,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks by ,ralph ,parlette ,the ,school ,that ,completes ,our ,education ,he that overcometh shall inherit all things2 and ,i will be his ,god1 and he shall be my son--,revelation #ba3g4 ,sweet are the uses of adversity2 ,which1 like the toad1 ugly and venomous1 ,wears yet a precious jewel in his head2 ,and thus our life1 exempt from public haunt1 ,finds tongues in trees1 books in running brooks ,sermons in stones1 and good in everything4 ,shakespeare ,why ,it ,is ,printed ,,more than a million people have sat in audiences in all parts of the ,united ,states and have listened to ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,it has been delivered to date more than twenty-five hundred times upon lyceum courses1 at chautauquas1 teachers' institutes1 club gatherings1 conventions and before various other kinds of audiences4 ,ralph ,parlette is kept busy year after year lecturing1 because his lectures deal with universal human experience4 ,can ,i get the lecture in book form8 ,that continuous question from audiences brought out this book in response4 ,here is the overflow of many deliveries4 ,what is written here is not the way ,i would write it1 were ,i writing a book1 says ,ralph ,parlette4 ,it is the way ,i say it4 ,the lecture took this unconscious colloquial form before audiences4 ,an audience makes a lecture1 if the lecture survives4 ,i wish ,i could shake the hand of every person who has sat in my audiences4 ,and ,i wish ,i could tell the lecture committees of ,america how ,i appreciate the vast amount of altruistic work they have done in bringing the audiences of ,america together4 ,for lecture audiences are not drawn together1 they are pushed together4 ,the warm reception given ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks by the public1 has encouraged the publishers to put more of ,mr4 ,parlette's lectures into book form1 ,big ,business and ,pockets and ,paradises are now in preparation as this1 the third edition of ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks comes from the press4 ,contents ,,some ,,preliminary ,,remarks--,the lecturer the delivery wagon--,the sorghum barrel--,audience must have place to put lecture--,why so many words ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks ,i4 ,,the ,,books ,,are ,,bumps--,every bump a lesson--,why the two kinds of bumps--,description of ,university--,sweet are the uses of ,adversity--,why children are not interested ,,ii4 ,,the ,,college ,,of ,,needless ,,knocks1 the bumps that we bump into--,getting the coffee-pot--,teaching a wilful child--,bumps make us stop1 look1 listen--,blind man learns with one bump--,going up requires effort--,prodigals must be bumped--,the fly and the sticky fly-paper--,removed and knocked out ,,iii4 ,,the ,,college ,,of ,,needful ,,knocks1 the bumps that bump into us--,our sorrows and disappointments--,how the piano was made--,how the red mud becomes razor-blades--,the world our mirror--,the cripple taught by the bumps--,every bump brings a blessing--,you are never down and out ,,iv4 ,,shake ,,the ,,barrel--,how we decide our destinies--,why the big ones shake up and the little ones shake down--,the barrel of life sorting people--,how we hold our places1 go down1 go up--,good luck and bad luck--,the girl who went up--,the man who went down--,the fatal rattle--,we must get ready to get--,testimonials and press notices--,you cannot uplift people with derrick--,no laws can equalize--,help people to help themselves--,we cannot get things till we get ready for them ,v4 ,,going ,,up--,how we become great--,we must get inside greatness--,there is no top--,we make ourselves great by service--the first step at hand--,all can be greatest--,where to find great people--,a glimpse of ,gunsaulus ,,vi4 ,,the ,,problem ,,of ,,preparedness--,preparing children for life--,most advantages are disadvantages--,buying education for children--,the story of ,gussie and ,bill ,whackem--,schools and books only give better tools for service--,hard knocks graduates--,menace of ,america not swollen fortunes but shrunken souls--,children must have struggle to get strength--,not packhorse work--,helping the turkeys killed them--the happiness of work we love--,amusement drunkards--,lure of the city--,strong men from the country--,must save the home towns--,a school of struggle--,new ,school experiment ,,vii4 ,,the ,,salvation ,,of ,a ,,sucker--,you can't get something for nothing--,the fiddle and the tuning--,how we know things--,trimmed at the shell game--,my fool drawer--,getting selected to receive #a1jjj per cent--,you must earn what you own--,commencement orations--,my maiden sermon--,the books that live have been lived--,singer must live songs--,successful songs written from experience--,theory and practice--,tuning the strings of life ,,viii4 ,,looking ,,backward--,memories of the price we pay--,my first school teaching--,loaning the deacon my money--,calling the roll of my schoolmates--,at the grave of the boy ,i had envied--,why ,ben ,hur won the chariot race--,pulling on the oar ,,ix4 ,,go ,,on ,,south6--,the book in the running brook--,the ,mississippi keeps on going south and growing greater--,we generally start well1 but stop--,few go on south--,the plague of incompetents--,today our best day1 tomorrow to be better--,birthdays are promotions--,i am just beginning--,bernhardt1 ,davis1 ,edison--,moses begins at eighty--,too busy to bury--,sympathy for the sob squad--,child sees worst days1 not best--,waiting for the second table--,better days on south--,overcoming obstacles develops power--,go on south from principle1 not praise--,doing duty for the joy of it--,becoming the ,father of ,waters--,go on south forever6 ,x4 ,,going ,,up ,,life',s ,,mountain--,the defeats that are victories--,climbing ,mount ,lowe--,getting above the clouds into the sunshine--,each day we rise to larger vision--,getting above the night into the eternal day--,going south is going upward ,some ,preliminary ,remarks ,,ladies and ,gentlemen3 ,i do not want to be seen in this lecture4 ,i want to be heard4 ,i am only the delivery wagon4 ,when the delivery wagon comes to your house1 you are not much interested in how it looks2 you are interested in the goods it brings you4 ,you know some very good goods are sometimes delivered to you in some very poor delivery wagons4 ,so in this lecture1 please do not pay any attention to the delivery wagon--how much it squeaks and wheezes and rattles and wabbles4 ,do not pay much attention to the wrappings and strings4 ,get inside to the goods4 ,really1 ,i believe the goods are good4 ,i believe ,i am to recite to you some of the multiplication table of life--not mine1 not yours alone1 but everybody's4 ,can ,only ,pull the ,plug6 ,every audience has a different temperature1 and that makes a lecture go differently before every audience4 ,the kind of an audience is just as important as the kind of a lecture4 ,a cold audience will make a good lecture poor1 while a warm audience will make a poor lecture good4 ,let me illustrate3 ,when ,i was a boy we had a barrel of sorghum in the woodshed4 ,when mother wanted to make ginger-bread or cookies1 she would send me to the woodshed to get a bucket of sorghum from that barrel4 ,some warm ,september day ,i would pull the plug from the barrel and the sorghum would fairly squirt into my bucket4 ,later in the fall when it was colder1 ,i would pull the plug but the sorghum would not squirt4 ,it would come out slowly and reluctantly1 so that ,i would have to wait a long while to get a little sorghum4 ,and on some real cold winter day ,i would pull the plug1 but the sorghum would not run at all4 ,it would just look out at me4 ,i discovered it was the temperature4 ,i have brought a barrel of sorghum to this audience4 ,the name of the sorghum is ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,i can only pull the plug4 ,i cannot make it run4 ,that will depend upon the temperature of this audience4 ,you can have all you want of it1 but to get it to running freely1 you will have to warm up4 ,did ,you ,bring a ,bucket8 ,no matter how the sorghum runs1 you have to have a bucket to get it4 ,how much any one gets out of a lecture depends also upon the size of the bucket he brings to get it in4 ,a big bucket can get filled at a very small stream4 ,a little bucket gets little at the greatest stream4 ,with no bucket you can get nothing at ,niagara4 ,that often explains why one person says a lecture is great1 while the next person says he got nothing out of it4 ,what ,it's ,all ,about ,here is a great mass of words and sentences and pictures to express two or three simple little ideas of life1 that our education is our growing up from the ,finite to the ,infinite1 and that it is done by our own personal overcoming1 and that we never finish it4 ,have you noticed that no sentence1 nor a million sentences1 can bound life8 ,have you noticed that every statement does not quite cover it8 ,no statement1 no library1 can tell all about life4 ,no success rule can alone solve the problem4 ,you must average it all and struggle up to a higher vision4 ,we are told that the stomach needs bulk as well as nutriment4 ,it would not prosper with the necessary elements in their condensed form4 ,so abstract truths in their lowest terms do not always promote mental digestion like more bulk in the way of pictures and discussions of these truths4 ,here is bulk as well as nutriment4 ,if you get the feeling that the first personal pronoun is being overworked1 ,i remind you that this is more a confession than a lecture4 ,you cannot confess without referring to the confesser4 ,to ,everybody in ,my ,audience ,i like you because ,i am like you4 ,i believe in you because ,i believe in myself4 ,we are all one family4 ,i believe in your ,inside1 not in your ,outside1 whoever you are1 whatever you are1 wherever you are4 ,i believe in the ,angel of ,good inside every block of human marble4 ,i believe it must be carved out in ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,i believe all this pride1 vanity1 selfishness1 self-righteousness1 hypocrisy and human frailty are the ,outside that must be chipped away4 ,i believe the ,hard ,knocks cannot injure the ,angel1 but can only reveal it4 ,i hope you are getting your ,hard ,knocks4 ,i care little about your glorious or inglorious past4 ,i care little about your present4 ,i care much about your future for that is to see more of the ,angel in you4 ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks ,chapter ,i ,the ,books ,are ,bumps ,,the greatest school is the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,its books are bumps4 ,every bump is a lesson4 ,if we learn the lesson with one bump1 we do not get that bump again4 ,we do not need it4 ,we have traveled past it4 ,they do not waste the bumps4 ,we get promoted to the next bump4 ,but if we are naturally bright1 or there is something else the matter with us1 so that we do not learn the lesson of the bump we have just gotten1 then that bump must come back and bump us again4 ,some of us learn to go forward with a few bumps1 but most of us are naturally bright and have to be pulverized4 ,the tuition in the ,university of ,hard ,knocks is not free4 ,experience is the dearest teacher in the world4 ,most of us spend our lives in the ,a-,b-,c's of getting started4 ,we matriculate in the cradle4 ,we never graduate4 ,when we stop learning we are due for another bump4 ,there are two kinds of people--wise people and fools4 ,the fools are the people who think they have graduated4 ,the playground is all of ,god's universe4 ,the university colors are black and blue4 ,the yell is ouch repeated ad lib4 ,the ,need of the ,bumps ,when ,i was thirteen ,i knew a great deal more than ,i do now4 ,there was a sentence in my grammar that disgusted me4 ,it was by some foreigner ,i had never met4 ,his name was ,shakespeare4 ,it was this3 ,sweet are the uses of adversity2 ,which1 like the toad1 ugly and venomous1 ,wears yet a priceless jewel in its head2 ,and thus our life1 exempt from public haunt1 ,finds tongues in trees1 books in running brooks1 ,sermons in stones1 and good in everything4 ,tongues in trees1 ,i thought4 ,trees can't talk6 ,that man is crazy4 ,books in running brooks6 ,why nobody never puts no books in no running brooks4 ,they'd get wet4 ,and that sermons in stones6 ,they get preachers to preach sermons1 and they build houses out of stones4 ,i was sorry for ,shakespeare--when ,i was thirteen4 ,but ,i am happy today that ,i have traveled a little farther4 ,i am happy that ,i have begun to learn the lessons from the bumps4 ,i am happy that ,i am learning the sweet tho painful lessons of the ,university of ,adversity4 ,i am happy that ,i am beginning to listen4 ,for as ,i learn to listen1 ,i hear every tree speaking1 every stone preaching and every running brook the unfolding of a book4 ,children1 ,i fear you will not be greatly interested in what is to follow4 ,perhaps you are naturally bright and feel sorry for ,shakespeare4 ,i was not interested when father and mother told me these things4 ,i knew they meant all right1 but the world had moved since they were young1 and now two and two made seven1 because we lived so much faster4 ,it is so hard to tell young people anything4 ,they know better4 ,so they have to get bumped just where we got bumped1 to learn that two and two always makes four1 and whatsoever a man soweth1 that shall he also reap4 ,but if you will remember some of these things1 they will feel like poultices by and by when the bumps come4 ,the ,two ,colleges ,as we get bumped and battered on life's pathway1 we discover we get two kinds of bumps--bumps that we need and bumps that we do not need4 ,bumps that we bump into and bumps that bump into us4 ,we discover1 in other words1 that ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks has two colleges--,the ,college of ,needless ,knocks and ,the ,college of ,needful ,knocks4 ,we attend both colleges4 ,chapter ,,ii ,the ,college of ,needless ,knocks ,the ,bumps ,that ,we ,bump ,into ,,nearly all the bumps we get are ,needless ,knocks4 ,there comes a vivid memory of one of my early ,needless ,knocks as ,i say that4 ,it was back at the time when ,i was trying to run our home to suit myself4 ,i sat in the highest chair in the family circle4 ,i was three years old and ready to graduate4 ,that day they had the little joy and sunshine of the family in his high-chair throne right up beside the dinner table4 ,the coffee-pot was within grabbing distance4 ,i became enamored with that coffee-pot4 ,i decided ,i needed that coffee-pot in my business4 ,i reached over to get the coffee-pot4 ,then ,i discovered a woman beside me1 my mother4 ,she was the most meddlesome woman ,i had ever known4 ,i had not tried to do one thing in three years that that woman had not meddled into4 ,and that day when ,i wanted the coffee-pot--,i did want it4 ,nobody knows how ,i desired that coffee-pot4 ,one thing thou lackest1 a coffee-pot--,i was reaching over to get it1 that woman said1 ,don't touch that6 ,the longer ,i thought about it the more angry ,i became4 ,what right has that woman to meddle into my affairs all the time8 ,i have stood this petticoat tyranny three years1 and it is time to stop it6 ,i stopped it4 ,i got the coffee-pot4 ,i know ,i got the coffee-pot4 ,i got it unanimously4 ,i know when ,i got it and ,i also know where ,i got it4 ,i got about a gallon of the reddest1 hottest coffee a bad boy ever spilled over himself4 ,o-o-o-o-o-o6 ,i can feel it yet6 ,there were weeks after that when ,i was upholstered4 ,they put applebutter on me--and coal oil and white-of-an-egg and starch and anything else the neighbors could think of4 ,they would bring it over and rub it on the little joy and sunshine of the family1 who had gotten temporarily eclipsed4 ,teaching a ,wilful ,child ,you see1 my mother's way was to tell me and then let me do as ,i pleased4 ,she told me not to get the coffee-pot and then let me get it1 knowing that it would burn me4 ,she would say1 ,don't4 ,then she would go on with her knitting and let me do as ,i pleased4 ,why don't mothers knit today8 ,mother would say1 ,don't fall in the well4 ,i could go and jump in the well after that and she would not look at me4 ,i do not argue that this is the way to raise children1 but ,i insist that this was the most kind and effective way to rear one stubborn boy ,i know of4 ,the neighbors and the ladies' aid society often said my mother was cruel with that angel child4 ,but the neighbors did not know what kind of an insect mother was trying to raise4 ,mother did know4 ,she knew how stubborn and self-willed ,i was4 ,it came from father's side of the house4 ,mother knew that to argue with me was to flatter me4 ,tell me1 serve notice upon me1 and then let me go ahead and get my coffee-pot4 ,that was the quickest and kindest way to teach me4 ,i learned very quickly that if ,i did not hear mother1 and heed1 a coffee-pot would spill upon me4 ,i cannot remember when ,i disobeyed my mother that a coffee-pot of some kind did not spill upon me1 and ,i got my blisters4 ,mother did not inflict them4 ,mother was not much of an inflicter4 ,father attended to that in the laboratory behind the parsonage4 ,stop1 ,look1 ,listen ,and thru the bumps we learn that ,the ,college of ,needless ,knocks runs on the same plan4 ,the ,voice of ,wisdom says to each of us1 ,child of humanity1 do right1 walk in the right path4 ,you will be wiser and happier4 ,the tongues in the trees1 the books in the running brooks and the sermons in the stones all repeat it4 ,but we are not compelled to walk in the right path4 ,we are free im-moral agents4 ,we get off the right path4 ,we go down forbidden paths4 ,they seem easier and more attractive4 ,it is so easy to go downward4 ,we slide downward1 but we have to make effort to go upward4 ,anything that goes downward will run itself4 ,anything that goes upward has to be pushed4 ,and going down the wrong path1 we get bumped harder and harder until we listen4 ,we are lucky if we learn the lesson with one bump4 ,we are unlucky when we get bumped twice in the same place1 for it means we are making no progress4 ,when we are bumped1 we should stop1 look1 listen4 ,safety first6 ,one time ,i paid a seeress two dollars to look into my honest palm4 ,she said1 ,it hain't your fault4 ,you wasn't born right4 ,you was born under an unlucky star4 ,you don't know how that comforted me4 ,it wasn't my fault--all my bumps and coffee-pots6 ,i was just unlucky and it had to be4 ,how ,i had to be bumped to learn better6 ,now when ,i get bumped ,i try to learn the lesson of the bump and find the right path1 so that when ,i see that bump coming again ,i can say1 ,excuse me2 it hath a familiar look1 and dodge it4 ,the seeress is the soothing syrup for mental infants4 ,blind ,man's ,fine ,sight ,the other day ,i watched a blind man go down the aisle of the car to get off the train4 ,did you ever study the walk of a blind man8 ,he pussyfooted it along so carefully4 ,he bumped his hand against a seat4 ,then he did what every blind man does1 he lifted his hand higher and didn't bump any more seats4 ,i looked down my nose4 ,ralph ,parlette1 ,i said to myself1 when are you going to learn to see as well as that blind man8 ,he learns his lesson with one bump1 and you have to go bumping into the same things day after day and wonder why you have so much 'bad luck'6 ,are ,you ,going ,up or ,down8 ,let me repeat1 things that go downward will run themselves4 ,things that go upward have to be pushed4 ,going upward is overcoming4 ,notice that churches1 schools1 lyceums1 chautauquas1 reform movements--things that go upward--never run themselves4 ,they must be pushed all the time4 ,and so with our own lives4 ,real living is conscious effort to go upward to larger life4 ,if you are making no effort in your life1 if you are moving in the line of least resistance1 depend upon it you are going downward4 ,look out for the bumps6 ,look over your community4 ,note the handful of brave1 faithful1 unselfish souls who are carrying the community burdens and pushing upward4 ,note the multitude making little or no effort1 and even getting in the way of the pushers4 ,majorities do not rule4 ,majorities never have ruled4 ,it is the brave minority of thinking1 self-sacrificing people that decides the tomorrow of communities that go upward4 ,majorities are not willing to make the effort to rule themselves4 ,they are content to drift and be amused and follow false gods that promise something for nothing4 ,they must be led--sometimes driven--by minorities4 ,people are like sheep4 ,the shepherd can lead them to heaven--or to hell4 ,bumping the ,prodigals ,human life is the story of the ,prodigal ,son4 ,we look over the fence of goodness into the mystery of the great unknown world beyond and in that unknown realm we fondly imagine is happiness4 ,down the great white way of the world go the million prodigals1 seeking happiness where nobody ever found happiness4 ,their days fill up with disappointment1 their vision becomes dulled4 ,they become anaemic feeding upon the husks4 ,they just must get their coffee-pot6 ,how they must be bumped to think upon their ways4 ,every time we do wrong we get a ,needless ,knock4 ,every time6 ,we may not always get bumped on the outside1 but we always get bumped on the inside4 ,a bump on the conscience is worse than a bump on the noodle4 ,i can do wrong and not get bumped4 ,i have no feelings upon the subject1 somebody says1 ,you can8 ,you poor old sinner1 you have bumped your conscience numb4 ,that is why you have no feelings on the subject4 ,you have pounded your soul into a jelly4 ,you don't know how badly you are hurt4 ,how the old devil works day and night to keep people amused and doped so that they will not think upon their ways6 ,how he keeps the music and the dazzle going so they will not see they are bumping themselves6 ,consider the ,sticky ,flypaper ,did you ever watch a fly get his ,needless ,knocks on the sticky flypaper8 ,the last thing ,mamma ,fly said as ,johnny went off to the city was1 ,remember1 son1 to stay away from the sticky flypaper4 ,that is where your poor dear father was lost4 ,and ,johnny ,fly remembers for several minutes4 ,but when he sees all the smart young flies of his set go over to the flypaper1 he goes over1 too4 ,he gazes down at his face in the stickiness4 ,ah6 how pretty ,i am6 ,this sticky flypaper shows me up better than anything at home4 ,what a fine place to skate4 ,just see how close ,i can fly over it and not get stuck a bit4 ,mother is such a silly old worryer4 ,she means all right1 of course1 but she isn't up-to-date4 ,we young set of modern flies are naturally bright and have so many more advantages4 ,you can't catch us4 ,they were too strict with me back home4 ,you see ,johnny fly back and forth and have the time of his naturally bright young life4 ,afterwhile1 tho1 he stubs his toe and lands in the stickiness4 ,well1 well1 how nice this is on the feet1 so soft and soothing6 ,first he puts one foot down and pulls it out4 ,that is a lot of fun4 ,it shows he is not a prisoner4 ,he is a strong-minded fly4 ,he can quit it or play in it1 just as he pleases4 ,after while he puts two feet down in the stickiness4 ,it is harder to pull them out4 ,then he puts three down and puts down a few more trying to pull them out4 ,really1 says ,johnny ,fly bowing to his comrades also stuck around him1 really1 boys1 you'll have to excuse me now4 ,good-bye6 ,but he doesn't pull loose4 ,he feels tired and he sits down in the sticky flypaper4 ,it is a fine place to stick around4 ,all his young set of flies are around him4 ,he does like the company4 ,they all feel the same way--they can play in the sticky flypaper or let it alone1 just as they please1 for they are strong-minded flies4 ,they have another drink and sing1 ,we won't go home till morning4 ,johnny may get home1 but he will leave a wing or a leg4 ,most of them stay4 ,they just settle down into the stickiness with sleeping sickness4 ,the tuition in ,the ,college of ,needless ,knocks is very high indeed6 ,removed or ,knocked ,out8 ,the man who goes to jail ought to congratulate himself if he is guilty4 ,it is the man who does not get discovered who is to be pitied1 for he must get some more knocks4 ,the world loves to write resolutions of respect4 ,how often we write1 ,whereas1 it has pleased an all-wise ,providence to remove1 when we might reasonably ask whether the victim was removed or merely knocked out4 ,there is a good deal of suicide charged up to ,providence4 ,chapter ,,iii ,the ,college of ,needful ,knocks ,the ,bumps ,that ,bump ,into ,us ,,but occasionally all of us get bumps that we do not bump into4 ,they bump into us4 ,they are the guideboard knocks that point us to the higher pathway4 ,you were bumped yesterday or years ago4 ,maybe the wound has not yet healed4 ,maybe you think it never will heal4 ,you wondered why you were bumped4 ,some of you in this audience are just now wondering why4 ,you were doing right--doing just the best you knew how--and yet some blow came crushing upon you and gave you cruel pain4 ,it broke your heart4 ,you have had your heart broken4 ,i have had my heart broken more times than ,i care to talk about now4 ,your home was darkened1 your plans were wrecked1 you thought you had nothing more to live for4 ,i am like you4 ,i have had more trouble than anybody else4 ,i have never known anyone who had not had more trouble than anyone else4 ,but ,i am discovering that life only gets good after we have been killed a few times4 ,each death is a larger birth4 ,we all must learn1 if we have not already learned1 that these blows are lessons in ,the ,college of ,needful ,knocks4 ,they point upward to a higher path than we have been traveling4 ,in other words1 we are raw material4 ,you know what raw material is--material that needs more ,needful ,knocks to make it more useful and