"How do you make that out?" said the teacher.
Promptly the answer came: "The whale couldn't hold him after he got
him down."
Boys, are you poor? Columbus was a weaver; Arkright was a barber;
Esop, a slave; Bloomfield, a shoemaker; Lincoln, a rail-splitter;
Garfield tramped a toe-path with no company but an honest mule; and
Franklin, whose name will never die while lightning blazes through the
clouds, went from the humble position of a printer's devil to that
height where he looked down upon other men. If you would win in the
battle of life, take the right side of life and build a righteous
character. The saddest scene on the streets at night is the young man,
whose clothes are finest in quality and fittest in fashion, but whose
principles sadly need "patching." I dare say there are young men
before me now who would not go into refined company indecently dressed
for any consideration, but who will rush into the presence of their
God before they sleep with a dozen oaths upon their lips. Will
Carleton puts it this way:
"Boys flying kites, haul in their white plumed birds;
You can't do that when flying words;
Thoughts unexpressed, may sometimes fall back dead,
But God Himself can't kill them when they're said."
Will Carleton puts it in poetry, let's have it in prose. Boys, pay
more attention to your manners than to your moustache; keep your
conduct as neat as your neck-tie, polish your language as well as your
boots; remember, moustache grows grey, clothes get seedy, and boots
wear out, but honor, virtue and integrity will be as bright and fresh
when you totter with old age as when your mother first looked love
into your eyes.
Little Lucy Rome was taken up for vagrancy in a great city. When
brought before the court an austere judge said: "Who claims this
child?"
A boy arose and walking down near the Judge, said: "Please, sir; I do.
She's my sister; we are orphans, but I can take care of her if you'll
let her go."
"Who are you?" asked the Judge.
"I'm Jimmy Rome, and I have been taking care of my sister; but two
weeks ago the man for whom I worked died and while I was out looking
for another place, Lucy begged some bread and they took her up. But
now I've a good place to work, Judge, and I'm going to put little
sister in school. Please let me have her, sir."
The Judge said: "Stand aside. Officer, take the child to the
children's home."
The boy with tears streaming down his cheeks, as he heard his sister
sobbing, said: "Judge, please don't take her from me."
The Judge, moved by the pleading of the brother, said: "Well, my boy,
if you can find some reliable person to go your security you may have
her."
"Judge, I don't know anyone to give you; my good friend is dead, but I
told you the truth. I don't drink, nor smoke nor swear oaths; I try to
be a good boy; I work hard, but I can't give you any security. Judge,
will you please let me kiss my little sister before you take her from
me?"
With this the boy put his arms about his weeping sister and printed,
as he thought, the last kiss upon her cheek. The Judge, with a lump in
his throat, said: "Take her, my boy; I'll go your security. I'll give
Lucy to the care of such a brother."
Hand in hand the homeless orphan pair walked out of the court room
together, Jimmy Rome to make his mark in the business world and his
sister to be the wife of a merchant prince.
Boys, be industrious, be honest, be sober. "I will" fluttered from the
worm-eaten ships of Columbus; "I will" blazed upon the banners of
Washington and Grant; "I will" stamped the walls of Hudson river
tunnel, and dug the canal of Panama. Young man, write "I will" upon
your brow, give your heart to God and hope will herald your way to
victory as the reward of a well spent life. Keep your eye upon the
star of ambition. Don't be like the owl, who when daylight comes hides
himself within the shadows of the ivy-bound oak and moans and moans
the days of his life away; but rather be like the proud eagle that
leaves its craggy summit, starts on its pinion flight through the
clouds, rides upon the face of the storm, then on beyond bathes its
plumage in the "sunlight of the day god, and laughs in the face of the
coming morrow."
Some one said, and trifled with the secret of success and happiness
when he said it: "There's only a dollar's difference between the man
who works and the man who pays, and the man who pays, gets that."
There is an old superstition that somewhere on the earth, under the
earth or in the sea, there is a stone called the "philosopher's stone"
and whoever finds it will be "chiefest among ten thousand." The same
superstition prevails with many today; only the name of the stone is
turned to "luck," and thousands of young men are waiting for luck to
come along and turn up something for them. There is a rule of life,
young men, more reliable than luck. It is called an ancient law and
runs thus: "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." It is the
foundation of more sweet bread and pure enjoyment than all your luck.
