the gallon.\n\nI had also a bale of mining stock. I had stock in gold mines and silver\nmines. Nobody knows how much mining stock I have owned. Nobody could\nknow while I kept that drawer shut. As I looked over my gold and silver\nmine stock, I often noticed that it was printed in green. I used to\nwonder why they printed it in green--wonder if they wanted it to\nharmonize with me! And I would realize I had so much to live for--the\ndividends. I have been so near the dividends I could smell them. Only\none more assessment, then we will cut the melon! I have heard that all\nmy life and never got a piece of the rind.\n\n\n\n\nGetting \"Selected\"\n\n\nWhy go farther? I am not half done confessing. Each bump only increased\nmy faith that the next ship would be mine. Good, honest, retired\nministers would come periodically and sell me stock in some new\nenterprise that had millions in it--in its prospectus. I would buy\nbecause I knew the minister was honest and believed in it. He was\nselling it on his reputation. Favorite dodge of the promoter to get the\nministers to sell his shares.\n\nI was also greatly interested in companies where I put in one dollar\nand got back a dollar or two of bonds and a dollar or two of stock.\nThat was doubling and trebling my money over night. An old banker once\nsaid to me, \"Why don't you invest in something that will pay you five\nor six per cent. and get it?\"\n\nI pitied his lack of vision. Bankers were such \"tightwads.\" They had no\nimagination! Nothing interested me that did not offer fifty or a\nhundred per cent.--then. Give me the five per cent. now!\n\nBy the time I was thirty-four I was a rich man in worthless paper. It\nwould have been better for me if I had thrown about all my savings into\nthe bottom of the sea.\n\nThen I got a confidential letter from a friend of our family I had\nnever met. His name was Thomas A. Cleage, and he was in the Rialto\nBuilding, St. Louis, Missouri. He wrote me in extreme confidence, \"You\nhave been selected.\"\n\nWere you ever selected? If you were, then you know the thrill that rent\nmy manly bosom as I read that letter from this man who said he was a\nfriend of our family. \"You have been selected because you are a\nprominent citizen and have a large influence in your community. You are\na natural leader and everybody looks up to you.\"\n\nHe knew me! He was the only man who did know me. So I took the cork\nclear under.\n\n\"Because of your tremendous influence you have been selected to go in\nwith us in the inner circle and get a thousand per cent. dividends.\"\n\nDid you get that? I hope you did. I did not! But I took a night train\nfor St. Louis. I was afraid somebody might beat me there if I waited\ntill next day. I sat up all night in a day coach to save money for Tom,\nthe friend of our family. But I see now I need not have hurried so.\nThey would have waited a month with the sheep-shears ready. Lambie,\nlambie, lambie, come to St. Louis!\n\nI don't get any sympathy from this crowd. You laugh at me. You respect\nnot my feelings. I am not going to tell you a thing that happened in\nSt. Louis. It is none of your business!\n\nO, I am so glad I went to St. Louis. Being naturally bright, I could\nnot learn it at home, back in Ohio. I had to go clear down to St. Louis\nto Tom Cleage's bucket-shop and pay him eleven hundred dollars to\ncorner the wheat market of the world. That is all I paid him. I could\nnot borrow any more. I joined what he called a \"pool.\" I think it must\nhave been a pool, for I know I fell in and got soaked!\n\nThat bump set me to thinking. My fever began to reduce. I got the\nthirty-third degree in financial suckerdom for only eleven hundred\ndollars.\n\nI have always regarded Tom as one of my great school teachers. I have\nalways regarded the eleven hundred as the finest investment I had made\nup to that time, for I got the most out of it. I do not feel hard\ntoward goldbrick men and \"blue sky\" venders. I sometimes feel that we\nshould endow them. How else can we save a sucker? You cannot tell him\nanything, because he is naturally bright and knows better. You simply\nhave to trim him till he bleeds.\n\n\n\n\nI Am Cured\n\n\nIt is worth eleven hundred dollars every day to know that one sentence,\nYou cannot get something for nothing. Life just begins to get juicy\nwhen you know it. Today when I open a newspaper and see a big ad,\n\"Grasp a Fortune Now!\" I will not do it! I stop my subscription to that\npaper. I simply will not take a paper with that ad in it, for I have\ngraduated from that class.\n\nI will not grasp a fortune now. Try me, I dare you! Bring a fortune\nright up on this platform and put it down there on the floor. I will\nnot grasp it. Come away, it is a coffee-pot!\n\nToday when somebody offers me much more than the legal rate of interest\nI know he is no friend of our family.\n\nIf he offers me a hundred per cent. I call for the police!\n\nToday when I get a confidential letter that starts out, \"You have been\nselected--\" I never read farther than the word \"selected.\" Meeting is\nadjourned. I select the waste-basket. Here, get in there just as quick\nas you can. I was selected!\n\n\nO, Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son! Learn it early in life. The law of\ncompensation is never suspended. You only own what you earn. You can't\nget something for nothing. If you do not learn it, you will have to be\n\"selected.\" There is no other way for you, because you are naturally\nbright. When you get a letter, \"You have been selected to receive a\nthousand per cent. dividends,\" it means you have been selected to\nreceive this bunch of blisters because you look like the biggest sucker\non the local landscape.\n\nThe other night in a little town of perhaps a thousand, a banker took\nme up into his office after the lecture in which I had related some of\nthe above experiences. \"The audience laughed with you and thought it\nvery funny,\" said he. \"I couldn't laugh. It was too pathetic. It was a\npicture of what is going on in our own little community year after\nyear. I wish you could see what I have to see. I wish you could see the\nthousands of hard-earned dollars that go out of our community every\nyear into just such wildcat enterprises as you described. The saddest\npart of it is that the money nearly always goes out of the pockets of\nthe people who can least afford to lose it.\"\n\nAbsalom, wake up! This is bargain night for you. I paid eleven hundred\ndollars to tell you this one thing, and you get it for a dollar or two.\nThis is no cheap lecture. It cost blood.\n\nLearn that the gambler never owns his winnings. The man who accumulates\nby sharp practices or by undue profits never owns it. Even the young\nperson who has large fortune given him does not own it. We only own\nwhat we have rendered definite service to bound. The owning is in the\nunderstanding of values.\n\nThis is true physically, mentally, morally. You only own what you have\nearned and stored in your life, not merely in your pocket, stomach or\nmind.\n\nI often think if it takes me thirty-four years to begin to learn one\nsentence, I see the need of an eternity.\n\nTo me that is one of the great arguments for eternal life--how slowly I\nlearn, and how much there is to learn. It will take an eternity!\n\n\n\n\nThose Commencement Orations\n\n\nThe young person says, \"By next June I shall have finished my\neducation.\"  Bless them all! They will have put another string on their\nfiddle.\n\nAfter they \"finish\" they have a commencement, not an end-ment, as they\nthink. This is not to sneer, but to cheer. Isn't it glorious that life\nis one infinite succession of commencements and promotions!\n\nI love to attend commencements. The stage is so beautifully decorated\nand the joy of youth is everywhere. There is a row of geraniums along\nthe front of the stage and a big oleander on the side. There is a\nlong-whiskered rug in the middle. The graduates sit in a semicircle\nupon the stage in their new patent leather. I know how it hurts. It is\nthe first time they have worn it.\n\nThen they make their orations. Every time I hear their orations I like\nthem better, because every year I am getting younger. Damsel Number One\ncomes forth and begins:\n\n\"Beyond the Alps (sweep arms forward to the left, left arm leading)\nlieth Italy!\" (Bring arms down, letting fingers follow the wrist. How\nembarrassing at a commencement for the fingers not to follow the wrist!\nIt is always a shock to the audience when the wrist sweeps downward and\nthe fingers remain up in the air. So by all means, let the fingers\nfollow the wrist, just as the elocution teacher marked on page 69.)\n\nApplause, especially from relatives.\n\nSweet Girl Graduate Number 2, generally comes second. S. G. G. No. 2\nstands at the same leadpencil mark on the floor, resplendent in a filmy\ncreation caught with something or other.\n\n\"We (hands at half-mast and separating) are rowing (business of\npropelling aerial boat with two fingers of each hand, head inclined).\nWe are not drifting (hands slide downward).\"\n\nChildren, we are not laughing at you. We are laughing at ourselves. We\nare laughing the happy laugh at how we have learned these great truths\nthat you have memorized, but not vitalized.\n\nYou get the most beautiful and sublime truths from Emerson's essays.\n(How did they ever have commencements before Emerson?) But that is not\nknowing them. You cannot know them until you have lived them. It is a\ngrand thing to say, \"Beyond the Alps lieth Italy,\" but you can never\nreally say that until you know it by struggling up over Alps of\ndifficulty and seeing the Italy of promise and victory beyond. It is\nfine to say, \"We are rowing and not drifting,\" but you cannot really\nsay that until you have pulled on the oar.\n\nO, Gussie, get an oar!\n\n\n\n\nMy Maiden Sermon\n\n\nDid you ever hear a young preacher, just captured, just out of a\nfactory? Did you ever hear him preach his \"maiden sermon\"? I wish you\nhad heard mine. I had a call. At least, I thought I had a call. I think\nnow I was \"short-circuited.\" The \"brethren\" waited upon me and told me\nI had been \"selected\": Maybe this was a local call, not long distance.\n\nThey gave me six weeks in which to load the gospel gun and get ready\nfor my try-out. I certainly loaded it to the muzzle.\n\nBut I made the mistake I am trying to warn you against. Instead of\ngoing to the one book where I might have gotten a sermon--the book of\nmy experience, I went to the books in my father's library. \"As the poet\nShakespeare has so beautifully said,\" and then I took a chunk of\nShakespeare and nailed it on page five of my sermon. \"List to the poet\nTennyson.\" Come here, Lord Alfred. So I soldered these fragments from\nthe books together with my own native genius. I worked that sermon up\ninto the most beautiful splurges and spasms. I bedecked it with\nmetaphors and semaphores. I filled it with climaxes, both wet and dry.\nI had a fine wet climax on page fourteen, where I had made a little\nmark in the margin which meant \"cry here.\" This was the spilling-point\nof the wet climax. I was to cry on the lefthand side of the page.\n\nI committed it all to memory, and then went to a lady who taught\nexpression, to get it expressed. You have to get it expressed.\n\nI got the most beautiful gestures nailed into almost every page. You\nknow about gestures--these things you make with your arms in the air as\nyou speak. You can notice it on me yet.\n\nI am not sneering at expression. Expression is a noble art. All life is\nexpression. But you have to get something to express. Here I made my\nmistake. I got a lot of fine gestures. I got an express-wagon and got\nno load for it. So it rattled. I got a necktie, but failed to get any\nman to hang it upon. I got up before a mirror for six weeks, day by\nday, and said the sermon to the glass. It got so it would run itself. I\ncould have gone to sleep and that sermon would not have hesitated.