Part 12 (2/2)

Ford dreamed of making an automobile for the purse-limited ma.s.ses--he was jeered; today the world cheers him.

My friend Bert Perrine was chucked off a stage in the middle of Idaho's great sage brush desert. He said to the driver, ”Some day I'll own that stage and I'll use it for a chicken house.”

He dreamed and schemed and today the desert is the famous Twin Falls country, blossoming like a rose, and on his beautiful ranch at Blue Lakes that old stage is used for a chicken house.

Rockefeller dreamed, Lincoln dreamed, so did Garfield, Wilson, Grant, Clay, Webster, Marshall Field, Richard W. Sears and all the other men who have done things worth while in the world.

The great West is the result of dreams come true.

Dream on, my boy; hitch your wagon to a star and stay hitched. That dream and that determination are the things that are to carry you over obstacles, past th.o.r.n.y ways, and through criticism, jeers and ridicule.

Your time will come. Dream and scheme, and make your ideals materialize into living, pulsating realities.

REAL CHARITY

Let Me Help Where I Am Rather Than Help in Siam

There are many persons who act and advocate ideals merely for effect--they are hypocrites.

Here's a little true heart story that probably pa.s.sed unnoticed excepting to a very few persons.

Little Spencer Nelson, a poor boy, eight years old, recently died in a hospital with a little bank clasped to his breast. The bank had $3.41 in pennies the boy had saved to buy presents for poor children.

The little hero had fought manfully through three months' suffering, enduring the torture of five lacerating operations. The pain failed to dim his spirit of unselfishness that burned brightly and clearly in his tired, fever-racked body.

After each operation his mind became more securely fixed on his project to help bring cheer to poor children.

A little savings bank was his companion and each visitor was asked to contribute to his fund.

Three hours before he died a smile beautified his thin wasted face as the nurse dropped a dime in his bank. His last words were to his mother and the message was in a scarcely audible whisper, asking her to remember to use the money to make poor children happy.

That was real charity; that boy had no hypocrisy in his heart.

The daily paper chronicles sensational charity, where men vie with each other to see who can give most and get the most advertising. They overlook the wonderful love and charity they are capable of, if they would look into out-of-the-way places and get direct connection with pain and suffering.

Little Spencer looked from his cot and saw the suffering of other little children and he wanted to help them, and the very resolve and impulse made him forget his own pains and misery.

In the Book of Good Deeds the name of Spencer Nelson will be recorded as a sweeter act of charity than any million-dollar gift to a great inst.i.tution.

What one of you who read these lines can read the story of that little hero and not be touched by the generous love and beautiful conception of charity he possessed.

He did not need sensational stories in newspapers or solicitors of charitable organizations to stir him to action.

He found opportunity at his door, close at home, near by, where all of us can find it if we only look.

<script>