On it the feet of Abraham Lincoln rested, while he wedged his way to
the highest office in the gift of the American people. On it
Shakespeare stood, driving a shuttle through the warp and woof of a
weaver's loom and wove out for himself a name and fame immortal. On it
Elihu Burrett wielded a sledge hammer, while developing a mind that
mastered many different languages. On it Henry Clay made his way from
the mill-sloshes of Virginia to the United States Senate, and on it
James A. Garfield tramped his toe-pathway from driving a mule, to
presiding over the destinies of seventy-five millions of people.
Boys, don't be idle. I know a man to-day who always looks so lazy it
really rests me to look at him. A boy working for a farmer was asked
by his employer if he ever saw a snail. The boy answered that he had.
"You must have met it, for you surely did not overtake it," said the
farmer. I know an old man who seems to take pride in saying he never
worked. The first time I saw this man was in my youth. While his
father was husking corn in a field, he was seated by a fire reading a
novel. Often after that, when I would go to the postoffice in the
winter, he would be there by the fire. He moved to the city thirty
years ago, where he spends his winters sitting around a fire. He
doesn't drink or gamble. I don't think he will have many sins of
commission for which to answer; he never commits anything; he sits by
the fire. When he dies an appropriate epitaph for his tomb will be:
"He was never much on stirrin' round,
Sich wasn't his desire;
When weather cool, he was always found,
A sittin' round the fire.
"When the frost was comin' down,
And the wind a creepin' higher,
He spent his time just that way,
A sittin' round the fire.
"Same old habit every day,
He never seemed to tire;
While others worked and got their pay,
He sat there by the fire.
"When he died, by slow degrees,
Some said, 'he's gone up higher;'
But if he's doin' what he did,
He's sittin' round the fire."
The man or woman who lives in this age of the world and lives in
idleness, should have lived in some other age. When ox-teams crept
across the plains, and stage coaches went six miles an hour, idleness
may have been in some kind of harmony with the age, but now, when
horses pace a mile in two minutes, express trains make fifty miles an
hour, and aeroplanes fly a mile in a minute; when telephone and
telegraph send news faster than light flies, the idler is out of
place. Carlisle said: "The race of life has become intense; the
runners are tramping on each other's heels; woe to the man who stops
to tie his shoestrings!"
Young man, if you would keep step with the energy of the age in which
you are living, and be ever found on the safe side of life, you must
not only be equipped with education, stability and ambition, but to
make sure you should start right. If you are going to California
tomorrow, which way would you start, east or west? You say: "We would
start west." A man riding along a highway said to a farmer by the
wayside: "How far to Baltimore?"
The farmer answered: "About twenty-five thousand miles the way you're
going; if you'll face about and go the other way, it's fourteen
miles."
Young man, which way are you going?
Does someone in my presence say: "I have started wrong; I take a glass
of beer now and then; occasionally utter an oath, and am sowing wild
oats in a few other fields; but I'll come out right in the end." Two
diverging roads keep on widening; they don't come together at the
other ends. If you would make sure of the safe side of life in the end
of the journey, then start right. Luke Howard graduated from a fine
college and went to a large city to practice his profession. He
boarded in a fine hotel and frequented fine saloons. He became
dissipated and one morning after a drunken debauch the landlord said:
"Sir, you disturbed my boarders last night and I must ask you to
leave." Young men, did Luke Howard go to a better hotel? No, but to a
grade lower; he started wrong. In this hotel a few months later, he
was asked to move on. Did he go to a better? No, still lower, until at
last he went to board in the low tavern on the river front. The
landlord said: "I remember when you graduated from college. I was
present, saw the flowers and heard the applause that greeted your
success. I feel honored to have you as a boarder." A few months later,
on Christmas night, Luke Howard lay drunk on the bar-room floor. The
landlord had borne all he could and, with a kick, he said: "Get up and
get out, you brute; I will not keep you another hour." The drunkard
with help arose and said: "Where am I? Why, this is my boarding place,
my home, and you are my landlord. You said you felt honored to have me
board here. What's the matter?"
"Luke Howard, you're not the man you once were, and I want you to
leave here at once."