\n\nThen came the grand day. The boy wonder stood forth and before his\nlarge and enthusiastic concourse delivered that maiden sermon more\ngrandly than ever to a mirror. Every gesture went off the bat according\nto the blueprint. I cried on page fourteen! I never knew it was in me.\nBut I certainly got it all out that day!\n\nThen I did another fine thing, I sat down. I wish now I had done that\nearlier. I wish now I had sat down before I got up. I was the last man\nout of the church--and I hurried. But they beat me out--all nine of\nthem. When I went out the door, the old sexton said as he jiggled the\nkey in the door to hurry me, \"Don't feel bad, bub, I've heerd worse\nthan that. You're all right, bub, but you don't know nothin' yet.\"\n\nI cried all the way to town. If he had plunged a dagger into me he\nwould not have hurt me so much. It has taken some years to learn that\nthe old man was right. I had wonderful truth in that sermon. No sermon\never had greater truth, but I had not lived it. The old man meant I did\nnot know my own sermon.\n\n\n\n\n\nSo, children, when you prepare your commencement oration, write about\nwhat you know best, what you have lived. If you know more about peeling\npotatoes than about anything else, write about \"Peeling Potatoes,\" and\nyou are most likely to hear the applause peal from that part of your\naudience unrelated to you.\n\nOut of every thousand books published, perhaps nine hundred of them do\nnot sell enough to pay the cost of printing them. As you study the\nbooks that do live, you note that they are the books that have been\nlived. Perhaps the books that fail have just as much of truth in them\nand they may even be better written, yet they lack the vital impulse.\nThey come out of the author's head. The books that live must come out\nof his heart. They are his own life. They come surging and pulsating\nfrom the book of his experience.\n\nThe best part of our schooling comes not from the books, but from the\nmen behind the books.\n\nWe study agriculture from books. That does not make us an\nagriculturist. We must take a hoe and go out and agricult. That is the\nknowing in the doing.\n\n\n\n\nYou Must Live Your Song\n\n\n  \"There was never a picture painted,\n  There was never a poem sung,\n  But the soul of the artist fainted,\n  And the poet's heart was wrung.\"\n\n\nSo many young people think because they have a good voice and they have\ncultivated it, they are singers. All this cultivation and irritation\nand irrigation and gargling of the throat are merely symptoms of a\nsinger--merely neckties. Singers look better with neckties.\n\nThey think the song comes from the diaphragm. But it comes from the\nheart, chaperoned by the diaphragm. You cannot sing a song you have not\nlived.\n\nJessie was singing the other day at a chautauqua. She has a beautiful\nvoice, and she has been away to \"Ber-leen\" to have it attended to. She\nsang that afternoon in the tent, \"The Last Rose of Summer.\" She sang it\nwith every note so well placed, with the sweetest little trills and\ntendrils, with the smile exactly like her teacher had taught her.\nJessie exhibited all the machinery and trimmings for the song, but she\nhad no steam, no song. She sang the notes. She might as well have sung,\n\"Pop, Goes the Weasel.\"\n\nThe audience politely endured Jessie. That night a woman sang in the\nsame tent \"The Last Rose of Summer.\" She had never been to Berlin, but\nshe had lived that song. She didn't dress the notes half so beautifully\nas Jessie did, but she sang it with the tremendous feeling it demands.\nThe audience went wild. It was a case of Gussie and Bill Whackem.\n\nAll this was gall and wormwood to Jessie. \"Child,\" I said to her, \"this\nis the best singing lesson you have ever had. Your study is all right\nand you have a better voice than that woman, but you cannot sing \"The\nLast Rose of Summer\" yet, for you do not know very much about the first\nrose of summer. And really, I hope you'll never know the ache and\ndisappointment you must know before you can sing that song, for it is\nthe sob of a broken-hearted woman. Learn to sing the songs you have\nlived.\"\n\nWhy do singers try to execute songs beyond the horizon of their lives?\nThat is why they \"execute\" them.\n\n\n\n\nThe Success of a Song-Writer\n\n\nThe guest of honor at a dinner in a Chicago club was a woman who is one\nof the widely known song-writers of this land. As I had the good\nfortune to be sitting at table with her I wanted to ask her, \"How did\nyou get your songs known? How did you know what kind of songs the\npeople want to sing?\"\n\nBut in the hour she talked with her friends around the table I found\nthe answer to every question. \"Isn't it good to be here? Isn't it great\nto have friends and a fine home and money?\" she said. \"I have had such\na struggle in my life. I have lived on one meal a day and didn't know\nwhere the next meal was coming from. I know what it is to be left alone\nin the world upon my own resources. I have had years of struggle. I\nhave been sick and discouraged and down and out. It was in my little\nback-room, the only home I had, that I began to write songs. I wrote\nthem for my own relief. I was writing my own life, just what was in my\nown heart and what the struggles were teaching me. No one is more\nsurprised and grateful that the world seems to love my songs and asks\nfor more of them.\"\n\nThe woman was Carrie Jacobs-Bond, who wrote \"The Perfect Day,\" \"Just a\nWearyin' for You,\" \"His Lullaby\" and many more of those simple little\nsongs so full of the pathos and philosophy of life that they tug at\nyour heart and moisten your eyes.\n\nAnybody could write those songs--just a few simple words and notes. No.\nBooks of theory and harmony and expression only teach us how to write\nthe words and where to place the notes. These are not the song, but\nonly the skeleton into which our own life must breathe the life of the\nsong.\n\nThe woman who sat there clad in black, with her sweet, expressive face\ncrowned with silvery hair, had learned to write her songs in the\nUniversity of Hard Knocks. She here became the song philosopher she is\ntoday. Her defeats were her victories. If Carrie Jacobs-Bond had never\nstruggled with discouragement, sickness, poverty and loneliness, she\nnever would have been able to write the songs that appeal to the\nmultitudes who have the same battles.\n\nThe popular song is the song that best voices what is in the popular\nheart. And while we have a continual inundation of popular songs that\nare trashy and voice the tawdriest human impulses, yet it is a tribute\nto the good elements in humanity that the wholesome, uplifting\nsentiments in Carrie Jacobs-Bond's songs continue to hold their\npopularity.\n\n\n\n\nTheory and Practice\n\n\nMy friends, I am not arguing that you and I must drink the dregs of\ndefeat, or that our lives must fill up with poverty or sorrow, or\nbecome wrecks. But I am insisting upon what I see written all around me\nin the affairs of everyday life, that none of us will ever know real\nsuccess in any line of human endeavor until that success flows from the\nfullness of our experience just as the songs came from the life of\nCarrie Jacobs-Bond.\n\nThe world is full of theorists, dreamers, uplifters, reformers, who\nhave worthy visions but are not able to translate them into practical\nrealities. They go around with their heads in the clouds, looking\nupward, and half the time their feet are in the flower-beds or\ntrampling upon their fellow men they dream of helping. Their ideas must\nbe forged into usefulness available for this day upon the anvil of\nexperience.\n\nMany of the most brilliant theorists have been the greatest failures in\npractice.\n\nThere are a thousand who can tell you what is the matter with things to\none person who can give you a practical way to fix them.\n\nI used to have respect amounting to reverence for great readers and\nbook men. I used to know a man who could tell in what book almost\nanything you could think of was discussed, and perhaps the page. He was\na walking library index. I thought him a most wonderful man. Indeed, in\nmy childhood I thought he was the greatest man in the world.\n\nHe was a remarkable man--a great reader and with a memory that retained\nit all. That man could recite chapters and volumes. He could give you\nalmost any date. He could finish almost any quotation. His conversation\nwas largely made up of classical quotations.\n\nBut he was one of the most helpless men I have ever seen in practical\nlife. He seemed to be unable to think and reason for himself. He could\nquote a page of John Locke, but somehow the page didn't supply the one\nsentence needed for the occasion. The man was a misfit on earth. He was\nliable to put the gravy in his coffee and the gasoline in the fire. He\nseemed never to have digested any of the things in his memory. Since I\nhave grown up I always think of that man as an intellectual cold\nstorage plant.\n\nThe greatest book is the textbook of the University of Hard Knocks, the\nBook of Human Experience the \"sermons in stones\" and the \"books in\nrunning brooks.\" Most fortunate is he who has learned to read\nunderstandingly from it.\n\n\n\n\n\nNote the sweeping, positive statements of the young person.\n\nNote the cautious, specific statements of the person who has lived long\nin this world.\n\nOur education is our progress from the sweeping, positive, wholesale\nstatements we have not proved, to the cautious, specific statements we\nhave proved.\n\n\n\n\nTuning the Strings of Life\n\n\nMany audiences are gathered into this one audience. Each person here is\na different audience, reading a different page in the Book of Human\nExperience. Each has a different fight to make and a different burden\nto carry. Each one of us has more trouble than anybody else!\n\nI know there are chapters of heroism in the lives of you older ones.\nYou have cried yourselves to sleep, some of you, and walked the floor\nwhen you could not sleep. You have learned that \"beyond the Alps lieth\nItaly.\"\n\nA good many of you were bumped today or yesterday, or maybe years ago,\nand the wound has not healed. You think it never will heal. You came\nhere thinking that perhaps you would forget your trouble for a little\nwhile. I know there are people in this audience in pain.\n\nNever do this many gather but what there are some with aching hearts.\n\nAnd you young people here with lives like June mornings, are not much\ninterested in this lecture. You are polite and attentive because this\nis a polite and attentive neighborhood. But down in your hearts you are\nasking, \"What is this all about? What is that man talking about? I\nhaven't had these things and I'm not going to have them, either!\"\n\nMaybe some of you are naturally bright!\n\nYou are going to be bumped. You are going to cry yourselves to sleep.\nYou are going to walk the floor when you cannot sleep. Some of you are\ngoing to know the keen sorrow of having the one you trust most betray\nyou. Maybe, betray you with a kiss. You will go through your\nGethsemane. You will see your dearest plans wrecked. You will see all\nthat seems to make life livable lost out of your horizon. You will say,\n\"God, let me die. I have nothing more to live for.\"\n\nFor all lives have about the same elements. Your life is going to be\nabout like other lives.\n\n\n\n\n\nAnd you are going to learn the wonderful lesson thru the years, the\nbumps and the tears, that all these things somehow are necessary to\npromote our education.\n\nThese bumps and hard knocks do not break the fiddle--they turn the pegs.