A MILITARY DRILL
The Winning Company at the M Street High School, Washington, D. C.
PLEASURE AND WORK COMBINED
The pleasure derived by the musical ear exceeds the work and practice required to become a skilled musician.
In the great game of grab after money, which is enthralling the earth at the present time, the man who dares takes no part except to see that his compensation is adequate to his efficiency. His abnegation of the canker worm of gold is a strong recommendation in his favor, and brings him much more than it does to one who bites every dollar to test its genuineness. He becomes renowned for this disposition, and nobody turns him down on any proposition for everybody knows that his disposition is to dare, to venture, to try, to win, to succeed. It is the best sort of renown to possess; it is a policy, really a dare.
He knows that everything comes to him who knows how to wait, and he plays the waiting game in a diplomatic manner, so diplomatic, indeed, that he wins.
The man who dares may scale the walls of Paradise to gain a crown of eternal glory. Nobody can slide through St. Peter’s gate unobserved. It requires a constant fight to reach it even, and blessed is he who gets that far, for he is sure to enter. We have it from the Saviour Himself: “And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”
There is authority, therefore, for saying that the man who dares may scale the walls of Paradise. The fact is, that a mollycoddle cannot be connected with the idea of taking the kingdom of heaven by force. It requires a man who dares to accomplish that feat, and it is the man who dares that gets there.
Let us suppose that you are a timid man and have little initiative—that is you are a follower of somebody and can not lead in anything. You must raise some steam and get a move on or you will never succeed. That is a settled fact, and if you to whom this is addressed, can not raise enough steam to start out on a dare, why then, fall out and let somebody else take your place in the waiting line.
Suppose you wanted to make a stagger at a dare, how would you go about it! That’s about the idea you are after. Well, in the first place, you must make ready. You can not ride without a horse, and even if you have a horse, he is no good to you unless you know how to ride. To learn to ride, you must get on the horse, of course, and take your chances of being thrown or of falling off through sheer fright.
That is nothing. A few bruises are honorable scars in the onward struggle. Let us start you our way: