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editorial and City Die Section of ficarst’s Sunday American, Atlanta, August si, tois.
Three Men With Ladders
Which Are You?
as he pot it, to the master who had given it
to him.
Most of us are men of ONE TALENT,
and like the man in the Bible, discouraped by
the smallness of our power, we wrap it up,
do nothinp with it, and when death comes
hand it hack, rusty and unused, to the Power
whence it came.
Use the ladder, lonp or short, that Nature
and your ancestors have piven you.
(’limb upward, if you climb only one
yard or one inch.
When you HAVE climbed an inch, pull
up the ladder, start ONE INCH HIGHER
and climb apain. With a scalinp ladder six
feet lonp a mountaineer mipht climb a cliff
five thousand feet hiph. He needs only
courape, determination and enerpy to do it.
He climbs up six feet, pets a footinp, places
his ladder higher, climbs apain, and thus
rises steadily.
Sometimes the climber reaches the top,
where the world looks broad and wonder
ful, where there is room for all, where a
man is A REAL MAN.
Sometimes he falls, is destroyed, and in
death ridiculed as a failure. But at least he
tries.
Get up early TO-MORROW morning.
Get the start of a lonp sleep to-night, open
your eyes fresh, rested, stronp.
Pick up the ladder of your power, long
or short. Put it apainst the cliff of success
—BE A CLIMBER.
There are rules for everything, and rules
for the man who means to climb upward.
SAVE YOUR POWER for your work.
No dissipation, gambling, drunkenness, fool
ish late hours.
Don’t burn up your ladder.
Pick out the spot where you mean to
climb and stick to THAT spot—at least until
you know positively that you have picked
out the w rong place.
Select some point above you on the cliff
of success and say to yourself, “I am going
to pet THERE.”
Then keep climbing until you do get
there, or until you die.
Keep your eye fixed on the spot that you
have selected. Start out in the morning de
termined to climb. Ask yourself every day
in the evening what progress you have made.
Be severe with yourself, critical and harsh.
No man succeeds who is not his own slave
driver.
# # «
Remember the one great rule: You must
climb UPWARD always, and in the same
direction.
You would laugh at a man running along
the bottom of a cliff, climbing up ten feet,
climbing dow n, going a little farther to climb
up ten feet, coming down and thus indefi
nitely. You would pity or scorn such a man
—yet nearly all of us are like him. We climb
up and climb down, climb up and climb
down during the few years that are given us.
and at the end we are about at the level
whence we started—or at a lower level.
He w ho will, no matter how' short his lad
der, no matte* . slight his opportunity,
may finish every day of his life finding him
self a little higher up than when the day be
gan.
Save your strength, save your health,
save your money, save your time, save your
character. AND USE THEM ALL AS THE
LADDER THAT WILL TAKE YOU
HIGHER. ^ $
The great majority, like the man sitting
on the ladder, do little, one way or the other.
We have our moments of youth with its
ambition, enthusiasm, pitiful, boundless
hope and self-confidence. We dream and
tell others what we shall do—and then youth
is gone.
The rest of life is more or less taking
things as they come, like a floating tw ig that
drifts and turns as the current takes it.
You ought to say TO YOURSELF and to
the men and women around you what you
would say to the men in this picture.
To the man going down into the pit of
vice and failure you would call out a bitter,
earnest warning, trying to persuade,
frighten or shame him into a better use of
his ladder.
To the man climbing upward you would
speak encouragingly, urging him not to be
frightened by the steepness of the cliff or dis
couraged by the great height of real achieve
ment.
And the man sitting still, what would
you say to him. who is most nearly like all
of us?
lie is too dull and indifferent to climb
upward, without even the energy to go
wrong, the dull, mentally tired, indifferent man, who
takes things as they come.
How many millions there are of such men! Each
has SOME POWER, some opportunity which is HIS
LADDER.
But he will hot climb.
Of such men there are a thousand kinds, and they
have a thousand reasons for sitting, instead of climb
ing.
These are the things they say, while others climb
and reach the heights above them:
“I NEVER HAD A CHANCE, what is the use of
my trying?
“If I work hard the employer gets the benefit, I get
nothing. I shall take things easily.
“SOME time, SOME day, when things are different,
I am going to do SOME thing worth while.
“I never had any luck. Those that pass me are
luckier.
“Life soon ends—peace of mind is the chief thing.
Why should I worry and tire myself when I know that
I will soon be dead anyhow? The whole thing will
make no difference in a hundred years.”
* « #
Thus talks the man sitting on his ladder. You
would say to him:
GET UP AND CLIMB.
Better fall and break your neck trying than stay
flat on the ground, like a turtle or a clam.
It is worth while to try, if only for the sake of
trying.
The world is what it is, changed from savage bar
barism by man in a few hundred thousand years, be
cause men have worked and climbed, not satisfied to sit
still.
* * *■
The picture is a good one, simple and plain as the
story in the Bible about the man dissatisfied with his
one talent, w ho buried it in the ground and gave it back
- '
j|/»u
What Each Man Amounts to Depends Upon
the Use to Which the Ladder Is Put.
Your “Ladder ” Is Your Brain, Your Thinking
Power. Do You Use It to Climb Upward, to Go
Downward, or Do You Just Sit Upon It and Do
Nothing ? '
The Three Men in This Picture Represent Us All.
OopjTlgbt, 1918, by tho HUr Company. firrwt Britain Ktefcta Reserved.
7 hen he which had received the
one talent came and said, Lord, /
knew thee that thou art an hard man,
reaping where thou hast not sown,
and gathering where thou hast not
strawed.
“And I Was afraid and Went
and hid thy talent in the earth: Lo,
there thou hast that is thine. ”
St. Matthew xxv., 24:25.
VER and over we must keep
saying to ourselves, “I shall
do better. I shall overcome
past mistakes, from now on I
shall go upward, NOT sit
still or go down.
Man is mentally what a young child is
physically. He walks a few steps, stumbles
and falls, then rises, and walks on again.
Sometimes a little thing, like the picture
on this page, starts the train of thought that
leads a man upward. A picture tells us in a
second what words cannot tell in an hour.
Do you doubt it? Ask yourself what
would be the effect if the living head of a big
snake should rise above this newspaper as
you hold it. What words could produce the
effect in your mind of such a PICTURE?
* * *
Any man. old or young, may see in this
picture his own life as it is to-day.
Brain, character, ambition, physical and
mental power constitute a man's ladder.
Each of us is climbing up. striving for
what is better, going downward, or idly sit
ting still, DOING NOTHING.