\n\nThese bumps and tragedies and Waterloos draw the strings of the soul\ntighter and tighter, nearer and nearer to God's great concert pitch,\nwhere the discords fade from our lives and where the music divine and\nharmonies celestial come from the same old strings that had been\nsending forth the noise and discord.\n\nThus we know that our education is progressing, as the evil and\nunworthy go out of our lives and as peace, harmony, happiness, love and\nunderstanding come into our lives.\n\nThat is getting in tune.\n\nThat is growing up.\n\n\n\n\nChapter VIII\n\nLooking Backward\n\nMemories of the Price We Pay\n\n\nWHAT a price we pay for what we know! I laugh as I look backward--and\nweep and rejoice.\n\nI was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, altho it is quite\nevident that I could have handled a pretty good-sized spoon. But father\nbeing a country preacher, we had tin spoons. We never had to tie a red\nstring around our spoons when we loaned them for the ladies' aid\nsociety oyster supper. We always got our spoons back. Nobody ever\ntraded with us by mistake.\n\nDo you remember the first money you ever earned? I do. I walked several\nmiles into the country those old reaper days and gathered sheaves. That\nnight I was proud when that farmer patted me on the head and said, \"You\nare the best boy to work, I ever saw.\" Then the cheerful old miser put\na nickel in my blistered hand. That nickel looked bigger than any money\nI have since handled.\n\n\n\n\nThat \"Last Day of School\"\n\n\nYet I was years learning it is much easier to make money than to handle\nit, hence the tale that follows.\n\nI was sixteen years old and a school teacher. Sweet sixteen--which\nmeans green sixteen. But remember again, only green things grow. There\nis hope for green things. I was so tall and awkward then--I haven't\nchanged much since. I kept still about my age. I was several dollars\nthe lowest bidder. They said out that way, \"Anybody can teach kids.\"\nThat is why I was a teacher.\n\nI had never studied pedagogy, but I had whittled out three rules that I\nthought would make it go. My first rule was, Make 'em study. My second,\nMake, em recite. That is, fill 'em up and then empty 'em.\n\nMy third and most important rule was, Get your money!\n\nI walked thirteen miles a day, six and a half miles each way, most of\nthe time, to save money. I think I had all teaching methods in use.\nWith the small fry I used a small paddle to win their confidence and\narouse their enthusiasm for an education. With the pupils larger and\nmore muscular than their teacher I used love and moral suasion.\n\nWe ended the school with an \"exhibition.\" Did you ever attend the old\nback-country \"last day of school exhibition\"? The people that day came\nfrom all over the township. They were so glad our school was closing\nthey all turned out to make it a success. They brought great baskets of\nprovender and we had a feast. We covered the school desks with boards,\nand then covered the boards with piles of fried chicken, doughnuts and\nforty kinds of pie.\n\nThen we had a \"doings.\" Everybody did a stunt. We executed a lot of\nliterature that day. Execute is the word that tells what happened to\nliterature in District No. 1, Jackson Township, that day. I can shut my\neyes and see it yet. I can see my pupils coming forward to speak their\n\"pieces.\" I hardly knew them and they hardly knew me, for we were\n\"dressed up.\" Many a head showed father had mowed it with the\nsheepshears. Mother had been busy with the wash-rag--clear back of the\nears! And into them! So many of them wore collars that stuck out all\nstiff like they had pushed their heads on thru their big straw hats.\n\nI can see them speaking their \"pieces.\" I can see \"The Soldier of the\nLegion lay dying in Algiers.\" We had him die again that day, and he had\na lingering end as we executed him. I can see \"The boy stood on the\nburning deck, whence all but he had fled.\" I can see \"Mary's little\nlamb\" come slipping over the stage. I see the tow-headed patriot in\n\"Give me liberty or give me death.\" I feel now that if Patrick Henry\nhad been present, he would have said, \"Give me death.\"\n\nThere came a breathless hush as \"teacher\" came forward as the last act\non the bill to say farewell. It was customary to cry. I wanted to yell.\nTomorrow I would get my money! I had a speech I had been saying over\nand over until it would say itself. But somehow when I got up before\nthat \"last day of school\" audience and opened my mouth, it was a great\nopening, but nothing came out. It came out of my eyes. Tears rolled\ndown my cheeks until I could hear them spatter on my six-dollar suit.\n\nAnd my pupils wept as their dear teacher said farewell. Parents wept.\nIt was a teary time. I only said, \"Weep not for me, dear friends. I am\ngoing away, but I am coming back.\" I thought to cheer them up, but they\nwept the more.\n\n\nNext day I drew my money. I had it all in one joyous wad--$240. I was\ngoing home with head high and aircastles even higher. But I never got\nhome with the money. Talk about the fool and his money and you get very\npersonal.\n\nFor on the way home I met Deacon K, and he borrowed it all. Deacon K\nwas \"such a good man\" and a \"pillar of the church.\" I used to wonder,\ntho, why he didn't take a pillow to church. I took his note for $240,\n\"due at corncutting,\" as we termed that annual fall-time paying up\nseason. I really thought a note was not necessary, such was my\nconfidence in the deacon.\n\nFor years I kept a faded, tear-spattered, yellow note for $240, \"due at\ncorncutting,\" as a souvenir of my first schoolteaching. Deacon K has\ngone from earth. He has gone to his eternal reward. I scarcely know\nwhether to look up or down as I say that. He never left any forwarding\naddress.\n\nI was paid thousands in experience for that first schoolteaching, but I\npaid all the money I got from it--two hundred and forty\nthirteen-mile-a-day dollars to learn one thing I could not learn from\nthe books, that it takes less wisdom to make money, than it does to\nintelligently handle it afterwards. Incidentally I learned it may be\nsafer to do business with a first-class sinner than with a second-class\nsaint.\n\nWhich is no slap at the church, but at its worst enemies, the foes of\nits own household.\n\n\n\n\nCalling the Class-Roll\n\n\nA lyceum bureau once sent me back to my home town to lecture. I imagine\nmost lecturers have a hard time lecturing in the home town. Their\nschoolmates and playmates are apt to be down there in the front rows\nwith their families, and maybe all the old scores have not yet been\nsettled. The boy he fought with may be down there. Perhaps the girl who\ngave him the \"mitten\" is there.\n\nAnd he has gotten his lecture out of that home town. The heroes and\nvillains live there within striking distance. Perhaps they have come to\nhear him. \"Is not this the carpenter's son?\" Perhaps this is why some\nlecturers and authors are not so popular in the home town until several\ngenerations pass.\n\nI went back to the same hall to speak, and stood upon the same platform\nwhere twenty-one years before I had stood to deliver my graduating\noration, when in impassioned and well modulated tones I had exclaimed,\n\"Greece is gone and Rome is no more, but fe-e-e-e-ear not, for I will\nsa-a-a-a-ave you!\" or words to that effect.\n\n\nThen I went back to the little hotel and sat up alone in my room half\nthe night living it over. Time was when I thought anybody who could\nlive in that hotel was a superior order of being. But the time had come\nwhen I knew the person who could go on living in any hotel has a\nsuperior order of vitality.\n\nI held thanksgiving services that night. I could see better. I had a\npicture of the school in that town that had been taken twenty-one years\nbefore, just before commencement. I had not seen the picture these\ntwenty-one years, for I could not then afford to buy one. The price was\na quarter.\n\nI got a truer perspective of life that night. Did you ever sit alone\nwith a picture of your classmates taken twenty-one years before? It is\na memorable experience.\n\nA class of brilliant and gifted young people went out to take charge of\nthe world. They were so glad the world had waited so long on them. They\nwere so willing to take charge of the world. They were going to be\npresidents and senators and authors and authoresses and scientists and\nscientist-esses and geniuses and genius-esses and things like that.\n\nThere was one boy in the class who was not naturally bright. It was not\nthe one you may be thinking of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He had no\nbrilliant career in view. He was dull and seemed to lack intellect. He\nwas \"conditioned\" into the senior class. We all felt a little sorry for\nJim.\n\nAs commencement day approached, the committee of the class appointed\nfor that purpose took Jim back of the schoolhouse and broke the news to\nhim that they were going to let him graduate, but they were not going\nto let him speak, because he couldn't make a speech that would do\ncredit to such a brilliant class. They hid Jim on the stage back of the\noleander commencement night.\n\nShake the barrel!\n\nThe girl who was to become the authoress became the helloess in the\nhome telephone exchange, and had become absolutely indispensable to the\ncommunity. The girl who was to become the poetess became the goddess at\nthe general delivery window and superintendent of the stamp-licking\ndepartment of the home postoffice. The boy who was going to Confess was\nraising the best corn in the county, and his wife was speaker of the\nhouse.\n\nMost of them were doing very well even Jim Lambert. Jim had become the\nhead of one of the big manufacturing plants of the South, with a lot of\nmen working for him. The committee that took him out behind the\nschoolhouse to inform him he could not speak at commencement, would now\nhave to wait in line before a frosted door marked, \"Mr. Lambert,\nPrivate.\" They would have to send up their cards, and the watchdog who\nguards the door would tell them, \"Cut it short, he's busy!\" before they\ncould break any news to him today.\n\nThey hung a picture of Mr. Lambert in the high school at the last\nalumni meeting. They hung it on the wall near where the oleander stood\nthat night.\n\nDull boy or girl--you with your eyes tear-dimmed sometimes because you\ndo not seem to learn like some in your classes can you not get a bit of\ncheer from the story of Jim?\n\n\nHours pass, and still as I sat in that hotel room I was lost in that\nschool picture and the twenty-one years. There were fifty-four young\npeople in that picture. They had been shaken these years in the barrel,\nand now as I called the roll on them, most of them that I expected to\ngo up had shaken down and some that I expected to stay down had shaken\nup.\n\nOut of that fifty-four, one had gone to a pulpit, one had gone to\nCongress and one had gone to the penitentiary. Some had gone to\nbrilliant success and some had gone down to sad failure. Some had found\nhappiness and some had found unhappiness. It seemed as tho almost every\nnote on the keyboard of human possibility had been struck by the one\nschool of fifty-four.\n\nWhen that picture was taken the oldest was not more than eighteen, yet\nmost of them seemed already to have decided their destinies. The\ntwenty-one years that followed had not changed their courses.\n\nThe only changes had come where God had come into a life to uplift it,\nor where Mammon had entered to pull it down. And I saw better that the\nfoolish dreams of success faded before the natural unfolding of\ntalents, which is the real success. I saw better that \"the boy is\nfather to the man.