I want to tell you to-day about a tricky ox I once read about. I suppose
you will at once think that this ox was in a circus. But he wasn't. Far
from it! It would have been better for some other cattle if he had been.
This ox is kept in the stockyards at Chicago. In those stockyards they
kill thousands of cattle every year to give us beef to eat. When the
cattle come to these stockyards they are not tame cattle like the cows
we see out in our pastures, but they are cattle that have pastured out
on the great broad prairies, and they have seen very few people. And for
that reason they are very timid and hard to get close to. So it is
difficult to get them near the pens where they want them.
Here is where the tricky ox comes in. In one of those yards they keep a
black, short-tailed ox known as "Bob," and he just walks along in an
unconcerned way toward the pens, and he looks so calm and unafraid that
the other cattle just take confidence and follow along after him. And
then, before they know it, they are in a trap and can never get out. But
in the meanwhile Bob has slipped away, to play the same trick on other
cattle.
There are some boys and girls just like that ox. They are always urging
other boys and girls on to do wrong things, telling them that they are
cowards if they don't take the "dare" and do it, and showing how brave
they are. But when they have got you into a scrape, and the real
business of punishment begins, they can't be found anywhere: they have
slipped out like old Bob.
You must be on the lookout for boys like that. Don't be afraid to be
called a coward by them. Don't let them "dare" you to do things which
your conscience tells you are foolish or wrong. You will be a bigger
coward if you do these things because you are ashamed not to take the
dare.
"SHINE INSIDE"
As I was passing along the street the other day I saw on the window of a
bootblack's parlour the words, "Shine Inside."
I want to turn these words around and make a motto of them for you boys
and girls. For I think that if every boy and girl would shine inside,
our homes, and the world in general, would be a much happier place.
Of course there are some boys and girls who shine only on the _outside_.
A little while ago I read a story about Byron, a great poet, of whom you
will learn later in school. A man said to Sir Walter Scott that he
wished he might have seen Byron when he was alive. He said he had only
seen a photograph of him. Scott said, "Yes, the luster is there [in the
photograph], but it is not lighted up." Now, there are some boys' and
girls' faces that have a luster, but it is not lighted up.
Or their faces are like a mirror that shines brightly only when there
is sunlight or some other light falling upon it. The mirror only shines
outside. The luster is not always lighted up. I know boys and girls who
shine outside only when other boys and girls play the game which they
want them to play, or when they get the clothes they want to wear or the
food they want to eat, or when they are out in pleasant company. But
when they don't have their own way, then their faces are very cloudy.
But the boy or girl who shines _inside_ is one who "irons out his
wrinkles with a smile" even though things do not exactly please him, and
he thinks of other people instead of himself.
Now, how can boys and girls shine inside so that they will always shine
outside whether they have their own way or not? Well, you remember that
the Bible says that when Moses came down from the mountain his face
shone, because he had been talking with God. That is the secret, boys
and girls. When a man or a woman or a boy or a girl talks often enough
with God in prayer and asks to be made like Christ, then a light is
lighted within him which causes his face to shine. You remember Christ
said, "I am the Light." Let Him into your heart, and you will shine
inside.
"The man worth while is the man with a smile
When everything goes dead wrong."