valuable4 ,the clothing we wear1 the food we eat1 the house we live in1 all have to have the ,needful ,knocks to become useful4 ,and so does humanity need the same preparation for greater usefulness4 ,i should like to know every person in this audience4 ,but the ones ,i should most appreciate knowing are the ones who have known the most of these knocks--who have faced the great crises of life and have been tried in the crucibles of affliction4 ,for ,i am learning that these lives are the gold tried in the fire4 ,the ,sorrows of the ,piano ,see the piano on this stage8 ,good evening1 ,mr4 ,piano4 ,i am glad to see you4 ,you are so shiny1 beautiful1 valuable and full of music1 if properly treated4 ,do you know how you got upon this stage1 ,mr4 ,piano8 ,you were bumped here4 ,this is no reflection upon the janitor4 ,you became a piano by the ,needful ,knocks4 ,i can see you back in your callow beginnings1 when you were just a tree--a tall1 green tree4 ,you were green6 ,only green things grow4 ,did you get the meaning of that1 children8 ,i hope you are green4 ,there you stood in the forest1 a perfectly good1 green young tree4 ,you got your lessons1 combed your hair1 went to ,sunday school and were the best young tree you could be4 ,that is why you were bumped--because you were good6 ,there came a man into the woods with an ax1 and he looked for the best trees there to bump4 ,he bumped you--hit you with the ax6 ,how it hurt you6 ,and how unjust it was6 ,he kept on hitting you4 ,the operation was just terrible4 ,finally you fell1 crushed1 broken1 bleeding4 ,it is a very sad story4 ,they took you all bumped and bleeding to the sawmill and they bumped and ripped you more4 ,they cut you in pieces and hammered you day by day4 ,they did not bump the little1 crooked1 dissipated1 cigaret-stunted trees4 ,they were not worth bumping4 ,but shake1 ,mr4 ,piano4 ,that is why you are on this stage4 ,you were bumped here4 ,all the beauty1 harmony and value were bumped into you4 ,the ,sufferings of the ,red ,mud ,one day ,i was up the ,missabe road about a hundred miles north of ,duluth1 ,minnesota1 and came to a hole in the ground4 ,it was a big hole--about a half-mile of hole4 ,there were steam-shovels at work throwing out of that hole what ,i thought was red mud4 ,kind sir1 why are they throwing that red mud out of that hole8 ,i asked a native4 ,that hain't red mud4 ,that's iron ore1 an' it's the best iron ore in the world4 ,what is it worth8 ,it hain't worth nothin' here2 that's why they're movin' it away4 ,there's red mud around every community that hain't worth nothin' until you move it--send it to college or somewhere4 ,not very long after this1 near ,pittsburgh1 ,pennsylvania1 ,i saw some of this same red mud4 ,it had been moved over the ,great ,lakes and the rails to what they call a blast furnace1 the technological name of which being ,the ,college of ,needful ,knocks for ,red ,mud4 ,i watched this red mud matriculate into a great hopper with limestone1 charcoal and other textbooks4 ,then they corked it up and school began4 ,they roasted it4 ,it is a great thing to be roasted4 ,when it was done roasting they stopped4 ,have you noticed that they always stop when anything is done roasting8 ,if we are yet getting roasted1 perhaps we are not done6 ,then they pulled the plug out of the bottom of the college and held promotion exercises4 ,the red mud squirted out into the sand4 ,it was not red mud now1 because it had been roasted4 ,it was a freshman--pig iron1 worth more than red mud1 because it had been roasted4 ,some of the pig iron went into another department1 a big teakettle1 where it was again roasted1 and now it came out a sophomore--steel1 worth more than pig iron4 ,some of the sophomore steel went up into another grade where it was roasted yet again and rolled thin into a junior4 ,some of that went on up and up1 at every step getting more pounding and roasting and affliction4 ,it seemed as tho ,i could hear the suffering red mud crying out1 ,o1 why did they take me away from my happy hole-in-the-ground8 ,why do they pound me and break my heart8 ,i have been good and faithful4 ,o1 why do they roast me8 ,o1 ,i'll never get over this6 ,but after they had given it a diploma--a pricemark telling how much it had been roasted--they took it proudly all over the world1 labeled ,made in ,america4 ,they hung it in show windows1 they put it in glass cases4 ,many people admired it and said1 ,isn't that fine work6 ,they paid much money for it now4 ,they paid the most money for what had been roasted the most4 ,if a ton of that red mud had become watch-springs or razor-blades1 the price had gone up into thousands of dollars4 ,my friends1 you and ,i are the raw material1 the green trees1 the red mud4 ,the ,needful ,knocks are necessary to make us serviceable4 ,every bump is raising our price4 ,every bump is disclosing a path to a larger life4 ,the diamond and the chunk of soft coal are exactly the same material1 say the chemists4 ,but the diamond has gone to ,the ,college of ,needful ,knocks more than has her crude sister of the coal-scuttle4 ,there is no human diamond that has not been crystallized in the crucibles of affliction4 ,there is no gold that has not been refined in the fire4 ,cripple ,taught by ,bumps ,one evening when ,i was trying to lecture in a chautauqua tent in ,illinois1 a crippled woman was wheeled into the tent and brought right down to the foot of the platform4 ,the subject was ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,presently the cripple's face was shining brighter than the footlights4 ,she knew about the knocks6 ,afterwards ,i went to her4 ,little lady1 ,i want to thank you for coming here4 ,i have the feeling that ,i spoke the words1 but you are the lecture itself4 ,what a smile she gave me6 ,yes1 ,i know about the hard knocks1 she said4 ,i have been in pain most of my life4 ,but ,i have learned all that ,i know sitting in this chair4 ,i have learned to be patient and kind and loving and brave4 ,they told me this crippled woman was the sweetest-spirited1 best-loved person in the town4 ,but her mother petulantly interrupted me4 ,she had wheeled the cripple into the tent4 ,she was tall and stately4 ,she was well-gowned4 ,she lived in one of the finest homes in the city4 ,she had everything that money could buy4 ,but her money seemed unable to buy the frown from her face4 ,mr4 ,lecture ,man1 she said1 why is everybody interested in my daughter and nobody interested in me8 ,why is my daughter happy and why am ,i not happy8 ,my daughter is always happy and she hasn't a single thing to make her happy4 ,i am not happy4 ,i have not been happy for years4 ,why am ,i not happy8 ,what would you have said8 ,just on the spur of the moment--,i said1 ,madam1 ,i don't want to be unkind1 but ,i really think the reason you are not happy is that you haven't been bumped enough4 ,i discover when ,i am unhappy and selfish and people don't use me right1 ,i need another bump4 ,the cripple girl had traveled ahead of her jealous mother4 ,for selfishness cripples us more than paralysis4 ,schools of ,sympathy ,when ,i see a long row of cots in a hospital or sanitarium1 ,i want to congratulate the patients lying there4 ,they are learning the precious lessons of patience1 sympathy1 love1 faith and courage4 ,they are getting the education in the humanities the world needs more than tables of logarithms4 ,only those who have suffered can sympathize4 ,they are to become a precious part of our population4 ,the world needs them more than libraries and foundations4 ,the ,silver ,lining ,there is no backward step in life4 ,whatever experiences come to us are truly new chapters of our education if we are willing to learn them4 ,we think this is true of the good things that come to us1 but we do not want to think so of the bad things4 ,yet we grow more in lean years than in fat years4 ,in fat years we put it in our pockets4 ,in lean years we put it in our hearts4 ,material and spiritual prosperity do not often travel hand-in-hand4 ,when we become materially very prosperous1 so many of us begin to say1 ,is not this ,babylon that ,i have builded8 ,and about that time there comes some handwriting on the wall and a bump to save us4 ,think of what might happen to you today4 ,your home might burn4 ,we don't want your home to burn1 but somebody's home is burning just now4 ,a conflagration might sweep your town from the map4 ,your business might wreck4 ,your fortune might be swept away4 ,your good name might be tarnished4 ,bereavement might take from you the one you love most4 ,you would never know how many real friends you have until then4 ,but look out6 ,some of your friends would say1 ,i am so sorry for you4 ,you are down and out4 ,do not believe that you are down and out1 for it is not true4 ,the old enemy of humanity wants you to believe you are down and out4 ,he wants you to sympathize with yourself4 ,you are never down and out6 ,the truth is1 another chapter of your real education has been opened4 ,will you read the lesson of the ,needful ,knocks8 ,a great conflagration1 a cyclone1 a railroad wreck1 an epidemic or other public disaster brings sympathy1 bravery1 brotherhood and love in its wake4 ,there is a silver lining to every hard knocks cloud4 ,out of the trenches of the ,great ,war come nations chastened by sacrifice and purged of their dross4 ,chapter ,,iv ,shake ,the ,barrel ,how ,we ,decide ,our ,destinies ,,now as we learn the lessons of the ,needless and the ,needful ,knocks1 we get wisdom1 understanding1 happiness1 strength1 success and greatness4 ,we go up in life4 ,we become educated4 ,let me bring you a picture of it4 ,one day the train stopped at a station to take water4 ,beside the track was a grocery with a row of barrels of apples in front4 ,there was one barrel full of big1 red1 fat apples4 ,i rushed over and got a sack of the big1 red1 fat apples4 ,later as the train was under way1 ,i looked in the sack and discovered there was not a big1 red1 fat apple there4 ,all ,i could figure out was that there was only one layer of the big1 red1 fat apples on the top1 and the groceryman1 not desiring to spoil his sign1 had reached down under the top layer4 ,he must have reached to the bottom1 for he gave me the worst mess of runts and windfalls ,i ever saw in one sack4 ,the things ,i said about the grocery business must have kept the recording angel busy4 ,then ,i calmed down4 ,did the groceryman do that on purpose8 ,does the groceryman ever put the big apples on top and the little ones down underneath8 ,do you8 ,is there a groceryman in the audience8 ,man of sorrows1 you have been slandered4 ,it never occurred to me until that day on the train that the groceryman does not put the big ones on top and the little ones down underneath4 ,he does not need to do it4 ,it does itself4 ,it is the shaking of the barrel that pushes the big ones up and the little ones down4 ,shake to ,their ,places ,you laugh8 ,you don't believe that8 ,maybe your roads are so good and smooth that things do not shake on the road to town4 ,but back in the ,black ,swamp of ,ohio we had corduroy roads4 ,did you ever see a corduroy road8 ,it was a layer of logs in the mud4 ,riding over it was the poetry of motion6 ,the wagon hit the high spots4 ,and as ,i hauled a wagon-bed full of apples to the cider-mill over a corduroy road1 the apples sorted out by the jolting4 ,the big apples would try to get to the top4 ,the little1 runty apples would try to hold a mass meeting at the bottom4 ,i saw that for thirty years before ,i saw it4 ,did you ever notice how long you have to see most things before you see them8 ,i saw that when ,i played marbles4 ,the big marbles would shake to the top of my pocket and the little ones would rattle down to the bottom4 ,you children try that tomorrow4 ,do not wait thirty years to learn that the big ones shake up and the little ones shake down4 ,put some big ones and some little things of about the same density in a box or other container and shake them4 ,you will see the larger things shake upward and the smaller shake downward4 ,you will see every thing shake to the place its size determines4 ,a little larger one shakes a little higher1 and a little smaller one a little lower4 ,when things find their place1 you can shake on till doomsday1 but you cannot change the place of one of the objects4 ,mix them up again and shake4 ,watch them all shake back as they were before1 the largest on top and the smallest at the bottom4 ,lectures in ,cans ,at this place the lecturer exhibits a glass jar more than half-filled with small white beans and a few walnuts4 ,let us try that right on the platform4 ,here is a glass jar and inside of it you see two sizes of objects--a lot of little white beans and some walnuts4 ,you will pardon me for bringing such a simple and crude apparatus before you in a lecture1 but ,i ask your forbearance4 ,i am discovering that we can hear faster thru the eye than thru the ear4 ,i want to make this so vivid that you will never forget it1 and ,i do not want these young people to live thirty years before they see it4 ,if there are sermons in stones1 there must be lectures in cans4 ,this is a canned lecture4 ,let the can talk to you awhile4 ,you note as ,i shake the jar the little beans quickly settle down and the big walnuts shake up4 ,not one bean asks1 ,which way do ,i go8 ,not one walnut asks1 ,which way do ,i go8 ,each one automatically goes the right way4 ,the little ones go down and the big ones go up4 ,note that ,i mix them all up and then shake4 ,note that they arrange themselves just as they were before4 ,suppose those objects could talk4 ,i think ,i hear that littlest bean down in the bottom saying1 ,help me6 ,help me6 ,i am so unfortunate and low down4 ,i never had no chance like them big ones up there4 ,help me up4 ,i say1 ,yes1 you little bean1 ,i'll help you4 ,so ,i lift him up to the top4 ,see6 ,i have boosted him4 ,i have uplifted him4 ,see1 the can shakes4 ,back to the bottom shakes the little bean4 ,and ,i hear him say1 ,king's ex6 ,i slipped4 ,try that again and ,i'll stay on top4 ,so ,i put him back again on top4 ,the can shakes4 ,the little bean again shakes back to the bottom4 ,he is too small to stay up4 ,he cannot stand prosperity4 ,then ,i hear ,little ,bean say1 ,well1 if ,i cannot get to the top1 you make them big ones come down4 ,give every one an equal chance4 ,so ,i say1 ,yes1 sir1 ,little ,bean4 ,here1 you big ones on top1 get down4 ,you ,big ,nuts get right down there on a level with ,little ,bean6 ,and you see ,i put them down4 ,but ,i shake the can1 and the big ones go right back to the top with the same shakes that send the little ones back to the bottom4 ,there is only one way for those objects to change their place in the can4 ,lifting them up or putting them down will not do it4 ,but change their size6 ,equality of position demands quality of size4 ,let the little one grow bigger and he will shake up4 ,let the big one grow smaller and he will shake down4 ,the ,shaking ,barrel of ,life ,o1 fellow apples6 ,we are all apples in the barrel of life on the way to the market place of the future4 ,it is a corduroy road and the barrel shakes all the time4 ,in the barrel are big apples1 little apples1 freckled apples1 speckled apples1 green apples1 and dried apples4 ,a bad boy on the front row shouted the other night1 ,and rotten apples6 ,in other words1 all the people of the world are in the great barrel of life4 ,that barrel is shaking all the time4 ,every community is shaking1 every place is shaking4 ,the offices1 the shops1 the stores1 the schools1 the pulpits1 the homes--every place where we live or work is shaking4 ,life is a constant survival of the fittest4 ,the same law that shakes the little ones down and the big ones up in that can is shaking every person to the place he fits in the barrel of life4 ,it is sending small people down and great people up4 ,and do you not see that we are very foolish when we want to be lifted up to some big place1 or when we want some big person to be put down to some little place8 ,we are foolishly trying to overturn the eternal law of life4 ,we shake right back to the places our size determines4 ,we must get ready for places before we can get them and keep them4 ,the very worst thing that can happen to anybody is to be artificially boosted up into some place where he rattles4 ,i hear a good deal about destiny4 ,some people seem to think destiny is something like a train and if we do not get to the depot in time our train of destiny will run off and leave us1 and we will have no destiny4 ,there is destiny--that jar4 ,if we are small we shall have a small destiny4 ,if we are great we shall have a great destiny4 ,we cannot dodge our destiny4 ,kings and ,queens of ,destiny ,the objects in that jar cannot change their size4 ,but thank ,god1 you and ,i are not helpless victims of blind fate4 ,we are not creatures of chance4 ,we have it in our hands to decide our destiny as we grow or refuse to grow4 ,we shake down if we become small2 we shake up if we become great4 ,and when we have reached the place our size determines1 we stay there so long as we stay that size4 ,if we wish to change our place1 we must first change our size4 ,if we wish to go down1 we must grow smaller and we shall shake down4 ,if we wish to go up1 we must grow greater1 and we shall shake up4 ,each person is doing one of three things consciously or unconsciously4 #a4 ,he is holding his place4 #b4 ,he is going down4 #c4 ,he is going up4 ,in order to hold his place he must hold his size4 ,he must fill the place4 ,if he shrinks up he will rattle4 ,nobody can stay long where he rattles4 ,nature abhors a rattler4 ,he shakes down to a smaller place4 ,in order to stay the same size he must grow enough each day to supply the loss by evaporation4 ,evaporation is going steadily on in lives as well as in liquids4 ,if we are not growing any1 we are rattling4 ,we ,compel ,promotion ,so you young people should keep in mind that you will shake into the places you fit4 ,and when you are in your places--in stores1 shops1 offices or elsewhere1 if you want to hold your place you must keep growing enough to keep it tightly filled4 ,if you want a greater place1 you simply grow greater and they cannot keep you down4 ,you do not ask for promotion1 you compel promotion4 ,you grow greater1 enlarge your dimensions1 develop new capabilities1 do more than you are paid to do--overfill your place1 and you shake up to a greater place4 ,i believe if ,i were so fortunate or unfortunate as to have a number of people working for me1 ,i would have a jar in my office filled with various sizes of objects4 ,when an employee would come into the office and say1 ,isn't it about time ,i was getting a raise8 ,i would say1 ,go shake the jar1 ,charlie4 ,that is the way you get raised4 ,as you grow greater you won't need to ask to be promoted4 ,you will promote yourself4 ,good ,luck and ,bad ,luck ,this jar tells me so much about luck4 ,i have noted that the lucky people shake up and the unlucky people shake down4 ,that is1 the lucky people grow great and the unlucky people shrivel and rattle4 ,notice as ,i bump this jar4 ,two things happened4 ,the little ones shook down and the big ones shook up4 ,the bump that was bad luck to the little ones was good luck to the big ones4 ,the same bump was both good luck and bad luck4 ,luck does not depend upon the direction of the bump1 but upon the size of the bump-ee6 ,the ,lucky ,one ,so everywhere you look you see the barrel sorting people according to size4 ,every business concern can tell you stories like that of the ,chicago house where a number of young ladies worked4 ,some of them had been there for a long time4 ,there came a raw1 green ,dutch girl from the country4 ,it was her first office experience1 and she got the bottom job4 ,the other girls poked fun at her and played jokes upon her because she was so green4 ,do you remember that green things grow8 ,is not she the limit8 they oft spake one to another4 ,she was4 ,she made many blunders4 ,but it is now recalled that she never made the same blunder twice4 ,she learned the lesson with one helping to the bumps4 ,and she never got done4 ,when she had finished her work1 the work she had been put at1 she would discover something else that ought to be done1 and she would go right on working1 contrary to the rules of the union6 ,without being told1 mind you4 ,she had that rare faculty the world is bidding for--initiative4 ,the other girls got done4 ,when they had finished the work they had been put at1 they would wait--,o1 so patiently they would wait--to be told what to do next4 ,within three months every other girl in that office was asking questions of the little ,dutch girl4 ,she had learned more about business in three months than the others had learned in all the time they had been there4 ,nothing ever escaped her4 ,she had become the most capable girl in the office4 ,the barrel did the rest4 ,today she is giving orders to all of them1 for she is the office superintendent4 ,the other girls feel hurt about it4 ,they will tell you in confidence that it was the rankest favoritism ever known4 ,there was nothing fair about it4 ,jennie ought to have been made superintendent4 ,jennie had been here four years4 ,the ,unlucky ,one ,the other day in a paper-mill ,i was standing beside a long machine making shiny super-calendered paper4 ,i asked the man working there some questions about the machine1 which he answered fairly well4 ,then ,i asked him about a machine in the next room4 ,he said1 ,i don't know nothing about it1 boss1 ,i don't work in there4 ,i asked him about another process1 and he replied1 ,i don't know nothing about it1 ,i never worked in there4 ,i asked him about the pulpmill4 ,he replied1 ,no1 ,i don't know nothing about that1 neither4 ,i don't work in there4 ,and he did not betray the least desire to know anything about anything4 ,how long have you worked here8 ,about twelve years4 ,going out of the building1 ,i asked the foreman1 ,do you see that man over there at the supercalendered machine8 pointing to the man who didn't know4 ,is he a human being8 ,the foreman's face clouded4 ,i hate to talk to you about that man4 ,he is one of the kindest-hearted men we ever had in the works1 but we've got to let him go4 ,we're afraid he'll break the machine4 ,he isn't interested1 does not learn1 doesn't try to learn4 ,so he had begun to rattle4 ,nobody can stay where he rattles4 ,it is grow or go4 ,life's ,barrel the ,leveler ,so books could be filled with just such stories of how people have gone up and down4 ,you may have noticed two brothers start with the same chance1 and presently notice that one is going up and the other is going down4 ,some of us begin life on the top branches1 right in the sunshine of popular favor1 and get our names in the blue-book at the start4 ,some of us begin down in the shade on the bottom branches1 and we do not even get invited4 ,we often become discouraged as we look at the top-branchers1 and we say1 ,o1 if ,i only had his chance6 ,if ,i were only up there ,i might amount to something4 ,but ,i am too low down4 ,we can grow4 ,everybody can grow4 ,and afterwhile we are all in the barrel of life1 shaken and bumped about4 ,there the real people do not often ask us1 ,on what branch of that tree did you grow8 ,but they often inquire1 ,are you big enough to fill this place8 ,the ,fatal ,rattle6 ,now life is mainly routine4 ,you and ,i and everybody must go on doing pretty much the same things over and over4 ,every day we appear to have about the same round of duties4 ,but if we let life become routine1 we are shaking down4 ,the very routine of life must every day flash a new attractiveness4 ,we must be learning new things and discovering new joys in our daily routine or we become unhappy4 ,if we go on doing just the same things in the same way day after day1 thinking the same thoughts1 our eyes glued to precedents--just turning round and round in our places and not growing any1 pretty soon we become mere machines4 ,we wear smaller4 ,the joy and juice go out of our lives4 ,we shrivel and rattle4 ,the success1 joy and glory of life are in learning1 growing1 going forward and upward4 ,that is the only way to hold our place4 ,the farmer must be learning new things about farming to hold his place this progressive age as a farmer4 ,the merchant must be growing into a greater1 wiser merchant to hold his place among his competitors4 ,the minister must be getting larger visions of the ministry as he goes back into the same old pulpit to keep on filling it4 ,the teacher must be seeing new possibilities in the same old schoolroom4 ,the mother must be getting a larger horizon in her homemaking4 ,we only live as we grow and learn4 ,when anybody stays in the same place year after year and fills it1 he does not rattle4 ,unless the place is a grave6 ,i shiver as ,i see the pages of school advertisements in the journals labeled ,finishing ,schools1 and ,a ,place to ,finish ,your ,child4 ,i know the schools generally mean all right1 but ,i fear the students will get the idea they are being finished1 which finishes them4 ,we never finish while we live4 ,a school finishing is a commencement1 not an end-ment4 ,i am sorry for the one who says1 ,i know all there is to know about that4 ,you can't tell me anything about that4 ,he is generally rattling4 ,the greater and wiser the man1 the more anxious he is to be told4 ,i am sorry for the one who struts around saying1 ,i own the job4 ,they can't get along without me4 ,for ,i feel that they are getting ready to get along without him4 ,that noise you hear is the death-rattle in his throat4 ,big business men keep their ears open for rattles in their machinery4 ,i am sorry for the man1 community or institution that spends much time pointing backward with pride and talking about in my day6 ,for it is mostly rattle4 ,the live one's my day is today and tomorrow4 ,the dead one's is yesterday4 ,we ,must ,get ,ready to ,get ,we young people come up into life wanting great places4 ,i would not give much for a young person 7or any other person7 who does not want a great place4 ,i would not give much for anybody who does not look forward to greater and better things tomorrow4 ,we often think the way to get a great place is just to go after it and get it4 ,if we do not have pull enough1 get some more pull4 ,get some more testimonials4 ,we think if we could only get into a great place we would be great4 ,but unless we have grown as great as the place we would be a great joke1 for we would rattle4 ,and when we have grown as great as the place1 that sized place will generally come seeking us4 ,we do not become great by getting into a great place1 any more than a boy becomes a man by getting into his father's boots4 ,he is in great boots1 but he rattles4 ,he must grow greater feet before he gets greater boots4 ,but he must get the feet before he gets the boots4 ,we must get ready for things before we get them4 ,all life is preparation for greater things4 ,moses was eighty years getting ready to do forty years work4 ,the ,master was thirty years getting ready to do three years work4 ,so many of us expect to get ready in four easy lessons by mail4 ,we can be a pumpkin in one summer1 with the accent on the punk4 ,we can be a mushroom in a day1 with the accent on the mush4 ,but we cannot become an oak that way4 ,the world is not greatly impressed by testimonials4 ,the man who has the most testimonials generally needs them most to keep him from rattling4 ,a testimonial so often becomes a crutch4 ,many a man writes a testimonial to get rid of somebody4 ,well1 ,i hope it will do him some good4 ,anyhow1 ,i have gotten him off my hands4 ,i heard a ,chicago superintendent say to his foreman1 ,give him a testimonial and fire him6 ,it is dangerous to overboost people1 for the higher you boost them the farther they will fall4 ,the ,menace of the ,press-,notice ,now testimonials and press-notices very often serve useful ends4 ,in lyceum work1 in teaching1 in very many lines1 they are often useful to introduce a stranger4 ,a letter of introduction is useful4 ,a diploma1 a degree1 a certificate1 a license1 are but different kinds of testimonials4 ,the danger is that the hero of them may get to leaning upon them4 ,then they become a mirror for his vanity instead of a monitor for his vitality4 ,most testimonials and press-notices are frank flatteries4 ,they magnify the good points and say little as possible about the bad ones4 ,i look back over my lyceum life and see that ,i hindered my progress by reading my press-notices instead of listening to the verdict of my audiences4 ,i avoided frank criticism4 ,it would hurt me4 ,whenever ,i heard an adverse criticism1 ,i would go and read a few press-notices4 ,there1 ,i am all right1 for this clipping says ,i am the greatest ever1 and should he return1 no hall would be able to contain the crowd4 ,and my vanity bump would again rise4 ,alas6 ,how often ,i have learned that when ,i did return the hall that was filled before was entirely too big for the audience6 ,the editors of ,america--,god bless them6 ,they are always trying to boost a home enterprise--not for the sake of the imported attraction but for the sake of the home folks who import it4 ,we must read people1 not press-notices4 ,when you get to the place where you can stand aside and see yourself go by--when you can keep still and see every fibre of you and your work mercilessly dissected1 shake hands with yourself and rejoice1 for the kingdom of success is yours4 ,the ,artificial ,uplift ,there are so many loving1 sincere1 foolish1 cruel uplift movements in the land4 ,they spring up1 fail1 wail1 disappear1 only to be succeeded by twice as many more4 ,they fail because instead of having the barrel do the uplifting1 they try to do it with a derrick4 ,the victims of the artificial uplift cannot stay uplifted4 ,they rattle back1 and the last estate of that man is worse than the first4 ,you cannot uplift a beggar by giving him alms4 ,you are using the derrick4 ,we must feed the hungry and clothe the naked1 but that is not helping them1 that is propping them4 ,the beggar who asks you to help him does not want to be helped4 ,he wants to be propped4 ,he wants you to license him and professionalize him as a beggar4 ,you can only help a man to help himself4 ,help him to grow4 ,you cannot help many people1 for there are not many people willing to be helped on the inside4 ,not many willing to grow up4 ,when ,peter and ,john went up to the temple they found the lame beggar sitting at the gate ,beautiful4 ,every day the beggar had been helped4 ,every day as they laid him at the gate people would pass thru the gate and see him4 ,he would say1 ,help me6 ,poor man1 they would reply1 you are in a bad fix4 ,here is help1 and they would throw him some money4 ,and so every day that beggar got to be more of a beggar4 ,the public helped him to be poorer in spirit1 more helpless and a more hopeless cripple4 ,no doubt he belonged after a few days of the helping to the ,jerusalem ,beggars' ,union and carried his card4 ,maybe he paid a commission for such a choice beggars' beat4 ,but ,peter really helped him4 ,silver and gold have ,i none2 but such as ,i have give ,i thee3 ,in the name of ,jesus ,christ of ,nazareth rise up and walk4 ,fix the ,people1 ,not the ,barrel ,i used to say1 ,nobody uses me right4 ,nobody gives me a chance4 ,but if chances had been snakes1 ,i would have been bitten a hundred times a day4 ,we need oculists1 not opportunities4 ,i used to work on the section and get a dollar and fifteen cents a day4 ,i rattled there4 ,i did not earn my dollar fifteen4 ,i tried to see how little ,i could do and look like ,i was working4 ,i was the ,artful ,dodger of ,section ,sixteen4 ,when the whistle would blow--,o1 joyful sound6--,i would leave my pick hang right up in the air4 ,i would not bring it down again for a soulless corporation4 ,i used to wonder as ,i passed ,bill ,barlow's bank on the way down to the section-house1 why ,i was not president of that bank4 ,i wondered why ,i was not sitting upon one of those mahogany seats instead of pumping a handcar4 ,i was naturally bright4 ,i used to say ,if the rich wasn't getting richer and the poor poorer1 ,i'd be president of a bank4 ,did you ever hear that line of conversation8 ,it generally comes from somebody who rattles where he is4 ,i am so glad now that ,i did not get to be president of the bank4 ,they are glad1 too6 ,i would have rattled down in about fifteen minutes1 down to the peanut row1 for ,i was only a peanut4 ,remember1 the hand-car job is just as honorable as the bank job1 but as ,i was not faithful over a few things1 ,i would have rattled over many things4 ,the fairy books love to tell about some clodhopper suddenly enchanted up into a king4 ,but life's good fairies see to it that the clodhopper is enchanted into readiness for kingship before he lands upon the throne4 ,the only way to rule others is to learn to rule ourself4 ,i used to say1 ,just wait till ,i get to ,congress4 ,i think they are all waiting6 ,i'll fix things4 ,i'll pass laws requiring all apples to be the same size4 ,yes1 ,i'll pass laws to turn the barrel upside down1 so the little ones will be on the top and the big ones will be at the bottom4 ,but ,i had not seen that it wouldn't matter which end was the top1 the big ones would shake right up to it and the little ones would shake down to the bottom4 ,the little man has the chance now1 just as fast as he grows4 ,you cannot fix the barrel4 ,you can only fix the people inside the barrel4 ,have you ever noticed that the man who is not willing to fix himself1 is the one who wants to get the most laws passed to fix other people8 ,he wants something for nothing4 ,that ,cruel ,fate ,o1 ,i am so glad ,i did not get the things ,i wanted at the time ,i wanted them6 ,they would have been coffee-pots4 ,thank goodness1 we do not get the coffee-pot until we are ready to handle it4 ,today you and ,i have things we couldn't have yesterday4 ,we just wanted them yesterday4 ,o1 how we wanted them6 ,but a cruel fate would not let us have them4 ,today we have them4 ,they come to us as naturally today1 and we see it is because we have grown ready for them1 and the barrel has shaken us up to them4 ,today you and ,i want things beyond our reach4 ,o1 how we want them6 ,but a cruel fate will not let us have them4 ,do you not see that cruel fate is our own smallness and unreadiness8 ,as we grow greater we have greater things4 ,we have today all we can stand today4 ,more would wreck us4 ,more would start us to rattling4 ,getting up is growing up4 ,and this blessed old barrel of life is just waiting and anxious to shake everybody up as fast as everybody grows4 ,chapter ,v ,going ,up ,how ,we ,become ,great ,,we go up as we grow great4 ,that is1 we go up as we grow up4 ,but so many are trying to grow great on the outside without growing great on the inside4 ,they rattle on the inside6 ,they fool themselves1 but nobody else4 ,there is only one greatness--inside greatness4 ,all outside greatness is merely an incidental reflection of the inside4 ,greatness is not measured in any material terms4 ,it is not measured in inches1 dollars1 acres1 votes1 hurrahs1 or by any other of the world's yardsticks or barometers4 ,greatness is measured in spiritual terms4 ,it is education4 ,it is life expansion4 ,we go up from selfishness to unselfishness4 ,we go up from impurity to purity4 ,we go up from unhappiness to happiness4 ,we go up from weakness to strength4 ,we go up from low ideals to high ideals4 ,we go up from little vision to greater vision4 ,we go up from foolishness to wisdom4 ,we go up from fear to faith4 ,we go up from ignorance to understanding4 ,we go up by our own personal efforts4 ,we go up by our own service1 sacrifice1 struggle and overcoming4 ,we push out our own skyline4 ,we rise above our own obstacles4 ,we learn to see1 hear1 hold and understand4 ,we may become very great1 very educated1 rise very high1 and yet not leave our kitchen or blacksmith shop4 ,we take the kitchen or blacksmith shop right up with us6 ,we make it a great kitchen or great blacksmith shop4 ,it becomes our throne-room6 ,come1 let us grow greater4 ,there is a throne for each of us4 ,getting to the ,top ,getting to the top is the world's pet delusion4 ,there is no top4 ,no matter how high we rise1 we discover infinite distances above4 ,the higher we rise1 the better we see that life on this planet is the going up from the ,finite to the ,infinite4 ,the world says that to get greatness means to get great things4 ,so the world is in the business of getting--getting great fortunes1 great lands1 great titles1 great applause1 great fame1 and folderol4 ,afterwhile the poor old world hears the empty rattle of the inside1 and wails1 ,all is vanity4 ,i find no pleasure in them4 ,life is a failure4 ,all outside life is a failure4 ,real life is in being things on the inside1 not in getting things on the outside4 ,i weary of the world's pink-sheet extras about ,getting to the ,top and ,forging to the ,front4 ,too often they are the sordid story of a few scrambling over the heads of the weaker ones4 ,sometimes they are the story of one pig crowding the other pigs out of the trough and cornering all the swill6 ,the ,secret of ,greatness ,christ ,jesus was a great ,teacher4 ,his mission was to educate humanity4 ,there came to him those two disciples who wanted to get to the top4 ,those two sons of ,zebedee wanted to have the greatest places in the new kingdom they imagined he would establish on earth4 ,they got very busy pursuing greatness1 but ,i do not read that they were half so busy preparing for greatness4 ,they even had their mother out electioneering for them4 ,o1 ,master1 said the mother1 grant that these my two sons may sit1 the one on thy right hand1 and the other on the left1 in thy kingdom4 ,the ,master looked with love and pity upon their unpreparedness4 ,are ye able to drink of the cup8 ,then he gave the only definition of greatness that can ever stand3 ,whosoever will be great among you1 let him be your minister2 and whosoever will be chief among you1 let him be your servant4 ,that is we cannot be born great1 nor have greatness thrust upon us4 ,we must achieve greatness by developing it on the inside--developing ability to minister and to serve4 ,we cannot buy a great arm4 ,our arm must become a great servant1 and thus it becomes great4 ,we cannot buy a great mind4 ,our mind must become a great servant1 and thus it becomes great4 ,we cannot buy a great character4 ,it is earned in great moral service4 ,the ,first ,step at ,hand ,this is the ,big ,business of life--going up1 getting educated1 getting greatness on the inside4 ,getting greatness on the outside is little business4 ,much of it mighty little4 ,everybody's privilege and duty is to become great4 ,and the joy of it is that the first step is always nearest at hand4 ,we do not have to go off to ,new ,york or ,chicago or go chasing around the world to become great4 ,it is a great stairway that leads from where our feet are now upward for an infinite number of steps4 ,we must take the first step now4 ,most of us want to take the hundredth step or the thousandth step now4 ,we want to make some spectacular stride of a thousand steps at one leap4 ,that is why we fall so hard when we miss our step4 ,we must go right back to our old place--into our kitchen or our workshop or our office and take the first step1 solve the problem nearest at hand4 ,we must make our old work luminous with a new devotion4 ,we must battle up over every inch4 ,and as fast as we solve and dissolve the difficulties and turn our burdens into blessings1 we find love1 the universal solvent1 shining out of our lives4 ,we find our spiritual influences going upward4 ,so the winds of earth are born2 they rush in from the cold lands to the warm upward currents4 ,and so as our problems disappear and our life currents set upward1 the world is drawn toward us with its problems4 ,we find our kitchen or workshop or office becoming a new throne of power4 ,we find the world around us rising up to call us blessed4 ,as we grow greater our troubles grow smaller1 for we see them thru greater eyes4 ,we rise above them4 ,as we grow greater our opportunities grow greater4 ,that is1 we begin to see them4 ,they are around us all the time1 but we must get greater eyes to see them4 ,generally speaking1 the smaller our vision of our work1 the more we admire what we have accomplished and point with pride4 ,the greater our vision1 the more we see what is yet to be accomplished4 ,it was the sweet girl graduate who at commencement wondered how one small head could contain it all4 ,it was ,newton after giving the world a new science who looked back over it and said1 ,i seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore 99 99 99 while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me4 ,that great ocean is before us all4 ,the ,widow's ,mites ,the great ,teacher pointed to the widow who cast her two mites into the treasury1 and then to the rich men who had cast in much more4 ,this poor widow hath cast in more than they all4 ,for all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of ,god3 but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had4 ,tho the rich men had cast in more1 yet it was only a part of their possessions4 ,the widow cast in less1 but it was all she had4 ,the ,master cared little what the footings of the money were in the treasury4 ,that is not why we give4 ,we give to become great4 ,the widow had given all--had completely overcome her selfishness and fear of want4 ,becoming great is overcoming our selfishness and fear4 ,he that saveth his life shall lose it1 but he that loseth his life for the advancement of the kingdom of happiness on earth shall find it great and glorified4 ,our greatness therefore does not depend upon how much we give or upon what we do1 whether peeling potatoes or ruling a nation1 but upon the percentage of our output to our resources4 ,upon doing with our might what our hands find to do4 ,quit worrying about what you cannot get to do4 ,rejoice in doing the things you can get to do4 ,and as you are faithful over a few things you go up to be ruler over many4 ,the world says some of us have golden gifts and some have copper gifts4 ,but when we cast them all into the treasury of right service1 there is an alchemy that transmutes every gift into gold4 ,every work is drudgery when done selfishly4 ,every work becomes golden when done in a golden manner4 ,finding the ,great ,people ,i do not know who fitted the boards into the floor ,i stand upon4 ,i do not know all the great people who may come and stand upon this floor4 ,but ,i do know that the one who made the floor--and the one who sweeps it--is just as great as anybody in the world who may come and stand upon it1 if each be doing his work with the same love1 faithfulness and capability4 ,we have to look farther than the ,who's ,who and ,dun and ,bradstreet to make a roster of the great people of a community4 ,you will find the community heart in the precious handful who believe that the service of ,god is the service of man4 ,the great people of the community serve and sacrifice for a better tomorrow4 ,they are the faithful few who get behind the churches1 the schools1 the lyceum and chautauqua1 and all the other movements that go upward4 ,they are the ones who are always trying to run things4 ,they are the happy ones1 happy for the larger vision that comes as they go higher by unselfish service4 ,they are discovering that their sweetest pay comes from doing many things they are not paid for4 ,they rarely get thanked1 for the community does not often think of thanking them until it comes time to draft the resolutions of respect4 ,i had to go to the mouth of a coal-mine in a little ,illinois town1 to find the man the bureau had given as lyceum committeeman there4 ,i wondered what the grimy-faced man from the shaft1 wearing the miner's lamp in his cap1 could possibly have to do with the lyceum course4 ,but ,i learned that he had all to do with it4 ,he had sold the tickets and had done all the managing4 ,he was superintendent of the ,sunday school4 ,he was the storm-center of every altruistic effort in the town--the greatest man there1 because the most serviceable1 tho he worked every day full time with his pick at his bread-and-butter job4 ,the great people are so busy serving that they have little time to strut and pose in the show places4 ,few of them are prominent clubmen4 ,you rarely find their names in the society page4 ,they rarely give brilliant social functions4 ,their idle families attend to such things4 ,a ,glimpse of ,gunsaulus ,i found a great man lecturing at the chautauquas4 ,he preaches in ,chicago on ,sundays to thousands4 ,he writes books and runs a college he founded by his own preaching4 ,he is the mainspring of so many uplift movements that his name gets into the papers about every day1 and you read it in almost every committee doing good things in ,chicago4 ,he had broken away from ,chicago to have a vacation4 ,many people think that a vacation means going off somewhere and stretching out under trees or letting the mind become a blank4 ,but this ,chicago preacher went from one chautauqua town to another1 and took his vacation going up and down the streets4 ,he dug into the local history of each place1 and before dinner he knew more about the place than most of the natives4 ,there is a sermon for me1 he would exclaim every half-hour4 ,he went to see people who were doing things4 ,he went to see people who were doing nothing4 ,in every town he would discover somebody of unusual attainment4 ,he made every town an unusual town4 ,he turned the humdrum travel map into a wonderland4 ,he scolded lazy towns and praised enterprising ones4 ,he stopped young fellows on the streets4 ,what are you going to do in life8 ,perhaps the young man would say1 ,i have no chance4 ,you come to ,chicago and ,i'll give you a chance1 the man on his vacation would reply4 ,so this ,chicago preacher was busy every day1 working overtime on his vacation4 ,he was busy about other people's business4 ,he did not once ask the price of land1 nor where there was a good investment for himself1 but every day he was trying to make an investment in somebody else4 ,his friends would sometimes worry about him4 ,they would say1 ,why doesn't the doctor take care of himself1 instead of taking care of everybody else8 ,he wears himself out for other people until he hasn't strength enough left to lecture and do his own work4 ,sometimes they were right about that4 ,but he that saveth his life shall lose it1 and he that loseth his life in loving service finds it returning to him great and glorious4 ,this man's preaching did not make him great4 ,his college did not make him great4 ,his books did not make him great4 ,these are the by-products4 ,his life of service for others makes him great--makes his preaching1 his college and his books great4 ,this ,chicago man gives his life into the service of humanity1 and it becomes the fuel to make the steam to accomplish the wonderful things he does4 ,let him stop and take care of himself1 and his career would stop4 ,if he had begun life by taking care of himself and looking out for number one1 stipulating in advance every cent he was to get and writing it all down in the contract1 most likely ,dr4 ,frank ,w4 ,gunsaulus would have remained a struggling1 discouraged preacher in the backwoods of ,morrow county1 ,ohio4 ,give ,it ,now ,gunsaulus often says1 ,you are planning and saving and telling yourself that afterwhile you are going to give great things and do great things4 ,give it now6 ,give your dollar now1 rather than your thousands afterwhile4 ,you need to give it now1 and the world needs to get it now4 ,chapter ,,vi ,the ,problem of ,preparedness ,preparing ,children to ,live ,,the problem of preparedness is the problem of preparing children for life4 ,all other kinds of preparedness fade into insignificance before this4 ,the history of nations shows that their strength was not in the size of their armies and in the vastness of their population and wealth1 but in the strength and ideals of the individual citizens4 ,as long as the nation was young and growing--as long as the people were struggling and overcoming--that nation was strong4 ,it was prepared4 ,but when the struggle stopped1 the strength waned1 for the strength came from the struggle4 ,when the people became materially prosperous and surrendered to ease and indulgence1 they became fat1 stall-fed weaklings4 ,then they fell a prey to younger1 hardier peoples4 ,has the ,american nation reached that period8 ,many homes and communities have reached it4 ,all over ,america are fathers and mothers who have struggled and have become strong men and women thru their struggles1 who are saying1 ,our children shall have better chances than we had4 ,we are living for our children4 ,we are going to give them the best education our money can buy4 ,then1 forgetful of how they became strong1 they plan to take away from their children their birthright--their opportunity to become strong and prepared--thru struggle and service and overcoming4 ,most advantages are disadvantages4 ,giving a child a chance generally means getting out of his way4 ,many an orphan can be grateful that he was jolted from his life-preserver and cruelly forced to sink or swim4 ,thus he learned to swim4 ,we are going to give our children the best education our money can buy4 ,they think they can buy an education--buy wisdom1 strength and understanding1 and give it to them ,c4 ,o4 ,d6 ,they seem to think they will buy any brand they see--buy the home brand of education1 or else send off to ,new ,york or ,paris or to ,sears ,roebuck1 and get a bucketful or a tankful of education4 ,if they are rich enough1 maybe they will have a private pipeline of education laid to their home4 ,they are going to force this education into them regularly until they get them full of education4 ,they are going to get them fully inflated with education6 ,toll the bell6 ,there's going to be a blow out4 ,those inflated children are going to have to run on flat tires4 ,father and mother cannot buy their children education4 ,all they can do is to buy them some tools1 perhaps1 and open the gate and say1 ,sic 'em1 ,tige6 ,the children must get it themselves4 ,a father and mother might as well say1 ,we will buy our children the strength we have earned in our arms and the wisdom we have acquired in a life of struggle4 ,as well expect the athlete to give them his physical development he has earned in years of exercise4 ,as well expect the musician to give them the technic he has acquired in years of practice4 ,as well expect the scholar to give them the ability to think he has developed in years of study4 ,as well expect ,moses to give them his spiritual understanding acquired in a long life of prayer4 ,they can show the children the way1 but each child must make the journey4 ,here is a typical case4 ,the ,story of ,gussie ,there was a factory town back ,east4 ,not a pretty town1 but just a great1 dirty mill and a lot of little dirty houses around the mill4 ,the hands lived in the little dirty houses and worked six days of the week in the big mill4 ,there was a little1 old man who went about that mill1 often saying1 ,i hain't got no book l'arnin' like the rest of you4 ,he was the man who owned the mill4 ,he had made it with his own genius out of nothing4 ,he had become rich and honored4 ,every man in the mill loved him like a father4 ,he had an idolatry for a book4 ,he also had a little pink son1 whose name was ,f4 ,gustavus ,adolphus4 ,the little old man often said1 ,i'm going to give that boy the best education my money can buy4 ,he began to buy it4 ,he began to polish and sandpaper ,gussie from the minute the