Newspaper Page Text
F.rfitni-bf f r Av S^rHnn Hrarst's Sunday America* Atlanta. Sunday. July 27, 1913
Plenty of Chances in This World Yet
This World Is Still a World of Opportunity. The Boy and
the Man Who Will Work Will Find Success—if They Have It
in Them. This Tells the Story of One Young Man Who Got a
College Education and a Fortune at the Same Time
Summer months of 1912—reads like an impossi
ble tale, but it all stands to speak for Itself.
Oopjrlgat., l»ia. by the Star Company. (.treat Britain Rights Reserved
E publish here the career
of one American citizen
who wanted an education,
and got it, plus financial
success. The story, which begins further
on, was written by Professor Melton, of
Emory College, Oxford, Georgia.
It is the story of a man who, at
thirty-one years of age, had no educa
tion except the education that boys get in
the country with their minds open and the
real earth around them.
You will be interested to read the story
of this American, who began studying at
thirty-one, who made a fortune at out
side work while he was doing the study
ing, and who took his degree after five
years of studying, building houses, side
walks, and doing all kinds of work in the
same five years.
* * *
Read this yourself and give it to some
young man who may be discouraged.
When he reads about the man who
started in to get an education at thirty-
one, and got his degree of bachelor of
arts at thirty-six, and who made a
fortune by hard work while he was
studying at college, he will discover that
“the age of opportunity” is not passed.
This is the story that Professor Melton
sends us:
* * #
MARSHALL’S MIRACLE.
By WIGHTMAN F. MELTON.
■
Nowadays fourteen units are required for en
trance to college. Marion Monroe Marshall en
tered with only three, but they were big ones.
His "Entrance Units" were good common sense,
determination and patience. Five years ago, at
thirty-one years of age, this man spent a whole
day mastering the English participle. He had
decided that he must have a college education.
"Impossible!” somebody said; but Marshall
makes a specialty of the impossible. The mid
dle of this ne he will receive, from Emory
College, Oxford, Georgia, the degree of Bachelor
of Arts.
A remarkable fact is % that, In addition to
studying Winter and Summer, young Marshall
has handled no less than $50,000 in construc
tive business enterprises, and will come out of
college better off, financially, than he was when
he entered.
M. M. Marshall was born fourteen miles from
Macon, Ga., thlrty-elx years ago. His boyhood
and youth were spent on the farm. The coun
try schools of his section, at that time, ran
about two months in the Summer. He was
unable to do more than to learn to read, spell
and write. He did not study grammar or geog
raphy. At twenty-two he was married and run
ning a saw mill. At thirty-one he had never
seen the outside of a Greek book nor the Inside
of a geometry.
During his sub-f^eshman year Mr. Marshall
stuck pretty closely to his preparatory studies,
for he had to make hla fourteen units In one
year. He did find time, however, to purchase,
grade down, and sell to the truetees of Emory
College the lot on which Allen Memorial
Church, a $35,000 structure, now stands.
During his freshman year this man purchased
twenty-five acree of land lying between the
towns of Oxford and Covington, graded streets
and sidewalks, divided the land into forty-eight
lots and sold all of them, clearing enough to
build himself a cozy home. (Quite a number of
pretty and substantial residences now stand In
Marshall's Addition.)
During the vacation between freshman and
sophomore years Mr. Marsh.t'l did a $16,000 job
of concrete *«undation work for the Central of
Georgia Ra. ,ny, at Macon, Ga.
During his sophomore year he built his $2,000
cottage on Haygood street. That vacation he
attended Summer school, catching up with his
work In Greek and Latin.
While carrying on his Junior work In college
he paved the sidewalks and street crossings In
Covington—a $7,000 contract—flying the two
miles from recitation to street work, and back
again, in a big motor car which he had pur
chased, for cash with money he made after en
tering college.
What Mr. Marshall accomplished during the
vacation between junior and senior years—the
Here It is:
(1) Attended Greek class In Summer school,
finishing the amount of Greek required for the
A. B. degree.
(2) Built and sold a one-thousand-dollar cot
tage.
