loved ones, and they have accepted your sacrifices, work, and
watchfulness as matter of fact.
You've had dreams of a some day when you would relax and play and enjoy,
but you have set that some day too far ahead. You consider yourself
after all your loved ones are more comfortable and happy, and time is
passing, Dad; the marks of time are showing on your poor, tired head;
the wrinkles of care are marking your face, and the roses are bleaching
from your cheeks.
You are too unselfish, too much centered in that some day. Let's change
things a bit, Dad. Sometimes the some day doesn't come.
You are entitled to, and it's your duty to have, happiness and pleasures
and health and joys, right here now today.
Your loved ones do not want you to spend your health getting wealth.
They don't want to see you worn out, tired, weary and unhappy in the
evening of your life. Besides it's your duty to let them share
responsibility and work out their own problems. They will be better if
you let them gain knowledge by practical experience.
Come on, Dad; get in the group and enjoy things now and you will live
longer and you will get more out of life and give more pleasure to your
loved ones. Get in the game, Dad; let's see the old light and twinkle in
your eyes; let's have the sunshine on your face; the love-light on your
lips and the happiness in your heart. Come on, Dad, we all want you to
do these things.
Leave your cares at the office; come on and play, and you will be so
much better and stronger and so much more successful in your business.
Let's have the corners of your mouth turned up tonight at the supper
table; be part of the family, Dad, not a poor, tired bread winner.
We don't want to hear any more sh--sh--or whispers when you come home.
We don't want to feel that restraint and uncomfortable feeling; let's
laugh and sing and love and play--let's make your home-coming a joyous
event.
We all love you, Dad, but you haven't made it as comfortable as you
might for us when we try to express our love. You've been too tired, too
busy, too much occupied with those business thoughts.
Don't you see how we love you, and how we appreciate you? Don't you know
that there is no one in the world who can take the place of Dad?
Keep your heart young, Dad; we will help if you only say "come on." We
are waiting for the signal. Let's start the new schedule tonight; come
on, Dad, what do you say?
CRYING BABIES
When They Cry There's a Reason; Find It
Now come the wise doctors with the injunction to let the baby cry. They
tell us it's good for the baby's lungs and that the baby needs the
exercise and all that sort of rot.
They augment this with the statement that if we soothe or coddle our
babies they will get the habit and require our attention always before
they go to sleep.
Old Mother Nature has been pretty successful in raising animals. Let the
kitten, dog, pig or chicken give the sign of pain or distress and the
mother will hasten to its offspring and nestle it.
When a baby cries, it's because it's hungry, or too warm or too hot or
too uncomfortable, or it has pain or distress. It's just nature's
instinct given by God to the helpless infant that it may call attention
to its trouble. The doctor would complain if uncomfortable. The doctor
or the parent can help himself, but the baby can use its only signal, a
cry.
When baby cries it should be taken up and soothed. Don't pay any
attention to the doctor who says the baby cries to be petted; baby can't
reason in its infant days; its little brain hasn't reached the reasoning
powers.
Doctors constantly protest and warn us against over exertion on the part
of children and even adults; yet they tell us to let the few-weeks-old
baby cry, which is the most violent and extreme exertion it can put
forth.
Crying puts a strain on all the baby's vital organs and its delicate,
fragile blood vessels and heart. There have been thousands of babies who
have had irreparable damage done to their constitutions because of this
cold-blooded, heartless fad of the doctors, to let baby cry.
Many a mother's heart is torn and wrung because of the doctor's order,
"Let the baby cry."
The mother is worked up into an excited nervous condition by the
doctor's inhuman order to let the baby cry, and this same doctor tells
her not to become excited because it will have a bad effect on her
nursing baby. Just read this paragraph over again and see if the doctor
hasn't crossed his logic wires and insulted common sense.
The doctors become calloused; they are used to seeing pain and
suffering. It's easy for them to endure pain in others, and easy for
them to give them heartless orders.