\"\n\nThe boy who skimmed over his work in school was skimming over his work\nas a man. The boy who went to the bottom of things in school was going\nto the bottom of things in manhood. Which had helped him to go to the\ntop of things!\n\nJim Lambert had merely followed the call of talents unseen in him\ntwenty-one years before.\n\nThe lazy boy became a \"tired\" man. The industrious boy became an\nindustrious man. The sporty boy became a sporty man. The domineering\negotist boy became the domineering egotist man.\n\nThe boy who traded knives with me and beat me--how I used to envy him!\nWhy was it he could always get the better of me? Well, he went on\ntrading knives and getting the better of people. Now, twenty-one years\nafterwards, he was doing time in the state penitentiary for forgery. He\nwas now called a bad man, when twenty-one years ago when he did the\nsame things on a smaller scale they called him smart and bright.\n\nThe \"perfectly lovely\" boy who didn't mix with the other boys, who\ndidn't whisper, who never got into trouble, who always had his hair\ncombed, and said, \"If you please,\" used to hurt me. He was the\nteacher's model boy. All the mothers of the community used to say to\ntheir own reprobate offspring, \"Why can't you be like Harry? He'll be\nPresident of the United States some day, and you'll be in jail.\" But\nModel Harry sat around all his life being a model. I believe Mr.\nWebster defines a model as a small imitation of the real thing. Harry\ncertainly was a successful model. He became a seedy, sleepy, helpless\nrelic at forty. He was \"perfectly lovely\" because he hadn't the energy\nto be anything else. It was the boys who had the hustle and the energy,\nwho occasionally needed bumping--and who got it--who really grew.\n\nI have said little about the girls of the school. Fact was, at that age\nI didn't pay much attention to them. I regarded them as in the way. But\nI naturally thought of Clarice, our social pet of the class--our real\npretty girl who won the vase in the home paper beauty contest. Clarice\nwent right on remaining in the social spotlight, primping and flirting.\nShe outshone all the rest. But it seemed like she was all out-shine and\nno in-shine. She mistook popularity for success. The boys voted for\nher, but did not marry her. Most of the girls who shone with less\nsocial luster became the happy homemakers of the community.\n\nBut as I looked into the face of Jim Lambert in the picture, my heart\nwarmed at the sight of another great success--a sweet-faced irish lass\nwho became an \"old maid.\" She had worked day by day all these years to\nsupport a home and care for her family. She had kept her grace and\nsweetness thru it all, and the influence of her white, loving life\nradiated far.\n\n\n\n\nThe Boy I Had Envied\n\n\nFrank was the boy I had envied. He had everything--a fine home, a\nloving father, plenty of money, opportunity and a great career awaiting\nhim. And he was bright and lovable and talented. Everybody said Frank\nwould make his mark in the world and make the town proud of him.\n\nI was the janitor of the schoolhouse. Some of my classmates will never\nknow how their thoughtless jeers and jokes wounded the sensitive,\nshabby boy who swept the floors, built the fires and carried in the\ncoal. After commencement my career seemed to end and the careers of\nFrank and the rest of them seemed to begin. They were going off to\ncollege and going to do so many wonderful things.\n\nBut the week after commencement I had to go into a printing office,\nroll up my sleeves and go to work in the \"devil's corner\" to earn my\ndaily bread. Seemed like it took so much bread!\n\nMany a time as I plugged at the \"case\" I would think of Frank and\nwonder why some people had all the good things and I had all the hard\nthings.\n\nHow easy it is to see as you look backward. But how hard it is to see\nwhen you look forward.\n\nTwenty-one years afterward as I got off the train in the home town, I\nasked, \"Where is he?\" We went out to the cemetery, where I stood at a\ngrave and read on the headstone, \"Frank.\"\n\nI had the story of a tragedy--the tragedy of modern unpreparedness. It\nwas the story of the boy who had every opportunity, but who had all the\nstruggle taken out of his life. He never followed his career, never\ndeveloped any strength. He disappointed hopes, spent a fortune, broke\nhis father's heart, shocked the community, and finally ended his wasted\nlife with a bullet fired by his own hand.\n\n\n\nWhy Ben Hur Won\n\n\nIt revived the memory of the story of Ben Hur.\n\nDo you remember it? The Jewish boy is torn from his home in disgrace.\nHe is haled into court and tried for a crime he never committed. Ben\nHur did not get a fair trial. Nobody can get a fair trial at the hands\nof this world. That is why the great Judge has said, judge not, for you\nhave not the full evidence in the case. I alone have that.\n\nThen they condemn him. They lead him away to the galleys. They chain\nhim to the bench and to the oar. There follow the days and long years\nwhen he pulls on the oar under the lash. Day after day he pulls on the\noar. Day after day he writhes under the sting of the lash. Years of the\ncruel injustice pass. Ben Hur is the helpless victim of a mocking fate.\n\nThat seems to be your life and my life. In the kitchen or the office,\nor wherever we work we seem so often like slaves bound to the oar and\npulling under the sting of the lash of necessity. Life seems one\nfutureless round of drudgery. We wonder why. We often look across the\nstreet and see somebody who lives a happier life. That one is chained\nto no oar. See what a fine time they all have. Why must we pull on the\noar?\n\nHow blind we are! We can only see our own oar. We cannot see that they,\ntoo, pull on the oar and feel the lash. Most likely they are looking\nback at us and envying us. For while we envy others, others are envying\nus.\n\nBut look at the chariot race in Antioch. See the thousands in the\ncircus. See Messala, the haughty Roman, and see! Ben Hur from the\ngalleys in the other chariot pitted against him. Down the course dash\nthese twin thunderbolts. The thousands hold their breath. \"Who will\nwin?\" \"The man with the stronger forearms,\" they whisper.\n\nThere comes the crucial moment in the race. See the man with the\nstronger forearms. They are bands of steel that swell in the forearms\nof Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into the inner ring. Ben\nHur wins the race! Where got the Jew those huge forearms? From the\ngalleys!\n\nHad Ben Hur never pulled on the oar, he never could have won the\nchariot race.\n\nSooner or later you and I are to learn that Providence makes no\nmistakes in the bookkeeping. As we pull on the oar, so often lashed by\ngrim necessity, every honest effort is laid up at compound interest in\nthe bank account of strength. Sooner or later the time comes when we\nneed every ounce. Sooner or later our chariot race is on--when we win\nthe victory, strike the deciding blow, stand while those around us\nfall--and it is won with the forearms earned in the galleys of life by\npulling on the oar.\n\n\nThat is why I thanked God as I stood at the grave of my classmate. I\nthanked God for parents who believed in the gospel of struggle, and for\nthe circumstances that compelled it.\n\nI am not an example of success.\n\nBut I am a very grateful pupil in the first reader class of The\nUniversity of Hard Knocks.\n\n\n\nChapter IX\n\nGo On South!\n\nThe Book in the Running Brook\n\nTHERE is a little silvery sheet of water in Minnesota called Lake\nItasca. There is a place where a little stream leaps out from the lake.\n\n\"Ole!\" you will exclaim, \"the lake is leaking. What is the name of this\nlittle creek?\"\n\n\"Creek! It bane no creek. It bane Mississippi river.\"\n\nSo even the Father of Waters has to begin as a creek. We are at the\ncradle where the baby river leaps forth. We all start about alike. It\nwabbles around thru the woods of Minnesota. It doesn't know where it is\ngoing, but it is \"on the way.\"\n\nIt keeps wabbling around, never giving up and quitting, and it gets to\nthe place where all of us get sooner or later. The place where Paul\ncame on the road to Damascus. The place of the \"heavenly vision.\"\n\nIt is the place where gravity says, \"Little Mississippi, do you want to\ngrow? Then you will have to go south.\"\n\nThe little Mississippi starts south. He says to the people, \"Goodbye,\nfolks, I am going south.\" The folks at Itascaville say, \"Why,\nMississippi, you are foolish. You hain't got water enough to get out of\nthe county.\" That is a fact, but he is not trying to get out of the\ncounty. The Mississippi is only trying to go south.\n\nThe Mississippi knows nothing about the Gulf of Mexico. He does not\nknow that he has to go hundreds of miles south. He is only trying to go\nsouth. He has not much water, but he does not wait for a relative to\ndie and bequeath him some water. That is a beautiful thought! He has\nwater enough to start south, and he does that.\n\nHe goes a foot south, then another foot south. He goes a mile south. He\npicks up a little stream and he has some more water. He goes on south.\nHe picks up another stream and grows some more. Day by day he picks up\nstreamlets, brooklets, rivulets. Business is picking up! He grows as he\nflows. Poetry!\n\nMy friends, here is one of the best pictures I can find in nature of\nwhat it seems to me our lives should be. I hear a great many orations,\nespecially in high school commencements, entitled, \"The Value of a Goal\nin Life.\" But the direction is vastly more important than the goal.\nFind the way your life should go, and then go and keep on going and\nyou'll reach a thousand goals.\n\nWe do not have to figure out how far we have to go, nor how many\nsupplies we will need along the way. All we have to do is to start and\nwe will find the resources all along the way. We will grow as we flow.\nAll of us can start! And then go on south!\n\nSuccess is not tomorrow or next year. Success is now. Success is not at\nthe end of the journey, for there is no end. Success is every day in\nflowing and growing. The Mississippi is a success in Minnesota as well\nas on south.\n\nYou and I sooner or later hear the call, \"Go on south.\" If we haven't\nheard it, let us keep our ear to the receiver and live a more natural\nlife, so that we can hear the call. We are all called. It is a divine\ncall--the call of our unfolding talents to be used.\n\nRemember, the Mississippi goes south. If he had gone any other\ndirection he would never have been heard of.\n\n\nThree wonderful things develop as the Mississippi goes on south.\n\n1. He keeps on going on south and growing greater.\n\n2. He overcomes his obstacles and develops his power.\n\n3. He blesses the valley, but the valley does not bless him.\n\n\n\n\nGo On South and Grow Greater\n\n\nYou never meet the Mississippi after he starts south, but what he is\ngoing on south and growing greater. You never meet him but what he\nsays, \"Excuse me, but I must go on south.\"\n\nThe Mississippi gets to St. Paul and Minneapolis. He is a great river\nnow--the most successful river in the state. But he does not retire\nupon his laurels. He goes on south and grows greater. He goes on south\nto St. Louis. He is a wonderful river now. But he does not stop. He\ngoes on south and grows greater.\n\nEverywhere you meet him he is going on south and growing greater.\n\nDo you know why the Mississippi goes on south? To continue to be the\nMississippi. If he should stop and stagnate, he would not be the\nMississippi river, he would become a stagnant, poisonous pond.\n\nAs long as people keep on going south, they keep on living. When they\nstop and stagnate, they die.\n\nThat is why I am making it the slogan of my life--GO ON SOUTH AND GROW\nGREATER! I hope I can make you remember that and say it over each day.