child could sit up in the cradle and notice things4 ,he sent him to the astrologer1 the phrenologer and all other ologers they had around there4 ,when ,gussie was old enough to export1 he sent the boy to one of the greatest universities in the land4 ,the fault was not with the university1 not with ,gussie1 who was bright and capable4 ,the fault was with the little old man1 who was so wise and great about everything else1 and so foolish about his own boy4 ,in the blindness of his love he robbed his boy of his birthright4 ,the birthright of every child is the opportunity of becoming great--of going up--of getting educated4 ,gussie had no chance to serve4 ,everything was handed to him on a silver platter4 ,gussie went thru that university about like a steer from ,texas goes thru ,mr4 ,armour's institute of packnology in ,chicago4 ,did you ever go over into ,packingtown and see a steer receive his education8 ,you remember1 then1 that after he matriculates--after he gets the grand bump1 said steer does not have to do another thing4 ,his education is all arranged for in advance and he merely rides thru and receives it4 ,there is a row of professors with their sleeves rolled up who give him the degrees4 ,so as ,mr4 ,t4 ,steer of ,panhandle goes riding thru on that endless cable from his ,a-,b-,c's to his eternal cold storage1 each professor hits him a dab4 ,he rides along from department to department until he is canned4 ,they canned ,gussie4 ,he had a man hired to study for him4 ,he rode from department to department4 ,they upholstered him1 enameled him1 manicured him1 sugar-cured him1 embalmed him4 ,finally ,gussie was done and the paint was dry4 ,he was a thing of beauty4 ,gussie and ,bill ,whackem ,gussie came back home with his education in the baggage-car4 ,it was checked4 ,the mill shut down on a week day1 the first time in its history4 ,the hands marched down to the depot1 and when the young lord alighted1 the factory band played1 ,see1 the ,conquering ,hero ,comes4 ,a few years later the mill shut down again on a week day4 ,there was crape hanging on the office door4 ,men and women stood weeping in the streets4 ,the little old man had been translated4 ,when they next opened up the mill1 ,f4 ,gustavus ,adolphus was at its head4 ,he had inherited the entire plant4 ,f4 ,gustavus ,adolphus1 ,president4 ,poor little peanut6 ,he rattled4 ,he had never grown great enough to fill so great a place4 ,in two years and seven months the mill was a wreck4 ,the monument of a father's lifetime was wrecked in two years and seven months by the boy who had all the advantages4 ,so the mill was shut down the third time on a week day4 ,it looked as tho it never could open4 ,but it did open1 and when it opened it had a new kind of boss4 ,if ,i were to give the new boss a descriptive name1 ,i would call him ,bill ,whackem4 ,he was an orphan4 ,he had little chance4 ,he had a new black eye almost every day4 ,but he seemed to fatten on bumps4 ,every time he was bumped he would swell up4 ,how fast he grew6 ,he became the most useful man in the community4 ,people forgot all about ,bill's lowly origin4 ,they got to looking up to him to start and run things4 ,so when the courts were looking for somebody big enough to take charge of the wrecked mill1 they simply had to appoint ,hon4 ,william ,whackem4 ,it was ,hon4 ,william ,whackem who put the wreckage together and made the wheels go round1 and finally got the hungry town back to work4 ,colleges ,give ,us ,tools ,after that a good many people said it was the college that made a fool of ,gussie4 ,they said ,bill succeeded so well because he never went to one of them highbrow schools4 ,i am sorry to say ,i thought that way for a good while4 ,but now ,i see that ,bill went up in spite of his handicaps4 ,if he had had ,gussie's fine equipment he might have accomplished vastly more4 ,the book and the college suffer at the hands of their friends4 ,they say to the book and the college1 ,give us an education4 ,they cannot do that4 ,you cannot get an education from the book and the college any more than you can get to ,new ,york by reading a travelers' guide4 ,you cannot get physical education by reading a book on gymnastics4 ,the book and the college show you the way1 give you instruction and furnish you finer working tools4 ,but the real education is the journey you make1 the strength you develop1 the service you perform with these instruments and tools4 ,gussie was in the position of a man with a very fine equipment of tools and no experience in using them4 ,bill was the man with the poor1 homemade1 crude tools1 but with the energy1 vision and strength developed by struggle4 ,the ,hard ,knocks ,graduates ,for education is getting wisdom1 understanding1 strength1 greatness1 physically1 mentally and morally4 ,i believe ,i know some people liberally educated who cannot write their own names4 ,but they have served and overcome and developed great lives with the poor1 crude tools at their command4 ,in almost every community are what we sometimes call hard knocks graduates--people who have never been to college nor have studied many or any books4 ,yet they are educated to the degree they have acquired these elements of greatness in their lives4 ,they realized how they have been handicapped by their poor mental tools4 ,that is why they say1 ,all my life ,i have been handicapped by lack of proper preparation4 ,don't make my mistake1 children1 go to school4 ,the young person with electrical genius will make an electrical machine from a few bits of junk4 ,but send him to ,westinghouse and see how much more he will achieve with the same genius and with finer equipment4 ,get the best tools you can4 ,but remember diplomas1 degrees are not an education1 they are merely preparations4 ,when you are thru with the books1 remember1 you are having a commencement1 not an end-ment4 ,you will discover with the passing years that life is just one series of greater commencements4 ,go out with your fine equipment from your commencements into the school of service and write your education in the only book you ever can know--the book of your experience4 ,that is what you know--what the courts will take as evidence when they put you upon the witness stand4 ,the ,tragedy of ,unpreparedness ,the story of ,gussie and ,bill ,whackem is being written in every community in tears1 failure and heartache4 ,it is peculiarly a tragedy of our ,american civilization today4 ,these fathers and mothers who toil and save1 who get great farms1 fine homes and large bank accounts1 so often think they can give greatness to their children--they can make great places for them in life and put them into them4 ,they do all this and the children rattle4 ,they have had no chance to grow great enough for the places4 ,the child gets the blame for making the wreck1 even as ,gussie was blamed for wrecking his father's plant1 when the child is the victim4 ,a man heard me telling the story of ,gussie and ,bill ,whackem1 and he went out of my audience very indignant4 ,he said he was very glad his boy was not there to hear it4 ,but that good1 deluded father now has his head bowed in shame over the career of his spoiled son4 ,i rarely tell of it on a platform that at the close of the lecture somebody does not take me aside and tell me a story just as sad from that community4 ,for years poor ,harry ,thaw was front-paged on the newspapers and gibbeted in the pulpits as the shocking example of youthful depravity4 ,he seems never to have had a fighting chance to become a man4 ,he seems to have been robbed of his birthright from the cradle4 ,yet the father of this boy who has cost ,america millions in court and detention expenses was one of the greatest business generals of the ,keystone state4 ,he could plat great coal empires and command armies of men1 but he seems to have been pitifully ignorant of the fact that the barrel shakes4 ,it is the educated1 the rich and the worldly wise who blunder most in the training of their children4 ,poverty is a better trainer for the rest4 ,the menace of ,america lies not in the swollen fortunes1 but in the shrunken souls who inherit them4 ,but ,nature's eliminating process is kind to the race in the barrel shaking down the rattlers4 ,somebody said it is only three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves4 ,how long this nation will endure depends upon how many ,gussie boys this nation produces4 ,steam heat is a fine thing1 but do you notice how few of our strong men get their start with steam heat8 ,children1 ,learn ,this ,early ,you boys and girls1 ,god bless you6 ,you live in good homes4 ,father and mother love you and give you everything you need4 ,you get to thinking1 ,i won't have to turn my hand over4 ,papa and mamma will take care of me1 and when they are gone ,i'll inherit everything they have4 ,i'm fixed for life4 ,no1 you are unfixed4 ,you are a candidate for trouble4 ,you are going to rattle4 ,father and mother can be great and you can be a peanut4 ,you must solve your own problems and carry your own loads to have a strong mind and back4 ,anybody who does for you regularly what you can do for yourself--anybody who gives you regularly what you can earn for yourself1 is robbing you of your birthright4 ,father and mother can put money in your pocket1 ideas in your head and food in your stomach1 but you cannot own it save as you digest it--put it into your life4 ,i have read somewhere about a man who found a cocoon and put it in his house where he could watch it develop4 ,one day he saw a little insect struggling inside the cocoon4 ,it was trying to get out of the envelope4 ,it seemed in trouble and needed help4 ,he opened the envelope with a knife and set the struggling insect free4 ,but out came a monstrosity that soon died4 ,it had an over-developed body and under-developed wings4 ,he learned that helping the insect was killing it4 ,he took away from it the very thing it had to have--the struggle4 ,for it was this struggle of breaking its own way out of that envelope that was needed to reduce its body and develop its wings4 ,not ,packhorse ,work ,but remember there is little virtue in work unless it is getting us somewhere4 ,just work that gets us three meals a day and a place to lie down to sleep1 then another day of the same grind1 then a year of it and years following until our machine is worn out and on the junkpile1 means little4 ,one day nearer home for such a worker means one day nearer the scrapheap4 ,such a worker is like the packhorse who goes forward to keep ahead of the whip4 ,such a worker is the horse we used to have hitched to the sorghum mill4 ,round and round that horse went1 seeing nothing1 hearing nothing1 his head down1 without ambition enough to prick up his ears4 ,such work deadens and stupefies4 ,the masses work about that way4 ,they regard work as a necessary evil4 ,they are right--such work is a necessary evil1 and they make it such4 ,they follow their nose4 ,dumb1 driven cattle4 ,but getting a vision of life1 and working to grow upward to it1 that is the work that brings the joy and the greatness4 ,when we are growing and letting our faculties develop1 we will love even the packhorse job1 because it is our meal ticket that enables us to travel upward4 ,helping the ,turkeys ,one time ,i put some turkey eggs under the mother hen and waited day by day for them to hatch4 ,and sure enough1 one day the eggs began to crack and the little turkeys began to stick their heads out of the shells4 ,some of the little turkeys came out from the shells all right1 but some of them stuck in the shells4 ,shell out1 little turkeys1 shell out1 ,i urged1 for ,thanksgiving is coming4 ,shell out6 ,but they stuck to the shells4 ,little turkeys1 ,i'll have to help you4 ,i'll have to shell you by hand4 ,so ,i picked the shells off4 ,little turkeys1 you will never know how fortunate you are4 ,ordinary turkeys do not have these advantages4 ,ordinary turkeys do not get shelled by hand4 ,did ,i help them8 ,i killed them1 or stunted them4 ,not one of the turkeys was right that ,i helped4 ,they were runts4 ,one of them was a regular ,harry ,thaw turkey4 ,they had too many silk socks4 ,too many advantages4 ,children1 you must crack your own shells4 ,you must overcome your own obstacles to develop your own powers4 ,a rich boy can succeed1 but he has a poorer chance than a poor boy4 ,the cards are against him4 ,he must succeed in spite of his advantages4 ,i am pleading for you to get a great arm1 a great mind1 a great character1 for the joy of having a larger life4 ,i am pleading with you to know the joy of overcoming and having the angels come and minister to you4 ,happiness in ,our ,work ,children1 ,i am pleading with you to find happiness4 ,all the world is seeking happiness1 but so many are seeking it by rattling down instead of by shaking up4 ,the happiness is in going up--in developing a greater arm1 a greater mind1 a greater character4 ,happiness is the joy of overcoming4 ,it is the delight of an expanding consciousness4 ,it is the cry of the eagle mounting upward4 ,it is the proof that we are progressing4 ,we find happiness in our work1 not outside of our work4 ,if we cannot find happiness in our work1 we have the wrong job4 ,find the work that fits your talents1 and stop watching the clock and planning vacations4 ,loving friends used to warn me against breaking down4 ,they scared me into taking care of myself4 ,and ,i got to taking such good care of myself and watching for symptoms that ,i became a physical wreck4 ,i saved myself by getting busier4 ,i plunged into work ,i love4 ,i found my job in my work1 not away from it1 and the work refreshed me and rejuvenated me4 ,now ,i do two men's work1 and have grown from a skinny1 fretful1 nervous wreck into a hearty1 happy man4 ,this has been a great surprise to my friends and a great disappointment to the undertaker4 ,i am an editor in the daytime and a lecturer at night4 ,i edit all day and take a vacation lecturing at night4 ,i lecture almost every day of the year--maybe two or three times some days--and then take a vacation by editing and writing4 ,thus every day is jam full of play and vacation and good times4 ,the year is one round of joy1 and ,i ought to pay people for the privilege of speaking and writing to them instead of them paying me6 ,if ,i did not like my work1 of course1 ,i would be carrying a terrible burden and would speedily collapse4 ,you see1 ,i have no time nowadays to break down4 ,i have no time to think and grunt and worry about my body4 ,and like ,paul ,i am happy to be absent from the body and present with the ,lord4 ,thus this old body behaves just beautifully and wags along like the tail follows the dog when ,i forget all about it4 ,the grunter lets the tail wag the dog4 ,i have never known a case of genuine overwork4 ,i have never known of anyone killing himself by working4 ,but ,i have known of multitudes killing themselves by taking vacations4 ,the people who think they are overworking are merely overworrying4 ,this is one species of selfishness4 ,to worry is to doubt ,god4 ,to work at the things you love1 or for those you love1 is to turn work into play and duty into privilege4 ,when we love our work1 it is not work1 it is life4 ,many ,kinds of ,drunkards ,the world is trying to find happiness in being amused4 ,the world is amusement-mad4 ,vacations1 ,coca ,cola and moviemania6 ,what a sad1 empty lot of rattlers6 ,look over the bills of the movies1 look over the newsstands and see a picture of the popular mind1 for these places keep just what the people want to buy4 ,what a lot of mental frog-pond and moral slum our boys and girls wade thru6 ,there are ten literary drunkards to one alcoholic drunkard4 ,there are a hundred amusement drunkards to one victim of strong drink4 ,and all just as hard to cure4 ,we have to have amusement1 but if we fill our lives with nothing but amusement1 we never grow4 ,we go thru our lives babies with new rattleboxes and sugar-tits4 ,almost every day as ,i go along the street to some hall to lecture1 ,i hear somebody asking1 ,what are they going to have in the hall tonight8 ,going to have a lecture4 ,lecture8 said with a shiver as tho it was small pox4 ,i ain't goin4' ,i don't like lectures4 ,the speaker is perfectly honest4 ,he has no place to put a lecture4 ,i am not saying that he should attend my lecture1 but ,i am grieving at what underlies his remark4 ,he does not want to think4 ,he wants to follow his nose around4 ,other people generally lead his nose4 ,the man who will not make the effort to think is the great menace to the nation4 ,the crowd that drifts and lives for amusement is the crowd that finds itself back near the caboose1 and as the train of progress leaves them1 they wail1 they never had no chanct4 ,they want to start a new party to reform the government4 ,the ,lure of the ,city ,do you ever get lonely in a city8 ,how few men and women there4 ,a jam of people1 most of them imitations--most of them trying to look like they get more salary4 ,poor1 hungry1 doped butterflies of the bright lights1--hopers1 suckers and straphangers6 ,down the great white way they go chasing amusement to find happiness4 ,they must be amused every moment1 even when they eat1 or they will have to be alone with their empty lives4 ,the ,prodigal ,son came to himself afterwhile and thought upon his ways4 ,then he arose and went to his father's house4 ,whenever one will stop chasing amusements long enough to think upon his ways1 he will arise and go to his father's house of wisdom4 ,but there is no hope for the person who will not stop and think4 ,and the devil works day and night shifts keeping the crowd moving on4 ,that is why the crowd is not furnishing the strong men and women4 ,we must have amusement and relaxation4 ,study your muscles4 ,first they contract1 then they relax4 ,but the muscle that goes on continually relaxing is degenerating4 ,and the individual1 the community1 the nation that goes on relaxing without contracting--without struggling and overcoming--is degenerating4 ,the more you study your muscles1 the more you learn that while one muscle is relaxing another is contracting4 ,so you must learn that your real relaxation1 vacation and amusement1 are merely changing over to contracting another set of muscles4 ,go to the bank president's office1 go to the railroad magnate's office1 go to the great pulpit1 to the college chair--go to any place of great responsibility in a city and ask the one who fills the place1 ,were you born in this city8 ,the reply is almost a monotony4 ,i born in this city8 ,no1 ,i was born in ,poseyville1 ,indiana1 and ,i came to this city forty years ago and went to work at the bottom4 ,he glows as he tells you of some log-cabin home1 hillside or farmside where he struggled as a boy4 ,personally1 ,i think this log-cabin ancestry has been over-confessed for campaign purposes4 ,give us steam heat and push-buttons4 ,there is no virtue in a log-cabin1 save that there the necessity for struggle that brings strength is most in evidence4 ,there the young person gets the struggle and service that makes for strength and greatness4 ,and as that young person comes to the city and shakes in the barrel among the weaklings of the artificial life1 he rises above them like the eagle soars above a lot of chattering sparrows4 ,the cities do not make their own steam4 ,the little minority from the farms controls the majority4 ,the red blood of redemption flows from the country year by year into the national arteries1 else these cities would drop off the map4 ,if it were not for ,poseyville1 ,indiana1 ,chicago would disappear4 ,if it were not for ,poseyville1 ,new ,york would disintegrate for lack of leaders4 ,hep and ,pep for the ,home ,town ,but so many of the home towns of ,america are sick4 ,many are dying4 ,many are dead4 ,it is the lure of the city--and the lure-lessness of the country4 ,the town the young people leave is the town the young people ought to leave4 ,somebody says1 ,the reason so many young people go to hell is because they have no other place to go4 ,what is the matter with the small town8 ,do not blame it all upon the city mail order house4 ,with rural delivery1 daily papers1 telephones1 centralized schools1 automobiles and good roads1 there are no more delightful places in the world to live than in the country or in the small town4 ,they have the city advantages plus sunshine1 air and freedom that the crowded cities cannot have4 ,i asked the keeper who was showing me thru the insane asylum at ,weston1 ,west ,virginia1 ,you say you have nearly two thousand insane people in this institution and only a score of guards to keep them in4 ,aren't you in danger8 ,what is to hinder these insane people from getting together1 organizing1 overpowering the few guards and breaking out8 ,the keeper was not in the least alarmed at the question4 ,he smiled4 ,many people say that4 ,but they don't understand4 ,if these people could get together they wouldn't be in this asylum4 ,they are insane4 ,no two of them can agree upon how to get together and how to break out4 ,so a few of us can hold them4 ,it would be almost unkind to carry this further1 but ,i have been thinking ever since that about three-fourths of the small towns of ,america have one thing in common with the asylum folks--they can't get together4 ,they cannot organize for the public good4 ,they break up into little antagonistic social1 business and even religious factions and neutralize each other's efforts4 ,a lot of struggling churches compete with each other instead of massing for the common good4 ,and when the churches fight1 the devil stays neutral and furnishes the munitions for both sides4 ,so the home towns stagnate and the young people with visions go away to the cities where opportunity seems to beckon4 ,ninety-nine out of a hundred of them will jostle with the straphangers all their lives1 mere wheels turning round in a huge machine4 ,ninety-nine out of a hundred of them might have had a larger opportunity right back in the home town1 had the town been awake and united and inviting4 ,we must make the home town the brightest1 most attractive1 most promising place for the young people4 ,no home town can afford to spend its years raising crops of young people for the cities4 ,that is the worst kind of soil impoverishment--all going out and nothing coming back4 ,that is the drain that devitalizes the home towns more than all the city mail order houses4 ,america is to be great1 not in the greatness of a few crowded cities1 but in the greatness of innumerable home towns4 ,the slogan today should be1 ,for ,god and ,home and the ,home ,town6 ,a ,school of ,struggle ,dr4 ,henry ,solomon ,lehr1 founder of the ,ohio ,northern ,university at ,ada1 ,ohio1 one of ,ohio's greatest educators1 used to say with pride1 ,our students come to school2 they are not sent4 ,he encouraged his students to be self-supporting1 and most of them were working their way thru school4 ,he made the school calendar and courses elastic to accommodate them4 ,he saw the need of combining the school of books with the school of struggle4 ,he organized his school into competing groups1 so that the student who had no struggle in his life would at least have to struggle with the others during his schooling4 ,he pitted class against class4 ,he organized great literary and debating societies to compete with each other4 ,he arranged contests for the military department4 ,his school was one surging mass of contestants4 ,yet each student felt no compulsion4 ,rather he felt that he was initiating an individual or class effort to win4 ,the literary societies vied with each other in their programs and in getting new members1 going every term to unbelievable efforts to win over the others4 ,they would go miles out on the trains to intercept new students1 even to their homes in other states4 ,each old student pledged new students in his home country4 ,the military companies turned the school into a military camp for weeks each year1 scarcely sleeping while drilling for a contest flag4 ,those students went out into the world trained to struggle4 ,i do not believe there is a school in ,america with a greater alumni roll of men and women of uniformly greater achievement4 ,i believe the most useful schools today are schools of struggle schools offering encouragement and facilities for young people to work their way thru and to act upon their own initiative4 ,men ,needed ,more ,than ,millions ,we are trying a new educational experiment today4 ,the old deestrick school is passing1 and with it the small academies and colleges1 each with its handful of students around a teacher1 as in the old days of the lyceum in ,athens1 when the pupils sat around the philosopher in the groves4 ,from these schools came the makers and the preservers of the nation4 ,today we are building wonderful public schools with equally wonderful equipment4 ,today we are replacing the many small colleges with a few great centralized state normal schools and state universities4 ,we are spending millions upon them in laboratories1 equipment and maintenance4 ,today we scour the earth for specialists to sit in the chairs and speak the last word in every department of human research4 ,o1 how the students of the dark ages would have rejoiced to see this day6 ,many of them never saw a germ6 ,but each student has the same definite effort to make in assimilation today as then4 ,knowing and growing demand the same personal struggle in the cushions of the frat house as back on the old oak-slab bench with its splintered side up4 ,i am anxiously awaiting the results4 ,i am hoping that the boys and girls who come out in case-lots from these huge school plants will not be rows of lithographed cans on the shelves of life4 ,i am hoping they will not be shorn of their individuality1 but will have it stimulated and unfettered4 ,i am anxious that they be not veneered but inspired1 not denatured but discovered4 ,all