And generally the doctor who affects most knowledge about baby rearing
is the one who has no babies of his own.
Dr. Walls of Chicago is one of the most eminent child specialists in the
world and he agrees with my conclusions in this matter and so does most
every really great child specialist I know.
When baby cries, find the reason; change its position; see if there is a
pin sticking; find out whether it's heat, cold, hunger or pain.
There's a reason why babies cry. My wife is emphatic on that point and
she has reared three mighty fine babies, and I have watched and helped
her.
GIRL
Be a Know Girl, Not a Show Girl
Girl, what a wonderful creature you can be. What a glorious success you
can make of your life, if you get the right start, the right hands to
help you, the right hearts to love you, and the right eyes to watch you,
the right thoughts to make you, and the right ideals to guide you.
There are so many influences to spoil you, so much convention, so much
artificiality, so much snobbery, so much caste, so much foolish
frivolity.
Then there are the wrong examples, the wrong grooming, the wrong
environments, the wrong influences surrounding you, that it is not to be
wondered why so many girls lose their heads and make a fizzle of their
young lives.
The fizzle is generally because daddy and mamma have a lot of foolish
notions about bringing up the girls. Especially is this so if the
parents are wealthy.
Here is the history of many a rich girl. She is born without welcome,
fed on a bottle, reared by a nurse, grows up in a nursery, estranged
from her mother, later on sent away to school, mixes with a lot of other
rich girls, gets lots of foolish notions, false estimates, and
prejudiced views. She graduates and comes home and there are a lot of
"doings" which she attends, then comes the show-off which is called a
debut.
She is shown off like a filly at the horse show, and some high-collared
young man wins her head although she thinks it's her heart. She thinks
it's the thing to marry, and he is such "a swell fellow," he is such
"good company," and he "dances so well,"--these qualities win her head.
So the girl marries, has children, husband goes broke and the girl
awakens to the necessity of coming down from her pedestal, facing stern
necessity, and raising her children as her mother should have raised
her.
That's the picture of the poor rich girl whose parents are to blame for
the nonsense she got in her head.
But, you, Girl, you are going to learn your cooking on a gas range
instead of a chafing dish; you'll learn to bake bread before fudge;
you'll learn how to cook solids before you learn to make salads.
You will study simplicity, sentiment, sense, sereneness, sweetness,
rather than envy, frills, feathers and foolishness.
God's noblest woman's calling is the work for children and home.
To cook and sew is a higher duty and better occupation than bridge
parties and society.
Not that you must cook and sew, my dear, but that you can if necessary.
With the ability to cook and sew you can properly direct the cook or
seamstress, and they will respect you for your education.
The painted, powdered, tinsel, fluff, feathers and furebelow girl may be
dashing now and you may envy her, but you, with your quiet, sweet,
simple, sensible ways--you will win real love, real respect, real
affection, real pleasures, real satisfaction, in all the days to come;
you will make a success of your life.
Frills and feathers may be an attraction to the girl who makes the
fizzle of her life, but sweetness and simplicity, and sentiment and
sense, are precious jewels that will endure for all time.
Be that sweet girl. Do not be the "show" kind, or the blow kind, be the
real "know" kind, and you will grow in the hearts of all who love
reality and hate artificiality. We all love the "know" kind--the sweet,
simple, sensible girl who knows.
So here's my hand, little sister, little daughter, little girl, and to
you here are also the sweetest thoughts of mine heart, for I picture you
through eyes, and through a heart, that sees two sweet little girls of
my very own.
I am going to stick mighty close to my girls and try to bring them up to
be real girls who will be loving, lovable and loved.
So then here is the hope that you, girl, will start right, keep right
and end right. I want you to think of sense, sentiment, and simplicity
rather than dances, dollars, duds and doings.
I want your life to be one of poise, happiness and serenity instead of
noise, worry and nerves.
This little message is all for you--GIRL.
