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editorial and City Cite Section of ficarst’s Sunday Jltnerican, Atlanta, June tots.
The Scarecrow in the Dollar Field
In His Remarkable “Condensed Sermon” in This Month's Cosmopolitan Magazine, “Billy” Sunday Says,
Among Other Things:
“All sins have blue eyes and dimples when they are young.” “An earnest man will get there with the goods while his half-
“A man with good gray matter under his hat can learn more by hearted brother is putting on his mittens.”
stubbing his toe in the dark than a fool can learn by going to college.” “We should look up FOR help, and then down TO help.”
“The right kind of a man never loses more than one finger by “The man who can’t learn anything from a mistake couldn’t
fooling with a buzz-saw.” learn anything in college.”
{Read the Rest of This Sermon in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.)
Copyright. 1915, by the Star Company. Great Britain Rights Reserved
world, young readers, is inhabited by fat
crows and thin crows.
It is inhabited by successful men, inde
pendent and at ease, and by miserable, thin
failures.
The miserable failures, like the thin crows,
are afraid of a scarecrow.
Almost any kind of scarecrow will do to frighten a foolish
crow.
The corn is there in the field, very attractive and digestible.
The timid, thin, foolish crow looks on at a distance, shakes
his head and goes away hungry.
He does not like the look of that scarecrow, he won’t go
into the field.
* * *
The field of human success is a big cornfield; the dollars
grow plentiful, very agreeable, and very digestible.
But the field of success and the field of dollars is also in
habited by a scarecrow, and its name is “HARD WORK,’’ as
you can see.
The thin, human crows, the failures, those that never land
anywhere and that blame everybody but themselves, shake
their heads dismally as they see the scarecrow of hard work,
and they don’t go into the field.
* * *
If you picked up a thin crow, that had just dropped dead
of starvation, off a fence at the edge of a cornfield, you would
look at his skinny frame and his sad feathers with contempt.
You would say to him, “Why, you poor thing, you starved
to death on the edge ot a cornfield, because you hadn’t the
courage to face a scarecrow that couldn’t have hurt you. You
deserved to die of hunger, and I am glad of it.”
Many of us will be like that imaginary crow later in life.
We shall be poor failures, thin, worried, complaining, blaming
everything but ourselves, when the real trouble i$ that the
scarecrow of hard work kept us away from success.
* * # t
There is one explanation of absolute failure—only one
And that is, LACK OF HARD WORK
Excepting for the men too ill in mind or body, there is no
other possible excuse of ANY KIND for absolute failure in life.
You'know about Thomas A Edison. All of you have
admired, and some have envied him.
When you think of his success and reputation in the world,
remember also that TO GET THAT SUCCESS he has worked
fourteen hours a day at least, and often more.
Once, like thousands of other young American boys, he sat
at a wire with the little electric key in his hand.
All that he was COMPELLED to do was to sit there, send
the message given to him and take the message that came in.
He had plenty of opportunity to rest, BUT HE DID NOT
REST.
While he was doing the EASY work for a LITTLE living,
he was doing HARD thinking work, that he might make a big
living and, what is far more important, a big name later. He
taught his wire to carry several messages at once.
If the scarecrow of hard work had frightened him, you
would never have heard of Edison.
Recently he said something that every young American
ought to learn by heart.
/?/*
Is This Scarecrow Keeping YOU Away from Success?
Success Is a Big Field, Plenty of Room and Plenty of Dollars
in It.
But the Scarecrow Is a Fierce One, and Many Are Sb Terrified
by It as to Stay Out of the Field All Their Lives.
Here Is a Picture to Paste Up Below the Clock Which Many
Workers Watch So Closely.
“Genius is one per cent INSPIRATION and ninety nine
per cent PERSPIRATION.” •
It is customary to speak of geniuses as beings inspired.
Edison teaches us a very good lesson when he says that
geniuses in :-eality have been the men that HAVE PERSPIRED.
Perspiration of the body and hard work of the brain account
for success, not mere inspiration.
* * *
Needless to say, while really hard work makes complete
failure impossible, hard work alone will not make a genius
of an average man, a poet of a man without imagination, or a
marathon winner of a man with only one leg.
