“YENDER GRASS”
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, without a thought of fame.—Longfellow.
“This world is full of ‘yender grass,’” says Deacon Watts to me;
“When I’m a-mowin’ in the field, the grass close by,” says he,
“Is short and thin and full of weeds; but over yender, why,
It looks to me as if the grass is thick and smooth and high.
But sakes alive! that ain’t the case, for, when I mow to where
The grass I saw from far away looked all so smooth and fair,
I find it’s jest as short and thin as all the rest, or wuss;
And that’s the way the things of earth keep on a-foolin’ us!
Be not simply good, be good for something.—Thoreau.
Progress depends upon what we are, rather than upon what we may encounter. One man is stopped by a sapling lying across the road; another, passing that way, picks up the hindrance and converts it into a help in crossing the brook just ahead.—Trumbull.
“’Bout every day you’ll hear some man complainin’ of his lot,
And tellin’, if he’d had a chance like other people, what
He might have been! He’d like to know how he can ever win
When all the grass that comes his way is all so short and thin.
But over in the neighbors’ fields, why, he can plainly see
That they’re in clover plumb knee-deep and sweet as sweet can be!
At times it’s hard to tell if things are made of gold or brass;
Some men can’t see them distant fields are full of ‘yender grass.’
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength.—Beecher.
Great is wisdom; infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.—Carlyle.
“I’ve learned one thing in makin’ hay, and that’s to fill my mow
With any grass that I can get to harvest here and now.
The ‘yender grass’ that ’way ahead is wavin’ in its pride
I find ain’t very fillin’ by the time it’s cut and dried.
Hope springs eternal, so they say, within the human breast:
Man never is, the sayin’ goes, but always to be, blest.
So my advice is, Don’t you let your present chances pass,
A-thinkin’ by and by you’ll reap your fill of ‘yender grass.’”
WASHINGTON AND LAFAYETTE AT MOUNT VERNON
[CHAPTER VIII]
“TRIFLES”
It is ours to climb and dare.—Frederick Lawrence Knowles.
“Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.” The saying is old but the truth is ever new.
Oh, sweet is life when youth is in the blood.—Denis McCarthy.
It is the little things that count, day by day, in the forming of character. The way in which we employ our moments finally becomes the way in which we employ our years.
Down in the busy thoroughfares are boys the world shall know some day.—Samuel Ellsworth Kiser.
As a matter of course every boy will, if he can, do some big, beautiful thing out there in the years to come. But it is a foregone conclusion that every boy must do a vast number of little things before he shall do the larger things. The “trifles” are always at hand waiting to be done, day after day, year after year. And it is the way in which a boy does these little things that gives him the standing he holds in the estimation of those with whom he is intimately associated.
“As the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” A habit is easy to form but hard to break. Yet the strongest of habits are formed just a little at a time—a small strand is added each day until there is a mighty cable that cannot be broken except by a mighty effort. If it is a good habit, its strength makes it all the better! If it is a bad habit, its strength makes it so much the worse.
To him who presses on, at each degree new visions rise.—Julia Ward Howe.
To doubt is failure, and to dare, success.—Frederick Lawrence Knowles.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there is disgrace.—Edmund Vance Cooke.
Where is the boy who cannot see the fallacy in such illogical reasoning as this: “Now, I will be careless while I am young so that I may be careful when I am older. I will remain ignorant and poorly informed while I am a boy, so that I may be wise when I am a man. I will bend one way while I am a twig so that I shall incline in another direction when I become a tree. I will do wrong things while my character is being formed so that I may do right things when my habits become fixed.” All such reasoning is very, very foolish, isn’t it? And yet there are some illogical youths who deem it will be easy to have one character and disposition as boys and quite a different one when they come to be men. By some strange hocus-pocus they hope to be able to sow a crop of “wild oats” and later on reap a harvest of good wheat. It cannot be done.
Do it right now and do it well.—John Townsend Trowbridge.
Any farmer’s boy will tell you that “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.” When the farmer wishes to harvest wheat he does not sow oats. When he wishes a crop of potatoes he does not plant gourds. He has learned that what he plants in the spring he will harvest in the autumn. It is equally as true of life. That which we sow in youth we reap in our maturer years. We must not try to deceive nature and our own consciences. We shall get back from the years what we give to the years.
Condemn no creed! Dig deep beneath the sod and at the root thou’lt find the truth of God.—Alicia K. Van Buren.
The boy who early gets into the habit of doing things right is pretty sure to go on doing them so all his life, and without much effort on his part. The will is strengthened by exercise in the same manner as are the muscles. We learn to do easily that which we do often.
It is adversity, not prosperity, which breeds men; as it is the storm, and not the calm, which makes the mariner.—Melvin L. Severy.
The slow long way may be the best.—Nathan Haskell Dole.
He who lifts his brother man in turn is lifted by him.—John Townsend Trowbridge.
As the twig is archetypal of the tree, so childhood builds the ladder up which manhood climbs.—Melvin L. Severy.
The youth who says “No” to little temptations will, later on in life, be perfectly able to say “No” to temptations of any size. And how many a man’s career has been made glorious simply because he learned, while a youth, to say “No” whenever his moral conscience told him it was the thing he should say! How true are the teachings of the wise moralist who tells us: “A very little word is ‘No.’ It is composed of but two letters and forms only one syllable. In meaning it is so definite as to defy misunderstanding. Your lips find its articulation easy. Diminutive in size, evident in import, easy of utterance, frequent in use, and necessary in ordinary speech, it seems one of the simplest and most harmless of all words. Yet there are those to whom it is almost a terror. Its sound makes them afraid. They would expurgate it from their vocabulary if they could. The little monosyllable sticks in their throat. Their pliable and easy temper inclines them to conformity, and frequently works their bane. Assailed by the solicitations of pleasure they are sure to yield, for at once and resolutely they will not repeat ‘No!’ Plied with the intoxicating cup they seldom overcome, for their facile nature refuses to express itself in ‘No!’ Encountering temptation in the hard and duteous path they are likely to falter and fall, for they have not the boldness to speak out the decided negative ‘No!’ Amid the mists of time, and involved in the labyrinthine mazes of error, they are liable to forget eternal verities and join in the ribald jest, for they have not been accustomed to utter an emphatic ‘No!’ All the noble souls and heroes of history have held themselves ready, whenever it was demanded, to say ‘No!’ The poet said ‘No!’ to the sloth and indolence which was consuming his precious hours, and wove for himself in heavenly song a garland of immortality.”
All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.—Edwin Markham.
The greatest, strongest, most skilled is he who knows how to wait, and wait patiently.—Charles the Ninth.
“No” might seem to be but a mere trifle of a word yet the boy who learns to say it on every right occasion has already conquered many of the foes that are likely to beset him along life’s pathway. Every boy should cultivate his will until it is strong enough for him to depend upon it at all times. With the proper amount of will he is sure to have sufficient “won’t” to resist all the temptations that wrong may offer him.
The man in whom others believe is a power, but if he believes in himself he is doubly powerful.—Willis George Emerson.
In developing a strength that enables him to say “No!” to wrong things a boy becomes strong enough to say “Yes!” to right things. His “I won’t!” with which he meets wrong suggestions engenders his “I will!” toward the wholesome and commendable undertakings in which he should be interested.
One forgives everything in him who forgives himself nothing.—Chinese.
When a boy has learned to say, and to feel the strength that is in the words, “I will!” he ceases to make use of the words, “I wish,” for his will is sufficient to make his wish a living reality. And what a world of difference there is between the involved meanings of the words,