SPECULATION
You Can't Earn Your Board on the Board of Trade
I've been riding through the golden wheat belt of Kansas, and estimated
the new wealth; for that which grows is the only real profit or wealth.
All else are trades, speculation or bookkeeping accounts.
The farmer plants the wheat. God makes it grow and we eat it.
But in a big building in an amphitheater in the city, is a crowd of wild
men in shirt sleeves, perspiring, shouting, making signs, clawing the
air. This crowd never raised wheat, but they raise pandemonium. It's the
board of trade; its job is getting the wheat from the farm to you and me
who require it to live.
I've recently visited the biggest food market in the world, the Chicago
Board of Trade. Below the gallery sat a nice dignified elderly man who
wrote a note on a slip of paper, folded it and gave it to a boy.
The boy was off like a shot to the wheat pit; he gave it to another
white-haired young-faced man of cultured, refined, even scholarly
bearing, so different from the row raisers in the pit.
This nice man was the floor man for a big grain commission house; he
read the message, and then did the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act. He
turned red, purple, and green. His neck swelled, he threw back his head
and screamed while he held up his hand and five fingers. Each finger
meant 5,000 bushels of wheat; five fingers meant 25,000 bushels to sell.
In an instant, like a pack of wolves, the other crazy men raised their
hands with bent and twisted fingers, the sign language of the pit.
The old man made a sign, the wheat was sold. He was Dr. Jekyll again; he
yawned and was composed once more.
Soon a boy came with another slip, and the old man went mad again. I
asked my host if it wasn't pretty busy today; he said "no, it's a dull
market."
That 25,000 bushels of wheat was sold half a dozen times. Every broker
who handled it got a commission. The buying and selling was speculation.
Outside the board were the hangers on, the down-and-outs, the has-beens,
who used to be in the pit and throw fits like the nice old man I've
described.
These has-beens have the speculation bug, and hope they can come back
some day and make fortunes out of lucky guesses.
The only ones who make money on the board of trade are the company who
rents offices, the cigar man, the lunch man, and the telegraph
operators, and the commission men who get one-eighth of a cent a bushel
either way the market goes. Some of these commission men get the
speculation bug and go broke, and yet there are callow youths and
business men and clerks and other outsiders who believe they are smart
enough to speculate on the Board of Trade. That belief helps fatten our
penitentiaries.
No outsider ever made money on the Board of Trade if he stayed with the
game. And the speculators on the inside graduate to the down-and-out
class if they play long enough. There's a group of millionaires who
control them and all others are pikers.
You can't beat the Board of Trade; it's not in the cards.
STARS
A Little Study of the Universe
Tonight I am in the Ozarks and old Mother Earth is passing through the
belt of meteoric dust, that great mysterious sea in the universe through
which we pass every year about the middle of November.
It is midnight. I will not reach my destination until 1:30 in the
morning. Two fellow passengers in the car, after cussing their luck,
have finally gone to Snoozeland, while I call the passing hours
opportunity.
I look out into the night and marvel at the countless stars in the
infinite black void, and wonder how closely those stars may be connected
with humanity.
That they are connected I have no doubt, for truly "the sun, the moon,
the stars, and endless space as well, are parts, are things, like me,
that cometh from and runneth by one grand power of which I am in truth a
part, an atom though I be."
How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I
can see about 3,000; with opera glasses I could see 30,000.
The late Franklin Adams photographed the whole canopy with 206
photographs. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and gives the
conclusion that there are 1,600,000,000 stars, and that number is just
about the number of humans on this earth. So then there is one star for
each of us.
Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth.
Many have human beings who think and reason like we do. Multiply the
1,600,000,000 population on this earth by any portion of the
1,600,000,000 stars that may have thinking creatures on them; multiply
that total by the millions of years and millions of generations that
have passed out of existence.
Think of these numbers and limitless boundaries and then tell me that
one little man, on one little star we call earth, has a strangle-hold on
truth, and that his viewpoint, his ism, his little dogma, his narrow
creed, is all sufficient, and that he can give me and you and them
definite rules and patterns for our belief.
