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Movies

Firefox : America's ace pilot penetrates Russian security and races against time to steal the Firefox, the world's most devastating aircraft - a futuristic MiG-31 that flies at six times the speed of sound and is armed with weapons triggered by pilot brain waves. A spectacular thousand-mile dogfight climaxes the thriller directed by star Clint Eastwood

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The University of Hard Knocks

[Books] > The University of Hard Knocks

**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The University of Hard Knocks**

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The University of Hard Knocks

**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The University of Hard Knocks**

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The University of Hard Knocks

"Sweet are the uses of adversity;

MORE than a million people have sat in audiences in all parts of

the United States and have listened to "The University of Hard

kinds of audiences. Ralph Parlette is kept busy year after year

of many deliveries.

shake the hand of every person who has sat in my audiences. 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 together. For lecture audiences

The warm reception given "The University of Hard Knocks" by the

public, has encouraged the publishers to put more of Mr. Parlette's

are now in preparation as this, the third edition of "The

University of Hard Knocks" comes from the press.

The University of Hard Knocks

I. THE BOOKS ARE BUMPS--Every bump a lesson--Why the two kinds of

bumps--Description of University--"Sweet are the uses of

II. THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS, the bumps that we bump

into--Getting the coffee-pot--Teaching a wilful child--Bumps make

III. THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS, the bumps that bump into

ones shake up and the little ones shake down--The barrel of life

people--A glimpse of Gunsaulus

VI. THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS"--Preparing children for

children--The story of "Gussie" and "Bill Whackem"--Schools and

Menace of America not swollen fortunes but shrunken souls--

Helping the turkeys killed them--the happiness of work we love--

Amusement drunkards--Lure of the city--Strong men from the

Must save the home towns--A school of struggle--New School

VII. THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER"--You can't get something for

experience--Theory and practice--Tuning the strings of life

VIII. 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

but stop--Few go on south--The plague of incompetents--Today our

principle, not praise--Doing duty for the joy of it--Becoming the

"Father of Waters"--Go on south forever!

you some of the multiplication table of life--not mine, not yours

lecture go differently before every audience. The kind of an

audience is just as important as the kind of a lecture. A cold

When I was a boy we had a barrel of sorghum in the woodshed. When

the woodshed to get a bucket of sorghum from that barrel.

I have brought a barrel of sorghum to this audience. The name of

the sorghum is "The University of Hard Knocks." I can only pull the

of this audience. You can have all you want of it, but to get it to

it. How much any one gets out of a lecture depends also upon the

size of the bucket he brings to get it in. A big bucket can get

That often explains why one person says a lecture is great, while

the next person says he got nothing out of it.

Here is a great mass of words and sentences and pictures to express

two or three simple little ideas of life, that our education is our

promote mental digestion like more bulk in the way of pictures and

discussions of these truths. Here is bulk as well as nutriment.

I believe in the Angel of Good inside every block of human marble.

I believe it must be carved out in The University of Hard Knocks.

see more of the Angel in you.

The University of Hard Knocks

THE greatest school is the University of Hard Knocks. Its books are

matter with us, so that we do not learn the lesson of the bump we

Some of us learn to go forward with a few bumps, but most of us are

The tuition in the University of Hard Knocks is not free.

Experience is the dearest teacher in the world. Most of us spend

our lives in the A-B-C's of getting started.

There are two kinds of people--wise people and fools. The fools are

The playground is all of God's universe.

The Need of the Bumps

"Sweet are the uses of adversity;

get preachers to preach sermons, and they build houses out of

happy that I am learning the sweet tho painful lessons of the

University of Adversity. I am happy that I am beginning to listen.

preaching and every running brook the unfolding of a book.

But if you will remember some of these things, they will feel like

two kinds of bumps--bumps that we need and bumps that we do not

We discover, in other words, that The University of Hard Knocks has

two colleges--The College of Needless Knocks and The College of

The College of Needless Knocks

There comes a vivid memory of one of my early Needless Knocks as I

That day they had the little joy and sunshine of the family in his

high-chair throne right up beside the dinner table. The coffee-pot

I became enamored with that coffee-pot. I decided I needed that

coffee-pot in my business. I reached over to get the coffee-pot.

And that day when I wanted the coffee-pot--I did want it. Nobody

how I desired that coffee-pot. "One thing thou lackest," a

coffee-pot--

I stopped it. I got the coffee-pot. I know I got the coffee-pot. I

got it. I got about a gallon of the reddest, hottest coffee a bad

applebutter on me--and coal oil and white-of-an-egg and starch and

anything else the neighbors could think of. They would bring it

over and rub it on the little joy and sunshine of the family, who

pleased. She told me not to get the coffee-pot and then let me get

the most kind and effective way to rear one stubborn boy I know of.

The neighbors and the ladies' aid society often said my mother was

kind of an insect mother was trying to raise. Mother did know. She

"side of the house."

notice upon me, and then let me go ahead and get my coffee-pot.

coffee-pot would spill upon me. I cannot remember when I disobeyed

my mother that a coffee-pot of some kind did not spill upon me, and I

got my blisters. Mother did not inflict them. Mother was not much of an

And thru the bumps we learn that The College of Needless Knocks

runs on the same plan. The Voice of Wisdom says to each of us,

"Child of humanity, do right, walk in the right path. You will be

We get off the right path. We go down forbidden paths. They seem

It wasn't my fault--all my bumps and coffee-pots! I was just

to learn the lesson of the bump and find the right path, so that

The other day I watched a blind man go down the aisle of the car to

get off the train. Did you ever study the walk of a blind man? He

line of least resistance, depend upon it you are going downward.

Look over your community. Note the handful of brave, faithful,

getting in the way of the pushers.

brave minority of thinking, self-sacrificing people that decides

the tomorrow of communities that go upward. Majorities are not

Human life is the story of the Prodigal Son. We look over the fence

of goodness into the mystery of the great unknown world beyond and

Down the great white way of the world go the million prodigals,

They just must get their coffee-pot!