this school machinery is only machinery4 ,back of it must be men--great men4 ,i am anxious that the modern school have the modern equipment demanded to serve the present age4 ,but ,i am more anxious that each student come in vital touch with great men4 ,we get life from life1 not from laboratories1 and we have life more abundantly as our lives touch greater lives4 ,a school is vastly more than machinery1 methods1 microscopes and millions4 ,many a small school struggling to live thinks that all it needs is endowment1 when the fact is that its struggle for existence and the spirit of its teachers are its greatest endowment4 ,and sometimes when the money endowment comes the spiritual endowment goes in fatty degeneration4 ,some schools seem to have been visited by calamities in the financial prosperity that has engulfed them4 ,can we keep men before millions1 and keep our ideals untainted by foundations8 ,that is the question the age is asking4 ,you and ,i are very much interested in the answer4 ,chapter ,,vii ,the ,salvation of a ,sucker ,the ,fiddle and the ,tuning ,,how long it takes to learn things6 ,i think ,i was thirty-four years learning one sentence1 ,you can't get something for nothing4 ,i have not yet learned it4 ,every few days ,i stumble over it somewhere4 ,for that sentence utters one of the fundamentals of life that underlies every field of activity4 ,what is knowing8 ,one day a manufacturer took me thru his factory where he makes fiddles4 ,not violins--fiddles4 ,a violin is only a fiddle with a college education4 ,i have had the feeling ever since that you and ,i come into this world like the fiddle comes from the factory4 ,we have a body and a neck4 ,that is about all there is either to us or to the fiddle4 ,we are empty4 ,we have no strings4 ,we have no bow--yet6 ,when the human fiddles are about six years old they go into the primary schools and up thru the grammar grades1 and get the first string--the little ,e string4 ,the trouble is so many of these human fiddles think they are an orchestra right away4 ,they want to quit school and go fiddling thru life on this one string6 ,we must show these little fiddles they must go back into school and go up thru all the departments and institutions necessary to give them the full complement of strings for their life symphonies4 ,after all this there comes the commencement1 and the violin comes forth with the ,e1 ,a1 ,d and ,g strings all in place4 ,educated now8 ,why is a violin8 ,to wear strings8 ,gussie got that far and gave a lot of discord4 ,the violin is to give music4 ,so there is much yet to do after getting the strings4 ,all the book and college can do is to give the strings--the tools4 ,after that the violin must go into the great tuning school of life4 ,here the pegs are turned and the strings are put in tune4 ,the music is the knowing4 ,learning is tuning4 ,you do not know what you have memorized1 you know what you have vitalized1 what you have written in the book of experience4 ,gussie says1 ,i have read it in a book4 ,bill ,whackem says1 ,i know6 ,reading and ,knowing ,all of us are ,christopher ,columbuses1 discovering the same new-old continents of ,truth4 ,that is the true happiness of life--discovering ,truth4 ,we read things in a book and have a hazy idea of them4 ,we hear the preacher utter truths and we say with little feeling1 ,yes1 that is so4 ,we hear the great truths of life over and over and we are not excited4 ,truth never excites--it is falsehood that excites--until we discover it in our lives4 ,until we see it with our own eyes4 ,then there is a thrill4 ,then the old truth becomes a new blessing4 ,then the oldest1 driest platitude crystallizes into a flashing jewel to delight and enrich our consciousness4 ,this joy of discovery is the joy of living4 ,there is such a difference between reading a thing and knowing a thing4 ,we could read a thousand descriptions of the sun and not know the sun as in one glimpse of it with our own eyes4 ,i used to stand in the row of blessed little rascals in the deestrick school and read from ,mc,guffey's celebrated literature1 ,if--,i-p-p-play--with--the--f-f-f-i-i-i -i-r-r-e--,i--will--g-e-e-et --my-y-y-y-y--f-f-f-f--ingers--bur-r-r-r ned--period6 ,i did not learn it4 ,i wish ,i had learned by reading it that if ,i play with the fire ,i will get my fingers burned4 ,i had to slap my hands upon hot stoves and coffee-pots1 and had to get many kinds of blisters in order to learn it4 ,then ,i had to go around showing the blisters1 boring my friends and taking up a collection of sympathy4 ,look at my bad luck6 ,fool6 ,this is not a lecture4 ,it is a confession6 ,it seems to me if you in the audience knew how little ,i know1 you wouldn't stay4 ,you ,can't ,get ,something for ,nothing ,yes1 ,i was thirty-four years learning that one sentence4 ,you can't get something for nothing4 ,that is1 getting it in partial tune4 ,it took me so long because ,i was naturally bright4 ,it takes that kind longer than a human being4 ,they are so smart you cannot teach them with a few bumps4 ,they have to be pulverized4 ,that sentence takes me back to the days when ,i was a hired man on the farm4 ,you might not think ,i had ever been a hired man on the farm at ten dollars a month and washed1 mended and found4 ,you see me here on this platform in my graceful and cultured manner1 and you might not believe that ,i had ever trained an orphan calf to drink from a copper kettle4 ,but ,i have fed him the fingers of this hand many a time4 ,you might not think that ,i had ever driven a yoke of oxen and had said the words4 ,but ,i have6 ,i remember the first county fair ,i ever attended4 ,fellow sufferers1 you may remember that at the county fair all the people sort out to their own departments4 ,some people go to the canned fruit department4 ,some go to the fancywork department4 ,some go to the swine department4 ,everybody goes to his own department4 ,even the suckers6 ,did you ever notice where they go8 ,that is where ,i went--to the trimming department4 ,i was in the trimming department in five minutes4 ,nobody told me where it was4 ,i didn't need to be told4 ,i gravitated there4 ,the barrel always shakes all of one size to one place4 ,you notice that--in a city all of one size get together4 ,right at the entrance to the local ,midway ,i met a gentleman4 ,i know he was a gentleman because he said he was a gentleman4 ,he had a little light table he could move quickly4 ,whenever the climate became too sultry he would move to greener pastures4 ,on that table were three little shells in a row1 and there was a little pea under the middle shell4 ,i saw it there1 being naturally bright4 ,i was the only naturally bright person around the table1 hence the only one who knew under which shell the little round pea was hidden4 ,even the gentleman running the game was fooled4 ,he thought it was under the end shell and bet me money it was under the end shell4 ,you see1 this was not gambling1 this was a sure thing4 7,it was67 ,i had saved up my money for weeks to attend the fair4 ,i bet it all on that middle shell4 ,i felt bad4 ,it seemed like robbing father4 ,and he seemed like a real nice old gentleman1 and maybe he had a family to keep4 ,but ,i would teach him a lesson not to monkey with people like me1 naturally bright4 ,but ,i needn't have felt bad4 ,i did not rob father4 ,father cleaned me out of all ,i had in about five seconds4 ,i went over to the other side of the fairgrounds and sat down4 ,that was all ,i had to do now--just go1 sit down4 ,i couldn't see the mermaid now or get into the grandstand4 ,sadly ,i thought it all over1 but ,i did not get the right answer4 ,i said the thing every fool does say when he gets bumped and fails to learn the lesson from the bump4 ,i said1 ,next time ,i shall be more careful4 ,when anybody says that he is due for a return date4 ,i ,bought the ,soap ,learn8 ,no6 ,within a month ,i was on the street a ,saturday night when another gentleman drove into town4 ,he stopped on the public square and stood up in his buggy4 ,let the prominent citizens gather around me1 for ,i am going to give away dollars4 ,immediately all the prominent suckers crowded around the buggy4 ,gentlemen1 ,i am introducing this new medicinal soap that cures all diseases humanity is heir to4 ,now just to introduce and advertise1 ,i am putting these cakes of ,wonder ,soap in my hat4 ,you see ,i am wrapping a ten-dollar bill around one cake and throwing it into the hat4 ,now who will give me five dollars for the privilege of taking a cake of this wonderful soap from my hat--any cake you want1 gentlemen6 ,and right on top of the pile was the cake with the ten wrapped around it6 ,i jumped over the rest to shove my five 7two weeks' farm work7 in his hands and grab that bill cake4 ,but the bill disappeared4 ,i never knew where it went4 ,the man whipped up his horse and also disappeared4 ,i never knew where he went4 ,my ,fool ,drawer ,i grew older and people began to notice that ,i was naturally bright and therefore good picking4 ,they began to let me in on the ground floor4 ,did anybody ever let you in on the ground floor8 ,i never could stick4 ,whenever anybody let me in on the ground floor it seemed like ,i would always slide on thru and land in the cellar4 ,i used to have a drawer in my desk ,i called my fool drawer4 ,i kept my investments in it4 ,i mean1 the investments ,i did not have to lock up4 ,you get the pathos of that--the investments nobody wanted to steal4 ,and whenever ,i would get unduly inflated ,i would open that drawer and view the remains4 ,i had in that drawer the deed to my ,oklahoma corner-lots4 ,those lots were going to double next week4 ,but they did not double ,i doubled4 ,they still exist on the blueprint and the ,oklahoma metropolis on paper is yet a wide place in the road4 ,i had in that drawer my deed to my rubber plantation4 ,did you ever hear of a rubber plantation in ,central ,america8 ,that was mine4 ,i had there my oil propositions4 ,what a difference1 ,i have learned1 between an oil proposition and an oil well6 ,the learning has been very expensive4 ,i used to wonder how ,i ever could spend my income4 ,i do not wonder now4 ,i wonder how ,i will make it4 ,i had in that drawer my ,everglade farm4 ,did you ever hear of the ,everglades8 ,i have an alligator ranch there4 ,it is below the frost-line1 also below the water-line4 ,i will sell it by the gallon4 ,i had also a bale of mining stock4 ,i had stock in gold mines and silver mines4 ,nobody knows how much mining stock ,i have owned4 ,nobody could know while ,i kept that drawer shut4 ,as ,i looked over my gold and silver mine stock1 ,i often noticed that it was printed in green4 ,i used to wonder why they printed it in green--wonder if they wanted it to harmonize with me6 ,and ,i would realize ,i had so much to live for--the dividends4 ,i have been so near the dividends ,i could smell them4 ,only one more assessment1 then we will cut the melon6 ,i have heard that all my life and never got a piece of the rind4 ,getting ,selected ,why go farther8 ,i am not half done confessing4 ,each bump only increased my faith that the next ship would be mine4 ,good1 honest1 retired ministers would come periodically and sell me stock in some new enterprise that had millions in it--in its prospectus4 ,i would buy because ,i knew the minister was honest and believed in it4 ,he was selling it on his reputation4 ,favorite dodge of the promoter to get the ministers to sell his shares4 ,i was also greatly interested in companies where ,i put in one dollar and got back a dollar or two of bonds and a dollar or two of stock4 ,that was doubling and trebling my money over night4 ,an old banker once said to me1 ,why don't you invest in something that will pay you five or six per cent4 and get it8 ,i pitied his lack of vision4 ,bankers were such tightwads4 ,they had no imagination6 ,nothing interested me that did not offer fifty or a hundred per cent4--then4 ,give me the five per cent4 now6 ,by the time ,i was thirty-four ,i was a rich man in worthless paper4 ,it would have been better for me if ,i had thrown about all my savings into the bottom of the sea4 ,then ,i got a confidential letter from a friend of our family ,i had never met4 ,his name was ,thomas ,a4 ,cleage1 and he was in the ,rialto ,building1 ,st4 ,louis1 ,missouri4 ,he wrote me in extreme confidence1 ,you have been selected4 ,were you ever selected8 ,if you were1 then you know the thrill that rent my manly bosom as ,i read that letter from this man who said he was a friend of our family4 ,you have been selected because you are a prominent citizen and have a large influence in your community4 ,you are a natural leader and everybody looks up to you4 ,he knew me6 ,he was the only man who did know me4 ,so ,i took the cork clear under4 ,because of your tremendous influence you have been selected to go in with us in the inner circle and get a thousand per cent4 dividends4 ,did you get that8 ,i hope you did4 ,i did not6 ,but ,i took a night train for ,st4 ,louis4 ,i was afraid somebody might beat me there if ,i waited till next day4 ,i sat up all night in a day coach to save money for ,tom1 the friend of our family4 ,but ,i see now ,i need not have hurried so4 ,they would have waited a month with the sheep-shears ready4 ,lambie1 lambie1 lambie1 come to ,st4 ,louis6 ,i don't get any sympathy from this crowd4 ,you laugh at me4 ,you respect not my feelings4 ,i am not going to tell you a thing that happened in ,st4 ,louis4 ,it is none of your business6 ,o1 ,i am so glad ,i went to ,st4 ,louis4 ,being naturally bright1 ,i could not learn it at home1 back in ,ohio4 ,i had to go clear down to ,st4 ,louis to ,tom ,cleage's bucket-shop and pay him eleven hundred dollars to corner the wheat market of the world4 ,that is all ,i paid him4 ,i could not borrow any more4 ,i joined what he called a pool4 ,i think it must have been a pool1 for ,i know ,i fell in and got soaked6 ,that bump set me to thinking4 ,my fever began to reduce4 ,i got the thirty-third degree in financial suckerdom for only eleven hundred dollars4 ,i have always regarded ,tom as one of my great school teachers4 ,i have always regarded the eleven hundred as the finest investment ,i had made up to that time1 for ,i got the most out of it4 ,i do not feel hard toward goldbrick men and blue sky venders4 ,i sometimes feel that we should endow them4 ,how else can we save a sucker8 ,you cannot tell him anything1 because he is naturally bright and knows better4 ,you simply have to trim him till he bleeds4 ,i ,am ,cured ,it is worth eleven hundred dollars every day to know that one sentence1 ,you cannot get something for nothing4 ,life just begins to get juicy when you know it4 ,today when ,i open a newspaper and see a big ad1 ,grasp a ,fortune ,now6 ,i will not do it6 ,i stop my subscription to that paper4 ,i simply will not take a paper with that ad in it1 for ,i have graduated from that class4 ,i will not grasp a fortune now4 ,try me1 ,i dare you6 ,bring a fortune right up on this platform and put it down there on the floor4 ,i will not grasp it4 ,come away1 it is a coffee-pot6 ,today when somebody offers me much more than the legal rate of interest ,i know he is no friend of our family4 ,if he offers me a hundred per cent4 ,i call for the police6 ,today when ,i get a confidential letter that starts out1 ,you have been selected-- ,i never read farther than the word selected4 ,meeting is adjourned4 ,i select the waste-basket4 ,here1 get in there just as quick as you can4 ,i was selected6 ,o1 ,absalom1 ,absalom1 my son1 my son6 ,learn it early in life4 ,the law of compensation is never suspended4 ,you only own what you earn4 ,you can't get something for nothing4 ,if you do not learn it1 you will have to be selected4 ,there is no other way for you1 because you are naturally bright4 ,when you get a letter1 ,you have been selected to receive a thousand per cent4 dividends1 it means you have been selected to receive this bunch of blisters because you look like the biggest sucker on the local landscape4 ,the other night in a little town of perhaps a thousand1 a banker took me up into his office after the lecture in which ,i had related some of the above experiences4 ,the audience laughed with you and thought it very funny1 said he4 ,i couldn't laugh4 ,it was too pathetic4 ,it was a picture of what is going on in our own little community year after year4 ,i wish you could see what ,i have to see4 ,i wish you could see the thousands of hard-earned dollars that go out of our community every year into just such wildcat enterprises as you described4 ,the saddest part of it is that the money nearly always goes out of the pockets of the people who can least afford to lose it4 ,absalom1 wake up6 ,this is bargain night for you4 ,i paid eleven hundred dollars to tell you this one thing1 and you get it for a dollar or two4 ,this is no cheap lecture4 ,it cost blood4 ,learn that the gambler never owns his winnings4 ,the man who accumulates by sharp practices or by undue profits never owns it4 ,even the young person who has large fortune given him does not own it4 ,we only own what we have rendered definite service to bound4 ,the owning is in the understanding of values4 ,this is true physically1 mentally1 morally4 ,you only own what you have earned and stored in your life1 not merely in your pocket1 stomach or mind4 ,i often think if it takes me thirty-four years to begin to learn one sentence1 ,i see the need of an eternity4 ,to me that is one of the great arguments for eternal life--how slowly ,i learn1 and how much there is to learn4 ,it will take an eternity6 ,those ,commencement ,orations ,the young person says1 ,by next ,june ,i shall have finished my education4 ,bless them all6 ,they will have put another string on their fiddle4 ,after they finish they have a commencement1 not an end-ment1 as they think4 ,this is not to sneer1 but to cheer4 ,isn't it glorious that life is one infinite succession of commencements and promotions6 ,i love to attend commencements4 ,the stage is so beautifully decorated and the joy of youth is everywhere4 ,there is a row of geraniums along the front of the stage and a big oleander on the side4 ,there is a long-whiskered rug in the middle4 ,the graduates sit in a semicircle upon the stage in their new patent leather4 ,i know how it hurts4 ,it is the first time they have worn it4 ,then they make their orations4 ,every time ,i hear their orations ,i like them better1 because every year ,i am getting younger4 ,damsel ,number ,one comes forth and begins3 ,beyond the ,alps 7sweep arms forward to the left1 left arm leading7 lieth ,italy6 7,bring arms down1 letting fingers follow the wrist4 ,how embarrassing at a commencement for the fingers not to follow the wrist6 ,it is always a shock to the audience when the wrist sweeps downward and the fingers remain up in the air4 ,so by all means1 let the fingers follow the wrist1 just as the elocution teacher marked on page #fi47 ,applause1 especially from relatives4 ,sweet ,girl ,graduate ,number #b1 generally comes second4 ,s4 ,g4 ,g4 ,no4 #b stands at the same leadpencil mark on the floor1 resplendent in a filmy creation caught with something or other4 ,we 7hands at half-mast and separating7 are rowing 7business of propelling aerial boat with two fingers of each hand1 head inclined74 ,we are not drifting 7hands slide downward74 ,children1 we are not laughing at you4 ,we are laughing at ourselves4 ,we are laughing the happy laugh at how we have learned these great truths that you have memorized1 but not vitalized4 ,you get the most beautiful and sublime truths from ,emerson's essays4 7,how did they ever have commencements before ,emerson87 ,but that is not knowing them4 ,you cannot know them until you have lived them4 ,it is a grand thing to say1 ,beyond the ,alps lieth ,italy1 but you can never really say that until you know it by struggling up over ,alps of difficulty and seeing the ,italy of promise and victory beyond4 ,it is fine to say1 ,we are rowing and not drifting1 but you cannot really say that until you have pulled on the oar4 ,o1 ,gussie1 get an oar6 ,my ,maiden ,sermon ,did you ever hear a young preacher1 just captured1 just out of a factory8 ,did you ever hear him preach his maiden sermon8 ,i wish you had heard mine4 ,i had a call4 ,at least1 ,i thought ,i had a call4 ,i think now ,i was short-circuited4 ,the brethren waited upon me and told me ,i had been selected3 ,maybe this was a local call1 not long distance4 ,they gave me six weeks in which to load the gospel gun and get ready for my try-out4 ,i certainly loaded it to the muzzle4 ,but ,i made the mistake ,i am trying to warn you against4 ,instead of going to the one book where ,i might have gotten a sermon--the book of my experience1 ,i went to the books in my father's library4 ,as the poet ,shakespeare has so beautifully said1 and then ,i took a chunk of ,shakespeare and nailed it on page five of my sermon4 ,list to the poet ,tennyson4 ,come here1 ,lord ,alfred4 ,so ,i soldered these fragments from the books together with my own native genius4 ,i worked that sermon up into the most beautiful splurges and spasms4 ,i bedecked it with metaphors and semaphores4 ,i filled it with climaxes1 both wet and dry4 ,i had a fine wet climax on page fourteen1 where ,i had made a little mark in the margin which meant cry here4 ,this was the spilling-point of the wet climax4 ,i was to cry on the lefthand side of the page4 ,i committed it all to memory1 and then went to a lady who taught expression1 to get it expressed4 ,you have to get it expressed4 ,i got the most beautiful gestures nailed into almost every page4 ,you know about gestures--these things you make with your arms in the air as you speak4 ,you can notice it on me yet4 ,i am not sneering at expression4 ,expression is a noble art4 ,all life is expression4 ,but you have to get something to express4 ,here ,i made my mistake4 ,i got a lot of fine gestures4 ,i got an express-wagon and got no load for it4 ,so it rattled4 ,i got a necktie1 but failed to get any man to hang it upon4 ,i got up before a mirror for six weeks1 day by day1 and said the sermon to the glass4 ,it got so it would run itself4 ,i could have gone to sleep and that sermon would not have hesitated4 ,then came the grand day4 ,the boy wonder stood forth and before his large and enthusiastic concourse delivered that maiden sermon more grandly than ever to a mirror4 ,every gesture went off the bat according to the blueprint4 ,i cried on page fourteen6 ,i never knew it was in me4 ,but ,i certainly got it all out that day6 ,then ,i did another fine thing1 ,i sat down4 ,i wish now ,i had done that earlier4 ,i wish now ,i had sat down before ,i got up4 ,i was the last man out of the church--and ,i hurried4 ,but they beat me out--all nine of them4 ,when ,i went out the door1 the old sexton said as he jiggled the key in the door to hurry me1 ,don't feel bad1 bub1 ,i've heerd worse than that4 ,you're all right1 bub1 but you don't know nothin' yet4 ,i cried all the way to town4 ,if he had plunged a dagger into me he would not have hurt me so much4 ,it has taken some years to learn that the old man was right4 ,i had wonderful truth in that sermon4 ,no sermon ever had greater truth1 but ,i had not lived it4 ,the old man meant ,i did not know my own sermon4 ,so1 children1 when you prepare your commencement oration1 write about what you know best1 what you have lived4 ,if you know more about peeling potatoes than about anything else1 write about ,peeling ,potatoes1 and you are most likely to hear the applause peal from that part of your audience unrelated to you4 ,out of every thousand books published1 perhaps nine hundred of them do not sell enough to pay the cost of printing them4 ,as you study the books that do live1 you note that they are the books that have been lived4 ,perhaps the books that fail have just as much of truth in them and they may even be better written1 yet they lack the vital impulse4 ,they come out of the author's head4 ,the books that live must come out of his heart4 ,they are his own life4 ,they come surging and pulsating from the book of his experience4 ,the best part of our schooling comes not from the books1 but from the men behind the books4 ,we study agriculture from books4 ,that does not make us an agriculturist4 ,we must take a hoe and go out and agricult4 ,that is the knowing in the doing4 ,you ,must ,live ,your ,song ,there was never a picture painted1 ,there was never a poem sung1 ,but the soul of the artist fainted1 ,and the poet's heart was wrung4 ,so many young people think because they have a good voice and they have cultivated it1 they are singers4 ,all this cultivation and irritation and irrigation and gargling of the throat are merely symptoms of a singer--merely neckties4 ,singers look better with neckties4 ,they think the song comes from the diaphragm4 ,but it comes from the heart1 chaperoned by the diaphragm4 ,you cannot sing a song you have not lived4 ,jessie was singing the other day at a chautauqua4 ,she has a beautiful voice1 and she has been away to ,ber-leen to have it attended to4 ,she sang that afternoon in the tent1 ,the ,last ,rose of ,summer4 ,she sang it with every note so well placed1 with the sweetest little trills and tendrils1 with the smile exactly like her teacher had taught her4 ,jessie exhibited all the machinery and trimmings for the song1 but she had no steam1 no song4 ,she sang the notes4 ,she might as well have sung1 ,pop1 ,goes the ,weasel4 ,the audience politely endured ,jessie4 ,that night a woman sang in the same tent ,the ,last ,rose of ,summer4 ,she had never been to ,berlin1 but she had lived that song4 ,she didn't dress the notes half so beautifully as ,jessie did1 but she sang it with the tremendous feeling it demands4 ,the audience went wild4 ,it was a case of ,gussie and ,bill ,whackem4 ,all this was gall and wormwood to ,jessie4 ,child1 ,i said to her1 this is the best singing