Verily, little protoplasm, you have another guess. We can by
experience and tests prove two and two make four. We can by practice and
experience prove that love, kindness, help, gentleness, sympathy, cheer
and courage bring happiness.
These are tangible things; but when one wee Willie with sober face tells
you and me and others that he has the truth about the definite, full
workings of God's plans and purposes, I think of the greatness of
1,600,000,000 stars each with 1,600,000,000 humans and of the unnumbered
generations gone by, and say, verily we must live TODAY and do the best
we can today in act and thought and word.
Yesterday is dead, tomorrow is unknown; where we have been, where we
will be, we know not. Where we are today we know, and God in His great
plan knows only the final answer as to our future estate.
He will take us and hold us and place us in His keeping and according to
His purpose, even though we do not or cannot follow or believe any one
of the little man-formed creeds, isms or cults as the measure and rule
for our beliefs.
Those stars testify to the certainty of God, and I believe in Him.
LEADERS
Are Ever Subject to Backbiters
When a man by his brains or by fortunate combination or circumstances
arises to a position of prominence he becomes a target for the envious
and a pattern for the imitator.
Emulation and envy are ever alert in trying to steal the fruits of the
leader or doer of things.
The man who makes a name gets both reward and punishment. The reward is
his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory
that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his
accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and
the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told
about him.
When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a
great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the
envious few.
If he does a mediocre thing he is unnoticed; if his work is a
masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting.
Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was
pronounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced
mutiny on his ship on the eve of his discovery of land. Millet starved
in his attic. Time has passed, and the backbiters are all in unmarked
graves. The world until its end will enjoy Wagner's music, Whistler and
Millet's painting will attract artists from all over the world, and
inventors will reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.
The leader is assailed because he has done a thing worth while; the
slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to
prove his greatness.
Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader they seek to belittle him.
But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and he remains a leader;
he had made his genius and the creature of his hopes and brains known to
the world.
Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him,
his masterpiece and his fame endure.
And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to
the noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers.
In his own heart he knows he has done a thing worth while; his own
conscience is clear, and he cares not for the estimate of the world.
His own character is his chief concern, and he is content in the
knowledge that time will bring its reward.
If you have high ideals in business, if you make success, mark well, you
will be a subject of attacks, of lies, of malice, of envy, of
disreputable competition; there is no way out of it.
But you will be repaid. The lover of fair play, the grateful, the true,
honest, worth-while people will flock to your standard; the riff-raff
will skulk behind bushes and throw rocks and mud, but their acts will
prove to the great mass of the people that your purposes, practices and
policies are right.
Therefore, courage is to be your chief asset; with patience, pride,
perseverance your lieutenants.
Be not weary, grow not discouraged when your progress is hampered by
obstacles.
OLD AGE
The Pleasures of a Well Lived Life
There are three periods in our lives: the youth period or prospective
period, the adult or introspective period, and the old age or
retrospective period.
Too many there are who look forward to old age with fear or dread.
But old age has its joys and pleasures as keen as youth or adult age, if
the youth and adult ages were lived sanely, worthily and properly.
If middle age is spent in getting dollars only, then old age will be
days of empty nothingness.
Youth is the planning time of ideals and ambitions, middle age the
building time and old age the dividend time.
With many, old age is reading the book of the past, with sadness as the
reader recognizes that the ideals, plans and hopes were shattered. As
age turns the page in the book of the past he reads one hope after
another vanished in smoke.
Anticipation is seldom realized, and this is as it should be, for in
time men will learn to live each day for each day's good and each day's
happiness.
Let us perform our duty today, let us put away a kindly act, a smile, a
word of cheer in the bank of good deeds.
Each of us has our share in this world's work. It matters little whether
our actual share is what we had guessed or wished it to be.
Vicissitudes clip us here and there, so-called misfortune or bad luck
will strike us when least suspected. The failure of our dreams should
not grieve us.