\nI wish I could write it over the pulpits, over the schoolrooms, over\nthe business houses and homes--GO ON SOUTH AND GROW GREATER. For this\nis life, and there is no other. This is education--and religion. And\nthe only business of life.\n\nYou and I start well. We go on south a little ways, and then we retire.\nEven young people as they start south and make some little knee-pants\nachievement, some kindergarten touchdown, succumb to their press\nnotices. Their friends crowd around them to congratulate them. \"I must\ncongratulate you upon your success. You have arrived.\"\n\nSo many of those young goslings believe that. They quit and get canned.\nThey think they have gotten to the Gulf of Mexico when they have not\ngotten out of the woods of Minnesota. Go on south!\n\nWe can protect ourselves fairly well from our enemies, but heaven\ndeliver us from our fool friends.\n\nSuccess is so hard to endure. We can endure ten defeats better than one\nvictory. Success goes to the head and defeat goes to \"de feet.\" It\nmakes them work harder.\n\n\n\n\nThe Plague of Incompetents\n\n\nCivilization is mostly a conspiracy to keep us from going very far\nsouth.\n\nThe one who keeps on going south defies custom and becomes unorthodox.\n\nBut contentment with present achievement is the damnation of the race.\n\nThe mass of the human family never go on south far enough to become\ngood servants, workmen or artists. The young people get a smattering\nand squeeze into the bottom position and never go on south to\nefficiency and promotion. They wonder why their genius is not\nrecognized. They do not make it visible.\n\nNine out of ten stenographers who apply for positions can write a few\nshorthand characters and irritate a typewriter keyboard. They think\nthat is being a stenographer, when it is merely a symptom of a\nstenographer. They mangle the language, grammar, spelling,\ncapitalization and punctuation. Their eyes are on the clock, their\nminds on the movies.\n\nNine out of ten workmen cannot be trusted to do what they advertise to\ndo, because they have never gone south far enough to become efficient.\nMany a professional man is in the same class.\n\nHalf of our life is spent in getting competents to repair the botchwork\nof incompetents.\n\nNo matter how well equipped you are, you are never safe in your job if\nyou are contented to do today just what you did yesterday. Contented to\nthink today what you thought yesterday.\n\nYou must go on south to be safe.\n\nI used to know a violinist who would say, \"If I were not a genius, I\ncould not play so well with such little practice.\" The poor fellow did\nnot know how poor a fiddler he really was. Well did Strickland\nGillilan, America's great poet-humorist, say, \"Egotism is the opiate\nthat Nature administers to deaden the pains of mediocrity.\"\n\n\n\n\nThis Is Our Best Day\n\n\nJust because our hair gets frosty or begins to rub off in spots, we are\nso prone to say, \"I am aging rapidly.\" It pays to advertise. We always\nget results. See the one shrivel who goes around front-paging his age.\nAge is not years; age is grunts.\n\nWe say, \"I've seen my best days.\" And the undertaker goes and greases\nhis buggy. He believes in \"preparedness.\"\n\nGo on south! We have not seen our best days. This is the best day so\nfar, and tomorrow is going to be better on south.\n\nWe are only children in God's great kindergarten, playing with our\nA-B-C's. I do not utter that as a bit of sentiment, but as the great\nfundamental of our life. I hope the oldest in years sees that best. I\nhope he says, \"I am just beginning. Just beginning to understand. Just\nbeginning to know about life.\"\n\nWe are not going on south to old age, we are going on south to eternal\nyouth. It is the one who stops who \"ages rapidly.\" Each day brings us a\nlarger vision. Infinity, Eternity, Omnipotence, Omniscience are all on\nsouth.\n\nWe have left nothing behind but the husks. I would not trade this\nmoment for all the years before it. I have their footings at compound\ninterest! They are dead. This is life.\n\n\n\n\nBirthdays and Headmarks\n\n\nYesterday I had a birthday. I looked in the glass and communed with my\nfeatures. I saw some gray hairs coming. Hurrah!\n\nYou know what gray hairs are? Did you ever get a headmark in school?\nGray hairs are silver headmarks in our education as we go on south.\n\nYou children cheer up. Your black hair and auburn hair and the other\nfirst reader hair will pass and you'll get promoted as you go on south.\n\nDon't worry about gray hair or baldness. Only worry about the location\nof your gray hair or baldness. If they get on the inside of the head,\nworry. Do you know why corporations sometimes say they do not want to\nemploy gray-headed men? They have found that so many of them have quit\ngoing on south and have gotten gray on the inside--or bald.\n\nThese same corporations send out Pinkertons and pay any price for\ngray-headed men--gray on the outside and green on the inside. They are\nthe most valuable, for they have the vision and wisdom of many years\nand the enthusiasm and \"pep\" and courage of youth.\n\nThe preacher, the teacher--everyone who gets put on the retired list,\nretires himself. He quits going on south.\n\nThe most wonderful person in the world is the one who has lived years\nand years on earth and has perhaps gotten gray on the outside, but has\nkept young and fresh on the inside. Put that person in the pulpit, in\nthe schoolroom, in the office, behind the ticket-window or on the\nbench--or under the hod--and you find the whole world going to that\nperson for direction, advice, vision, help, sympathy, love.\n\n\nI am happy today as I look back over my life. I have been trying to\nlecture a good while. I am almost ashamed to tell you how long, for I\nought to know more about it by this time. But when anybody says, \"I\nheard you lecture twenty years ago over at----\" I stop him. \"Please\ndon't throw it up to me now. I am just as ashamed of it as you are. I\nam trying to do better now.\"\n\nO, I want to forget all the past, save its lessons. I am just beginning\nto live. If anybody wants to be my best friend, let him come to me and\ntell me how to improve--what to do and what not to do. Tell me how to\ngive a better lecture.\n\nYears ago a bureau representative who booked me told me my lectures\nwere good enough. I told him I wanted to get better lectures, for I was\nso dissatisfied with what little I knew. He told me I could never get\nany better. I had reached my limit. Those lectures were the \"limit.\" I\nshiver as I think what I was saying then. I want to go on south\nshivering about yesterday. These years I have noticed the people on the\nplatform who were contented with their offerings, were not trying to\nimprove them, and were lost in admiration of what they were doing, did\nnot stay long on the platform. I have watched them come and go, come\nand go. I have heard their fierce invectives against the bureaus and\nungrateful audiences that were \"prejudiced\" against them.\n\nBirthdays are not annual affairs. Birthdays are the days when we have a\nnew birth. The days when we go on south to larger visions. I wish I\ncould have a birthday every minute!\n\nSome people seem to string out to near a hundred years with mighty few\nbirthdays. Some people spin up to Methuselahs in a few years.\n\nFrom what I can learn of Methuselah, he never grew past copper-toed\nboots. He just hibernated and \"chawed on.\"\n\nThe more birthdays we have, the nearer we approach eternal youth!\n\n\n\n\nBernhardt, Davis and Edison\n\n\nThe spectacle of Sarah Bernhardt, past seventy, thrilling and gripping\naudiences with the fire and brilliancy of youth, is inspiring. No\nobstacle can daunt her. Losing a leg does not end her acting, for she\nremains the \"Divine Sarah\" with no crippling of her work. She looks\nyounger than many women of half her years. \"The years are nothing to\nme.\"\n\nSenator Henry Gassaway Davis, West Virginia's Grand Old Man, at\nninety-two was working as hard and hopefully as any man of the\nmultitudes in his employ. He was an ardent Odd Fellow, and one day at\nninety-two--just a short time before his passing--he went out to the\nOdd Fellows' Home near Elkins, where he lived. On the porch of the home\nwas a row of old men inmates. The senator shook hands with these men\nand one by one they rose from the bench to return his hearty greetings.\n\nThe last man on the bench did not rise. He helplessly looked up at the\nsenator and said, \"Senator, you'll have to excuse me from getting up.\nI'm too old. When you get as old as I am, you'll not get up, either.\"\n\n\"That's all right. But, my man, how old are you?\"\n\n\"Senator, I'm old in body and old in spirit. I'm past sixty.\"\n\n\"My boy,\" laughed Senator Davis, \"I was an Odd Fellow before you were\nborn.\"\n\nThe senator at ninety-two was younger than the man \"past sixty,\"\nbecause he was going on south.\n\n\nWhen I was a little boy I saw them bring the first phonograph that Mr.\nEdison invented into the meeting at Lakeside, Ohio. The people cheered\nwhen they heard it talk.\n\nYou would laugh at it today. It had a tinfoil cylinder, it screeched\nand stuttered. You would not have it in your barn today to play to your\nford!\n\nBut the people said, \"Mr. Edison has succeeded.\" There was one man who\ndid not believe that Mr. Edison had succeeded. His name was Thomas Alva\nEdison. He had gotten to St. Paul, and he went on south. A million\npeople would have stopped there and said, \"I have arrived.\" They would\nhave put in their time litigating for their rights with other people\nwho would have gone on south with the phonograph idea.\n\nMr. Edison has said that his genius is mainly his ability to keep on\nsouth. A young lady succeeded in getting into his laboratory the other\nday, and she wrote me that the great inventor showed her one invention.\n\"I made over seven thousand experiments and failed before I hit upon\nthat.\"\n\n\"Why make so many experiments?\"\n\n\"I know more than seven thousand ways now that won't work.\"\n\nI doubt if there are ten men in America who could go on south in the\nface of seven thousand failures. Today he brings forth a\ndiamond-pointed phonograph. I am sure if we could bring Mr. Edison to\nthis platform and ask him, \"Have you succeeded?\" he would say what he\nhas said to reporters and what he said to the young lady, \"I have not\nsucceeded. I am succeeding. All I have done only shows me how much\nthere is yet to do.\"\n\nThat is success supreme. Not \"succeeded\" but \"succeeding.\"\n\nWhat a difference between \"ed\" and \"ing\"! The difference between death\nand life. Are you \"ed-ing\" or \"ing-ing\"?\n\n\n\n\nMoses Begins at Eighty\n\n\nMoses, the great Hebrew law-giver, was eighty years old before he\nstarted south. It took him eighty years to get ready. Moses did not\neven get on the back page of the Egyptian newspapers till he was\neighty. He went on south into the extra editions after that!\n\nIf Moses had retired at seventy-nine, we'd never have heard of him. If\nMoses had retired to a checkerboard in the grocery store or to pitching\nhorseshoes up the alley and talking about \"ther winter of fifty-four,\"\nhe would have become the seventeenth mummy on the thirty-ninth row in\nthe green pickle-jar!\n\nImagine Moses living today amidst the din of the high school orations\non \"The Age of the Young Man\" and the Ostler idea that you are going\ndown hill at fifty. Imagine Moses living on \"borrowed time\" when he\nbecomes the leader of the Israelite host.\n\nI would see his scandalized friends gather around him. \"Moses! Moses!\nwhat is this we hear? You going to lead the Israelites to the Promised\nLand? Why, Moses, you are an old man. Why don't you act like an old\nman? You are liable to drop off any minute. Here is a pair of slippers.