BOYS AND GIRLS OF THE BURLINGTON PUBLIC SCHOOL.
Canada cannot be a strong nation unless her youth become
strong in character.
If you are looking for an opening for your life’s career, you cannot do better than pick a spot right here in Canada. Probably the place to start is right where you are. A lot of people make mistakes in running around looking for opportunities when, in all probability, the opportunity is standing around the corner waiting for the door to be opened to make a bolt in. It is the wise young man or woman who can see an opportunity and grab it from where he stands, and in a good many cases these opportunities consist simply in doing honestly, sincerely and with all the heart that can be put into it the things which lie right at hand. It may be pitching hay on the farm, chucking coal into the fire-box of a locomotive or delivering parcels from a grocery store. If these things are done with the right spirit and done as well as one knows how to do them, bigger opportunities are as certain to crop up all in good time as the sun is to rise to-morrow morning. Those of us who look back from added years see that the hard and trying work in what seemed to be limited opportunities was really a preparation for the bigger things to follow, and if the one who is doing what seems to be the little things doesn’t do them in the best way he knows how he will not be ready to take hold of the bigger things when they come along.
This country of ours, Canada, is to-day, in resources, an undeveloped opportunity, the greatest under God’s heaven. With its wealth of land, forest and mine, with its unknown and undreamed-of resources in the sections man has not yet trod, it presents a wealth of opportunity such as our fathers never dreamed of. The young man or woman who believes in the syllable “can” and will develop his or her will-power to say “I can,” and “I will,” and follows this up with the doing will not lack a place in this country.
With all the struggle and striving for success do not forget that life’s choicest gift is Love. Every chivalrous act results from love. Faith, Hope and Charity are all the outgrowth of love. Nature as we see it around us in the fields and forests is a picture of love, and is a sort of mirror reflecting God’s thoughts.
Robert and Mary, the hero and heroine of the preceding story, went their way and left an impress of their lives on their country and on the hearts of the people of their time by playing fairly and by working with God’s blessing. To fill a similar place in life it will be necessary for you to work with the same end in view and under the same auspices.
Will you do it?
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.