FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 683 



' 'But I do not like to do that now; this is my thirtieth year as a breeder." 

 "It is indeed the end of your thirtieth year, but remember it is also the 

 beginning of another thirty years, of another fifty years, of another hundred 

 years of effort. That is the right use of the golden present, to consider it 

 not as the end of all but as the beginning of a better era. You and your 

 boys may better date from today the time when you began to breed prize 

 winners than to date it as the time when you gave up, defeated, after thirty 

 years of struggle. This is the first time you have met the best herds? Very 

 well, you have learned far more than it has cost you to come here. Go home, 

 somewhat humble, perhaps, but at any rate far stronger than ever before as 

 you now have the knowledge that will make you succeed in the future." 



The old breeder called his boy. "See here, John, here is where our cat- 

 tle are weak, here is what knocked us out; we have not realized this defect or 

 classed it as serious, I think we will find a sire that will correct this. I have 

 been to school here. Good day; I won't forget; this is the beginning, not 

 the end. " And the old man took a fresh pull at his pipe and led his old bull 

 to water with a twinkle in his eye and a look of firm resolve about his 

 weatherbeaten face that told of something else than defeat. 



HARVEST THANKSGIVING SERMON. 



Delivered by Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus , in the Central Church, Held in the 

 Auditorium Hall, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday October 30, 1904, A. M. 



' 'A Shock op Corn, Fullt Ripe. " 



You have the text of this morning already before you. (Indicating the 

 display of harvest products arranged on the platform, which Dr. Gunsaulus, 

 in a prelude to his sermon, had explained had been sent from the Iowa State 

 College, Division of Agriculture, Ames, Iowa.) I suppose I would better 

 select, as appropriate to the guidance of our thought, those great and vener- 

 able words of Job, who was a farmer, and drew many of the symbols of his 

 spiritual life from the fields, and who saw that this is not a duo-verse — part 

 spiritual and part natural, but a universe, a uni-verse, and who left us this 

 immortal phrase, "A shock of corn, fully ripe." 



It is the lesson of ripeness that we must learn this morning. Now there 

 are two attitudes which the mind of man takes with respect to the autumn. 

 One attitude may be illustrated in the story that there was once a little girl, 

 with rosy cheeks and golden hair, who climbed up upon her grandfather's 

 lap and began to play with the few remaining hairs at the side of his head. 

 And as the little girl stroked his head, thinking as she did so of her Whit- 

 comb Riley poem, she said, "Grandfather, the frost is on the pumpkins.'* 