The last thing Mamma Fly said as Johnny went off to the city was,

several minutes. But when he sees all the smart young flies of his

right, of course, but she isn't up-to-date. We young set of modern

You see Johnny fly back and forth and have the time of his

so soft and soothing!"

First he puts one foot down and pulls it out. That is a lot of fun.

flypaper. It is a fine place to stick around. All his young set of

Most of them stay. They just settle down into the stickiness

The tuition in The College of Needless Knocks is very high indeed!

The world loves to write resolutions of respect. How often we

There is a good deal of suicide charged up to Providence.

The College of Needful Knocks

BUT occasionally all of us get bumps that we do not bump into. They

were bumped. Some of you in this audience are just now wondering

are lessons in The College of Needful Knocks. They point upward to

most of these knocks--who have faced the great crises of life and

have been tried in the crucibles of affliction. For I am learning

The Sorrows of the Piano

see you. You are so shiny, beautiful, valuable and full of music,

Did you get the meaning of that, children? I hope you are green.

The Sufferings of the Red Mud

One day I was up the Missabe road about a hundred miles north of

hole--about a half-mile of hole. There were steam-shovels at work

throwing out of that hole what I thought was red mud.

"Kind sir, why are they throwing that red mud out of that hole?" I

of this same red mud. It had been moved over the Great Lakes and

of which being The College of Needful Knocks for Red Mud.

Then they pulled the plug out of the bottom of the college and held

Some of the pig iron went into another department, a big teakettle,

Some of the sophomore steel went up into another grade where it was

roasted yet again and rolled thin into a junior. Some of that went

If a ton of that red mud had become watch-springs or razor-blades,

the price had gone up into thousands of dollars.

a larger life. The diamond and the chunk of soft coal are exactly the

of Needful Knocks more than has her crude sister of the coal-scuttle.

crucibles of affliction. There is no gold that has not been refined

right down to the foot of the platform. The subject was The

University of Hard Knocks. Presently the cripple's face was shining

said. "I have been in pain most of my life. But I have learned all

well-gowned. She lived in one of the finest homes in the city. She

What would you have said? Just on the spur of the moment--I said,

The cripple girl had traveled ahead of her jealous mother. For

Schools of Sympathy

When I see a long row of cots in a hospital or sanitarium, I want

precious lessons of patience, sympathy, love, faith and courage.

more than tables of logarithms. Only those who have suffered can

sympathize. They are to become a precious part of our population.

are truly new chapters of our education if we are willing to learn

We think this is true of the good things that come to us, but we do

not want to think so of the bad things. Yet we grow more in lean

prosperity do not often travel hand-in-hand. When we become

materially very prosperous, so many of us begin to say, "Is not

Think of what might happen to you today. Your home might burn. We

look out! Some of your friends would say, "I am so sorry for you.

for it is not true. The old enemy of humanity wants you to believe

The truth is, another chapter of your real education has been

opened. Will you read the lesson of the Needful Knocks?

Out of the trenches of the Great War come nations chastened by

sacrifice and purged of their dross.

NOW as we learn the lessons of the Needless and the Needful Knocks,

a picture of it.

track was a grocery with a row of barrels of apples in front. There

was one barrel full of big, red, fat apples. I rushed over and got

a sack of the big, red, fat apples. Later as the train was under

All I could figure out was that there was only one layer of the

have reached to the bottom, for he gave me the worst mess of runts

Man of sorrows, you have been slandered. It never occurred to me

need to do it. It does itself. It is the shaking of the barrel that

in the Black Swamp of Ohio we had corduroy roads. Did you ever see

a corduroy road? It was a layer of logs in the mud. Riding over it

was the poetry of motion! The wagon "hit the high spots." And as I

hauled a wagon-bed full of apples to the cider-mill over a corduroy

of my pocket and the little ones would rattle down to the bottom.

big ones and some little things of about the same density in a box

you cannot change the place of one of the objects.

inside of it you see two sizes of objects--a lot of little white

Equality of position demands quality of size. Let the little one

The Shaking Barrel of Life

O, fellow apples! We are all apples in the barrel of life on the

way to the market place of the future. It is a corduroy road and

In other words, all the people of the world are in the great barrel

of life. That barrel is shaking all the time. Every community is

shaking, every place is shaking. The offices, the shops, the

live or work is shaking. Life is a constant survival of the

barrel of life. It is sending small people down and great people

the eternal law of life.

our train of destiny will run off and leave us, and we will have no

Kings and Queens of Destiny

you and I are not helpless victims of blind fate. We are not

creatures of chance. We have it in our hands to decide our destiny

Each person is doing one of three things consciously or

shops, offices or elsewhere, if you want to hold your place you

of people working for me, I would have a jar in my office filled

with various sizes of objects. When an employee would come into the

office and say, "Isn't it about time I was getting a raise?" I

Luck does not depend upon the direction of the bump, but upon the

size of the bump-ee!

to size. Every business concern can tell you stories like that of

the Chicago house where a number of young ladies worked. Some of

girl from the country. It was her first office experience, and she

"Is not she the limit?" they oft spake one to another. She was. She

rules of the union! Without being told, mind you. She had that rare

Within three months every other girl in that office was asking

questions of the little Dutch girl. She had learned more about

the most capable girl in the office.

The barrel did the rest. Today she is giving orders to all of them,

for she is the office superintendent.