lesson you have ever had4 ,your study is all right and you have a better voice than that woman1 but you cannot sing ,the ,last ,rose of ,summer yet1 for you do not know very much about the first rose of summer4 ,and really1 ,i hope you'll never know the ache and disappointment you must know before you can sing that song1 for it is the sob of a broken-hearted woman4 ,learn to sing the songs you have lived4 ,why do singers try to execute songs beyond the horizon of their lives8 ,that is why they execute them4 ,the ,success of a ,song-,writer ,the guest of honor at a dinner in a ,chicago club was a woman who is one of the widely known song-writers of this land4 ,as ,i had the good fortune to be sitting at table with her ,i wanted to ask her1 ,how did you get your songs known8 ,how did you know what kind of songs the people want to sing8 ,but in the hour she talked with her friends around the table ,i found the answer to every question4 ,isn't it good to be here8 ,isn't it great to have friends and a fine home and money8 she said4 ,i have had such a struggle in my life4 ,i have lived on one meal a day and didn't know where the next meal was coming from4 ,i know what it is to be left alone in the world upon my own resources4 ,i have had years of struggle4 ,i have been sick and discouraged and down and out4 ,it was in my little back-room1 the only home ,i had1 that ,i began to write songs4 ,i wrote them for my own relief4 ,i was writing my own life1 just what was in my own heart and what the struggles were teaching me4 ,no one is more surprised and grateful that the world seems to love my songs and asks for more of them4 ,the woman was ,carrie ,jacobs-,bond1 who wrote ,the ,perfect ,day1 ,just a ,wearyin' for ,you1 ,his ,lullaby and many more of those simple little songs so full of the pathos and philosophy of life that they tug at your heart and moisten your eyes4 ,anybody could write those songs--just a few simple words and notes4 ,no4 ,books of theory and harmony and expression only teach us how to write the words and where to place the notes4 ,these are not the song1 but only the skeleton into which our own life must breathe the life of the song4 ,the woman who sat there clad in black1 with her sweet1 expressive face crowned with silvery hair1 had learned to write her songs in the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,she here became the song philosopher she is today4 ,her defeats were her victories4 ,if ,carrie ,jacobs-,bond had never struggled with discouragement1 sickness1 poverty and loneliness1 she never would have been able to write the songs that appeal to the multitudes who have the same battles4 ,the popular song is the song that best voices what is in the popular heart4 ,and while we have a continual inundation of popular songs that are trashy and voice the tawdriest human impulses1 yet it is a tribute to the good elements in humanity that the wholesome1 uplifting sentiments in ,carrie ,jacobs-,bond's songs continue to hold their popularity4 ,theory and ,practice ,my friends1 ,i am not arguing that you and ,i must drink the dregs of defeat1 or that our lives must fill up with poverty or sorrow1 or become wrecks4 ,but ,i am insisting upon what ,i see written all around me in the affairs of everyday life1 that none of us will ever know real success in any line of human endeavor until that success flows from the fullness of our experience just as the songs came from the life of ,carrie ,jacobs-,bond4 ,the world is full of theorists1 dreamers1 uplifters1 reformers1 who have worthy visions but are not able to translate them into practical realities4 ,they go around with their heads in the clouds1 looking upward1 and half the time their feet are in the flower-beds or trampling upon their fellow men they dream of helping4 ,their ideas must be forged into usefulness available for this day upon the anvil of experience4 ,many of the most brilliant theorists have been the greatest failures in practice4 ,there are a thousand who can tell you what is the matter with things to one person who can give you a practical way to fix them4 ,i used to have respect amounting to reverence for great readers and book men4 ,i used to know a man who could tell in what book almost anything you could think of was discussed1 and perhaps the page4 ,he was a walking library index4 ,i thought him a most wonderful man4 ,indeed1 in my childhood ,i thought he was the greatest man in the world4 ,he was a remarkable man--a great reader and with a memory that retained it all4 ,that man could recite chapters and volumes4 ,he could give you almost any date4 ,he could finish almost any quotation4 ,his conversation was largely made up of classical quotations4 ,but he was one of the most helpless men ,i have ever seen in practical life4 ,he seemed to be unable to think and reason for himself4 ,he could quote a page of ,john ,locke1 but somehow the page didn't supply the one sentence needed for the occasion4 ,the man was a misfit on earth4 ,he was liable to put the gravy in his coffee and the gasoline in the fire4 ,he seemed never to have digested any of the things in his memory4 ,since ,i have grown up ,i always think of that man as an intellectual cold storage plant4 ,the greatest book is the textbook of the ,university of ,hard ,knocks1 the ,book of ,human ,experience the sermons in stones and the books in running brooks4 ,most fortunate is he who has learned to read understandingly from it4 ,note the sweeping1 positive statements of the young person4 ,note the cautious1 specific statements of the person who has lived long in this world4 ,our education is our progress from the sweeping1 positive1 wholesale statements we have not proved1 to the cautious1 specific statements we have proved4 ,tuning the ,strings of ,life ,many audiences are gathered into this one audience4 ,each person here is a different audience1 reading a different page in the ,book of ,human ,experience4 ,each has a different fight to make and a different burden to carry4 ,each one of us has more trouble than anybody else6 ,i know there are chapters of heroism in the lives of you older ones4 ,you have cried yourselves to sleep1 some of you1 and walked the floor when you could not sleep4 ,you have learned that beyond the ,alps lieth ,italy4 ,a good many of you were bumped today or yesterday1 or maybe years ago1 and the wound has not healed4 ,you think it never will heal4 ,you came here thinking that perhaps you would forget your trouble for a little while4 ,i know there are people in this audience in pain4 ,never do this many gather but what there are some with aching hearts4 ,and you young people here with lives like ,june mornings1 are not much interested in this lecture4 ,you are polite and attentive because this is a polite and attentive neighborhood4 ,but down in your hearts you are asking1 ,what is this all about8 ,what is that man talking about8 ,i haven't had these things and ,i'm not going to have them1 either6 ,maybe some of you are naturally bright6 ,you are going to be bumped4 ,you are going to cry yourselves to sleep4 ,you are going to walk the floor when you cannot sleep4 ,some of you are going to know the keen sorrow of having the one you trust most betray you4 ,maybe1 betray you with a kiss4 ,you will go through your ,gethsemane4 ,you will see your dearest plans wrecked4 ,you will see all that seems to make life livable lost out of your horizon4 ,you will say1 ,god1 let me die4 ,i have nothing more to live for4 ,for all lives have about the same elements4 ,your life is going to be about like other lives4 ,and you are going to learn the wonderful lesson thru the years1 the bumps and the tears1 that all these things somehow are necessary to promote our education4 ,these bumps and hard knocks do not break the fiddle--they turn the pegs4 ,these bumps and tragedies and ,waterloos draw the strings of the soul tighter and tighter1 nearer and nearer to ,god's great concert pitch1 where the discords fade from our lives and where the music divine and harmonies celestial come from the same old strings that had been sending forth the noise and discord4 ,thus we know that our education is progressing1 as the evil and unworthy go out of our lives and as peace1 harmony1 happiness1 love and understanding come into our lives4 ,that is getting in tune4 ,that is growing up4 ,chapter ,,viii ,looking ,backward ,memories of the ,price ,we ,pay ,,what a price we pay for what we know6 ,i laugh as ,i look backward--and weep and rejoice4 ,i was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth1 altho it is quite evident that ,i could have handled a pretty good-sized spoon4 ,but father being a country preacher1 we had tin spoons4 ,we never had to tie a red string around our spoons when we loaned them for the ladies' aid society oyster supper4 ,we always got our spoons back4 ,nobody ever traded with us by mistake4 ,do you remember the first money you ever earned8 ,i do4 ,i walked several miles into the country those old reaper days and gathered sheaves4 ,that night ,i was proud when that farmer patted me on the head and said1 ,you are the best boy to work1 ,i ever saw4 ,then the cheerful old miser put a nickel in my blistered hand4 ,that nickel looked bigger than any money ,i have since handled4 ,that ,last ,day of ,school ,yet ,i was years learning it is much easier to make money than to handle it1 hence the tale that follows4 ,i was sixteen years old and a school teacher4 ,sweet sixteen--which means green sixteen4 ,but remember again1 only green things grow4 ,there is hope for green things4 ,i was so tall and awkward then--,i haven't changed much since4 ,i kept still about my age4 ,i was several dollars the lowest bidder4 ,they said out that way1 ,anybody can teach kids4 ,that is why ,i was a teacher4 ,i had never studied pedagogy1 but ,i had whittled out three rules that ,i thought would make it go4 ,my first rule was1 ,make 'em study4 ,my second1 ,make1 em recite4 ,that is1 fill 'em up and then empty 'em4 ,my third and most important rule was1 ,get your money6 ,i walked thirteen miles a day1 six and a half miles each way1 most of the time1 to save money4 ,i think ,i had all teaching methods in use4 ,with the small fry ,i used a small paddle to win their confidence and arouse their enthusiasm for an education4 ,with the pupils larger and more muscular than their teacher ,i used love and moral suasion4 ,we ended the school with an exhibition4 ,did you ever attend the old back-country last day of school exhibition8 ,the people that day came from all over the township4 ,they were so glad our school was closing they all turned out to make it a success4 ,they brought great baskets of provender and we had a feast4 ,we covered the school desks with boards1 and then covered the boards with piles of fried chicken1 doughnuts and forty kinds of pie4 ,then we had a doings4 ,everybody did a stunt4 ,we executed a lot of literature that day4 ,execute is the word that tells what happened to literature in ,district ,no4 #a1 ,jackson ,township1 that day4 ,i can shut my eyes and see it yet4 ,i can see my pupils coming forward to speak their pieces4 ,i hardly knew them and they hardly knew me1 for we were dressed up4 ,many a head showed father had mowed it with the sheepshears4 ,mother had been busy with the wash-rag--clear back of the ears6 ,and into them6 ,so many of them wore collars that stuck out all stiff like they had pushed their heads on thru their big straw hats4 ,i can see them speaking their pieces4 ,i can see ,the ,soldier of the ,legion lay dying in ,algiers4 ,we had him die again that day1 and he had a lingering end as we executed him4 ,i can see ,the boy stood on the burning deck1 whence all but he had fled4 ,i can see ,mary's little lamb come slipping over the stage4 ,i see the tow-headed patriot in ,give me liberty or give me death4 ,i feel now that if ,patrick ,henry had been present1 he would have said1 ,give me death4 ,there came a breathless hush as teacher came forward as the last act on the bill to say farewell4 ,it was customary to cry4 ,i wanted to yell4 ,tomorrow ,i would get my money6 ,i had a speech ,i had been saying over and over until it would say itself4 ,but somehow when ,i got up before that last day of school audience and opened my mouth1 it was a great opening1 but nothing came out4 ,it came out of my eyes4 ,tears rolled down my cheeks until ,i could hear them spatter on my six-dollar suit4 ,and my pupils wept as their dear teacher said farewell4 ,parents wept4 ,it was a teary time4 ,i only said1 ,weep not for me1 dear friends4 ,i am going away1 but ,i am coming back4 ,i thought to cheer them up1 but they wept the more4 ,next day ,i drew my money4 ,i had it all in one joyous wad--#bdj4 ,i was going home with head high and aircastles even higher4 ,but ,i never got home with the money4 ,talk about the fool and his money and you get very personal4 ,for on the way home ,i met ,deacon ,k1 and he borrowed it all4 ,deacon ,k was such a good man and a pillar of the church4 ,i used to wonder1 tho1 why he didn't take a pillow to church4 ,i took his note for #bdj1 due at corncutting1 as we termed that annual fall-time paying up season4 ,i really thought a note was not necessary1 such was my confidence in the deacon4 ,for years ,i kept a faded1 tear-spattered1 yellow note for #bdj1 due at corncutting1 as a souvenir of my first schoolteaching4 ,deacon ,k has gone from earth4 ,he has gone to his eternal reward4 ,i scarcely know whether to look up or down as ,i say that4 ,he never left any forwarding address4 ,i was paid thousands in experience for that first schoolteaching1 but ,i paid all the money ,i got from it--two hundred and forty thirteen-mile-a-day dollars to learn one thing ,i could not learn from the books1 that it takes less wisdom to make money1 than it does to intelligently handle it afterwards4 ,incidentally ,i learned it may be safer to do business with a first-class sinner than with a second-class saint4 ,which is no slap at the church1 but at its worst enemies1 the foes of its own household4 ,calling the ,class-,roll ,a lyceum bureau once sent me back to my home town to lecture4 ,i imagine most lecturers have a hard time lecturing in the home town4 ,their schoolmates and playmates are apt to be down there in the front rows with their families1 and maybe all the old scores have not yet been settled4 ,the boy he fought with may be down there4 ,perhaps the girl who gave him the mitten is there4 ,and he has gotten his lecture out of that home town4 ,the heroes and villains live there within striking distance4 ,perhaps they have come to hear him4 ,is not this the carpenter's son8 ,perhaps this is why some lecturers and authors are not so popular in the home town until several generations pass4 ,i went back to the same hall to speak1 and stood upon the same platform where twenty-one years before ,i had stood to deliver my graduating oration1 when in impassioned and well modulated tones ,i had exclaimed1 ,greece is gone and ,rome is no more1 but fe-e-e-e-ear not1 for ,i will sa-a-a-a-ave you6 or words to that effect4 ,then ,i went back to the little hotel and sat up alone in my room half the night living it over4 ,time was when ,i thought anybody who could live in that hotel was a superior order of being4 ,but the time had come when ,i knew the person who could go on living in any hotel has a superior order of vitality4 ,i held thanksgiving services that night4 ,i could see better4 ,i had a picture of the school in that town that had been taken twenty-one years before1 just before commencement4 ,i had not seen the picture these twenty-one years1 for ,i could not then afford to buy one4 ,the price was a quarter4 ,i got a truer perspective of life that night4 ,did you ever sit alone with a picture of your classmates taken twenty-one years before8 ,it is a memorable experience4 ,a class of brilliant and gifted young people went out to take charge of the world4 ,they were so glad the world had waited so long on them4 ,they were so willing to take charge of the world4 ,they were going to be presidents and senators and authors and authoresses and scientists and scientist-esses and geniuses and genius-esses and things like that4 ,there was one boy in the class who was not naturally bright4 ,it was not the one you may be thinking of6 ,no1 it was ,jim ,lambert4 ,he had no brilliant career in view4 ,he was dull and seemed to lack intellect4 ,he was conditioned into the senior class4 ,we all felt a little sorry for ,jim4 ,as commencement day approached1 the committee of the class appointed for that purpose took ,jim back of the schoolhouse and broke the news to him that they were going to let him graduate1 but they were not going to let him speak1 because he couldn't make a speech that would do credit to such a brilliant class4 ,they hid ,jim on the stage back of the oleander commencement night4 ,shake the barrel6 ,the girl who was to become the authoress became the helloess in the home telephone exchange1 and had become absolutely indispensable to the community4 ,the girl who was to become the poetess became the goddess at the general delivery window and superintendent of the stamp-licking department of the home postoffice4 ,the boy who was going to ,confess was raising the best corn in the county1 and his wife was speaker of the house4 ,most of them were doing very well even ,jim ,lambert4 ,jim had become the head of one of the big manufacturing plants of the ,south1 with a lot of men working for him4 ,the committee that took him out behind the schoolhouse to inform him he could not speak at commencement1 would now have to wait in line before a frosted door marked1 ,mr4 ,lambert1 ,private4 ,they would have to send up their cards1 and the watchdog who guards the door would tell them1 ,cut it short1 he's busy6 before they could break any news to him today4 ,they hung a picture of ,mr4 ,lambert in the high school at the last alumni meeting4 ,they hung it on the wall near where the oleander stood that night4 ,dull boy or girl--you with your eyes tear-dimmed sometimes because you do not seem to learn like some in your classes can you not get a bit of cheer from the story of ,jim8 ,hours pass1 and still as ,i sat in that hotel room ,i was lost in that school picture and the twenty-one years4 ,there were fifty-four young people in that picture4 ,they had been shaken these years in the barrel1 and now as ,i called the roll on them1 most of them that ,i expected to go up had shaken down and some that ,i expected to stay down had shaken up4 ,out of that fifty-four1 one had gone to a pulpit1 one had gone to ,congress and one had gone to the penitentiary4 ,some had gone to brilliant success and some had gone down to sad failure4 ,some had found happiness and some had found unhappiness4 ,it seemed as tho almost every note on the keyboard of human possibility had been struck by the one school of fifty-four4 ,when that picture was taken the oldest was not more than eighteen1 yet most of them seemed already to have decided their destinies4 ,the twenty-one years that followed had not changed their courses4 ,the only changes had come where ,god had come into a life to uplift it1 or where ,mammon had entered to pull it down4 ,and ,i saw better that the foolish dreams of success faded before the natural unfolding of talents1 which is the real success4 ,i saw better that the boy is father to the man4 ,the boy who skimmed over his work in school was skimming over his work as a man4 ,the boy who went to the bottom of things in school was going to the bottom of things in manhood4 ,which had helped him to go to the top of things6 ,jim ,lambert had merely followed the call of talents unseen in him twenty-one years before4 ,the lazy boy became a tired man4 ,the industrious boy became an industrious man4 ,the sporty boy became a sporty man4 ,the domineering egotist boy became the domineering egotist man4 ,the boy who traded knives with me and beat me--how ,i used to envy him6 ,why was it he could always get the better of me8 ,well1 he went on trading knives and getting the better of people4 ,now1 twenty-one years afterwards1 he was doing time in the state penitentiary for forgery4 ,he was now called a bad man1 when twenty-one years ago when he did the same things on a smaller scale they called him smart and bright4 ,the perfectly lovely boy who didn't mix with the other boys1 who didn't whisper1 who never got into trouble1 who always had his hair combed1 and said1 ,if you please1 used to hurt me4 ,he was the teacher's model boy4 ,all the mothers of the community used to say to their own reprobate offspring1 ,why can't you be like ,harry8 ,he'll be ,president of the ,united ,states some day1 and you'll be in jail4 ,but ,model ,harry sat around all his life being a model4 ,i believe ,mr4 ,webster defines a model as a small imitation of the real thing4 ,harry certainly was a successful model4 ,he became a seedy1 sleepy1 helpless relic at forty4 ,he was perfectly lovely because he hadn't the energy to be anything else4 ,it was the boys who had the hustle and the energy1 who occasionally needed bumping--and who got it--who really grew4 ,i have said little about the girls of the school4 ,fact was1 at that age ,i didn't pay much attention to them4 ,i regarded them as in the way4 ,but ,i naturally thought of ,clarice1 our social pet of the class--our real pretty girl who won the vase in the home paper beauty contest4 ,clarice went right on remaining in the social spotlight1 primping and flirting4 ,she outshone all the rest4 ,but it seemed like she was all out-shine and no in-shine4 ,she mistook popularity for success4 ,the boys voted for her1 but did not marry her4 ,most of the girls who shone with less social luster became the happy homemakers of the community4 ,but as ,i looked into the face of ,jim ,lambert in the picture1 my heart warmed at the sight of another great success--a sweet-faced irish lass who became an old maid4 ,she had worked day by day all these years to support a home and care for her family4 ,she had kept her grace and sweetness thru it all1 and the influence of her white1 loving life radiated far4 ,the ,boy ,i ,had ,envied ,frank was the boy ,i had envied4 ,he had everything--a fine home1 a loving father1 plenty of money1 opportunity and a great career awaiting him4 ,and he was bright and lovable and talented4 ,everybody said ,frank would make his mark in the world and make the town proud of him4 ,i was the janitor of the schoolhouse4 ,some of my classmates will never know how their thoughtless jeers and jokes wounded the sensitive1 shabby boy who swept the floors1 built the fires and carried in the coal4 ,after commencement my career seemed to end and the careers of ,frank and the rest of them seemed to begin4 ,they were going off to college and going to do so many wonderful things4 ,but the week after commencement ,i had to go into a printing office1 roll up my sleeves and go to work in the devil's corner to earn my daily bread4 ,seemed like it took so much bread6 ,many a time as ,i plugged at the case ,i would think of ,frank and wonder why some people had all the good things and ,i had all the hard things4 ,how easy it is to see as you look backward4 ,but how hard it is to see when you look forward4 ,twenty-one years afterward as ,i got off the train in the home town1 ,i asked1 ,where is he8 ,we went out to the cemetery1 where ,i stood at a grave and read on the headstone1 ,frank4 ,i had the story of a tragedy--the tragedy of modern unpreparedness4 ,it was the story of the boy who had every opportunity1 but who had all the struggle taken out of his life4 ,he never followed his career1 never developed any strength4 ,he disappointed hopes1 spent a fortune1 broke his father's heart1 shocked the community1 and finally ended his wasted life with a bullet fired by his own hand4 ,why ,ben ,hur ,won ,it revived the memory of the story of ,ben ,hur4 ,do you remember it8 ,the ,jewish boy is torn from his home in disgrace4 ,he is haled into court and tried for a crime he never committed4 ,ben ,hur did not get a fair trial4 ,nobody can get a fair trial at the hands of this world4 ,that is why the great ,judge has said1 judge not1 for you have not the full evidence in the case4 ,i alone have that4 ,then they condemn him4 ,they lead him away to the galleys4 ,they chain him to the bench and to the oar4 ,there follow the days and long years when he pulls on the oar under the lash4 ,day after day he pulls on the oar4 ,day after day he writhes under the sting of the lash4 ,years of the cruel injustice pass4 ,ben ,hur is the helpless victim of a mocking fate4 ,that seems to be your life and my life4 ,in the kitchen or the office1 or wherever we work we seem so often like slaves bound to the oar and pulling under the sting of the lash of necessity4 ,life seems one futureless round of drudgery4 ,we wonder why4 ,we often look across the street and see somebody who lives a happier life4 ,that one is chained to no oar4 ,see what a fine time they all have4 ,why must we pull on the oar8 ,how blind we are6 ,we can only see our own oar4 ,we cannot see that they1 too1 pull on the oar and feel the lash4 ,most likely they are looking back at us and envying us4 ,for while we envy others1 others are envying us4 ,but look at the chariot race in ,antioch4 ,see the thousands in the circus4 ,see ,messala1 the haughty ,roman1 and see6 ,ben ,hur from the galleys in the other chariot pitted against him4 ,down the course dash these twin thunderbolts4 ,the thousands hold their breath4 ,who will win8 ,the man with the stronger forearms1 they whisper4 ,there comes the crucial moment in the race4 ,see the man with the stronger forearms4 ,they are bands of steel that swell in the forearms of ,ben ,hur4 ,they swing those flying ,arabians into the inner ring4 ,ben ,hur wins the race6 ,where got the ,jew those huge forearms8 ,from the galleys6 ,had ,ben ,hur never pulled on the oar1 he never could have won the