On the other hand, no amount of “natural talent,” no
amount of so-called genius or inspiration, will produce one of
the world’s great men, unless that “ninety-nine per cent of
perspiration,” as Edison puts it, goes with the genius.
Select s.ny one of the world's “greatest men” and you will
find one of the world’s HARDEST WORKERS.
The great artist must be a genius. The GREATEST of all
the artiste, was Michael Angelo, and he was THE HARDEST
WORKEF,.
Other painters of his day, and artists of all days, look
in amazement upon the actual MANUAL LABOR performed
by that m in of colossal power.
As soon as it was light enough to see he was at work in
the morning.
And he was still working when darkness came.
Many who wonder why they don't succeed in life would be
tired out IF THEY EVEN HAD TO LOOK CAREFULLY AT
ALL THE WORK MICHAEL ANGELO DID.
The work of a great musician we call “inspiration.” Who
is the greatest of musicians?
BEETHOVEN. And he was the hardest worker, one whom
nothing could drive from work, who toiled like an inspired
slave from his childhood, when he was put at the piano by a
brutal, drunken father, to the day he died.
In music, everything is SOUND.
Music exists to us only as we HEAR it.
You would say that if a man became stone deaf, music
would have no meaning for him, and however great his tal-nt,
his work as a musician must cease.
Beethoven continued his work and did some of his best
work AFTER HE WAS DEAF.
When he produced one of his greatest works in Vienna,
leading the orchestra, which conveyed not one sound to his
brain, following the music by watching the bow of the first
violin, he could not hear the roar of applause that drowned
♦he music. It was necessary to take him by the arm and turn
him around that he might see the thousands standing and
cheering him.
* * *
The scarecrow on this page did not keep out of the field of
success Beethoven, nor Edison, nor any of the great men
that the world has known. •
One of the soldiers under Napoleon, easily frightened by
the hard work scarecrow, complained bitterly to the Emperor,
saying: “It seems impossible to succeed. I have been a lieu
tenant more than five years and am getting nowhere.' ’
To that Napoleon replied: “My young friend, I was a lieu
tenant more than six years, yet you see it was possible to
arrive. ’ ’ ^
Napoleon worked as hard as any of the men that have ever
lived; he could tell you the size and location of every cannon
on the English Channel. He could direct the wandering hand
ful of soldiers who had gone astray, and tell them exactly
where they would find THEIR PARTICULAR REGIMENT.
They did not know, but he did—although he had a dozen
armies in his brain.
* * *
Young men, there are all kinds of success. There are good,
honest, average workers, successful, independent, honored by
their friends in thj community.
There are men of genius whose names are written high
above the crowd. There are little, modest, unknown men,
happy in their families, because the house they live in is
THEIRS, and no man can point to them and say, “You owe
me money.”
There are ten thousand kinds of success, but in every single
one HARD WORK is the cornerstone, the foundation, the
mortar for the brick, the one thing without which there would
be nothing.
There are many kinds of success. GO AFTER ONE KIND.
AND KEEP AFTER IT.
# * *
A remarkable genius of hard work and moral gymnastics,
Billy Sunday, publishes in this month’s number of the Cos
mopolitan Magazine a condensed, boiled-down sermon that
every young man ought to read. Quotations from it are
printed at the top of this page.
He says, among other things:
“The man who aims at nothing generally HITS it.”
Aim at something, and work hard to hit it.
* A *
This picture, fortunately, will be sent into two millions of
separate American homes on this Sunday.
There are two million copies of this newspaper sold in the
different cities where it is published. And it is safe to say
that at least five human beings see each of these newspapers.
Millions of young men will see this picture.
A majority, of course, will look at it, as they look at other
things, and turn away.
But, BECAUSE ONE MAY NOT TAKE THE LESSON,
it won’t be wasted.
Next to you, working beside you, or far below you, there
is some young man whom you look upon with magnificent
disdain.
A few years from now you will tilt your head upward, look
at him far above you and wonder how he got there.
He will get there BECAUSE HE WON’T LET THIS
SCARECROW KEEP HIM OUT OF THE FIELD WHERE
SUCCESS GROWS.