10 



rHE HAKIUVOOD RECORD. 



soinr snfr pliut- « inn- linii' will b«' imh- 

 to iiidli'st iir imiko thoiu iifriilil. You we 

 them all nl>out you, iiicii some of tliom 

 ijlllto youiiR. wlio Imvf II wrilli-n all over 

 tlioui tliut tlio.v Imvo Ih'oii worstoil hi life's 

 bnttle. ttmt tlioy have l>een wlilpiieil unci 

 tlmt what little 8plrlt lliey had has lieen 

 broken. And they have slipped Into clerk- 

 ships, or something of that kind, where 

 thoy will have an assnretl Income, how- 

 ever small, and he safe fri>m the buffet- 

 tings of the rude world. They are with- 

 out hope, it would s<'eni. and they live 

 HK-aserly in tlie hall bedroom of a third- 

 rate boarding house. If they arc single, or 

 half starve some misguided woman and 

 unfortunate children, if they arc married. 

 Of course it is very convenient to have 

 n lot of sucli people in the world. l>ut you 

 don't want to be one of them, nor do I 

 want to l>e one of them. 



• • • 



We have wandered a little from the 

 main line of our contention, which was for 

 the value, if not the absolute necessity, of 

 discipline, of the tempering process, in 

 producing a successful man. Init we will 

 come back to it. 



* * * 



1 knew two boys who went through the 

 public schools at the same time. One was 

 a very bright and handsome lad. who 

 stood at the liead of his classes and was, 

 in fact, tlie show pupil of the whole town. 

 The other was a big. awakward fellow, 

 slow of speech and the butt of much ridi- 

 cule. He didn't shine in the schoolroom 

 or on the playground, or anywhere. The 

 teachers frowned upon him. the girls 

 openly jeered at and ridiculed him, and 

 the boys — well, the boys liked him pretty 

 well, but they couldn't help being ashamed 

 of him. 



They graduated from high school the 

 same year, the bright boy with all the 

 honors and the dull boy barely pulling 

 through, and being allowed to do so more 

 because the teachers wanted to get rid of 

 him than for any other reason. Neither 

 of them went further with their schooling 

 than the high school, and when they came 

 out of that school they were equipped as 

 well as they would ever be to begin their 

 life career. 



Now most people would consider that 

 the boy who had won all the honors and 

 had been the pet and pride of the school 

 and of his fond relatives was the better 

 equipped of the two, bnt you and I know 

 better. 



The dull boy came out of school without 

 any conceit or vanity in him. It had all 

 been hammered out. But he. being of the 

 right metal, resented the treatment he 

 had received and down in his heart was 

 a strong and bitter determination to show 

 the people that he wasn't as big a fool as 

 they thought him. So you see that boy w-as 

 in a frame of mind to clear a T\ay in front 



of him. He had been taking his bitter 



uiiHllclne fui .1 _i:, il many years and It had 

 done liim good. 



The bright Iwy had come out of school 

 so full of vanity and conceit as to be 

 totally unlit for anything. It is fvinny 

 how many ilifferent kinds of a donkey n 

 foolish, conceile<l boy can make of him- 

 self, but he played the whole string. lie 

 I'ouldn't settle down to anything seri- 

 niisly, because there was nothing quite 

 worthy of him open in the riither under- 

 sized place There were two bunks, but 

 both had very competent ju-esldents, who 

 in eacli case owned a majority of the stock, 

 so that there was no show there. He 

 didn't think much of the banking business 

 anyhow, because it was such a sordid, 

 cent-per-cent kind of a business. 



The district in which he lived wcs also 

 well equipped witl> a congressman and 

 state legislators, able men who didn't show 

 any disposition to loosen their grip, and 

 altliough he seriously considered the mat- 

 ter of breaking into politics, and by the 

 power of his broad and liberal culture and 

 his matchless eloquence sweeping every- 

 thing before him, the opportunity did not 

 seem to present itself somehow. 



He had an idea that he would be a great 

 success as an actor. In fact, he knew ho 

 would if he could get the right start. He 

 leaned toward tragedy. Hamlet he 

 thought would be about the proper thing. 

 lUit he didn't know just exactly how to 

 go at it. 