Going out of the building, I asked the foreman, "Do you see that

He is one of the kindest-hearted men we ever had in the works, but

So books could be filled with just such stories of how people have

Some of us begin life on the top branches, right in the sunshine of

Some of us begin down in the shade on the bottom branches, and we

do not even get invited. We often become discouraged as we look at

And afterwhile we are all in the barrel of life, shaken and bumped

about. There the real people do not often ask us, "On what branch

of that tree did you grow?" But they often inquire, "Are you big

appear to have about the same round of duties.

routine of life must every day flash a new attractiveness. We must

smaller. The joy and juice go out of our lives. We shrivel and rattle.

The success, joy and glory of life are in learning, growing, going

competitors. The minister must be getting larger visions of the

I shiver as I see the pages of school advertisements in the

We often think the way to get a great place is just to go after it

many of us expect to get ready in "four easy lessons by mail."

rattling. A testimonial so often becomes a crutch.

Many a man writes a testimonial to get rid of somebody. "Well, I

hope it will do him some good. Anyhow, I have gotten him off my

The Menace of the Press-Notice

Now testimonials and press-notices very often serve useful ends. In

lyceum work, in teaching, in very many lines, they are often useful

to introduce a stranger. A letter of introduction is useful. A

kinds of testimonials.

The danger is that the hero of them may get to leaning upon them.

Then they become a mirror for his vanity instead of a monitor

progress by reading my press-notices instead of listening to the

verdict of my audiences. I avoided frank criticism. It would hurt

Alas! How often I have learned that when I did return the hall that

editors of America--God bless them! 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 it.

yourself go by"--when you can keep still and see every fibre of you

rejoice, for the kingdom of success is yours.

succeeded by twice as many more. They fail because instead of

The victims of the artificial uplift cannot stay uplifted. They

rattle back, and "the last estate of that man is worse than the

wants you to license him and professionalize him as a beggar.

And so every day that beggar got to be more of a beggar. The public

hopeless cripple. No doubt he belonged after a few days of the

as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise

Artful Dodger of Section Sixteen. When the whistle would blow--O,

the section-house, why I was not president of that bank. I wondered

why I was not sitting upon one of those mahogany seats instead of

rich wasn't getting richer and the poor poorer, I'd be president of a

Did you ever hear that line of conversation? It generally comes

I am so glad now that I did not get to be president of the bank.

wanted them! They would have been coffee-pots. Thank goodness, we

do not get the coffee-pot until we are ready to handle it.

And this blessed old barrel of life is just waiting and anxious to

greatness is merely an incidental reflection of the inside.

in inches, dollars, acres, votes, hurrahs, or by any other of the

Come, let us grow greater. There is a throne for each of us.

the world is in the business of getting--getting great fortunes,

folderol. Afterwhile the poor old world hears the empty rattle of

I weary of the world's pink-sheet extras about "Getting to the Top"

and "Forging to the Front." Too often they are the sordid story of

a few scrambling over the heads of the weaker ones. Sometimes they

are the story of one pig crowding the other pigs out of the trough

The Secret of Greatness

top." Those two sons of Zebedee wanted to have the greatest places

"Are ye able to drink of the cup?" Then he gave the only definition

of greatness that can ever stand: "Whosoever will be great among

This is the Big Business of life--going up, getting educated,

is little business. Much of it mighty little.

Everybody's privilege and duty is to become great. And the joy of

to go off to New York or Chicago or go chasing around the world to

are now upward for an infinite number of steps.

We must take the first step now. Most of us want to take the

spectacular stride of a thousand steps at one leap. That is why we

workshop or our office and take the first step, solve the problem

blessings, we find love, the universal solvent, shining out of our

of earth are born; they rush in from the cold lands to the warm

We find our kitchen or workshop or office becoming a new throne

of power. We find the world around us rising up to call us blessed.

Generally speaking, the smaller our vision of our work, the more we

ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." That great ocean is

have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she

of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had."

Tho the rich men had cast in more, yet it was only a part of their

Master cared little what the footings of the money were in the

fear of want.

advancement of the kingdom of happiness on earth shall find it

upon the percentage of our output to our resources. Upon doing with

The world says some of us have golden gifts and some have copper

gifts. But when we cast them all into the treasury of right

to make a roster of the great people of a community. You will find

service of God is the service of man.

The great people of the community serve and sacrifice for a better

They rarely get thanked, for the community does not often think of

thanking them until it comes time to draft the "resolutions of

I had to go to the mouth of a coal-mine in a little Illinois town,

the tickets and had done all the managing. He was superintendent of

the Sunday school. He was the storm-center of every altruistic

strut and pose in the show places. Few of them are "prominent

A Glimpse of Gunsaulus

he founded by his own preaching. He is the mainspring of so many

think that a vacation means going off somewhere and stretching out

history of each place, and before dinner he knew more about the

place than most of the natives.

were doing nothing. In every town he would discover somebody of

once ask the price of land, nor where there was a good investment

doesn't the doctor take care of himself, instead of taking care of

the by-products. His life of service for others makes him

This Chicago man gives his life into the service of humanity, and

things he does. Let him stop and "take care of himself," and his

If he had begun life by "taking care of himself" and "looking out

the backwoods of Morrow county, Ohio.

Gunsaulus often says, "You are planning and saving and telling

The Problem of "Preparedness"

THE problem of "preparedness" is the problem of preparing children

for life. All other kinds of "preparedness" fade into

insignificance before this. The history of nations shows that their

strength was not in the size of their armies and in the vastness

of their population and wealth, but in the strength and ideals

of the individual citizens.

Then, forgetful of how they became strong, they plan to take away

generally means getting out of his way. Many an orphan can be

will buy any brand they see--buy the home brand of education, or

else send off to New York or Paris or to "Sears Roebuck," and get

a bucketful or a tankful of education. If they are rich enough,

maybe they will have a private pipeline of education laid to their

until they get them full of education. They are going to get them

acquired in a life of struggle." As well expect the athlete to give

them his physical development he has earned in years of exercise.

acquired in years of practice. As well expect the scholar to give

them the ability to think he has developed in years of study. As

in a long life of prayer.