\nAnd keep out of the night air. It is so hard on old folks.\"\n\nI think I would hear Moses say, \"No, no, I am just beginning to see\nwhat to do. Watch things happen from now on. Children of Israel,\nforward, march!\"\n\nI see Moses at eighty starting for the Wilderness so fast Aaron can\nhardly keep up. Moses is eighty-five and busier and more enthusiastic\nthan ever. The people say, \"Isn't Moses dead?\" \"No.\" \"Well, he ought to\nbe dead, for he is old enough.\"\n\nThey appoint a committee to bury Moses. You cannot do anything in\nAmerica without a committee. The committee gets out the invitations and\nmakes all the arrangements for a gorgeous funeral next Thursday. They\nget ready the resolutions of\nrespect--\"Whereas,--Whereas,--Resolved,--Resolved.\"\n\nThen I see the committee waiting on Moses. That is what a committee\ndoes--it \"waits\" on something or other. And this committee goes up to\nGeneral Moses' private office. It is his busy day. They have to stand\nin line and wait their turn. When they get up to Moses' desk, the great\nprophet says, \"Boys, what is it? Cut it short, I'm busy.\"\n\nThe committee begins to weep. \"General Moses, you are a very old man.\nYou are eighty-five years old and full of honors. We are the committee\nduly authorized to give you gorgeous burial. The funeral is to be next\nThursday. Kindly die.\"\n\nI see Moses look over his appointments. \"Next Thursday? Why, boys,\nevery hour is taken next Thursday. I simply cannot attend my funeral\nnext Thursday.\"\n\nThey cannot bury Moses. He cannot attend. You cannot bury anybody who\nis too busy to attend his own funeral! You cannot bury anybody until he\nconsents. It is bad manners! The committee is so mortified, for all the\ninvitations are out. It waits.\n\nMoses is eighty-six and the committee 'phones over, \"Moses, can you\nattend next Thursday?\" And Moses says, \"No, boys, you'll just have to\nhold that funeral until I get this work pushed off so I can attend it.\nI haven't even time to think about getting old.\"\n\nThe committee waits. Moses is ninety and rushed more than ever. He is\ndoing ten men's work and his friends all say he is killing himself. But\nhe makes the committee wait.\n\nMoses is ninety-five and burning the candle at both ends. He is a\nhundred. And the committee dies!\n\nMoses goes right on shouting, \"Onward!\" He is a hundred and ten. He is\na hundred and twenty. Even then I read, \"His eye was not dim, nor his\nnatural force abated.\" He had not time to stop and abate.\n\nSo God buried him. The committee was dead. O, friends, this is not\nirreverence. It is joyful reverence. It is the message to all of us, Go\non south to the greater things, and get so enthused and absorbed in our\ngoing that we'll fool the \"committee.\"\n\n\nAll the multitudes of the Children of Israel died in the Wilderness.\nThey were afraid to go on south. Only two of them went on south--Joshua\nand Caleb. They put the giants out of business.\n\nThe Indians once owned America. But they failed to go on south. So\nanother crop of Americans came into the limelight. If we modern\nAmericans do not go on south we will join the Indians, the auk and the\ndodo.\n\n\n\n\nThe \"Sob Squad\"\n\n\nI am so sorry for the folks who quit, retire, \"get on the shelf\" or\nlive on \"borrowed time.\"\n\nThey generally join the \"sob squad.\"\n\nThey generally discover the world is \"going to the dogs.\" They cry on\nmy shoulder, no matter how good clothes I wear.\n\nThey tell me nobody uses them right. The person going on south has not\ntime to look back and see how anybody uses him.\n\nThey say nobody loves them. Which is often a fact. Nobody loves the\nclock that runs down.\n\nThey say, \"Only a few more days of trouble, only a few more\ntribulations, and I'll be in that bright and happy land.\" What will\nthey do with them when they get them there? They would be dill pickles\nin the heavenly preserve-jar.\n\nThey say, \"I wish I were a child again. I was happy when I was a child\nand I'm not happy now. Them was the best days of my life childhood's\npalmy days.\"\n\nWake up! Your clock has run down. Anybody who wants to be a child again\nis confessing he has lost his memory. Anybody who can remember the\nhorrors of childhood could not be hired to live it over again.\n\nIf there is anybody who does not have a good time, if there is anybody\nwho gets shortchanged regularly, it is a child. I am so sorry for a\nchild. Hurry up and go on south. It is better on south.\n\n\n\n\nWaiting till the \"Second Table\"\n\n\nI wish I could forget many of my childhood memories. I remember the\npalmy days. And the palm!\n\nI often wonder how I ever lived thru my childhood. I would not take my\nchances living it thru again. I am not ungrateful to my parents. I had\nadvantages. I was born in a parsonage and was reared in the nurture and\nadmiration of the Lord. I am not just sure I quoted that correctly, but\nI know I was reared in a parsonage. About all I inherited was a Godly\nexample and a large appetite. That was about all there was to inherit.\nI cannot remember when I was not hungry. I used to go around feeling\nlike the Mammoth Cave, never thoroly explored.\n\nI never sit down as \"company\" at a dinner and see some little children\ngoing sadly into the next room to \"wait till the second table\" that my\nheart does not go out to them. I remember when I did that.\n\nI can only remember about four big meals in a year. That was \"quart'ly\nmeeting day.\" We always had a big dinner on \"quart'ly meeting day.\"\nElder Berry would stay for dinner. His name was Berry, but being\n\"presiding elder,\" we called him Elder Berry.\n\nElder Berry always stayed for dinner. He was one of the easiest men to\nget to stay for dinner I ever saw.\n\nMother would stay home from \"quart'ly meeting\" to get the big dinner\nready. She would cook up about all the \"brethren\" brought in at the\nlast donation. We had one of those stretchable tables, and mother would\nstretch it clear across the room and put on two table-cloths. She would\nlap them over in the middle, where the hole was.\n\nI would watch her get the big dinner ready. I would look over the long\ntable and view the \"promised land.\" I would see her set on the jelly.\nWe had so much jelly--red jelly, and white jelly, and blue jelly. I\ndon't just remember if they had blue jelly, but if they had it we had\nit on that table. All the jelly that ever \"jelled\" was represented. I\ndidn't know we had so much jelly till \"quart'ly meeting\" day. I would\nwatch the jelly tremble. Did you ever see jelly tremble? I used to\nthink it ought to tremble, for Elder Berry was coming for dinner.\n\nI would see mother put on the tallest pile of mashed potatoes you ever\nsaw. She would make a hollow in the top and fill it with butter. I\nwould see the butter melt and run down the sides, and I would say,\n\"Hurry, mother, it is going to spill!\" O, how I wanted to spill it! I\ncould hardly hold out faithful.\n\nAnd then Elder Berry would sit down at the table, at the end nearest\nthe fried chicken. The \"company\" would sit down. I used to wonder why\nwe never could have a big dinner but what a lot of \"company\" had to\ncome and gobble it up. They would fill the table and father would sit\ndown in the last seat. There was no place for me to sit. Father would\nsay, \"You go into the next room, my boy, and wait. There's no room for\nyou at the table.\"\n\nThe hungriest one of that assemblage would have to go in the next room\nand hear the big dinner. Did you ever hear a big dinner when you felt\nlike the Mammoth Cave? I used to think as I would sit in the next room\nthat heaven would be a place where everybody would eat at the first\ntable.\n\nI would watch them thru the key-hole. It was going so fast. There was\nonly one piece of chicken left. It was the neck. O, Lord, spare the\nneck! And I would hear them say, \"Elder Berry, may we help you to\nanother piece of the chicken?\"\n\nAnd Elder Berry would take the neck!\n\nMany a time after that, Elder Berry would come into the room where I\nwas starving. He would say, \"Brother Parlette, is this your boy?\" He\nwould come over to the remains of Brother Parlette's boy. He would\noften put his hand in benediction upon my head.\n\nMy head was not the place that needed the benediction.\n\nHe would say, \"My boy, I want you to have a good time now.\" Now! When\nall the chicken was gone and he had taken the neck! \"My boy, you are\nseeing the best days of your life right now as a child.\"\n\nThe dear old liar! I was seeing the worst days of my life. If there is\nanybody shortchanged--if there is anybody who doesn't have a good time,\nit's a child. Life has been getting better ever since, and today is the\nbest day of all. Go on south!\n\n\n\n\nIt's Better on South\n\n\nSeeing your best days as a child? No! You are seeing your worst days.\nOf course, you can be happy as a child. A boy can be happy with fuzz on\nhis upper lip, but he'll be happier when his lip feels more like mine\nlike a piece of sandpaper. There are chapters of happiness undreamed of\nin his philosophy.\n\nA child can be full of happiness and only hold a pint. But afterwhile\nthe same child will hold a quart.\n\nI think I hold a gallon now. And I see people in the audience who must\nhold a barrel! Go on south. Of course, I do not mean circumference. But\nevery year we go south increases our capacity for joy. Our life is one\ncontinual unfolding as we go south. Afterwhile this old world gets too\nsmall for us and we go on south into a larger one.\n\nSo we cannot grow old. Our life never stops. It goes on and on forever.\nAnything that does not stop cannot grow old or have age. Material\nthings will grow old. This stage will grow old and stop. This hall will\ngrow old and stop. This house we live in will grow old and stop. This\nflesh and blood house we live in will grow old and stop. This lecture\neven will grow old--and stop! But you and I will never grow old, for\nGod cannot grow old. You and I will go on living as long as God lives.\n\nI am not worried today over what I do not know. I used to be worried. I\nused to say, \"I have not time to answer you now!\" But today it is such\na relief to look people in the face and say, \"I do not know.\"\n\nAnd I have to say that to many questions, \"I do not know.\" I often\nthink if people in an audience only knew how little I know, they would\nnot stay to hear me.\n\nBut some day I shall know! I patiently wait for the answer. Every day\nbrings the answer to something I could not answer yesterday.\n\nIt will take an eternity to know an infinity!\n\nWhat a wonderful happiness to go on south to it!\n\n\n\n\nOvercoming Obstacles Develops Power\n\n\nAs the Mississippi River goes on south he finds obstacles along the\nway. You and I find obstacles along our way south. What shall we do?\n\nGo to Keokuk, Iowa, for your answer.\n\nThey have built a great concrete obstacle clear across the path of the\nriver. It is many feet high, and many, many feet long. The river cannot\ngo on south. Watch him. He rises higher than the obstacle and sweeps\nover it on south.\n\nOver the great power dam at Keokuk sweeps the Mississippi. And then you\nsee the struggle of overcoming the obstacle develops light and power to\nvitalize the valley. A hundred towns and cities radiate the light and\npower from the struggle. The great city of St. Louis, many miles away,\nthrobs with the victory.\n\nSo that is why they spent the millions to build the obstacle--to get\nthe light and the power. The light and the power were latent in the\nriver, but it took the obstacle and the overcoming to develop it and\nmake it useful.