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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