We cannot reach up and grasp the stars, but like the pilot at the wheel
at sea we can steer by those stars and help us on our way.
Our ideal may not be realized but the journey to it may still be a
pleasant one.
Our ideals, plans and hopes had a real purpose, a real service; they
gave us courage and made us work and thus they were well worth while.
We must not in the old age period condemn ourselves because our plans
failed or our castles were shattered.
There is no hard luck but incurable disease or death. It is not for us
to mourn the past or weep over the vases from which the flowers are
gone.
In our active days we must realize we are putting memories away in our
brains that will come back to us in old age.
Only what we put in our brains we can take out.
So then, Mr. Avarice, I warn you if gold is your God it's cold comfort
you will get in your sunset days.
Build up loving ties, appreciation and worth-while riches of good deeds,
and in your evening of life you will be welcome in the midst of the
group.
If your life was sold for gold your evening of life will be short and
miserable; legatees will grudge you your every breath; they will endure
you simply because they are checking off the days from Time's calendar
until the day of your passing, and the dollars you sold your soul and
heart and life for will be lavishly spent by cold-blooded heirs who
cared nothing for you.
Leave a legacy of love, example and character, and if with these there
are a few dollars, they simply prove your frugality, economy and
independence.
A few dollars left to heirs will help. Many dollars will hurt. Dollars
in old age will give you pleasure by helping in tight corners, and
helping your loved ones over the bumps in the road.
Use the dollars to help those you love to help themselves, and your old
age will be a busy, happy one and you won't be in the way.
To prepare for that happy period of your life the foundation must be
built in the active today period.
Carry smiles in your old age; they will keep the heart young, the
digestion good, and life will be worth while.
TIME
What Geology Tells Us About Time
I have traveled horseback over the great arid plains of the West and
read the story of the ages gone before.
In Arizona and New Mexico there are ancient ruins of forts and cities
built by people we know not of.
Chalcedony Park with its petrified forest of mammoth trees silently
testifies to a period when vegetation was rampant and on what is now a
desert.
In Wyoming there is coal enough to furnish fuel for the United States
for several centuries.
Coal is carbon made from trees and vegetation covered with earth and
rock, pressed, and preserved through the thousands of years necessary to
change it from vegetable to carbon.
Oceans and floods gradually covered millions of acres of trees and
plants with ooze and soil and sand. Ages turned some of these deposits
to stone.
There in bleak Wyoming is testimony and evidence of changes that time
only can bring about.
"A thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years." Thus
wrote the scribe of old. So then we must consider this estimate of time
in reading the history of the sequential events in the first chapter of
Genesis which describes the order of the world's creation.
The arrangement of the formation of the world was the dividing the light
from the darkness, conforming to the rotation of our globe and
consequent day and night.
Then the separating of land and water, then the birth of vegetation on
the land, the creation of fish and reptiles in the sea, the fowls of the
air, the beasts of the field and finally the higher animal, man.
And the pages of the earth's surface carry in their stratification
indelible records harmonizing with this scriptural arrangement of the
evolution of the earth from its chaotic misty past to its concrete
definite present.
Yes, this earth of ours is old, so old mere man cannot contemplate or
accurately estimate its wondrous age.
The fossils of the mammoth reptiles and beasts which lived before the
ken of man are numerous in the fascinating West I know so well.
In those arid desert hills are bones of the ancient rhinoceros, parent
of our horse, and there are shells and fossils of fish and bones of
animals imbedded in the strata of rock.
Man reads these pages and he is lost in bewilderment, impoverished in
thought, dumb for words, paralyzed for expressions, to co-ordinate the
evidence with any man measure of what the age of the earth is.
Historians say the world was 4,004 years old before the Christian era
and 1915 years have passed since then, making the age to date 5,919
years.
The first records speak of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and up to the
time Cain went to the land of Nod there is no record of any other people
in the world.
It is not surprising that through the dark ages dates and facts were
lost and even there may have been mistakes in translations.