(3) Overhauled and recovered the home of
the president of the college, the college dining
hall and the public school building.
(4) Built for himself two pretty little brick
stores on Benson street.
(5) Put up three and a half miles of main
line electric wire, wired forty-four residences
and stores and supplied the town of Oxford with
electricity. (The college Is seventy-five years
old. Faculty and students studied by candles
and kerosene lamps until Marshall said: ‘‘Let
there be light.”)
During those three Summer months, Mr. Mar
shall kept from twenty-four to forty-six men at
work in five or six different places, paying them
from $1.25 to $3.50 per day.
Last Fall, before Mr. Marshall had entered
upon his senior year's work, the commissioners
of Oxford, in appreciation of what he had done
for the town, changed the name of the prettiest
street from Whatcoat—a name It had borne sev
enty-five years In honor of a great Methodist
minister—to Marshall place. .
When asked If he believes any man who wants
an education can get it, Mr. Marshall hesitated
a minute and then replied, thoughtfully: "If a
man tries hard enough, he Is much more likely
to succeed than if he never tries at all.”
* * *
There is an account of PRACTICAL
SUCCESS. Read it, hand it to some one
who will be inspired by it
But don't for a moment imagine
that this success is the greatest or
the only success.
The “Miraculous Marshall” is entitled
to praise and admiration.
is
He overcame difficulties, he got the
knowledge and the degree that he coveted
and at the same time he engineered a real
estate deal, built himself a home, did a
$10,000 concrete job for a railroad com
pany, paved sidewalks, put new roofs on
the college buildings and had a street
name in the college town changed in his
honor.
All very fine.
But there are other and greater sue- -
cesses.
And, although you may never be able
to make money laying sidewalks or
doing concrete work for railroads, you
may be able to do a great deal better.
The world needs earnest, thinking men
of principle devoted to the welfare of
others and devoted to good government
even more than it needs the layers of
sidewalks and roofing experts.
* * *
The chief lesson in this young man’s
life, as Professor Melton presents it, is
the emphasis that it lays upon THE
VALUE OF COUNTRY LIFE.
This man at thirty-one was powerful,
resourceful, able to study Greek and do a
concrete job at the same time BECAUSE
HE WAS BROUGHT UP IN THE
COUNTRY, IN THE OPEN AIR WHERE
THE CHANGING SEASONS AND THE
MOON AND THE STARS AND THE
FIELDS AND THE ANIMALS ACTU
ALLY MEANT SOMETHING TO HIM.
If he had been born in a hot, narrow
street, and had grown up on dusty, dirty
pavements; if the gutter had been his
playground and the rushing fire engine
his only view of Nature’s forces, he could
not have done the work that he did.
To illustrate the life of this successful
man, we asked the artist to make a picture
of a little country boy sitting on the edge
of a pond watching a turtle sunning him
self on a log. The picture shows this
country boy, and HIS opportunities, plus
study, EQUAL SUCCESS.
Take away the boyhood, the man
developed by contact with nature and the
body developed by life in the country, and
you would not have had “Marshall the
Miracle,” of whom Professor Melton
writes. You would have had a tired city
clerk going from his store to a hall bed
room, from the hall bedroom to a moving
picture, then to bed and then to the store.
* * *
The world IS A WORLD OF OPPOR
TUNITY. But millions are cheated of
that opportunity. And the greatest
wealth of the world, which is the new
born child, is wasted and made worthless
by the crowding in cities, and the dwarf
ing of human brains, while the beautiful
and limitless country lies vacant, not half
developed.
When shall we see the statesman that
will take the children from the cities and
put them on the farms, organize trans
portation and country life for the benefit
of human beings instead of organizing
everything for the sake of dividends?
Such a statesman, growing out of a
higher intelligence, will appear some day.
And he will be the real human liberator,
greater than all the Washingtons, Jeffer*
sons, Lincolns and Garibaldis. A
+ I
•V