The poor fellow started for the door muttering: "I am not the man I
was. I'm not the man I was." Missing the step as he went out, he fell,
striking his head against the stone curbing. A physician was summoned
and recognizing the injured man as an old friend said: "Luke, speak to
your old college chum; I'm here to help you."
The poor drunkard, looking through the blood that flowed from the
gaping wound said: "Listen to me, Tom, I'm not the man I was, I'm not
the man I was." And thus died the poor fellow.
Young man, start wrong and end right? No, start wrong and you may
expect in the autumn of life a penniless, friendless old age;
opportunity gone, health shattered, and the "long fingers of memory"
reaching out and dragging into its chambers thoughts that will "bite
like a serpent and sting like an adder." Bad as this is, it is even
worse when your depravity involves another life. What if that other
life is your mother, who went to the door of death to give you life,
and whose every breath is another thread of sorrow woven into her
wasting heart while her boy is bound like Mazeppa to the wild steed of
passion.
There are some things I cannot understand about this drink question. I
can understand how a young woman with jeweled fingers can tempt a
young man to drink wine. I had a bit of experience some years ago down
in Texas, that helped me to appreciate how young men are tempted. I
gave an address in a Y.M.C.A. lecture course in a city, and at the
close of my address a prominent citizen said to me: "Kentucky has a
reputation for beautiful women, but we think Texas has the handsomest
women in the world. At the hotel where you are stopping, there is a
leap year ball tonight and the most beautiful women for a hundred
miles around are gathered there. I will call for you at your room in a
little while and you must take a look at our Texas girls." A little
later I stood in a hallway where I could see down the long ball room,
and I declare they were as pretty women as I have ever seen, and I
live in Kentucky. I was invited to step inside the door, where between
dances I was introduced to couple after couple. It being leap year the
ladies were soliciting their partners for the dance, and a very
handsome young lady invited me to be her partner. Having never danced
and being a Methodist steward, I declined. Another and another asked
me to dance, and again and again I declined, giving as an excuse my
utter ignorance of the function. Finally a very beautiful, blue-eyed,
charming young lady said: "Since you do not dance, may I engage you
for a promenade around the ball room?" Boys, if I had been a young man
the chances are I would have started down the "turkey-trot" road that
evening. I can appreciate how young men are tempted.
There is one thing, however, about the drink habit that is difficult
for me to understand, and that is how a young man, who loves his
mother, whose mother loves him as only a mother can love, loved him
first, loved him best and will love him to the last, can go from home
and mother to the impure, degrading vileness of a liquor saloon. If we
enter that young man's home what do we find? Perhaps on one of the
side-walls, "What is home without a mother," on the altar the family
Bible, every picture on the walls suggestive of home life and purity,
every chair and piece of bric-a-brac linked with the sweet association
of childhood, the conversation as pure as the sunlight on which the
young man lives; yet he will kiss his mother, leave this home, and
down the street make his way to a liquor saloon, where often vile
pictures hang on the walls, cards lie on the table instead of the
family Bible and the air is freighted with oaths and obscenities.
Boys, have any of you done this within the past month, or six months?
Promise me now you will never do this again. Oh what a grand meeting
this would be if every young man and boy in my presence would make the
promise! I plead with you, young man, by the sleepless nights your
mother spent to give you rest; by the shadow you have hung over her
pathway; by the bleeding heart you've wounded but which loves you
still:
"Come back, my boy, come back, I say,
And walk now in thy mother's way."
I would that every boy in our land were as grateful to his mother as
was that Southern girl to her father, who stood years ago in front of
an open fire, her back to the fire, her face toward the door, her bare
arms full of flowers, waiting for her brother to call with a carriage
to take her to a party. While standing there a flame caught her dress;
she gave a scream, dropped the flowers and ran through the door to
where her father was standing in the yard. When the father saw his
child coming with flame following, he ran toward her. As he ran he
took off his coat and wrapping it about her face, arms and shoulders,
threw her to the ground. With his left hand he kept the flame from the
body, while with his right hand he fought the fire. He saved his
daughter but burned his right arm to the elbow. Day after day when the
doctor would unwrap the arm to dress it, the girl, though burned
herself, would go to her father's bed, gently lift the burned arm and
caress it. When the father recovered his hand was so maimed and
scarred, that when introduced to strangers, he would hold his right
hand behind him and shake hands with the left. One day his daughter,
seeing him do this, went to his side and reaching for the scarred
hand, held it to her lips and kissed it. She was not ashamed, for that
hand had been burned for her. When the father died and lay in his
casket ready for burial, the family came to take their last look.