The Story of "Gussie"

great, dirty mill and a lot of little dirty houses around the mill.

The hands lived in the little dirty houses and worked six days of

There was a little, old man who went about that mill, often saying,

"I hain't got no book l'arnin' like the rest of you." He was the

man who owned the mill. He had made it with his own genius out of

The little old man often said, "I'm going to give that boy the best

export, he sent the boy to one of the greatest universities in the

blindness of his love he robbed his boy of his birthright.

The birthright of every child is the opportunity of becoming

great--of going up--of getting educated.

from Texas goes thru Mr. Armour's institute of packnology in

and receives it. There is a row of professors with their sleeves

rolled up who give him the degrees. So as Mr. T. Steer of Panhandle

eternal cold storage, each professor hits him a dab. He rides along

done and the paint was dry. He was a thing of beauty.

crape hanging on the office door. Men and women stood weeping in

a wreck. The monument of a father's lifetime was wrecked in two

had a new kind of boss. If I were to give the new boss a

of the wrecked mill, they simply had to appoint Hon. William Whackem.

fool of Gussie. They said Bill succeeded so well because he never

went to one of "them highbrow schools." I am sorry to say I thought

But now I see that Bill went up in spite of his handicaps. If he

The book and the college suffer at the hands of their friends. They

Gussie was in the position of a man with a very fine equipment of

acquired these elements of greatness in their lives.

That is why they say, "All my life I have been handicapped by lack of

machine from a few bits of junk. But send him to Westinghouse and

just one series of greater commencements.

school of service and write your education in the only book you

ever can know--the book of your experience.

The Tragedy of Unpreparedness

The story of Gussie and Bill Whackem is being written in every

tragedy of our American civilization today.

fine homes and large bank accounts, so often think they can give

A man heard me telling the story of Gussie and Bill Whackem, and he

went out of my audience very indignant. He said he was very glad

has his head bowed in shame over the career of his spoiled son.

I rarely tell of it on a platform that at the close of the lecture

gibbeted in the pulpits as the shocking example of youthful

a man. He seems to have been robbed of his birthright from the

cradle. 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 state. He could plat great coal empires

and command armies of men, but he seems to have been pitifully

ignorant of the fact that the barrel shakes.

the training of their children. Poverty is a better trainer for the rest.

The menace of America lies not in the swollen fortunes, but in the

how few of our strong men get their start with steam heat?

take care of me, and when they are gone I'll inherit everything

earn for yourself, is robbing you of your birthright.

insect struggling inside the cocoon. It was trying to get out of

struggle. For it was this struggle of breaking its own way out of

lie down to sleep, then another day of the same grind, then a year

of it and years following until our machine is worn out and on the

of the whip. Such a worker is the horse we used to have hitched to

But getting a vision of life, and working to grow upward to it,

to crack and the little turkeys began to stick their heads out of

the shells. Some of the little turkeys came out from the shells all

right, but some of them stuck in the shells.

hand." So I picked the shells off. "Little turkeys, you will never

Did I help them? I killed them, or stunted them. Not one of the turkeys

was "right" that I helped. They were runts. One of them was a regular

The cards are against him. He must succeed in spite of his "advantages."

character, for the joy of having a larger life. I am pleading with

you to know the joy of overcoming and having the angels come and

instead of by shaking up.

Happiness is the joy of overcoming. It is the delight of an

expanding consciousness. It is the cry of the eagle mounting

upward. It is the proof that we are progressing.

We find happiness in our work, not outside of our work. If we

me into "taking care" of myself. And I got to taking such good care

of myself and watching for symptoms that I became a physical wreck.

almost every day of the year--maybe two or three times some

day is jam full of play and vacation and good times. The year is

one round of joy, and I ought to pay people for the privilege of

speaking and writing to them instead of them paying me!

If I did not like my work, of course, I would be carrying a

I have never known a case of genuine "overwork." I have never known

of anyone killing himself by working. But I have known of

This is one species of selfishness.

Many Kinds of Drunkards

What a sad, empty lot of rattlers! Look over the bills of the movies,

look over the newsstands and see a picture of the popular mind,

of mental frog-pond and moral slum our boys and girls wade thru!

are a hundred amusement drunkards to one victim of strong drink.

crowd that finds itself back near the caboose, and as the train of

The Lure of the City

Do you ever get lonely in a city? How few men and women there. A

jam of people, most of them imitations--most of them trying to look

like they get more salary. Poor, hungry, doped butterflies of the

will arise and go to his father's house of wisdom. But there is no

over to contracting another set of muscles.

Go to the bank president's office, go to the railroad magnate's

office, go to the great pulpit, to the college chair--go to any

place of great responsibility in a city and ask the one who fills

the place, "Were you born in this city?"

The reply is almost a monotony. "I born in this city? No, I was

born in Poseyville, Indiana, and I came to this city forty years

He glows as he tells you of some log-cabin home, hillside or

that young person comes to the city and shakes in the barrel among

the weaklings of the artificial life, he rises above them like the

eagle soars above a lot of chattering sparrows.

the farms controls the majority. The red blood of redemption flows

these cities would drop off the map.

for lack of leaders.

But so many of the home towns of America are sick. Many are dying.

It is the lure of the city--and the lure-lessness of the country.

the city mail order house. With rural delivery, daily papers,

country or in the small town. They have the city advantages plus

people in this institution and only a score of guards to keep them

insane. No two of them can agree upon how to get together and how

to break out. So a few of us can hold them."

thinking ever since that about three-fourths of the small towns of

A lot of struggling churches compete with each other instead of

out of a hundred of them will jostle with the straphangers all

Ninety-nine out of a hundred of them might have had a larger

spend its years raising crops of young people for the cities. That

is the worst kind of soil impoverishment--all going out and nothing

than all the city mail order houses.

