HANK STREETER’S BRAIN-WAVE
Go after two wolves, and you will not even catch one.—Russian.
Hank Streeter used to sit around the corner grocery store,
A-telling of the things he’d like to do;
“But, pshaw!” said Hank, “it ain’t no use to tackle ’em before
Fate settles in her mind she’ll help you through.
And ’tain’t no use to waste your time on triflin’ things,” said he;
“The feller that secures the biggest plum
Is the one that thinks up something that’s a winner, so, you see,
I’m waitin’ for a brain-wave to come.”
In all God’s creation there is no place appointed for the idle man.—Gladstone.
“The men that make the biggest hits,” so Hank would often say,
“They ain’t the ones, or so I calculate,
That get their everlastin’ fame a-workin’ by the day;
No, sir! They sort o’ grab it while you wait.
They spend their time a-thinkin’ till they strike some new idee
That’s big enough to make the hull world hum.”
“And that’s my plan for winnin’ out,” said Hank; “and so,” said he,
“I’m waitin’ for a brain-wave to come.”
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.—Mark Twain.
And there he sat a-waiting: in the winter by the stove,
In summer-time he sat outside the store;
And, while his busy neighbors all about him worked and throve,
He just kept on a-talking more and more;
Kept on a-getting poorer, and, while time it hauled and tacked,
Hank had to make a meal off just a crumb,
Till death it had to take him,—caught him in the very act
Of waiting for a brain-wave to come.
Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and changes the great curse to a great blessing.—Opie Read.
The man that’s born a genius,—well, I s’pose he’s bound to win,
But most of us are born the other way;
And, after all is said and done, the man who pitches in
And works,—well he’s a genius, so they say.
If he can’t win a dollar, why, he tries to earn a dime;
If he can’t have it all he’ll capture some:
For doing just the best we can is better, every time,
Than waiting for a brain-wave to come.
I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles that could be trusted in matters of importance.—Paley.
There are many echoes in the world, but few voices.—Goethe.
Consequences are unpitying.—George Eliot.
But it is to be remembered that the youth who does not think well of himself is not likely to do well. “Ability, learning, accomplishment, opportunity, are all well,” says Mathews, “but they do not, of themselves, insure success. Thousands have all these, and live and die without benefiting themselves or others. On the other hand, men of mediocre talents, often scale the dizzy steeps of excellence and fame because they have firm faith and high resolve. It is this solid faith in one’s mission—the rooted belief that it is the one thing to which he has been called,—this enthusiasm, attracting an Agassiz to the Alps or the Amazon, impelling a Pliny to explore the volcano in which he is to lose his life, and nerving a Vernet, when tossing in a fierce tempest, to sketch the waste of waters, and even the wave that is leaping up to devour him,—that marks the heroic spirit; and, wherever it is found, success, sooner or later, is almost inevitable.”
They who wish to sing always find a song.—Swedish.
The youth who will start out in life’s morning with a well-defined idea of the goal he wishes to gain, and who will keep going in the right direction need have little fear that his journey will finally end in