First came the mother of the girl, then a brother and sister, and then
the girl herself. She kissed the cold brow of her father, then
kneeling she took up the disfigured hand and kissed it over and over
again. My boy, your mother has suffered more for you than that father
did for his daughter. I beg you, go home and kiss your mother. If she
is dead or far from you, kiss her memory. Go to your bed room, kneel
there, and pray God to help you to live worthy the love of your
mother.
I now turn from young men to parents and say, use every means possible
to make safe the way of your boys. Some years ago in one of our
cities, after a lecture in which I appealed to parents, a leading
merchant of the city said: "I wish I had heard that lecture years
ago."
"You never used liquor?" I said.
"No, but I am responsible for its use in my family. I am a Methodist,
and a total abstainer. In my employ I had a number of clerks, and let
it be known I would not allow any of them to drink even moderately.
One day a man came to my store with a paper in his hand and said: 'I
want to set up a saloon on the next block and I am getting signers to
my petition. I am one of your customers; you know me and know I will
keep an orderly place.' I said to myself, 'if he doesn't sell others
will and we need the revenue anyway,' so I signed the petition. A few
months later I chanced to see my youngest boy and one of my clerks
coming out of the door of that saloon. Soon after when they entered
the store I called them into my office and said: 'Young men, did I see
you coming out of a saloon, and had you been taking a drink in there?'
When they admitted they had, I said to my son: 'Did I ever set such an
example for you to follow?' He answered: 'No, father, but you signed
that man's petition to set up the saloon; whom did you expect him to
sell to? Did you sign it for him to sell to other fathers' sons and
not yours?' I realized as never before the wrong I had done, not only
to my own son, but to every father's son to whom that saloon-keeper
would sell if they had the money to pay for liquor. I said: "Forgive
me, my boy. Promise me you will never enter a saloon again and I
promise never to sign a petition or vote to have a saloon-keeper sell
to anybody's boy!"
But it was too late; that boy went to ruin and carried his old father
to financial ruin with him. The store was sold and the father went on
to a little farm in Missouri, where he died a disappointed,
grief-stricken man. He was a good man and a kind father, but he did
not realize the full meaning of the warning, "whatsoever ye sow, that
shall ye also reap." Fathers, be careful of your example. Your sons
think they can safely follow where you lead. Could the turf break
above the drunken dead; could they come back to earth in their bony
whiteness to testify to the cause of their ruin, how many would point
to the old sideboard filled with all kinds of liquors, to father's
moderate use of strong drink, or his vote for the saloon at the ballot
box.
Too often the careless indulgence of mothers is responsible for the
ruin of their sons. If mothers were as watchful of their sons as of
their daughters, the magic chain of mother love would be far more
binding to their boys. There are homes in this city where at night you
can hear the mothers say to servants: "Are the clothes in off the
line; did you bring the broom and the pitcher from the porch; are the
blinds all down; are the girls in bed; is everything in order for the
night?" No, mothers, everything is not in order. Your girls are safe,
the windows and doors are locked, but your boys are on the outside
with night keys in their pockets, to come in at midnight from God only
knows where. The double standard reaches too often back into the home.
"Mother, watch the little feet,
Climbing o'er the garden wall,
Bounding through the busy street,
Ranging garret shed and hall:
Never count the time it cost,
Never think the moments lost;
Little feet will go astray,
Watch them, mother, while you may.
"Mother, watch the little tongue,
Prattling, innocent and wild,
What is said and what is sung
By the joyous, happy child;
Stop the word while yet unspoken;
Seal the vow while yet unbroken,
That same tongue may yet proclaim,
Blessings in a Savior's name.
"Mother, watch the little heart,
Beating soft and warm for you;
Wholesome lessons now impart,
Keep, O keep, that young heart pure.
Extricating every weed,
Sowing good and precious seed;
Harvests rich you then shall see,
Ripening for eternity."