America is to be great, not in the greatness of a few crowded

cities, but in the greatness of innumerable home towns.

A School of Struggle

Dr. Henry Solomon Lehr, founder of the Ohio Northern University at

Ada, Ohio, one of Ohio's greatest educators, used to say with

He encouraged his students to be self-supporting, and most of them

courses elastic to accommodate them. He saw the need of combining

the school of books with the school of struggle. He organized his

for the military department. His school was one surging mass of

of men and women of uniformly greater achievement.

I believe the most useful schools today are schools of struggle

schools offering encouragement and facilities for young people to

academies and colleges, each with its handful of students around a

teacher, as in the old days of the lyceum in Athens, when the

From these schools came the makers and the preservers of the nation.

to sit in the chairs and speak the last word in every department of

O, how the students of the "dark ages" would have rejoiced to see

this day! Many of them never saw a germ!

personal struggle in the cushions of the "frat" house as back on

not be rows of lithographed cans on the shelves of life. I am

hoping they will not be shorn of their individuality, but will have

All this school machinery is only machinery. Back of it must be

spirit of its teachers are its greatest endowment. And sometimes

The Salvation of a "Sucker"

For that sentence utters one of the fundamentals of life that

underlies every field of activity.

string--the little E string. The trouble is so many of these human

them the full complement of strings for their life symphonies.

lot of discord. The violin is to give music.

the violin must go into the great tuning school of life. Here the

vitalized, what you have written in the book of experience.

All of us are Christopher Columbuses, discovering the same new-old

continents of Truth. That is the true happiness of

idea of them. We hear the preacher utter truths and we say with

little feeling, "Yes, that is so." We hear the great truths of life

consciousness. This joy of discovery is the joy of living.

thing. We could read a thousand descriptions of the sun and not

know the sun as in one glimpse of it with our own eyes.

I used to stand in the row of blessed little rascals in the

hands upon hot stoves and coffee-pots, and had to get many kinds of

taking up a collection of sympathy. "Look at my bad luck!" Fool!

drink from a copper kettle. But I have fed him the fingers of this

of oxen and had said the words. But I have!

barrel always shakes all of one size to one place. You notice

that--in a city all of one size get together.

me out of all I had in about five seconds.

I went over to the other side of the fairgrounds and sat down. That

I am putting these cakes of Wonder Soap in my hat. You see I am

hat. Now who will give me five dollars for the privilege of taking

a cake of this wonderful soap from my hat--any cake you want, gentlemen!"

And right on top of the pile was the cake with the ten wrapped

to lock up. You get the pathos of that--the investments nobody

hear of a rubber plantation in Central America? That was mine.

I had in that drawer my "Everglade" farm. Did you ever hear of the

I had also a bale of mining stock. I had stock in gold mines and

my gold and silver mine stock, I often noticed that it was printed

melon! I have heard that all my life and never got a piece of the rind.

was selling it on his reputation. Favorite dodge of the promoter to

dollar and got back a dollar or two of bonds and a dollar or two of

I pitied his lack of vision. Bankers were such "tightwads." They

had no imagination! Nothing interested me that did not offer fifty

savings into the bottom of the sea.

Then I got a confidential letter from a friend of our family I had

was a friend of our family. "You have been selected because you are

"Because of your tremendous influence you have been selected to go

money for Tom, the friend of our family. But I see now I need not

happened in St. Louis. It is none of your business!

dollars to corner the wheat market of the world. That is all I paid

I have always regarded Tom as one of my great school teachers. I

had made up to that time, for I got the most out of it. I do not

floor. I will not grasp it. Come away, it is a coffee-pot!

Today when somebody offers me much more than the legal rate of

interest I know he is no friend of our family.

If he offers me a hundred per cent. I call for the police!

law of compensation is never suspended. You only own what you earn.

have been selected to receive this bunch of blisters because you

The other night in a little town of perhaps a thousand, a banker

took me up into his office after the lecture in which I had related

some of the above experiences. "The audience laughed with you and

pathetic. It was a picture of what is going on in our own little

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 described. The saddest part of it is that the money nearly

always goes out of the pockets of the people who can least afford

accumulates by sharp practices or by undue profits never owns it.

The owning is in the understanding of values.

I often think if it takes me thirty-four years to begin to learn

one sentence, I see the need of an eternity.

To me that is one of the great arguments for eternal life--how slowly

that life is one infinite succession of commencements and

decorated and the joy of youth is everywhere. There is a row of

geraniums along the front of the stage and a big oleander on the

"We (hands at half-mast and separating) are rowing (business of

propelling aerial boat with two fingers of each hand, head

up over Alps of difficulty and seeing the Italy of promise and

Did you ever hear a young preacher, just captured, just out of a factory?

But I made the mistake I am trying to warn you against. Instead of

of my experience, I went to the books in my father's library. "As

chunk of Shakespeare and nailed it on page five of my sermon. "List

"cry here." This was the spilling-point of the wet climax. I was to

cry on the lefthand side of the page.

I made my mistake. I got a lot of fine gestures. I got an

grandly than ever to a mirror. Every gesture went off the bat

last man out of the church--and I hurried. But they beat me

out--all nine of them. When I went out the door, the old sexton

peal from that part of your audience unrelated to you.

Out of every thousand books published, perhaps nine hundred of them

do not sell enough to pay the cost of printing them. As you study

been lived. Perhaps the books that fail have just as much of truth

vital impulse. They come out of the author's head. The books that

live must come out of his heart. They are his own life. They come

surging and pulsating from the book of his experience.

The best part of our schooling comes not from the books, but from

But the soul of the artist fainted,

and irrigation and gargling of the throat are merely symptoms of

attended to. She sang that afternoon in the tent, "The Last Rose of

the same tent "The Last Rose of Summer." She had never been to

case of Gussie and Bill Whackem.

cannot sing "The Last Rose of Summer" yet, for you do not know very

much about the first rose of summer. And really, I hope you'll

sing that song, for it is the sob of a broken-hearted woman. Learn

Why do singers try to execute songs beyond the horizon of their

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 land. As I had the

"How did you get your songs known? How did you know what kind of

resources. I have had years of struggle. I have been sick and

asks for more of them."

