Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Editorial and £itv Cite Section of Ream's Sunday American, Atlanta, December 7, ton. Some men look at life as the red Indian and the mountain lion look at the beaver—learn ing nothing. The Indian is dying out and the mountain lion has almost disappeared BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT INTELLIGENTLY SEE THAT WHICH WAS BEFORE THEIR EYES. ; Copyr;eht, 1913. by tile SUx Company. Great Britain Ritfbta Reserved. O see a thing cleariy and describe it simply”— that is the task of the writer. To see life clearly and learn what it means— (hat is the task of every human being. He who looks on and sees, but fails to see THE MEANING, is the failure, the disappointed man, the one that goes down—as the red Indian and the moun tain lion have failed and gone down in the struggle for existence. e * * For long thousands of years before white men came to this country the bea ver, the Indian and the panther, or nioun tain lion, lived close together Sometimes the panther killed the In dian and ate him. Sometimes the In dian killed the panther, wore his hide and made ornaments of his teeth. Mountain lion and Indian both killed the beaver Through many centuries the Indian’s painted face looked through the bushes at the beaver w orking, and the panther’s body crouched ready to spring as the heaver came ashore from his water vil lage. Indian and panther watched the bea ver but did not really SEE HIM They learned no lesson from him Their idea was oloodshed, conquest, cruelty. They saw in the wonderfully intelligent little beaver cutting down trees, building dams, stopping .the stream, constructing his water village, only something that could be killeo and eaten, something to furnish rlcsh for the stomach, fur for the Indians back in the Winter. Neither savage beast nor two-legged savage saw that the beaver W AS A HI ILDER, a planner, one understand ing co-operation and mutual aid. They saw the busy little creature, but did not learn the lesson he taught. So to-day you see the panther only in (he most distant places, and soon he will disappear. You see the remaining In dians cooped up like helpless children, and soon they will disappear. If they had learned the lesson that the beaver could teach them, if they had been really able to SEE HIM as well as to watch him, Indians and panthers might have learned the lesson that would have saved them from destruction. But they could not see that it is better to build than to murder, better to help than destroy. And they are on their w ay to extinction with the other animals, the other races and the other individuals THAT CANNOT LEARN. # # * It is just as well that the Indian should go, a good thing that the murderous four- footed panther should go. They are hopelessly out of place in a world civil ized. This picture is not intended tor red men or mountain lions, but for the mil- lions of w hite men and women and boys and girls who can tind a lesson in it, if they will. Show this picture to your children and say: “The beaver used the brain in his lit tle round skull and did wonders with it. He and his friends combined to cut down great trees. They dammed up rivers, cutting down the trees in such a way that they would fall across the stream, filling in the spaces with smaller branches, making a wall of tree trunks, branches and mud, plastering the mud with their broad, flat tails, which they used almost as skillfully as a mason uses his trowel, “Stopping the rapid current of the stream, they created above the dam peaceful, smooth, wide water in which *hev could establish their little houses safe from molestation. They lived con tented, peaceable, and where cruelty or ,r reed does not destroy them they still live happy and prosperous. For they help each other instead of killing each other; they build instead of tearing down. “And through ages so long that we cannot grasp them, through tens of thou sands of years, long before the red man or any other man was on the earth, these little creatures and their ancestors WATCHED AND UNDERSTOOD WHAT THEY SAW, and so learned to make dams and build villages and profit by the forces of co-operation, organiza tion and union. “Because they could so understand and profit by their understanding the beavers thrived. Because they could not see or reason or learn the lesson of brotherhood, the panthers and red men led a life of butchery and hatred, and failed.” * * # How many of us, old and young, look at life and its possibilities as the two creatures in this picture look at the work ing beaver, without knowing what we see? A man is succeeding under our eyes, and there is no secret about his success, no mystery. Ten or twenty years from now a majority of those that are watch ing him will be talking about “his luck” and the fact that THEY never had a chance. Right beside you there is some young man or older man to whom you wiil look up in a few' years, joining in a chorus of mingled praise and envy concerning his success. Yet he will get his success BY THE THINGS THAT HE IS DOING NOW, and that you can see. And YOU might be doing now the things that he is doing, and ten years or twenty years from now YOU might be enjoying success, usefulness, peace of mind, instead of simply envying those possessions in some other man. # 6 * The panther in this picture has sharp er, stronger teeth, bigger muscles, than the beaver. He has the strength to do everything that the beaver does—if he had the will and the intelligence. He could build himself in the moun tains a barricade that would keep out his enemies or prevent the escape of his prey. As for the Indian, if he could have learned building and co-operation from that beaver, he might have built up for himself a civilization greater than that which Columbus represented when he arrived in this country. For the Indians had a great continent to themselves, they had not back of them the history of horrible oppression, injus tice, fanaticism, religious bigotry, tor ture and the other dreadful things that Columbus represented. If the Indian couid have seen in the beaver something besides a creature to be murdered and eaten he might have faced Columbus with a civilization and a power far above his own. The Indian and the wild beast could watch but could not SEE, examine, but not learn, and they failed. £ * 4» And the white man, the white boy or girl or woman w ho ends as a failure may truly say. except in cases of misfortune and accident, that failure is due to IN ABILITY TO LEARN BY WATCHING SUCCESS. \ r ou know that near you, in the same village or city, in the same school or at the next office desk, there sits the success of a few years hence. Like you, he has two eyes, two ears, one pair of feet and hands. He is not performing any miracles. But, like the beaver, HE IS WORKING, and he is working on a definite plan; he knows what he means to build in the way of a career and a success. We don’t say that any healthy young man by any possibility whatever, by any amount of observation, hard work or self-denial, could make himself the equal of exceptional greatness. No baby living a hundred years ago, w hen Richard Wagner was in the cradle, could have done Wagner’s work. But genius and success are separate. EVER MAN CAN HAVE SUCCESS AND WILL HAVE IT if he will watch intelligently and SEE that which he watches. * # * The beaver in this picture is beginning his work. He gets up early, starts to cut down a tree, picks out a tree that will fail across the stream when it is cut, selects a tree not beyond the cutting pow ers of himself and his friends. And thf \ he spends the day CUTTING. He dote, not take a nibble at the tree and then run down the stream to tell somebody how wonderful he is, or what a difficult job it is to cut trees. HE KEEPS ON CUTTING AT THAT TREE. If he makes a mistake and the tree falls the wrong way—as must happen oc casionally—he goes at another tree. Then another. He cuts the small twigs, he fetches his mud and plasters the whole thing up; then he has his dam, his quiet pool; he builds his houses, lives happily and watches the young beavers work as he used to do. And that is all that is done by the man next to you who will be a success twenty years from now, w hen you, perhaps, will be talking about hard luck. The man who succeeds gets up early, selects his task and keeps at it. He plans what he means to do, and something that he CAN do. If he makes a mistake, he starts in again undiscouraged, knowing that work will do for him just what it does for the beaver. He does not work for three or four minutes and go off to tell about it. He keeps at it. You, Mr. Reader, can do what the hu man beaver-next to you is doing, if you will watch him intelligently. Work, and keep working—exercise and sleep enough. Be sober, and keep sober. Save, realize that money is power, that the most horrible slavery is POVERTY, that puts you under the thumb of any man with a dollar. Life is not complicated, success is not difficult. Any group of beavers can make a dam and establish a beavers’ city. Any young - man can put himself beyond the reach of want, can reach a point where he may use his brains for a bigger thing than money earning—if he has brains. But to succeed we must not be like the savage man on the one side and the sav age beast on the other side in this pic ture, WATCHING, BUT NOT LEARN ING.