\n\nThat is exactly what happens when you and I overcome our obstacles. We\ndevelop our light and power. We are rivers of light and power, but it\nis all latent and does no good until we overcome obstacles as we go on\nsouth.\n\nObstacles are the power stations on our way south!\n\nAnd where the most obstacles are, there you find the most power to be\ndeveloped. So many of us do not understand that. We look southward and\nwe see the obstacles in the road. \"I am so unfortunate. I could do\nthese great things, but alas! I have so many obstacles in the way.\"\n\nThank God! You are blessed of Providence. They do not waste the\nobstacles. The presence of the obstacles means that there is a lot of\nlight and power in you to be developed. If you see no obstacles, you\nare confessing to blindness.\n\nI hear people saying, \"I hope the time may speedily come when I shall\nhave no more obstacles to overcome!\" When that time comes, ring up the\nhearse, for you will be a \"dead one.\"\n\n\nLife is going on south, and overcoming the obstacles. Death is merely\nquitting.\n\nThe fact that we are not buried is no proof that we are alive. Go along\nthe street in almost any town and see the dead ones. There they are\ndecorating the hitching-racks and festooning the storeboxes. There they\nare blocking traffic at the postoffice and depot. There they are in the\nhotel warming the chairs and making the guests stand up. There they\nare--rows of retired farmers who have quit work and moved to town to\nblock improvements and die. But they will never need anything more than\nburying.\n\nFor they are dead from the ears up. They have not thought a new thought\nthe past month. Sometimes they sit and think, but generally they just\nsit. They have not gone south an inch the past year.\n\nUsually the deadest loafer is married to the livest woman. Nature tries\nto maintain an equilibrium.\n\nThey block the wheels of progress and get in the way of the people\ntrying to go on south. They say of the people trying to do things. \"Aw,\nhe's always tryin' to run things.\"\n\nThey do not join in to promote the churches and schools and big brother\nmovements. They growl at the lyceum courses and chautauquas, because\nthey \"take money outa town.\" They do not take any of their money \"outa\ntown.\" Ringling and Barnum & Bailey get theirs.\n\nI do not smile as I refer to the dead. I weep. I wish I could squirt\nsome \"pep\" into them and start them on south.\n\nBut all this lecture has been discussing this, so I hurry on to the\nlast glimpse of the book in the running brook.\n\n\n\n\nGo on South From Principle\n\n\nHere we come to the most wonderful and difficult thing in life. It is\nthe supreme test of character. That is, Why go on south? Not for\nblessing nor cursing, not for popularity nor for selfish ends, not for\nanything outside, but for the happiness that comes from within.\n\nThe Mississippi blesses the valley every day as he goes on south and\novercomes. But the valley does not bless the river in return. The\nvalley throws its junk back upon the river. The valley pours its foul,\nmuddy, poisonous streams back upon the Mississippi to defile him. The\nMississippi makes St. Paul and Minneapolis about all the prosperity\nthey have, gives them power to turn their mills. But the Twin Cities\nmerely throw their waste back upon their benefactor.\n\nThe Mississippi does not resign. He does not tell a tale of woe. He\ndoes not say, \"I am not appreciated. My genius is not understood. I am\nnot going a step farther south. I am going right back to Lake Itasca.\"\nNo, he does not even go to live with his father-in-law.\n\nHe says, \"Thank you. Every little helps, send it all along.\" Go a few\nmiles below the Twin Cities and see how, by some mysterious alchemy of\nNature, the Mississippi has taken over all the poison and the\ndefilement, he has purified it and clarified it, and has made it a part\nof himself. And he is greater and farther south!\n\nHe fattens upon bumps. Kick him, and you push him farther south. \"Hand\nhim a lemon,\" and he makes lemonade.\n\nCivilization conspires to defeat the Mississippi. Chicago's drainage\ncanal pollutes him. The flat, lazy Platte, three miles wide and three\ninches deep; the peevish, destructive Kaw, and all those streams that\nunite to form the treacherous, sinful, irresponsible lower Missouri;\nthe big, muddy Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red, the black and the blue\nfloods--all these pour into the Mississippi.\n\nDay by day the Father of Waters goes on south, taking them over and\npurifying them and making them a part of himself. Nothing can\ndiscourage, divert nor defile him. No matter how poisonous he becomes,\nhe goes a few miles on south and he is all pure again.\n\n\nWonderful the book in the running brook! We let our life stream become\npoisoned by bitter memories and bitter regrets. We carry along such a\nheart full of the injuries that other people have done us, that\nsometimes we are bank to bank full of poison and a menace to those\naround us. We say, \"I can forgive, but I cannot forget.\"\n\nOh, forget it! Drop it all. Purify your life and go on south all sweet\nagain. We forget what we ought to remember and remember what we ought\nto forget. We need schools of memory, but we need schools of\nforgettery, even more.\n\nAs you go on south and bless your valley, do you notice the valley does\nnot bless you very much? Have you sadly noted that the people you help\nthe most often are the least grateful in return?\n\nDon't wait to be thanked. Hurry on to avoid the kick! Do good to others\nbecause that is the way to be happy, but do not wait for a receipt for\nyour goodness; you will need a poultice every time you wait. I know,\nfor I have waited!\n\n\nWe get so discouraged. We say, \"I have gone far enough south.\" There is\nnobody who does not have that to meet. The preacher, the teacher, the\neditor, the man in office, the business man, the father and\nmother--every one who tries to carry on the work of the church, the\nschool, the lyceum and chautauqua, the work that makes for a better\ncommunity, gets discouraged at times.\n\nWe fail to see what we are doing or why we are doing it. Sometimes we\nsit down completely discouraged and say, \"I'm done. I'm going to quit.\nI have done my share. Nobody appreciates what I do. Let somebody else\ndo it awhile.\"\n\nStop! You are not saying that. The evil one is whispering that into\nyour heart. His business is to stop you from going south. His most\nsuccessful tool is discouragement, which is a wedge, and if he can get\nthe sharp edge started into your thought, he is going to drive it\ndeeper.\n\nYou do not go south and overcome your obstacles and bless the valley\nfor praise or blame, for appreciation or lack of it. You do it to live.\nYou do it to remain a living river and not a stagnant, unhappy pond or\nswamp.\n\nYOU ARE SAVING YOURSELF BY SAVING OTHERS. GO ON SOUTH!\n\n\nAlmost everybody is deceived. We work from mixed motives. We fool\nourselves that we are working to do good, when as we do the good, if we\nare not praised or thanked for it, if people do not present us a medal\nor resolutions, we want to quit. That is why there are so many\ndisappointed and disgruntled people in the world. They worked for\noutside thanks instead of inside thanks. They were trying to be\npersonal saviours. They say this is an ungrateful world.\n\nO, how easy it is to say these things, and how hard it is to do them!\n\n\n\n\nReaching the Gulf\n\n\nBut because the Mississippi does these things, one day the train I was\nriding stopped in Louisiana. We had come to a river so great science\nhas not yet been able to put a bridge across it.\n\nI watched them pile the steel train upon a ferry-boat. I watched the\nboat crossing a river more than a mile wide. Standing upon the\nferry-boat, I could look down into the lordly river and then far north\nperhaps fifteen hundred miles to the little struggling streamlet\nstarting southward thru the forests of Minnesota, there writing the\nfirst chapter of this wonderful book in the running brook.\n\nI thank God that I had gone a little farther southward in my own life.\nFather of Waters, you have fought a good fight. You are conquering\ngloriously. You bear upon your bosom the commerce of many nations. I\nknow why. I saw you born, saw your struggles, saw you get in the right\nchannel, saw you learn the lessons of your knocks, and saw that you\nnever stopped going southward.\n\nAnd may we read it into our own lives. May we get the vision of which\nway to go, and then keep on going south--on and on, overcoming, getting\nthe lessons of the bumps, the strength from the struggle and thus\nmaking it a part of ourselves, and thus growing greater.\n\n\n\n\nGo on South Forever!\n\n\nWhere shall we stop going south? At the Gulf of Mexico?\n\nThe Mississippi knows nothing about the gulf. He goes on south until he\nreaches the gulf. Then he pushes right on into the gulf as tho nothing\nhad happened. So he pushes his physical banks on south many miles right\nout into the gulf.\n\nAnd when he comes to the end of his physical banks, he pushes on south\ninto the gulf, and goes on south round and round the globe.\n\nWhen you and I come to our Gulf of Mexico, we must push right on south.\nSo we push our physical banks years farther into the gulf. And when\nphysical banks fail, we go on south beyond this mere husk, into the\ngreat Gulf of the Beyond, to go on south unfolding thru eternity.\n\nWE NEVER STOP GOING SOUTH.\n\n\n\nChapter X\n\nGoing Up Life's Mountain\n\nThe Defeats that are Victories\n\nHOW often we say, \"I wish I had a million!\" Perhaps it is a blessing\nthat we have not the million. Perhaps it would make us lazy, selfish\nand unhappy. Perhaps we would go around giving it to other people to\nmake them lazy, selfish and unhappy.\n\nO, the problem is not how to get money, but how to get rid of money\nwith the least injury to the race!\n\nPerhaps getting the million would completely spoil us. Look at the wild\ncat and then look at the tabby cat. The wild cat supports itself and\nthe tabby cat has its million. So the tabby cat has to be doctored by\nspecialists.\n\nIf the burden were lifted from most of us we would go to wreck.\nNecessity is the ballast in our life voyage.\n\nWhen you hear the orator speak and you note the ease and power of his\nwork, do you think of the years of struggle he spent in preparing? Do\nyou ever think of the times that orator tried to speak when he failed\nand went back to his room in disgrace, mortified and broken-hearted?\nThru it all there came the discipline, experience and grim resolve that\nmade him succeed.\n\nWhen you hear the musician and note the ease and grace of the\nperformance, do you think of the years of struggle and overcoming\nnecessary to produce that finish and grace? That is the story of the\nactor, the author and every other one of attainment.\n\nDo you note that the tropics, the countries with the balmiest climates,\nproduce the weakest peoples? Do you note that the conquering races are\nthose that struggle with both heat and cold? The tropics are the\ngeographical Gussielands.\n\nDo you note that people grow more in lean years than in fat years? Crop\nfailures and business stringencies are not calamities, but blessings in\ndisguise. People go to the devil with full pockets; they turn to God\nwhen hunger hits them. \"Is not this Babylon that I have builded?\" says\nthe Belshazzar of material prosperity as he drinks to his gods. Then\nmust come the Needful and Needless Knocks handwriting upon the wall to\nsave him.\n\nYou have to shoot many men's eyes out before they can see. You have to\ncrack their heads before they can think, knock them down before they\ncan stand, break their hearts before they can sing, and bankrupt them\nbefore they can be rich.