RIGHT HERE AND JUST NOW
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser to-day than he was yesterday.—Abraham Lincoln.
“If I’d ’a’ been born,” says Sy Slocum to me,
“In some other far-away clime,
Or if I could ’a’ had my existence,” says he,
“In some other long-ago time,
I know I’d ’a’ flourished in pretty fine style
And set folks a-talkin’, I ’low,
But what troubles me is there’s nothin’ worth while
A-doin’ right here and just now.”
Hurry not only spoils work, but spoils life also.—Lubbock.
“Them folks that can dwell in a country,” says Sy,
“Where they don’t have no winter nor storm,
And the weather ain’t ready to freeze ’em or fry,
By gettin’ too cold or too warm,
Have got all the time that they want to sit down
And think out a project so great
That it’s just about certain to win ’em renown
And bring ’em success while they wait.”
I cannot hear what you say for listening to what you are.—Emerson.
Says Sy, “Folks a-livin’ here ages ago,
Before all the chances had flown
For makin’ a hit, wouldn’t stand any show
To-day at a-holdin’ their own.
Good times will come back to our planet, I ’low,
When I’ve faded out of the scene;
But it hurts me to think that right here and just now
Is a sorry betwixt and between.”
At that I got tired a-hearin’ Sy spout,
And says I, “Sy, you like to enthuse
Regardin’ the marvelous work you’d turn out
If you stood in some other man’s shoes;
But while all your ’might-’a’-been’ praises you sing,
It’s worth while recallin’ as how
That no man on earth ever does the first thing
That he can’t do right here and just now!”
Honest labor wears a lovely face.—Decker.
Jean Paul Richter, who suffered greatly from poverty, said that he would not have been rich for worlds.
“I began life with a sixpence,” said Girard, “and believe that a man’s best capital is his industry.”
I am a part of all that I have seen.—Tennyson.
Thomas Ball, the sculptor, whose fine statues ornament the parks and squares of Boston, used as a lad to sweep out the halls of the Boston Museum. Horace Greeley, journalist and orator, was the son of a poor New Hampshire farmer and for years earned his living by typesetting. Thorwaldsen, the great Danish sculptor, was the son of humble Icelandic fisher-folk, but by study and perseverance he became one of the greatest of modern sculptors. In the Copenhagen museum alone are six hundred examples of his art.
If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.—Marcus Aurelius.
Benjamin Franklin, philosopher and statesman, was the son of a tallow-chandler, and was the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen children. This would seem to go far toward proving that it is no misfortune to be born into a home of many brothers and sisters. Lord Tennyson, too, was the third child in a family of eleven children, all born within a period of thirteen years. They formed a joyous, lively household, amusements being agreeably mingled with their daily tasks. They were all handsome and gifted, with marked personal traits and imaginative temperaments. They were very fond of reading and story-telling. At least four of the boys—Frederick, Charles, Alfred, and Edward—were given to verse-writing.
A thing is never too often repeated which is never sufficiently learned.—Seneca.
Any man may commit a mistake, but none but a fool will continue in it.—Cicero.
John Bunyan, author of “Pilgrim’s Progress,” which is said to have obtained a larger circulation than any other book in English except the Bible, was a tinker. Linnaeus, the great Swedish botanist, and most influential naturalist of the eighteenth century, was a shoemaker’s apprentice.
As a matter of fact, a man’s first duty is to mind his own business.—Lorimer.
George Stephenson, the English engineer and inventor, was in his youth a stoker in a colliery, learning to read and write at a workingmen’s evening school. Sir Richard Arkwright, inventor of the spinning-jenny, and founder of the great cotton industries of England, never saw the inside of a school-house until after he was twenty years of age, having long served as a barber’s assistant.
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.—Whipple.
John Jacob Astor began life as a peddler in the streets of New York, where his descendants now own real estate worth hundreds of millions.
Civility costs nothing and buys everything.—Lady Montague.
Shakespeare in his youth was a wool-carder.
Cheerful looks make every dish a feast.—Massinger.
Thousands of other examples might be mentioned to show that lowly birth is no barrier to lofty attainment. It has been truly said that genius ignores all social barriers and springs forth wherever heaven has dropped the seed. The grandest characters known in art, literature, and the useful inventions, have illustrated the axiom that “brave deeds are the ancestors of brave men,” and, as Ballou has told us, “it would almost appear that an element of hardship is necessary to the effective development of true genius. Indeed, when we come to the highest achievements of the greatest minds, it seems that they were not limited by race, condition of life, or the circumstances of their age.”
Character, good or bad, has a tendency to perpetuate itself.—Hodge.
So we see that it is something within the boy rather than conditions about him that is to determine what he is to become. A boy with a good mind with which to think and a determination to do, is pretty sure of doing something worth while. The whole world knows that so much depends on whether or not the boy cultivates a determination to