Fishing is my favorite sport. My grandson was a baseball fiend and a football player. He was hurt in a football game and I wrote him, warning him against his recklessness, and to the admonition I added: "Twenty-five boys have been killed already this season playing football; it's a brutal game anyway."
He replied: "Dear Grandfather, I am sorry so many boys have been killed playing football, but I read recently that last summer two hundred and fifty men were drowned while out fishing; would it not be well for you to keep off Lake Ellerslie? You say football is a brutal game; I submit to you, Grandpa, that the man who takes an innocent worm or a minnow, strings it on a steel hook, and sinking it into the water, jerks the gills out of an innocent fish, is more cruel than the boy who kicks another around for exercise. I need a pair of baseball shoes, number six and a half; send them by express." He got the shoes, and I decided he was called to be a lawyer.
Young man, if you get to be a preacher and cannot put force into your sermon, the world doesn't want to hear you preach, but if you are a good cobbler it will wear your shoes, if a good baker it will eat your bread, or if a good barber it will let you put your razor to its throat. Remember in making your choice,
"Honor and fame from no condition rise,
Act well your part; there the honor lies."
If I could live life over, I would not be content with a common school education. In my youth circumstances lifted a dead wall against my hopes, but if given another chance I would somehow press my way to where higher education scatters its trophies at the feet of youth, for while it is true some of the most successful men of our country graduated from the high school of "hard knocks" and universities of adversity, yet the humblest toil is more easily accomplished and better done where college education guides.
To college education, however, I would add the education which comes from rubbing against the world. Some one has said: "For every ounce of book knowledge one needs a half dozen ounces of common sense with which to apply it." Douglas Jerrold said: "I have a friend who can speak fluently a dozen different languages but has not a practical idea to express in any one of them."
An old woman suffering from rheumatism was asked by a friend: "Did you ever try electricity?"
She answered: "Yes, I was struck by lightning once but it didn't do me any good."
In this many sided age one needs to educate muscle, nerves, heart and conscience as well as brain. That man who is all brain and no heart, goes through the world with his intellect shining above his bosom like an electric light over a graveyard.