chariot race4 ,sooner or later you and ,i are to learn that ,providence makes no mistakes in the bookkeeping4 ,as we pull on the oar1 so often lashed by grim necessity1 every honest effort is laid up at compound interest in the bank account of strength4 ,sooner or later the time comes when we need every ounce4 ,sooner or later our chariot race is on--when we win the victory1 strike the deciding blow1 stand while those around us fall--and it is won with the forearms earned in the galleys of life by pulling on the oar4 ,that is why ,i thanked ,god as ,i stood at the grave of my classmate4 ,i thanked ,god for parents who believed in the gospel of struggle1 and for the circumstances that compelled it4 ,i am not an example of success4 ,but ,i am a very grateful pupil in the first reader class of ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,chapter ,,ix ,go ,on ,south6 ,the ,book in the ,running ,brook ,,there is a little silvery sheet of water in ,minnesota called ,lake ,itasca4 ,there is a place where a little stream leaps out from the lake4 ,ole6 you will exclaim1 the lake is leaking4 ,what is the name of this little creek8 ,creek6 ,it bane no creek4 ,it bane ,mississippi river4 ,so even the ,father of ,waters has to begin as a creek4 ,we are at the cradle where the baby river leaps forth4 ,we all start about alike4 ,it wabbles around thru the woods of ,minnesota4 ,it doesn't know where it is going1 but it is on the way4 ,it keeps wabbling around1 never giving up and quitting1 and it gets to the place where all of us get sooner or later4 ,the place where ,paul came on the road to ,damascus4 ,the place of the heavenly vision4 ,it is the place where gravity says1 ,little ,mississippi1 do you want to grow8 ,then you will have to go south4 ,the little ,mississippi starts south4 ,he says to the people1 ,goodbye1 folks1 ,i am going south4 ,the folks at ,itascaville say1 ,why1 ,mississippi1 you are foolish4 ,you hain't got water enough to get out of the county4 ,that is a fact1 but he is not trying to get out of the county4 ,the ,mississippi is only trying to go south4 ,the ,mississippi knows nothing about the ,gulf of ,mexico4 ,he does not know that he has to go hundreds of miles south4 ,he is only trying to go south4 ,he has not much water1 but he does not wait for a relative to die and bequeath him some water4 ,that is a beautiful thought6 ,he has water enough to start south1 and he does that4 ,he goes a foot south1 then another foot south4 ,he goes a mile south4 ,he picks up a little stream and he has some more water4 ,he goes on south4 ,he picks up another stream and grows some more4 ,day by day he picks up streamlets1 brooklets1 rivulets4 ,business is picking up6 ,he grows as he flows4 ,poetry6 ,my friends1 here is one of the best pictures ,i can find in nature of what it seems to me our lives should be4 ,i hear a great many orations1 especially in high school commencements1 entitled1 ,the ,value of a ,goal in ,life4 ,but the direction is vastly more important than the goal4 ,find the way your life should go1 and then go and keep on going and you'll reach a thousand goals4 ,we do not have to figure out how far we have to go1 nor how many supplies we will need along the way4 ,all we have to do is to start and we will find the resources all along the way4 ,we will grow as we flow4 ,all of us can start6 ,and then go on south6 ,success is not tomorrow or next year4 ,success is now4 ,success is not at the end of the journey1 for there is no end4 ,success is every day in flowing and growing4 ,the ,mississippi is a success in ,minnesota as well as on south4 ,you and ,i sooner or later hear the call1 ,go on south4 ,if we haven't heard it1 let us keep our ear to the receiver and live a more natural life1 so that we can hear the call4 ,we are all called4 ,it is a divine call--the call of our unfolding talents to be used4 ,remember1 the ,mississippi goes south4 ,if he had gone any other direction he would never have been heard of4 ,three wonderful things develop as the ,mississippi goes on south4 #a4 ,he keeps on going on south and growing greater4 #b4 ,he overcomes his obstacles and develops his power4 #c4 ,he blesses the valley1 but the valley does not bless him4 ,go ,on ,south and ,grow ,greater ,you never meet the ,mississippi after he starts south1 but what he is going on south and growing greater4 ,you never meet him but what he says1 ,excuse me1 but ,i must go on south4 ,the ,mississippi gets to ,st4 ,paul and ,minneapolis4 ,he is a great river now--the most successful river in the state4 ,but he does not retire upon his laurels4 ,he goes on south and grows greater4 ,he goes on south to ,st4 ,louis4 ,he is a wonderful river now4 ,but he does not stop4 ,he goes on south and grows greater4 ,everywhere you meet him he is going on south and growing greater4 ,do you know why the ,mississippi goes on south8 ,to continue to be the ,mississippi4 ,if he should stop and stagnate1 he would not be the ,mississippi river1 he would become a stagnant1 poisonous pond4 ,as long as people keep on going south1 they keep on living4 ,when they stop and stagnate1 they die4 ,that is why ,i am making it the slogan of my life--,,go ,,on ,,south ,,and ,,grow ,,greater6 ,i hope ,i can make you remember that and say it over each day4 ,i wish ,i could write it over the pulpits1 over the schoolrooms1 over the business houses and homes--,,go ,,on ,,south ,,and ,,grow ,,greater4 ,for this is life1 and there is no other4 ,this is education--and religion4 ,and the only business of life4 ,you and ,i start well4 ,we go on south a little ways1 and then we retire4 ,even young people as they start south and make some little knee-pants achievement1 some kindergarten touchdown1 succumb to their press notices4 ,their friends crowd around them to congratulate them4 ,i must congratulate you upon your success4 ,you have arrived4 ,so many of those young goslings believe that4 ,they quit and get canned4 ,they think they have gotten to the ,gulf of ,mexico when they have not gotten out of the woods of ,minnesota4 ,go on south6 ,we can protect ourselves fairly well from our enemies1 but heaven deliver us from our fool friends4 ,success is so hard to endure4 ,we can endure ten defeats better than one victory4 ,success goes to the head and defeat goes to de feet4 ,it makes them work harder4 ,the ,plague of ,incompetents ,civilization is mostly a conspiracy to keep us from going very far south4 ,the one who keeps on going south defies custom and becomes unorthodox4 ,but contentment with present achievement is the damnation of the race4 ,the mass of the human family never go on south far enough to become good servants1 workmen or artists4 ,the young people get a smattering and squeeze into the bottom position and never go on south to efficiency and promotion4 ,they wonder why their genius is not recognized4 ,they do not make it visible4 ,nine out of ten stenographers who apply for positions can write a few shorthand characters and irritate a typewriter keyboard4 ,they think that is being a stenographer1 when it is merely a symptom of a stenographer4 ,they mangle the language1 grammar1 spelling1 capitalization and punctuation4 ,their eyes are on the clock1 their minds on the movies4 ,nine out of ten workmen cannot be trusted to do what they advertise to do1 because they have never gone south far enough to become efficient4 ,many a professional man is in the same class4 ,half of our life is spent in getting competents to repair the botchwork of incompetents4 ,no matter how well equipped you are1 you are never safe in your job if you are contented to do today just what you did yesterday4 ,contented to think today what you thought yesterday4 ,you must go on south to be safe4 ,i used to know a violinist who would say1 ,if ,i were not a genius1 ,i could not play so well with such little practice4 ,the poor fellow did not know how poor a fiddler he really was4 ,well did ,strickland ,gillilan1 ,america's great poet-humorist1 say1 ,egotism is the opiate that ,nature administers to deaden the pains of mediocrity4 ,this ,is ,our ,best ,day ,just because our hair gets frosty or begins to rub off in spots1 we are so prone to say1 ,i am aging rapidly4 ,it pays to advertise4 ,we always get results4 ,see the one shrivel who goes around front-paging his age4 ,age is not years2 age is grunts4 ,we say1 ,i've seen my best days4 ,and the undertaker goes and greases his buggy4 ,he believes in preparedness4 ,go on south6 ,we have not seen our best days4 ,this is the best day so far1 and tomorrow is going to be better on south4 ,we are only children in ,god's great kindergarten1 playing with our ,a-,b-,c's4 ,i do not utter that as a bit of sentiment1 but as the great fundamental of our life4 ,i hope the oldest in years sees that best4 ,i hope he says1 ,i am just beginning4 ,just beginning to understand4 ,just beginning to know about life4 ,we are not going on south to old age1 we are going on south to eternal youth4 ,it is the one who stops who ages rapidly4 ,each day brings us a larger vision4 ,infinity1 ,eternity1 ,omnipotence1 ,omniscience are all on south4 ,we have left nothing behind but the husks4 ,i would not trade this moment for all the years before it4 ,i have their footings at compound interest6 ,they are dead4 ,this is life4 ,birthdays and ,headmarks ,yesterday ,i had a birthday4 ,i looked in the glass and communed with my features4 ,i saw some gray hairs coming4 ,hurrah6 ,you know what gray hairs are8 ,did you ever get a headmark in school8 ,gray hairs are silver headmarks in our education as we go on south4 ,you children cheer up4 ,your black hair and auburn hair and the other first reader hair will pass and you'll get promoted as you go on south4 ,don't worry about gray hair or baldness4 ,only worry about the location of your gray hair or baldness4 ,if they get on the inside of the head1 worry4 ,do you know why corporations sometimes say they do not want to employ gray-headed men8 ,they have found that so many of them have quit going on south and have gotten gray on the inside--or bald4 ,these same corporations send out ,pinkertons and pay any price for gray-headed men--gray on the outside and green on the inside4 ,they are the most valuable1 for they have the vision and wisdom of many years and the enthusiasm and pep and courage of youth4 ,the preacher1 the teacher--everyone who gets put on the retired list1 retires himself4 ,he quits going on south4 ,the most wonderful person in the world is the one who has lived years and years on earth and has perhaps gotten gray on the outside1 but has kept young and fresh on the inside4 ,put that person in the pulpit1 in the schoolroom1 in the office1 behind the ticket-window or on the bench--or under the hod--and you find the whole world going to that person for direction1 advice1 vision1 help1 sympathy1 love4 ,i am happy today as ,i look back over my life4 ,i have been trying to lecture a good while4 ,i am almost ashamed to tell you how long1 for ,i ought to know more about it by this time4 ,but when anybody says1 ,i heard you lecture twenty years ago over at---- ,i stop him4 ,please don't throw it up to me now4 ,i am just as ashamed of it as you are4 ,i am trying to do better now4 ,o1 ,i want to forget all the past1 save its lessons4 ,i am just beginning to live4 ,if anybody wants to be my best friend1 let him come to me and tell me how to improve--what to do and what not to do4 ,tell me how to give a better lecture4 ,years ago a bureau representative who booked me told me my lectures were good enough4 ,i told him ,i wanted to get better lectures1 for ,i was so dissatisfied with what little ,i knew4 ,he told me ,i could never get any better4 ,i had reached my limit4 ,those lectures were the limit4 ,i shiver as ,i think what ,i was saying then4 ,i want to go on south shivering about yesterday4 ,these years ,i have noticed the people on the platform who were contented with their offerings1 were not trying to improve them1 and were lost in admiration of what they were doing1 did not stay long on the platform4 ,i have watched them come and go1 come and go4 ,i have heard their fierce invectives against the bureaus and ungrateful audiences that were prejudiced against them4 ,birthdays are not annual affairs4 ,birthdays are the days when we have a new birth4 ,the days when we go on south to larger visions4 ,i wish ,i could have a birthday every minute6 ,some people seem to string out to near a hundred years with mighty few birthdays4 ,some people spin up to ,methuselahs in a few years4 ,from what ,i can learn of ,methuselah1 he never grew past copper-toed boots4 ,he just hibernated and chawed on4 ,the more birthdays we have1 the nearer we approach eternal youth6 ,bernhardt1 ,davis and ,edison ,the spectacle of ,sarah ,bernhardt1 past seventy1 thrilling and gripping audiences with the fire and brilliancy of youth1 is inspiring4 ,no obstacle can daunt her4 ,losing a leg does not end her acting1 for she remains the ,divine ,sarah with no crippling of her work4 ,she looks younger than many women of half her years4 ,the years are nothing to me4 ,senator ,henry ,gassaway ,davis1 ,west ,virginia's ,grand ,old ,man1 at ninety-two was working as hard and hopefully as any man of the multitudes in his employ4 ,he was an ardent ,odd ,fellow1 and one day at ninety-two--just a short time before his passing--he went out to the ,odd ,fellows' ,home near ,elkins1 where he lived4 ,on the porch of the home was a row of old men inmates4 ,the senator shook hands with these men and one by one they rose from the bench to return his hearty greetings4 ,the last man on the bench did not rise4 ,he helplessly looked up at the senator and said1 ,senator1 you'll have to excuse me from getting up4 ,i'm too old4 ,when you get as old as ,i am1 you'll not get up1 either4 ,that's all right4 ,but1 my man1 how old are you8 ,senator1 ,i'm old in body and old in spirit4 ,i'm past sixty4 ,my boy1 laughed ,senator ,davis1 ,i was an ,odd ,fellow before you were born4 ,the senator at ninety-two was younger than the man past sixty1 because he was going on south4 ,when ,i was a little boy ,i saw them bring the first phonograph that ,mr4 ,edison invented into the meeting at ,lakeside1 ,ohio4 ,the people cheered when they heard it talk4 ,you would laugh at it today4 ,it had a tinfoil cylinder1 it screeched and stuttered4 ,you would not have it in your barn today to play to your ford6 ,but the people said1 ,mr4 ,edison has succeeded4 ,there was one man who did not believe that ,mr4 ,edison had succeeded4 ,his name was ,thomas ,alva ,edison4 ,he had gotten to ,st4 ,paul1 and he went on south4 ,a million people would have stopped there and said1 ,i have arrived4 ,they would have put in their time litigating for their rights with other people who would have gone on south with the phonograph idea4 ,mr4 ,edison has said that his genius is mainly his ability to keep on south4 ,a young lady succeeded in getting into his laboratory the other day1 and she wrote me that the great inventor showed her one invention4 ,i made over seven thousand experiments and failed before ,i hit upon that4 ,why make so many experiments8 ,i know more than seven thousand ways now that won't work4 ,i doubt if there are ten men in ,america who could go on south in the face of seven thousand failures4 ,today he brings forth a diamond-pointed phonograph4 ,i am sure if we could bring ,mr4 ,edison to this platform and ask him1 ,have you succeeded8 he would say what he has said to reporters and what he said to the young lady1 ,i have not succeeded4 ,i am succeeding4 ,all ,i have done only shows me how much there is yet to do4 ,that is success supreme4 ,not succeeded but succeeding4 ,what a difference between ed and ing6 ,the difference between death and life4 ,are you ed-ing or ing-ing8 ,moses ,begins at ,eighty ,moses1 the great ,hebrew law-giver1 was eighty years old before he started south4 ,it took him eighty years to get ready4 ,moses did not even get on the back page of the ,egyptian newspapers till he was eighty4 ,he went on south into the extra editions after that6 ,if ,moses had retired at seventy-nine1 we'd never have heard of him4 ,if ,moses had retired to a checkerboard in the grocery store or to pitching horseshoes up the alley and talking about ther winter of fifty-four1 he would have become the seventeenth mummy on the thirty-ninth row in the green pickle-jar6 ,imagine ,moses living today amidst the din of the high school orations on ,the ,age of the ,young ,man and the ,ostler idea that you are going down hill at fifty4 ,imagine ,moses living on borrowed time when he becomes the leader of the ,israelite host4 ,i would see his scandalized friends gather around him4 ,moses6 ,moses6 what is this we hear8 ,you going to lead the ,israelites to the ,promised ,land8 ,why1 ,moses1 you are an old man4 ,why don't you act like an old man8 ,you are liable to drop off any minute4 ,here is a pair of slippers4 ,and keep out of the night air4 ,it is so hard on old folks4 ,i think ,i would hear ,moses say1 ,no1 no1 ,i am just beginning to see what to do4 ,watch things happen from now on4 ,children of ,israel1 forward1 march6 ,i see ,moses at eighty starting for the ,wilderness so fast ,aaron can hardly keep up4 ,moses is eighty-five and busier and more enthusiastic than ever4 ,the people say1 ,isn't ,moses dead8 ,no4 ,well1 he ought to be dead1 for he is old enough4 ,they appoint a committee to bury ,moses4 ,you cannot do anything in ,america without a committee4 ,the committee gets out the invitations and makes all the arrangements for a gorgeous funeral next ,thursday4 ,they get ready the resolutions of respect--,whereas1--,whereas1--,resolved 1--,resolved4 ,then ,i see the committee waiting on ,moses4 ,that is what a committee does--it waits on something or other4 ,and this committee goes up to ,general ,moses' private office4 ,it is his busy day4 ,they have to stand in line and wait their turn4 ,when they get up to ,moses' desk1 the great prophet says1 ,boys1 what is it8 ,cut it short1 ,i'm busy4 ,the committee begins to weep4 ,general ,moses1 you are a very old man4 ,you are eighty-five years old and full of honors4 ,we are the committee duly authorized to give you gorgeous burial4 ,the funeral is to be next ,thursday4 ,kindly die4 ,i see ,moses look over his appointments4 ,next ,thursday8 ,why1 boys1 every hour is taken next ,thursday4 ,i simply cannot attend my funeral next ,thursday4 ,they cannot bury ,moses4 ,he cannot attend4 ,you cannot bury anybody who is too busy to attend his own funeral6 ,you cannot bury anybody until he consents4 ,it is bad manners6 ,the committee is so mortified1 for all the invitations are out4 ,it waits4 ,moses is eighty-six and the committee 'phones over1 ,moses1 can you attend next ,thursday8 ,and ,moses says1 ,no1 boys1 you'll just have to hold that funeral until ,i get this work pushed off so ,i can attend it4 ,i haven't even time to think about getting old4 ,the committee waits4 ,moses is ninety and rushed more than ever4 ,he is doing ten men's work and his friends all say he is killing himself4 ,but he makes the committee wait4 ,moses is ninety-five and burning the candle at both ends4 ,he is a hundred4 ,and the committee dies6 ,moses goes right on shouting1 ,onward6 ,he is a hundred and ten4 ,he is a hundred and twenty4 ,even then ,i read1 ,his eye was not dim1 nor his natural force abated4 ,he had not time to stop and abate4 ,so ,god buried him4 ,the committee was dead4 ,o1 friends1 this is not irreverence4 ,it is joyful reverence4 ,it is the message to all of us1 ,go on south to the greater things1 and get so enthused and absorbed in our going that we'll fool the committee4 ,all the multitudes of the ,children of ,israel died in the ,wilderness4 ,they were afraid to go on south4 ,only two of them went on south--,joshua and ,caleb4 ,they put the giants out of business4 ,the ,indians once owned ,america4 ,but they failed to go on south4 ,so another crop of ,americans came into the limelight4 ,if we modern ,americans do not go on south we will join the ,indians1 the auk and the dodo4 ,the ,sob ,squad ,i am so sorry for the folks who quit1 retire1 get on the shelf or live on borrowed time4 ,they generally join the sob squad4 ,they generally discover the world is going to the dogs4 ,they cry on my shoulder1 no matter how good clothes ,i wear4 ,they tell me nobody uses them right4 ,the person going on south has not time to look back and see how anybody uses him4 ,they say nobody loves them4 ,which is often a fact4 ,nobody loves the clock that runs down4 ,they say1 ,only a few more days of trouble1 only a few more tribulations1 and ,i'll be in that bright and happy land4 ,what will they do with them when they get them there8 ,they would be dill pickles in the heavenly preserve-jar4 ,they say1 ,i wish ,i were a child again4 ,i was happy when ,i was a child and ,i'm not happy now4 ,them was the best days of my life childhood's palmy days4 ,wake up6 ,your clock has run down4 ,anybody who wants to be a child again is confessing he has lost his memory4 ,anybody who can remember the horrors of childhood could not be hired to live it over again4 ,if there is anybody who does not have a good time1 if there is anybody who gets shortchanged regularly1 it is a child4 ,i am so sorry for a child4 ,hurry up and go on south4 ,it is better on south4 ,waiting till the ,second ,table ,i wish ,i could forget many of my childhood memories4 ,i remember the palmy days4 ,and the palm6 ,i often wonder how ,i ever lived thru my childhood4 ,i would not take my chances living it thru again4 ,i am not ungrateful to my parents4 ,i had advantages4 ,i was born in a parsonage and was reared in the nurture and admiration of the ,lord4 ,i am not just sure ,i quoted that correctly1 but ,i know ,i was reared in a parsonage4 ,about all ,i inherited was a ,godly example and a large appetite4 ,that was about all there was to inherit4 ,i cannot remember when ,i was not hungry4 ,i used to go around feeling like the ,mammoth ,cave1 never thoroly explored4 ,i never sit down as company at a dinner and see some little children going sadly into the next room to wait till the second table that my heart does not go out to them4 ,i remember when ,i did that4 ,i can only remember about four big meals in a year4 ,that was quart'ly meeting day4 ,we always had a big dinner on quart'ly meeting day4 ,elder ,berry would stay for dinner4 ,his name was ,berry1 but being presiding elder1 we called him ,elder ,berry4 ,elder ,berry always stayed for dinner4 ,he was one of the easiest men to get to stay for dinner ,i ever saw4 ,mother would stay home from quart'ly meeting to get the big dinner ready4 ,she would cook up about all the brethren brought in at the last donation4 ,we had one of those stretchable tables1 and mother would stretch it clear across the room and put on two table-cloths4 ,she would lap them over in the middle1 where the hole was4 ,i would watch her get the big dinner ready4 ,i would look over the long table and view the promised land4 ,i would see her set on the jelly4 ,we had so much jelly--red jelly1 and white jelly1 and blue jelly4 ,i don't just remember if they had blue jelly1 but if they had it we had it on that table4 ,all the jelly that ever jelled was represented4 ,i didn't know we had so much jelly till quart'ly meeting day4 ,i would watch the jelly tremble4 ,did you ever see jelly tremble8 ,i used to think it ought to tremble1 for ,elder ,berry was coming for dinner4 ,i would see mother put on the tallest pile of mashed potatoes you ever saw4 ,she would make a hollow in the top and fill it with butter4 ,i would see the butter melt and run down the sides1 and ,i would say1 ,hurry1 mother1 it is going to spill6 ,o1 how ,i wanted to spill it6 ,i could hardly hold out faithful4 ,and then ,elder ,berry would sit down at the table1 at the end nearest the fried chicken4 ,the company would sit down4 ,i used to wonder why we never could have a big dinner but what a lot of company had to come and gobble it up4 ,they would fill the table and father would sit down in the last seat4 ,there was no place for me to sit4 ,father would say1 ,you go into the next room1 my boy1 and wait4 ,there's no room for you at the table4 ,the hungriest one of that assemblage would have to go in the next room and hear the big dinner4 ,did you ever hear a big dinner when you felt like the ,mammoth ,cave8 ,i used to think as ,i would sit in the next room that heaven would be a place where everybody would eat at the first table4 ,i would watch them thru the key-hole4 ,it was going so fast4 ,there was only one piece of chicken left4 ,it was the neck4 ,o1 ,lord1 spare the neck6 ,and ,i would hear them say1 ,elder ,berry1 may we help you to another piece of the chicken8 ,and ,elder ,berry would take the neck6 ,many a time after that1 ,elder ,berry would come into the room where ,i was starving4 ,he would say1 ,brother ,parlette1 is this your boy8 ,he would come over to the remains of ,brother ,parlette's boy4 ,he would often put his hand in benediction upon my head4 ,my head was not the place that needed the benediction4 ,he would say1 ,my boy1 ,i want you to have a good time now4 ,now6 ,when all the chicken was gone and he had taken the neck6 ,my boy1 you are seeing the best days of your life right now as a child4 ,the dear old liar6 ,i was seeing the worst days of my life4 ,if there is anybody shortchanged--if there is anybody who doesn't have a good time1 it's a child4 ,life has been getting better ever since1 and today is the best day of all4 ,go on south6 ,it's ,better on ,south ,seeing your best days as a child8 ,no6 ,you are seeing your worst days4 ,of course1 you can be happy as a child4 ,a boy can be happy with fuzz on his upper lip1 but he'll be happier when his lip feels more like mine like a piece of sandpaper4 ,there are chapters of happiness undreamed of in his philosophy4 ,a child can be full of happiness and only hold a