By means of hanging around the tmicl 

 and opera house, and buying some cigars 

 with money his mother gave him. he n an- 

 aged to scrape acquaintance with some of 

 the one-night stand artists who visited the 

 town. But thoy failed to take the interest 

 in him which they would have had they 

 known what a devilish smart fellow he 

 was. 



On one occasion, during the time wlien 

 the county fair was held and the Silver 

 Bell Dramatic Company was in town for a 

 week, ho became quite well acquainted 

 with the jovial manager, who was also the 

 low comedian of the company and played 

 the tuba horn in the band. 



So thoroughly did he win the manager's 

 confidence, that on the second day he was 

 placed in charge of the boys who dis- 

 tributed the handbills about the town. He 

 didn't distribute the bills himself, you un- 

 derstand, but merely oversaw and had 

 charge of the boys, and went about the 

 town with them to see that they did their 

 work thoroughly and well. 



In consideration of this and other serv- 

 ices the bright boy (grown to be 24 by tliis 

 time; how time does fly'*) was given a 

 pass, allowing him to enter the theater at 

 all times, and even admitting him behind 

 the scenes. 



But the jovial manager couldn't see his 

 way to give him anything to do just at 

 present. He would be around next year, 

 no doubt, and might have something open. 

 In the meantime he urged the boy to 



Irani some goo<l steps In "buck and wlnj:" 

 dancing, and lit lilmmMf lo "double in 

 brass," that is, to piny a horn in tlie brass 

 band. As for Hamlet, here the Jovla\ 

 manager grinned — well, then- wasn't much 

 deiiiand for Hamlet. 



.\fler the troupe had guiic the Uiy got 

 up a dramatic enlerlalnnienl of home 

 talent. They played "The Idiot of the 

 Mountain," and allowed him to be the 

 idiot. A fairly good crowd came the flrst 

 niglit, and altliough u good many left be- 

 fore the show was over, the results were 

 fairly satisfactory. 



Tliey made the mistake, however, of giv- 

 ing the entertainment a second night. To 

 this venture le.ss than 20 paid admissions 

 re.s|)onded. Then they made the fmllier 

 mistake of taking the show to a neighbor- 

 ing town, whore a small but good humored 

 crowd guyed them unmercifully. 



And that ended his venture into dra- 

 matics. His mother wanted him to enter 

 the ministry, bnt he said that he would 

 be cramped in that vocation, as he would 

 not have full play for his powers. 



And I'm blest if ten years didn't drift 

 by in this way. while this bright boy was 

 moving around with his head in the clouds. 

 He wasn't lazy nor incompetent. He was 

 just full of wrong ideas. He needed some 

 hammering and. fortunately for him. he 

 got it. 



He had drifted into politics more than 

 .iiiything else. He was really a ready md 

 lonvincing speaker, quickwitted and en- 

 tertaining and had been of considerable 

 service to his party in a small way. So 

 one spring he was nominated for alder- 

 man in his ward, an honorable but rela- 

 tively unimportant and entirely unprofit- 

 able position. 



And when the opposition lield its con- 

 vention later it placed in nomination for 

 alderman the dull Jack who had finished 

 school at the foot of his class. 



For in those ten years dull Jack had 

 been coming forward in a most surprising 

 way. His fatlier had been for years the 

 stonemason of the town, laying founda- 

 tions, lettering and selling tombstones, 

 etc., and while he had made no noise about 

 it he had prospered in a small but sub- 

 stantial way. 



When dull Jack quit school he had gone 

 into his father's shop and learned his 

 trade. He wasted no time on social func- 

 tions, because he wasn't invited, and he 

 had so just an appreciation of his own 

 powers that he was not above starting at 

 tlie very bottom of the ladder. His father 

 had learned his trade in England and he 

 taught dull Jack thoroughly and well, and 

 in a few years he was a master mason. 



Then, almost before people knew what 

 liad happened, the firm of dull Jack and 

 ills father were contractors in stone work 

 on quite a large scale, being successful 

 liidders on work all over their section of 

 the state. And although the old shop was 

 onlv used as a storehouse for tools and 