"Just a Wearyin' for You," "His Lullaby" and many more of those

simple little songs so full of the pathos and philosophy of life

No. Books of theory and harmony and expression only teach us how to

the life of the song.

the University of Hard Knocks. She here became the song philosopher

popular heart. And while we have a continual inundation of popular

My friends, I am not arguing that you and I must drink the dregs of

around me in the affairs of everyday life, 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-Bond.

The world is full of theorists, dreamers, uplifters, reformers, who

or trampling upon their fellow men they dream of helping. Their

the anvil of experience.

Many of the most brilliant theorists have been the greatest

anything you could think of was discussed, and perhaps the page. He

His conversation was largely made up of classical quotations.

But he was one of the most helpless men I have ever seen in

himself. He could quote a page of John Locke, but somehow the page

a misfit on earth. He was liable to put the gravy in his coffee

of the things in his memory. Since I have grown up I always think

of that man as an intellectual cold storage plant.

The greatest book is the textbook of the University of Hard Knocks,

the Book of Human Experience the "sermons in stones" and the "books

Note the sweeping, positive statements of the young person.

Note the cautious, specific statements of the person who has lived

Tuning the Strings of Life

of Human Experience. Each has a different fight to make and a

different burden to carry. Each one of us has more trouble than

I know there are chapters of heroism in the lives of you older

ones. You have cried yourselves to sleep, some of you, and walked

A good many of you were bumped today or yesterday, or maybe years

Maybe some of you are naturally bright!

of you are going to know the keen sorrow of having the one you

You will see all that seems to make life livable lost out of your

These bumps and tragedies and Waterloos draw the strings of the

unworthy go out of our lives and as peace, harmony, happiness, love

Memories of the Price We Pay

That "Last Day of School"

I walked thirteen miles a day, six and a half miles each way, most of

old back-country "last day of school exhibition"? The people that

great baskets of provender and we had a feast. We covered the

school desks with boards, and then covered the boards with piles of

fried chicken, doughnuts and forty kinds of pie.

Then we had a "doings." Everybody did a stunt. We executed a lot of

back of the ears! And into them! So many of them wore collars that

I can see them speaking their "pieces." I can see "The Soldier of

got up before that "last day of school" audience and opened my

mouth, it was a great opening, but nothing came out. It came out of

was "such a good man" and a "pillar of the church." I used to wonder,

"due at corncutting," as a souvenir of my first schoolteaching.

of its own household.

And he has gotten his lecture out of that home town. The heroes and

could live in that hotel was a superior order of being. But the

hotel has a superior order of vitality.

a picture of the school in that town that had been taken twenty-one

I got a truer perspective of life that night. Did you ever sit

alone with a picture of your classmates taken twenty-one years

A class of brilliant and gifted young people went out to take

charge of the world. They were so glad the world had waited so long

on them. They were so willing to take charge of the world. They

not the one you may be thinking of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He had

As commencement day approached, the committee of the class

appointed for that purpose took Jim back of the schoolhouse and

on the stage back of the oleander commencement night.

goddess at the general delivery window and superintendent of the

stamp-licking department of the home postoffice. The boy who was

wife was speaker of the house.

Most of them were doing very well even Jim Lambert. Jim had become

the head of one of the big manufacturing plants of the South, with

a lot of men working for him. The committee that took him out

They hung a picture of Mr. Lambert in the high school at the last

a bit of cheer from the story of Jim?

the barrel, and now as I called the roll on them, most of them that

Out of that fifty-four, one had gone to a pulpit, one had gone to

almost every note on the keyboard of human possibility had been

struck by the one school of fifty-four.

yet most of them seemed already to have decided their destinies.

that the foolish dreams of success faded before the natural

unfolding of talents, which is the real success. I saw better that

work as a man. The boy who went to the bottom of things in school

was going to the bottom of things in manhood. Which had helped him

to go to the top of things!

Jim Lambert had merely followed the call of talents unseen in him

him! Why was it he could always get the better of me? Well, he went

on trading knives and getting the better of people. Now, twenty-one

teacher's model boy. All the mothers of the community used to say

to their own reprobate offspring, "Why can't you be like Harry?

He'll be President of the United States some day, and you'll be in

believe Mr. Webster defines a model as a small imitation of the

I have said little about the girls of the school. Fact was, at that

way. But I naturally thought of Clarice, our social pet of the

her. Most of the girls who shone with less social luster became the

happy homemakers of the community.

But as I looked into the face of Jim Lambert in the picture, my

heart warmed at the sight of another great success--a sweet-faced

her grace and sweetness thru it all, and the influence of her

a loving father, plenty of money, opportunity and a great career

the town proud of him.

I was the janitor of the schoolhouse. Some of my classmates will

the careers of Frank and the rest of them seemed to begin. They

were going off to college and going to do so many wonderful things.

But the week after commencement I had to go into a printing office,

Many a time as I plugged at the "case" I would think of Frank and wonder

Twenty-one years afterward as I got off the train in the home town,

I had the story of a tragedy--the tragedy of modern unpreparedness.

It was the story of the boy who had every opportunity, but who had

all the struggle taken out of his life. He never followed his

It revived the memory of the story of Ben Hur.

trial at the hands of this world. That is why the great Judge has

he pulls on the oar. Day after day he writhes under the sting of

the lash. Years of the cruel injustice pass. Ben Hur is the

helpless victim of a mocking fate.

office, or wherever we work we seem so often like slaves bound to

the oar and pulling under the sting of the lash of necessity. Life

seems one futureless round of drudgery. We wonder why. We often

stronger forearms. They are bands of steel that swell in the

forearms of Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into the

mistakes in the bookkeeping. As we pull on the oar, so often lashed

interest in the bank account of strength. Sooner or later the time

galleys of life by pulling on the oar.