pint4 ,but afterwhile the same child will hold a quart4 ,i think ,i hold a gallon now4 ,and ,i see people in the audience who must hold a barrel6 ,go on south4 ,of course1 ,i do not mean circumference4 ,but every year we go south increases our capacity for joy4 ,our life is one continual unfolding as we go south4 ,afterwhile this old world gets too small for us and we go on south into a larger one4 ,so we cannot grow old4 ,our life never stops4 ,it goes on and on forever4 ,anything that does not stop cannot grow old or have age4 ,material things will grow old4 ,this stage will grow old and stop4 ,this hall will grow old and stop4 ,this house we live in will grow old and stop4 ,this flesh and blood house we live in will grow old and stop4 ,this lecture even will grow old--and stop6 ,but you and ,i will never grow old1 for ,god cannot grow old4 ,you and ,i will go on living as long as ,god lives4 ,i am not worried today over what ,i do not know4 ,i used to be worried4 ,i used to say1 ,i have not time to answer you now6 ,but today it is such a relief to look people in the face and say1 ,i do not know4 ,and ,i have to say that to many questions1 ,i do not know4 ,i often think if people in an audience only knew how little ,i know1 they would not stay to hear me4 ,but some day ,i shall know6 ,i patiently wait for the answer4 ,every day brings the answer to something ,i could not answer yesterday4 ,it will take an eternity to know an infinity6 ,what a wonderful happiness to go on south to it6 ,overcoming ,obstacles ,develops ,power ,as the ,mississippi ,river goes on south he finds obstacles along the way4 ,you and ,i find obstacles along our way south4 ,what shall we do8 ,go to ,keokuk1 ,iowa1 for your answer4 ,they have built a great concrete obstacle clear across the path of the river4 ,it is many feet high1 and many1 many feet long4 ,the river cannot go on south4 ,watch him4 ,he rises higher than the obstacle and sweeps over it on south4 ,over the great power dam at ,keokuk sweeps the ,mississippi4 ,and then you see the struggle of overcoming the obstacle develops light and power to vitalize the valley4 ,a hundred towns and cities radiate the light and power from the struggle4 ,the great city of ,st4 ,louis1 many miles away1 throbs with the victory4 ,so that is why they spent the millions to build the obstacle--to get the light and the power4 ,the light and the power were latent in the river1 but it took the obstacle and the overcoming to develop it and make it useful4 ,that is exactly what happens when you and ,i overcome our obstacles4 ,we develop our light and power4 ,we are rivers of light and power1 but it is all latent and does no good until we overcome obstacles as we go on south4 ,obstacles are the power stations on our way south6 ,and where the most obstacles are1 there you find the most power to be developed4 ,so many of us do not understand that4 ,we look southward and we see the obstacles in the road4 ,i am so unfortunate4 ,i could do these great things1 but alas6 ,i have so many obstacles in the way4 ,thank ,god6 ,you are blessed of ,providence4 ,they do not waste the obstacles4 ,the presence of the obstacles means that there is a lot of light and power in you to be developed4 ,if you see no obstacles1 you are confessing to blindness4 ,i hear people saying1 ,i hope the time may speedily come when ,i shall have no more obstacles to overcome6 ,when that time comes1 ring up the hearse1 for you will be a dead one4 ,life is going on south1 and overcoming the obstacles4 ,death is merely quitting4 ,the fact that we are not buried is no proof that we are alive4 ,go along the street in almost any town and see the dead ones4 ,there they are decorating the hitching-racks and festooning the storeboxes4 ,there they are blocking traffic at the postoffice and depot4 ,there they are in the hotel warming the chairs and making the guests stand up4 ,there they are--rows of retired farmers who have quit work and moved to town to block improvements and die4 ,but they will never need anything more than burying4 ,for they are dead from the ears up4 ,they have not thought a new thought the past month4 ,sometimes they sit and think1 but generally they just sit4 ,they have not gone south an inch the past year4 ,usually the deadest loafer is married to the livest woman4 ,nature tries to maintain an equilibrium4 ,they block the wheels of progress and get in the way of the people trying to go on south4 ,they say of the people trying to do things4 ,aw1 he's always tryin' to run things4 ,they do not join in to promote the churches and schools and big brother movements4 ,they growl at the lyceum courses and chautauquas1 because they take money outa town4 ,they do not take any of their money outa town4 ,ringling and ,barnum ,bailey get theirs4 ,i do not smile as ,i refer to the dead4 ,i weep4 ,i wish ,i could squirt some pep into them and start them on south4 ,but all this lecture has been discussing this1 so ,i hurry on to the last glimpse of the book in the running brook4 ,go on ,south ,from ,principle ,here we come to the most wonderful and difficult thing in life4 ,it is the supreme test of character4 ,that is1 ,why go on south8 ,not for blessing nor cursing1 not for popularity nor for selfish ends1 not for anything outside1 but for the happiness that comes from within4 ,the ,mississippi blesses the valley every day as he goes on south and overcomes4 ,but the valley does not bless the river in return4 ,the valley throws its junk back upon the river4 ,the valley pours its foul1 muddy1 poisonous streams back upon the ,mississippi to defile him4 ,the ,mississippi makes ,st4 ,paul and ,minneapolis about all the prosperity they have1 gives them power to turn their mills4 ,but the ,twin ,cities merely throw their waste back upon their benefactor4 ,the ,mississippi does not resign4 ,he does not tell a tale of woe4 ,he does not say1 ,i am not appreciated4 ,my genius is not understood4 ,i am not going a step farther south4 ,i am going right back to ,lake ,itasca4 ,no1 he does not even go to live with his father-in-law4 ,he says1 ,thank you4 ,every little helps1 send it all along4 ,go a few miles below the ,twin ,cities and see how1 by some mysterious alchemy of ,nature1 the ,mississippi has taken over all the poison and the defilement1 he has purified it and clarified it1 and has made it a part of himself4 ,and he is greater and farther south6 ,he fattens upon bumps4 ,kick him1 and you push him farther south4 ,hand him a lemon1 and he makes lemonade4 ,civilization conspires to defeat the ,mississippi4 ,chicago's drainage canal pollutes him4 ,the flat1 lazy ,platte1 three miles wide and three inches deep2 the peevish1 destructive ,kaw1 and all those streams that unite to form the treacherous1 sinful1 irresponsible lower ,missouri2 the big1 muddy ,ohio1 the ,arkansas1 the ,red1 the black and the blue floods--all these pour into the ,mississippi4 ,day by day the ,father of ,waters goes on south1 taking them over and purifying them and making them a part of himself4 ,nothing can discourage1 divert nor defile him4 ,no matter how poisonous he becomes1 he goes a few miles on south and he is all pure again4 ,wonderful the book in the running brook6 ,we let our life stream become poisoned by bitter memories and bitter regrets4 ,we carry along such a heart full of the injuries that other people have done us1 that sometimes we are bank to bank full of poison and a menace to those around us4 ,we say1 ,i can forgive1 but ,i cannot forget4 ,oh1 forget it6 ,drop it all4 ,purify your life and go on south all sweet again4 ,we forget what we ought to remember and remember what we ought to forget4 ,we need schools of memory1 but we need schools of forgettery1 even more4 ,as you go on south and bless your valley1 do you notice the valley does not bless you very much8 ,have you sadly noted that the people you help the most often are the least grateful in return8 ,don't wait to be thanked4 ,hurry on to avoid the kick6 ,do good to others because that is the way to be happy1 but do not wait for a receipt for your goodness2 you will need a poultice every time you wait4 ,i know1 for ,i have waited6 ,we get so discouraged4 ,we say1 ,i have gone far enough south4 ,there is nobody who does not have that to meet4 ,the preacher1 the teacher1 the editor1 the man in office1 the business man1 the father and mother--every one who tries to carry on the work of the church1 the school1 the lyceum and chautauqua1 the work that makes for a better community1 gets discouraged at times4 ,we fail to see what we are doing or why we are doing it4 ,sometimes we sit down completely discouraged and say1 ,i'm done4 ,i'm going to quit4 ,i have done my share4 ,nobody appreciates what ,i do4 ,let somebody else do it awhile4 ,stop6 ,you are not saying that4 ,the evil one is whispering that into your heart4 ,his business is to stop you from going south4 ,his most successful tool is discouragement1 which is a wedge1 and if he can get the sharp edge started into your thought1 he is going to drive it deeper4 ,you do not go south and overcome your obstacles and bless the valley for praise or blame1 for appreciation or lack of it4 ,you do it to live4 ,you do it to remain a living river and not a stagnant1 unhappy pond or swamp4 ,,you ,,are ,,saving ,,yourself ,,by ,,saving ,,others4 ,,go ,,on ,,south6 ,almost everybody is deceived4 ,we work from mixed motives4 ,we fool ourselves that we are working to do good1 when as we do the good1 if we are not praised or thanked for it1 if people do not present us a medal or resolutions1 we want to quit4 ,that is why there are so many disappointed and disgruntled people in the world4 ,they worked for outside thanks instead of inside thanks4 ,they were trying to be personal saviours4 ,they say this is an ungrateful world4 ,o1 how easy it is to say these things1 and how hard it is to do them6 ,reaching the ,gulf ,but because the ,mississippi does these things1 one day the train ,i was riding stopped in ,louisiana4 ,we had come to a river so great science has not yet been able to put a bridge across it4 ,i watched them pile the steel train upon a ferry-boat4 ,i watched the boat crossing a river more than a mile wide4 ,standing upon the ferry-boat1 ,i could look down into the lordly river and then far north perhaps fifteen hundred miles to the little struggling streamlet starting southward thru the forests of ,minnesota1 there writing the first chapter of this wonderful book in the running brook4 ,i thank ,god that ,i had gone a little farther southward in my own life4 ,father of ,waters1 you have fought a good fight4 ,you are conquering gloriously4 ,you bear upon your bosom the commerce of many nations4 ,i know why4 ,i saw you born1 saw your struggles1 saw you get in the right channel1 saw you learn the lessons of your knocks1 and saw that you never stopped going southward4 ,and may we read it into our own lives4 ,may we get the vision of which way to go1 and then keep on going south--on and on1 overcoming1 getting the lessons of the bumps1 the strength from the struggle and thus making it a part of ourselves1 and thus growing greater4 ,go on ,south ,forever6 ,where shall we stop going south8 ,at the ,gulf of ,mexico8 ,the ,mississippi knows nothing about the gulf4 ,he goes on south until he reaches the gulf4 ,then he pushes right on into the gulf as tho nothing had happened4 ,so he pushes his physical banks on south many miles right out into the gulf4 ,and when he comes to the end of his physical banks1 he pushes on south into the gulf1 and goes on south round and round the globe4 ,when you and ,i come to our ,gulf of ,mexico1 we must push right on south4 ,so we push our physical banks years farther into the gulf4 ,and when physical banks fail1 we go on south beyond this mere husk1 into the great ,gulf of the ,beyond1 to go on south unfolding thru eternity4 ,,we ,,never ,,stop ,,going ,,south4 ,chapter ,x ,going ,up ,life's ,mountain ,the ,defeats that are ,victories ,,how often we say1 ,i wish ,i had a million6 ,perhaps it is a blessing that we have not the million4 ,perhaps it would make us lazy1 selfish and unhappy4 ,perhaps we would go around giving it to other people to make them lazy1 selfish and unhappy4 ,o1 the problem is not how to get money1 but how to get rid of money with the least injury to the race6 ,perhaps getting the million would completely spoil us4 ,look at the wild cat and then look at the tabby cat4 ,the wild cat supports itself and the tabby cat has its million4 ,so the tabby cat has to be doctored by specialists4 ,if the burden were lifted from most of us we would go to wreck4 ,necessity is the ballast in our life voyage4 ,when you hear the orator speak and you note the ease and power of his work1 do you think of the years of struggle he spent in preparing8 ,do you ever think of the times that orator tried to speak when he failed and went back to his room in disgrace1 mortified and broken-hearted8 ,thru it all there came the discipline1 experience and grim resolve that made him succeed4 ,when you hear the musician and note the ease and grace of the performance1 do you think of the years of struggle and overcoming necessary to produce that finish and grace8 ,that is the story of the actor1 the author and every other one of attainment4 ,do you note that the tropics1 the countries with the balmiest climates1 produce the weakest peoples8 ,do you note that the conquering races are those that struggle with both heat and cold8 ,the tropics are the geographical ,gussielands4 ,do you note that people grow more in lean years than in fat years8 ,crop failures and business stringencies are not calamities1 but blessings in disguise4 ,people go to the devil with full pockets2 they turn to ,god when hunger hits them4 ,is not this ,babylon that ,i have builded8 says the ,belshazzar of material prosperity as he drinks to his gods4 ,then must come the ,needful and ,needless ,knocks handwriting upon the wall to save him4 ,you have to shoot many men's eyes out before they can see4 ,you have to crack their heads before they can think1 knock them down before they can stand1 break their hearts before they can sing1 and bankrupt them before they can be rich4 ,do you remember that they had to lock ,john ,bunyan in ,bedford jail before he would write his immortal ,pilgrim's ,progress8 ,it may be that some of us will have to go to jail to do our best work4 ,do you remember that one musician became deaf before he wrote music the world will always hear8 ,do you remember that one author became blind before writing ,paradise ,lost the world will always read8 ,do you remember that ,saul of ,tarsus would have never been remembered had he lived the life of luxury planned for him8 ,he had to be blinded before he could see the way to real success4 ,he had to be scourged and fettered to become the ,apostle to the ,gentiles4 ,he1 too1 had to be sent to prison to write his immortal messages to humanity4 ,what throne-rooms are some prisons6 ,and what prisons are some throne-rooms6 ,do you not see all around you that success is ever the phoenix rising from the ashes of defeat8 ,then1 children1 when you stand in the row of graduates on commencement day with your diplomas in your hands1 and when your relatives and friends say1 ,success to you6 ,i shall take your hand and say1 ,defeat to you6 ,and struggles to you6 ,and bumps to you6 ,for that is the only way to say1 ,success to you6 ,go ,up the ,mountain ,o ,,university ,,of ,,hard ,,knocks1 we learn to love you more with each passing year4 ,we learn that you are cruel only to be kind4 ,we learn that you are saving us from ourselves4 ,but ,o1 how most of us must be bumped to see this6 ,i know no better way to close this lecture than to tell you of a great bump that struck me one morning in ,los ,angeles4 ,it seemed as tho twelve years of my life had dropped out of it1 and had been lost4 ,were you ever bumped so hard you were numb8 ,i was numb4 ,i wondered why ,i was living4 ,i thought ,i had nothing more to live for4 ,when a dog is wounded he crawls away alone to lick his wounds4 ,i felt like the wounded dog4 ,i wanted to crawl away to lick my wounds4 ,that is why ,i climbed ,mount ,lowe that day4 ,i wanted to get alone4 ,it is a wonderful experience to climb ,mount ,lowe4 ,the tourists go up half a mile into ,rubio ,canyon1 to the engineering miracle1 the triangular car that hoists them out of the hungry chasm thirty-five hundred feet up the side of a granite cliff1 to the top of ,echo ,mountain4 ,here they find that ,echo ,mountain is but a shelf on the side of ,mount ,lowe4 ,here they take an electric car that winds five miles on towards the sky4 ,there is hardly a straight rail in the track4 ,every minute a new thrill1 and no two thrills alike4 ,five miles of winding and squirming1 twisting and ducking1 dodging and summersaulting4 ,there are places where the tourist wants to grasp his seat and lift4 ,there is a wooden shelf nailed to the side of the perpendicular rockwall where his life depends upon the honesty of the man who drove the nails4 ,he may wonder if the man was working by the day or by the job6 ,he looks over the edge of the shelf downward1 and then turns to the other side to look at the face of the cliff they are hugging1 and discovers there is no place to resign6 ,the car is five thousand feet high where it stops on that last shelf1 ,alpine ,tavern4 ,one cannot ride farther upward4 ,this is not the summit1 but just where science surrenders4 ,there is a little trail that winds upward from ,alpine ,tavern to the summit4 ,it is three miles long and rises eleven hundred feet4 ,to go up that last eleven hundred feet and stand upon the flat rock at the summit of ,mount ,lowe is to get a picture so wonderful it cannot be described with this poor human vocabulary4 ,it must be lived4 ,on a pure1 clear day one looks down this sixty-one hundred feet1 more than a mile1 into the orange belt of ,southern ,california4 ,it spreads out below in one great mosaic of turquoise and amber and emerald1 where the miles seem like inches1 and where his field-glass sweeps one panoramic picture of a hundred miles or more4 ,just below is ,pasadena and ,los ,angeles4 ,to the westward perhaps forty miles is the blue stretch of the ,pacific ,ocean1 on westward the faint outlines of ,catalina ,islands4 ,the ocean seems so close one could throw a pebble over into it4 ,how a mountain does reduce distances4 ,you throw the pebble and it falls upon your toes6 ,and ,mount ,lowe is but a shelf on the side of the higher ,sierras4 ,the granite mountains rise higher to the northward1 and to the east rises ,old ,baldy1 twelve thousand feet high and snow eternally on his head4 ,this is one of the workshops of the infinite6 ,all alone ,i scrambled up that three-mile trail to the summit4 ,all alone ,i stood upon the flat rock at the summit and looked down into the swimming distances4 ,i did not know why ,i had struggled up into that mountain sanctuary1 for ,i was not searching for sublimity4 ,i was searching for relief4 ,i was heartsick4 ,i saw clouds down in the valley below me4 ,i had never before looked down upon clouds4 ,i thought of the cloud that had covered me in the valley below1 and dully watched the clouds spread wider and blacker4 ,afterwhile the valley was all hidden by the clouds4 ,i knew rain must be falling down there4 ,the people must be saying1 ,the sun doesn't shine4 ,the sky is all gone4 ,but ,i saw the truth--the sun was shining4 ,the sky was in place4 ,a cloud had covered down over that first mile4 ,the sun was shining upon me1 the sky was all blue over me1 and there were millions of miles of sunshine above me4 ,i could see all this because ,i had gone above the valley4 ,i could see above the clouds4 ,a great light seemed to break over my stormswept soul4 ,i am under the clouds of trouble today1 ,,but ,,the ,,sun ,,is ,,shining6 ,i must go on up the mountain to see it4 ,the years have been passing1 the stormclouds have many times hidden my sun4 ,but ,i have always found the sun shining above them4 ,no matter how black and sunless today1 when ,i have struggled on up the mountain path1 ,i have gotten above the clouds and found the sun forever shining and ,god forever in ,his heavens4 ,each day as ,i go up the mountain ,i get a larger vision4 ,the miles that seem so great down in the valley1 seem so small as ,i look down upon them from higher up4 ,each day as ,i look back ,i see more clearly the plan of a human life4 ,the rocks1 the curves and the struggles fit into a divine engineering plan to soften the steepness of the ascent4 ,the bumps are lifts4 ,the things that seem so important down in the smudgy1 stormswept valley1 seem so unimportant as we go higher up the mountain to more important things4 ,today ,i look back to the bump that sent me up ,mount ,lowe4 ,i did not see how ,i could live past that bump4 ,the years have passed and ,i now know it was one of the greatest blessings of my life4 ,it closed one gate1 but it opened another gate to a better pathway up the mountain4 ,late that day ,i was clambering down the side of ,mount ,lowe4 ,down in the valley below me ,i saw shadows4 ,then ,i looked over into the southwest and ,i could see the sun going down4 ,i could see him sink lower and lower until his red lips kissed the cheek of the ,pacific4 ,the glory of the sunset filled sea and sky with flames of gold and fountains of rainbows4 ,such a sunset from the mountain-side is a promise of heaven4 ,the shadows of sunset widened over the valley4 ,presently all the valley was black with the shadow4 ,it was night down there4 ,the people were saying1 ,the sun doesn't shine4 ,but it was not night where ,i stood4 ,i was farther up the mountain4 ,i turned and looked up to the summit4 ,the beams of the setting sun were yet gilding ,mount ,lowe's summit4 ,it was night down in the valley1 but it was day on the mountain top6 ,go on south6 ,that means1 go on up6 ,child of humanity1 are you in the storm8 ,go on upward4 ,are you in the night8 ,go on upward4 ,for the peace and the light are always above the storm and the night1 and always in our reach4 ,i am going on upward4 ,take my hand and let us go together4 ,mount ,lowe showed the way that dark day4 ,there ,i heard the sermons in stones4 ,some day my night will come4 ,it will spread over all this valley of material things where the storms have raged4 ,but ,i shall be on the mountain top4 ,i shall look down upon the night1 as ,i am learning to climb and look down upon the storms4 ,i shall be in the new day of the mountain-top1 forever above the night4 ,i shall find this mountain-top just another shelf on the side of the ,mountain of ,infinite ,unfolding4 ,i shall have risen perhaps only the first mile4 ,i shall have millions of miles yet to rise4 ,this will be another ,commencement ,day and ,master's ,degree4 ,infinite the number on up4 ,eye hath not seen nor ear heard1 neither have entered into the heart of man1 the things which ,god hath prepared for them that love ,him4 ,we are not growing old4 ,we are going up to ,eternal ,life4 ,rejoice and ,go ,upward6 ,,another ,,beginning ,the ,big ,business of ,life ,turning work ,into ,play ,by ,ralph ,parlette ,this book proves that the real big business is that of getting our happiness now in our work1 and not tomorrow for our work4 ,judge ,ben ,b4 ,lindsey1 the kids' ,judge1 says3 ,it is a great big boost for everybody who will read it4 ,people ought to buy them by the gross and send them to their friends4 ,dr4 ,j4 ,g4 ,crabbe1 ,president of the ,state ,teachers ,college1 ,greeley1 ,colo41 says3 ,the ,big ,business of ,life is a real joy to read4 ,it is big and ought to be read today and tomorrow and forevermore every where4 ,it is truly ',a ,book of ,rejoicing'4 ,the ,augsberg ,teacher1 a ,magazine for ,teachers1 says3 ,in ,the ,big ,business of ,life we have the practical philosophy that it is everyone's business to abolish work and turn this world into a playground4 ,who will not confess that many mortals take their work too seriously1 and that to them it is a joyless1 cheerless thing8 ,to be able to find happiness1 and to find it when we are bending to our duties is to possess the secret of living to the full4 ,and happiness is to be sought within1 and not among the things that lie at our feet4 ,the book before us is wholesome and vivacious4 ,it provokes many a smile1 and beneath each one is a bit of wisdom it would do us a world of good to learn4 ,it recalls the saying of the wise man ',a merry heart doeth good like a medicine'4 ,many who have read ,the ,big ,business of ,life write us that they think it is even better than ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks1 which1 they add1 is mighty hard to beat4 ,it's ,up ,to ,you6 ,are ,you ,shaking ,up or ,rattling ,down8 ,go ,on ,south6 ,the ,best is ,yet to ,come ,the ,salvation of a ,sucker ,you ,can't ,get ,something for ,nothing ,these booklets by ,ralph ,parlette are short stories adapted from chapters in ,the ,university of ,hard ,knocks4 ,john ,c4 ,carroll1 ,president of the ,hyde ,park ,state ,bank of ,chicago1 bought #ajjj copies of the booklet ,it's ,up to ,you6 and of it he says1 ,parlette's ,beans and ,nuts is just as good as the ,message to ,garcia and will be handed around just us much4 ,i have handed the book to business men1 to young fellows1 bond salesmen and such1 to our own vice president1 and they all want another copy to send to some friend4 ,i would rather be author of it than president of the bank4 ,employers in every line of business are buying quantities of ,it's ,up to ,you6 for their workers4 ,william ,jennings ,bryan says of the booklet ,go ,on ,south3 ,it is one of the great stories of the day4 ,charles ,grilk of ,davenport1 says3 ,my two children and ,i read the ,mississippi ,river story together and we were thoroly delighted4 ,instruct us to send one of these booklets to your friends4 ,it will delight them more than any small present you can make4