\n\nDo you remember that they had to lock John Bunyan in Bedford jail\nbefore he would write his immortal \"Pilgrim's Progress\"? It may be that\nsome of us will have to go to jail to do our best work.\n\nDo you remember that one musician became deaf before he wrote music the\nworld will always hear? Do you remember that one author became blind\nbefore writing \"Paradise Lost\" the world will always read?\n\nDo you remember that Saul of Tarsus would have never been remembered\nhad he lived the life of luxury planned for him? He had to be blinded\nbefore he could see the way to real success. He had to be scourged and\nfettered to become the Apostle to the Gentiles. He, too, had to be sent\nto prison to write his immortal messages to humanity. What throne-rooms\nare some prisons! And what prisons are some throne-rooms!\n\nDo you not see all around you that success is ever the phoenix rising\nfrom the ashes of defeat?\n\nThen, children, when you stand in the row of graduates on commencement\nday with your diplomas in your hands, and when your relatives and\nfriends say, \"Success to you!\" I shall take your hand and say, \"Defeat\nto you! And struggles to you! And bumps to you!\"\n\nFor that is the only way to say, \"Success to you!\"\n\n\n\n\nGo Up the Mountain\n\nO UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS, we learn to love you more with each\npassing year. We learn that you are cruel only to be kind. We learn\nthat you are saving us from ourselves. But O, how most of us must be\nbumped to see this!\n\nI know no better way to close this lecture than to tell you of a great\nbump that struck me one morning in Los Angeles. It seemed as tho twelve\nyears of my life had dropped out of it, and had been lost.\n\nWere you ever bumped so hard you were numb? I was numb. I wondered why\nI was living. I thought I had nothing more to live for. When a dog is\nwounded he crawls away alone to lick his wounds. I felt like the\nwounded dog. I wanted to crawl away to lick my wounds.\n\nThat is why I climbed Mount Lowe that day. I wanted to get alone.\n\n\nIt is a wonderful experience to climb Mount Lowe. The tourists go up\nhalf a mile into Rubio Canyon, to the engineering miracle, the\ntriangular car that hoists them out of the hungry chasm thirty-five\nhundred feet up the side of a granite cliff, to the top of Echo\nMountain.\n\nHere they find that Echo Mountain is but a shelf on the side of Mount\nLowe. Here they take an electric car that winds five miles on towards\nthe sky. There is hardly a straight rail in the track. Every minute a\nnew thrill, and no two thrills alike. Five miles of winding and\nsquirming, twisting and ducking, dodging and summersaulting.\n\nThere are places where the tourist wants to grasp his seat and lift.\nThere is a wooden shelf nailed to the side of the perpendicular\nrockwall where his life depends upon the honesty of the man who drove\nthe nails. He may wonder if the man was working by the day or by the\njob! He looks over the edge of the shelf downward, and then turns to\nthe other side to look at the face of the cliff they are hugging, and\ndiscovers there is no place to resign!\n\nThe car is five thousand feet high where it stops on that last shelf,\nAlpine Tavern. One cannot ride farther upward. This is not the summit,\nbut just where science surrenders. There is a little trail that winds\nupward from Alpine Tavern to the summit. It is three miles long and\nrises eleven hundred feet.\n\nTo go up that last eleven hundred feet and stand upon the flat rock at\nthe summit of Mount Lowe is to get a picture so wonderful it cannot be\ndescribed with this poor human vocabulary. It must be lived. On a pure,\nclear day one looks down this sixty-one hundred feet, more than a mile,\ninto the orange belt of Southern California. It spreads out below in\none great mosaic of turquoise and amber and emerald, where the miles\nseem like inches, and where his field-glass sweeps one panoramic\npicture of a hundred miles or more.\n\nJust below is Pasadena and Los Angeles. To the westward perhaps forty\nmiles is the blue stretch of the Pacific Ocean, on westward the faint\noutlines of Catalina Islands. The ocean seems so close one could throw\na pebble over into it. How a mountain does reduce distances. You throw\nthe pebble and it falls upon your toes!\n\nAnd Mount Lowe is but a shelf on the side of the higher Sierras. The\ngranite mountains rise higher to the northward, and to the east rises\n\"Old Baldy,\" twelve thousand feet high and snow eternally on his head.\n\nThis is one of the workshops of the infinite!\n\n\nAll alone I scrambled up that three-mile trail to the summit. All alone\nI stood upon the flat rock at the summit and looked down into the\nswimming distances. I did not know why I had struggled up into that\nmountain sanctuary, for I was not searching for sublimity. I was\nsearching for relief. I was heartsick.\n\nI saw clouds down in the valley below me. I had never before looked\ndown upon clouds. I thought of the cloud that had covered me in the\nvalley below, and dully watched the clouds spread wider and blacker.\n\nAfterwhile the valley was all hidden by the clouds. I knew rain must be\nfalling down there. The people must be saying, \"The sun doesn't shine.\nThe sky is all gone.\" But I saw the truth--the sun was shining. The sky\nwas in place. A cloud had covered down over that first mile. The sun\nwas shining upon me, the sky was all blue over me, and there were\nmillions of miles of sunshine above me. I could see all this because I\nhad gone above the valley. I could see above the clouds.\n\nA great light seemed to break over my stormswept soul. I am under the\nclouds of trouble today, BUT THE SUN IS SHINING!\n\nI must go on up the mountain to see it.\n\nThe years have been passing, the stormclouds have many times hidden my\nsun. But I have always found the sun shining above them. No matter how\nblack and sunless today, when I have struggled on up the mountain path,\nI have gotten above the clouds and found the sun forever shining and\nGod forever in His heavens.\n\nEach day as I go up the mountain I get a larger vision. The miles that\nseem so great down in the valley, seem so small as I look down upon\nthem from higher up. Each day as I look back I see more clearly the\nplan of a human life. The rocks, the curves and the struggles fit into\na divine engineering plan to soften the steepness of the ascent. The\nbumps are lifts. The things that seem so important down in the smudgy,\nstormswept valley, seem so unimportant as we go higher up the mountain\nto more important things.\n\nToday I look back to the bump that sent me up Mount Lowe. I did not see\nhow I could live past that bump. The years have passed and I now know\nit was one of the greatest blessings of my life. It closed one gate,\nbut it opened another gate to a better pathway up the mountain.\n\nLate that day I was clambering down the side of Mount Lowe. Down in the\nvalley below me I saw shadows. Then I looked over into the southwest\nand I could see the sun going down. I could see him sink lower and\nlower until his red lips kissed the cheek of the Pacific. The glory of\nthe sunset filled sea and sky with flames of gold and fountains of\nrainbows. Such a sunset from the mountain-side is a promise of heaven.\n\nThe shadows of sunset widened over the valley. Presently all the valley\nwas black with the shadow. It was night down there. The people were\nsaying, \"The sun doesn't shine.\" But it was not night where I stood. I\nwas farther up the mountain. I turned and looked up to the summit. The\nbeams of the setting sun were yet gilding Mount Lowe's summit. It was\nnight down in the valley, but it was day on the mountain top!\n\n\nGo on south!\n\n\nThat means, go on up!\n\n\nChild of humanity, are you in the storm? Go on upward. Are you in the\nnight? Go on upward.\n\n\nFor the peace and the light are always above the storm and the night,\nand always in our reach.\n\n\nI am going on upward. Take my hand and let us go together. Mount Lowe\nshowed the way that dark day. There I heard the \"sermons in stones.\"\n\n\nSome day my night will come. It will spread over all this valley of\nmaterial things where the storms have raged.\n\n\nBut I shall be on the mountain top. I shall look down upon the night,\nas I am learning to climb and look down upon the storms. I shall be in\nthe new day of the mountain-top, forever above the night.\n\n\nI shall find this mountain-top just another shelf on the side of the\nMountain of Infinite Unfolding. I shall have risen perhaps only the\nfirst mile. I shall have millions of miles yet to rise.\n\n\nThis will be another Commencement Day and Master's Degree. Infinite the\nnumber on up. \"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered\ninto the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that\nlove Him.\"\n\nWe are not growing old. We are going up to Eternal Life.\n\nRejoice and Go Upward!\n\n\n\n\n\nANOTHER BEGINNING\n\n\n\nThe Big Business of Life Turning work Into Play\n\nBy Ralph Parlette\n\nThis book proves that the real big business is that of getting our\nhappiness now in our work, and not tomorrow for our work.\n\nJudge Ben B. Lindsey, the kids' Judge, says: \"It is a great big boost\nfor everybody who will read it. People ought to buy them by the gross\nand send them to their friends.\"\n\nDr. J. G. Crabbe, President of the State Teachers College, Greeley,\nColo., says: \"The Big Business of Life is a real joy to read. It is big\nand ought to be read today and tomorrow and forevermore every where. It\nis truly 'A Book of Rejoicing'.\"\n\nThe Augsberg Teacher, a Magazine for Teachers, says: \"In The Big\nBusiness of Life we have the practical philosophy that it is everyone's\nbusiness to abolish work and turn this world into a playground. Who\nwill not confess that many mortals take their work too seriously, and\nthat to them it is a joyless, cheerless thing? To be able to find\nhappiness, and to find it when we are bending to our duties is to\npossess the secret of living to the full. And happiness is to be sought\nwithin, and not among the things that lie at our feet. The book before\nus is wholesome and vivacious. It provokes many a smile, and beneath\neach one is a bit of wisdom it would do us a world of good to learn. It\nrecalls the saying of the wise man 'A merry heart doeth good like a\nmedicine'.\"\n\n\nMany who have read The Big Business of Life write us that they think it\nis even better than \"The University of Hard Knocks,\" which, they add,\nis mighty hard to beat.\n\n\n\nIt's Up To You!\nAre You Shaking Up or Rattling Down?\n\nGo On South!\nThe Best is Yet to Come\n\nThe Salvation of a Sucker\nYou Can't Get Something for Nothing\n\n\nThese booklets by Ralph Parlette are short stories adapted from\nchapters in \"The University of Hard Knocks.\"\n\n\nJohn C. Carroll, President of the Hyde Park State Bank of Chicago,\nbought 1000 copies of the booklet \"It's Up to You!\" and of it he says,\n\"Parlette's Beans and Nuts is just as good as the Message to Garcia and\nwill be handed around just us much. I have handed the book to business\nmen, to young fellows, bond salesmen and such, to our own vice\npresident, and they all want another copy to send to some friend. I\nwould rather be author of it than president of the bank.\"\n\n\nEmployers in every line of business are buying quantities of \"It's Up\nto You!\" for their workers.\n\n\nWilliam Jennings Bryan says of the booklet \"Go On South\": \"It is one of\nthe great stories of the day.\"\n\n\nCharles Grilk of Davenport, says: \"My two children and I read the\nMississippi River story together and we were thoroly delighted.\"\n\n\nInstruct us to send one of these booklets to your friends. It will\ndelight them more than any small present you can make.","title":"The University of Hard Knocks","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":38170}