That is why I thanked God as I stood at the grave of my classmate.

I thanked God for parents who believed in the gospel of struggle,

I am not an example of success.

But I am a very grateful pupil in the first reader class of The

University of Hard Knocks.

THERE is a little silvery sheet of water in Minnesota called Lake Itasca.

"Ole!" you will exclaim, "the lake is leaking. What is the name of

So even the Father of Waters has to begin as a creek. We are at the

It wabbles around thru the woods of Minnesota. It doesn't know

to the place where all of us get sooner or later. The place where

Paul came on the road to Damascus. The place of the "heavenly vision."

get out of the county." That is a fact, but he is not trying to get

out of the county. The Mississippi is only trying to go south.

The Mississippi knows nothing about the Gulf of Mexico. He does not

know that he has to go hundreds of miles south. He is only trying

My friends, here is one of the best pictures I can find in nature

of what it seems to me our lives should be. I hear a great many

Value of a Goal in Life." But the direction is vastly more

we flow. All of us can start! And then go on south!

not at the end of the journey, for there is no end. Success is

It is a divine call--the call of our unfolding talents to be used.

direction he would never have been heard of.

That is why I am making it the slogan of my life--GO ON SOUTH AND

education--and religion. And the only business of life.

So many of those young goslings believe that. They quit and get

canned. They think they have gotten to the Gulf of Mexico when they

have not gotten out of the woods of Minnesota. Go on south!

The Plague of Incompetents

But contentment with present achievement is the damnation of the race.

The mass of the human family never go on south far enough to

Nine out of ten stenographers who apply for positions can write a

think that is being a stenographer, when it is merely a symptom of

Nine out of ten workmen cannot be trusted to do what they advertise

efficient. Many a professional man is in the same class.

Half of our life is spent in getting competents to repair the

botchwork of incompetents.

is the opiate that Nature administers to deaden the pains of mediocrity.

Just because our hair gets frosty or begins to rub off in spots, we

A-B-C's. I do not utter that as a bit of sentiment, but as the

great fundamental of our life. I hope the oldest in years sees that

of your gray hair or baldness. If they get on the inside of the head,

to employ gray-headed men? They have found that so many of them

are the most valuable, for they have the vision and wisdom of many

years and the enthusiasm and "pep" and courage of youth.

person in the pulpit, in the schoolroom, in the office, behind the

"Please don't throw it up to me now. I am just as ashamed of it as

the people on the platform who were contented with their offerings,

were not trying to improve them, and were lost in admiration of

From what I can learn of Methuselah, he never grew past copper-toed

The spectacle of Sarah Bernhardt, past seventy, thrilling and

gripping audiences with the fire and brilliancy of youth, is

acting, for she remains the "Divine Sarah" with no crippling of her

work. She looks younger than many women of half her years. "The

ninety-two was working as hard and hopefully as any man of the

the Odd Fellows' Home near Elkins, where he lived. On the porch of

the home was a row of old men inmates. The senator shook hands with

the face of seven thousand failures. Today he brings forth a

even get on the back page of the Egyptian newspapers till he was

If Moses had retired at seventy-nine, we'd never have heard of him.

pitching horseshoes up the alley and talking about "ther winter of

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

time" when he becomes the leader of the Israelite host.

You are liable to drop off any minute. Here is a pair of slippers.

And keep out of the night air. It is so hard on old folks."

what to do. Watch things happen from now on. Children of

Thursday. They get ready the resolutions of respect--

to General Moses' private office. It is his busy day. They have to

man. You are eighty-five years old and full of honors. We are the

to hold that funeral until I get this work pushed off so I can

irreverence. It is joyful reverence. It is the message to all of

All the multitudes of the Children of Israel died in the Wilderness.

They were afraid to go on south. Only two of them went on south--

Joshua and Caleb. They put the giants out of business.

So another crop of Americans came into the limelight. If we modern

They say nobody loves them. Which is often a fact. Nobody loves the

They say, "Only a few more days of trouble, only a few more

child and I'm not happy now. Them was the best days of my life

the horrors of childhood could not be hired to live it over again.

I wish I could forget many of my childhood memories. I remember the

I often wonder how I ever lived thru my childhood. I would not take

nurture and admiration of the Lord. I am not just sure I quoted

Elder Berry always stayed for dinner. He was one of the easiest men

at the last donation. We had one of those stretchable tables,

I would see mother put on the tallest pile of mashed potatoes you

wonder why we never could have a big dinner but what a lot of

The hungriest one of that assemblage would have to go in the next

was only one piece of chicken left. It was the neck. O, Lord, spare

to another piece of the chicken?"

boy?" He would come over to the remains of Brother Parlette's boy.

He would often put his hand in benediction upon my head.

you are seeing the best days of your life right now as a child."

The dear old liar! I was seeing the worst days of my life. If there

and today is the best day of all. Go on south!

days. Of course, you can be happy as a child. A boy can be happy

more like mine like a piece of sandpaper. There are chapters of

happiness undreamed of in his philosophy.

