The University of Hard Knocks

ng Ba

of the Pr

we know! I laugh as I look

oon. But father being a country preacher, we had tin spoons. We never had to tie a red string around our spoons when we lo

red sheaves. That night I was proud when that farmer patted me on the head and said, "You are the best boy to work, I ever saw

st Day o

h easier to make money than to han

s grow. There is hope for green things. I was so tall and awkward then-I haven't changed much since. I kept still about my

at I thought would make it go. My first rule was, Make 'em study. M

important rule w

teaching methods in use. With the small fry I used a small paddle to win their confidence and arouse their enthus

ll over the township. They were so glad our school was closing they all turned out to make it a success. They brought great baskets of provender an

my eyes and see it yet. I can see my pupils coming forward to speak their "pieces." I hardly knew them and they hardly knew me, for we were "dressed up." Many a head showed father had mowed it with the sh

d as we executed him. I can see "The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled." I can see "Mary's little lamb" come slipping over the stage

my money! I had a speech I had been saying over and over until it would say itself. But somehow when I got up before that "last day of school" audience and opened

s a teary time. I only said, "Weep not for me, dear friends. I am going awa

g home with head high and aircastles even higher. But I never got home wi

I used to wonder, tho, why he didn't take a pillow to church. I took his note for $240, "due at corncutting," as we terme

nir of my first schoolteaching. Deacon K has gone from earth. He has gone to his eternal reward.

ile-a-day dollars to learn one thing I could not learn from the books, that it takes less wisdom to make money, than it does to intellige

h, but at its worst enemies,

the Cl

town. Their schoolmates and playmates are apt to be down there in the front rows with their families, and maybe all the old sc

king distance. Perhaps they have come to hear him. "Is not this the carpenter's son?" Perhaps this

stood to deliver my graduating oration, when in impassioned and well modulated tones I had exclaimed, "Gre

was when I thought anybody who could live in that hotel was a superior order of being. But the time

at town that had been taken twenty-one years before, just before commencement. I had not seen th

ever sit alone with a picture of your classmates taken

aited so long on them. They were so willing to take charge of the world. They were going to be presidents and senato

king of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He had no brilliant career in view. He was dull and seemed to

oke the news to him that they were going to let him graduate, but they were not going to let him speak, because he couldn't m

the

mmunity. The girl who was to become the poetess became the goddess at the general delivery window and superintendent of the stamp-licking depa

ttee that took him out behind the schoolhouse to inform him he could not speak at commencement, would now have to wait in line before a frosted door marked, "Mr. Lambert, Pr

hool at the last alumni meeting. They hung it on

s because you do not seem to learn like some in your cla

re fifty-four young people in that picture. They had been shaken these years in the barrel, and now as I called the ro

gone to brilliant success and some had gone down to sad failure. Some had found happiness and some had found unhappiness

, yet most of them seemed already to have decided their destinies

d to pull it down. And I saw better that the foolish dreams of success faded before the natural u

man. The boy who went to the bottom of things in school was going to the b

d the call of talents unseen i

e an industrious man. The sporty boy became a sporty man. Th

rading knives and getting the better of people. Now, twenty-one years afterwards, he was doing time in the state penitentiary for forgery

own reprobate offspring, "Why can't you be like Harry? He'll be President of the United States some day, and you'll be in jail." But Model Harry sat around all his life being a model. I believe Mr. Webster defines a model as a small imitation of the real thing. Harry cer

real pretty girl who won the vase in the home paper beauty contest. Clarice went right on remaining in the social spotlight, primping and flirting. She outshone all the rest. But it seemed like she was all

eet-faced irish lass who became an "old maid." She had worked day by day all these years to support a home and care for

y I Ha

money, opportunity and a great career awaiting him. And he was bright and lovable and tale

sitive, shabby boy who swept the floors, built the fires and carried in the coal. After commencement my career seemed to end and

ffice, roll up my sleeves and go to work in the "devil's corn

think of Frank and wonder why some people had a

ook backward. But how hard it

e town, I asked, "Where is he?" We went out to the cemetery,

ad all the struggle taken out of his life. He never followed his career, never developed any strength. He disappointed hopes, spent

en Hu

memory of the s

e he never committed. Ben Hur did not get a fair trial. Nobody can get a fair trial at the hands of this world. T

e days and long years when he pulls on the oar under the lash. Day after day he pulls on the oar. Day after day he wr

pulling under the sting of the lash of necessity. Life seems one futureless round of drudgery. We wonder why. We often look across the stree

too, pull on the oar and feel the lash. Most likely they are looking bac

see! Ben Hur from the galleys in the other chariot pitted against him. Down the course dash these twin thund

bands of steel that swell in the forearms of Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into t

n the oar, he never could

fort is laid up at compound interest in the bank account of strength. Sooner or later the time comes when we need every ounce. Sooner or later our chariot race is on-

ssmate. I thanked God for parents who believed in the gospe

n example

in the first reader class of