“I’m glad we celebrate the Fourth of July, when we can uncork our
enthusiasm and shoot firecrackers and eat peanuts and drink red lemonade,
for it makes us realize that we are living in the greatest nation that
man’s eye ever saw or God’s hand ever made. I’m glad we have Labor
day, when the man who toils can have a holiday of his own. I’m glad we
celebrate Easter to commemorate the time when the Son of Man arose in
conquering majesty. I’m glad we celebrate Thanksgiving, when we sit at our
sumptuously laden tables and recall that as a nation we have never gone
to bed hungry and that our granaries have never been empty, and reflect
that we have one state that can raise corn enough to feed us all. America
can feed the world. I pay tribute to the man with the dinner bucket,
with bundles of muscle that knot like steel. All these days are days of
precious memories, days that make the nation strong and great, days that
make us better men and women.”
“If you are well prepared for life you’ll never wear out shoe leather
hunting for a job, and you’ll never become blind reading the ‘Help wanted’
ads.”
“What songs do the people go daffy over today? Listen and I’ll tell you.”
“Love your neighbor as yourself,
But let his wife alone;
For if you don’t he’ll soon get wise,
And then you’ll lose your own.”
And here Sunday named some of the popular songs he said were causing
divorces. Among them were: “My Wife’s Gone to the Country,” “I Love My
Wife, But Oh You Kid,” and “I’ll Trust My Wife With Fifty Men, But With
One?—Not On Your Life.”
Sunday pointed out five things which he stated he considered necessary
qualifications to win in life: Blood, environment, grit, education and
religion. He then added that the first four without the fifth meant
nothing at all, and pleaded with his youthful audience to trust in God.
“It takes more than a mortarboard cap, pipe, peg-top trousers, a cane and
your ‘rah, rah, rah,’ to make a man out of you. It takes character and
determination. It pays to feed the Bible to the children,” Sunday said.
[Illustration: BILLY SUNDAY AT THE AGES OF 24 AND 50 YEARS.]