A child can be full of happiness and only hold a pint. But

must hold a barrel! Go on south. Of course, I do not mean

circumference. But every year we go south increases our capacity

And I have to say that to many questions, "I do not know." I often

They have built a great concrete obstacle clear across the path of

you see the struggle of overcoming the obstacle develops light and

the light and power from the struggle. The great city of St. Louis,

We develop our light and power. We are rivers of light and power,

be developed. So many of us do not understand that. We look

Thank God! You are blessed of Providence. They do not waste the

obstacles. The presence of the obstacles means that there is a lot

of light and power in you to be developed. If you see no obstacles,

The fact that we are not buried is no proof that we are alive. Go

storeboxes. There they are blocking traffic at the postoffice and

the guests stand up. There they are--rows of retired farmers who

They block the wheels of progress and get in the way of the people

trying to go on south. They say of the people trying to do things.

because they "take money outa town." They do not take any of their

last glimpse of the book in the running brook.

is the supreme test of character. That is, Why go on south? Not for

The Mississippi does not resign. He does not tell a tale of woe. He

alchemy of Nature, the Mississippi has taken over all the poison

made it a part of himself. And he is greater and farther south!

Day by day the Father of Waters goes on south, taking them over and

purifying them and making them a part of himself. Nothing can

along such a heart full of the injuries that other people have done

us, that sometimes we are bank to bank full of poison and a menace

we ought to forget. We need schools of memory, but we need schools

of forgettery, even more.

you help the most often are the least grateful in return?

teacher, the editor, the man in office, the business man, the

father and mother--every one who tries to carry on the work of the

valley for praise or blame, for appreciation or lack of it. You do

for outside thanks instead of inside thanks. They were trying to

streamlet starting southward thru the forests of Minnesota, there

writing the first chapter of this wonderful book in the running brook.

life. Father of Waters, you have fought a good fight. You are

conquering gloriously. You bear upon your bosom the commerce of

you get in the right channel, saw you learn the lessons of your

And may we read it into our own lives. May we get the vision of

getting the lessons of the bumps, the strength from the struggle

and thus making it a part of ourselves, and thus growing greater.

Where shall we stop going south? At the Gulf of Mexico?

And when he comes to the end of his physical banks, he pushes on

When you and I come to our Gulf of Mexico, we must push right on

into the great Gulf of the Beyond, to go on south unfolding thru eternity.

HOW often we say, "I wish I had a million!" Perhaps it is a

O, the problem is not how to get money, but how to get rid of

If the burden were lifted from most of us we would go to wreck.

When you hear the orator speak and you note the ease and power of

his work, do you think of the years of struggle he spent in

preparing? Do you ever think of the times that orator tried to

When you hear the musician and note the ease and grace of the

performance, do you think of the years of struggle and overcoming

necessary to produce that finish and grace? That is the story of

the actor, the author and every other one of attainment.

I have builded?" says the Belshazzar of material prosperity as he

that some of us will have to go to jail to do our best work.

Do you remember that Saul of Tarsus would have never been

remembered had he lived the life of luxury planned for him? He had

rising from the ashes of defeat?

Then, children, when you stand in the row of graduates on

O UNIVERSITY OF HARD KNOCKS, we learn to love you more with each

that you are saving us from ourselves. But O, how most of us must

I know no better way to close this lecture than to tell you of a

tho twelve years of my life had dropped out of it, and had been

triangular car that hoists them out of the hungry chasm thirty-five

hundred feet up the side of a granite cliff, to the top of Echo Mountain.

Here they find that Echo Mountain is but a shelf on the side of

Every minute a new thrill, and no two thrills alike. Five miles of

lift. 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

He looks over the edge of the shelf downward, and then turns to the other

side to look at the face of the cliff they are hugging, and discovers

at the summit of Mount Lowe is to get a picture so wonderful it

feet, more than a mile, into the orange belt of Southern California.

It spreads out below in one great mosaic of turquoise and amber

field-glass sweeps one panoramic picture of a hundred miles or more.

forty miles is the blue stretch of the Pacific Ocean, on westward

the faint outlines of Catalina Islands. The ocean seems so close

And Mount Lowe is but a shelf on the side of the higher Sierras.

This is one of the workshops of the infinite!

down upon clouds. I thought of the cloud that had covered me in the

over me, and there were millions of miles of sunshine above me. I

the clouds of trouble today, BUT THE SUN IS SHINING!

clearly the plan of a human life. The rocks, the curves and the

struggles fit into a divine engineering plan to soften the

steepness of the ascent. The bumps are lifts. The things that seem

know it was one of the greatest blessings of my life. It closed one

Late that day I was clambering down the side of Mount Lowe. Down in

lower and lower until his red lips kissed the cheek of the Pacific.

The glory of the sunset filled sea and sky with flames of gold and

fountains of rainbows. Such a sunset from the mountain-side is a

promise of heaven.

The shadows of sunset widened over the valley. Presently all the

up to the summit. The beams of the setting sun were yet gilding

Child of humanity, are you in the storm? Go on upward. Are you in

Some day my night will come. It will spread over all this valley of

shall be in the new day of the mountain-top, forever above the night.

I shall find this mountain-top just another shelf on the side of

the Mountain of Infinite Unfolding. I shall have risen perhaps only

the first mile. I shall have millions of miles yet to rise.

entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared

The Big Business of Life

This book proves that the real big business is that of getting our

Dr. J. G. Crabbe, President of the State Teachers College,

"The Big Business of Life is a real joy to read. It is big and

where. It is truly `A Book of Rejoicing'."

"In The Big Business of Life we have the practical philosophy

secret of living to the full. And happiness is to be sought

a smile, and beneath each one is a bit of wisdom it would do us

a world of good to learn. It recalls the saying of the wise man

Many who have read The Big Business of Life

University of Hard Knocks," which, they add, is

The Salvation of a Sucker

chapters in "The University of Hard Knocks."

John C. Carroll, President of the Hyde Park State Bank of Chicago,

bought 1000 copies of the booklet "It's Up to You!" and of it he

friend. I would rather be author of it than president of the bank."

Employers in every line of business are buying quantities of "It's

William Jennings Bryan says of the booklet "Go On South": "It is

one of the great stories of the day."

Charles Grilk of Davenport, says: "My two children and I read the

Instruct us to send one of these booklets to your friends. It will

End of Project Gutenberg etext of "The University of Hard Knocks"