Once more I turn to the young men to say, if you would make life safe
take the Bible as the man of your counsel and the guide of your life;
love God and keep His commandments. In this age of glittering
literature, many consider the Bible dull reading. Sir William Jones,
one of England's greatest jurists and scholars, said: "I have
carefully perused the Bible, and independent of its divine origin, I
believe it contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer
morality, more important history and finer strains of poetry and
eloquence than could be contained within the same compass, from all
the books ever published in any age or any idiom."
A passionate lover of poetry has said: "The Bible is a mass of
beautiful figures. It has pressed into its service the animals of the
forest, the flowers of the fields and the stars of heaven; the lion,
spurning the sands of the desert; the wild roe, leaping the mountains;
the lamb led to the slaughter; the goat, fleeing to the wilderness;
the Rose of Sharon; the Lily of the Valley; the great rock in a weary
land; Carmel by the sea; Tabor in the mountains; the rain and mown
grass; the sun and moon and morning stars. Thus hath the Bible swept
creation to lay its trophies upon the altar of Jehovah." Patrick Henry
continually sought the Bible for gems of expression, while today the
politician on the rostrum and the lawyer at the bar, quote the Bible
to give force and effect to their speeches.
Some say: "There is so much in the Bible we cannot comprehend." Yes,
there's very much in there doubtless God did not intend you should
understand. One wades in the ocean knee deep, waist deep, neck deep,
and gives it up that he can't wade the ocean. If God had intended one
should wade the ocean He would have made it shallow enough to wade.
So, one finds he can climb to the mountain's top, or sail thousands of
feet above the mountain in an air ship, but he can't sail to the
skies. Two good women went to Sam Jones and said: "Mr. Jones, here are
several passages of scripture we don't understand. We have been to
several ministers and they cannot explain them satisfactorily; perhaps
you can." The great evangelist said: "Sisters, you haven't as much
good hard sense as my cow. We keep a cow and through the winter we
give her hay to eat. Now Georgia hay has a considerable mixture of
briars. When we give the cow an arm full of hay she has sense enough
to eat the hay and let the briars alone. But with the blessed Bible
full of good hay, you are 'chawing' away on the briars." Young people,
there is enough in God's word you can understand to serve you if you
live a thousand years, enough in there to save you if you die tonight,
so don't worry over what you can't understand.
During the Civil War a terrible battle raged all day between the
armies of Grant and Lee. When the night shadows shut out the light,
dead and dying were strewn for miles. Surgeons were busy and the
chaplains going their rounds. A chaplain heard a voice say, in clarion
tone: "Here." Going to the spot from whence came the voice and bending
over the prostrate form of a dying soldier, the chaplain asked: "What
can I do for you?"
"Nothing, sir; they were just calling the roll in Heaven, and I was
answering to my name."
Blessed book, in which there is enough a wounded soldier, dying far
away from home and loved ones, can so understand as to fit him to
answer the roll call in Heaven.
We may not comprehend the full meaning of faith, but we can grasp
sufficient to be to our souls what the force of nature is to the
trees, by which they stand with their branches reaching skyward and
their roots drawing earth-centerward. Take from me this faith and you
take away the best friend I ever had, the friend that stood by me in
the darkest hour of my life, when a daughter in the bloom of womanhood
said, "good-bye," and went away to live with the angels; that stands
by me now pointing to where my child is waiting for me in the bowers
that kiss the very porch of Heaven. Without this faith how awful would
be the dirge, "earth to earth, dust to dust." Blessed book that tells
us we shall meet "beyond the river, where the surges cease to roll;"
that death is but the doorway to a better land, "the grave a subway to
a sweeter clime."
My dear young friends, accept this faith and you will find in it a
sweet companion up the hillward way of life, and down the sunset slope
to the valley of death, where it will not leave nor forsake you, but
will wait till you throw off your "burden of clay," then "bear you
away on its balmy wings to your eternal home." Young men, may you so
follow the safe side of life, that when its great trials come, you can
with the wings of faith cleave the clouds and soar safely above the
thunders that roll at your feet.
My closing advice is, "Walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor
stand in the way of sinners; but delight in the law of the Lord; and
in his law meditate day and night. In due season your life will fruit
and whatsoever you do will prosper."