Part 2 (1/2)

CUTTING CORNERS

Have you boys and girls ever noticed how all the curbings at the corners of the streets in the city are worn smooth by drivers of carts and wagons trying to cut the corners as closely as possible?

But the princ.i.p.al thing to notice about those curbs is that you will often find on them the paint, sometimes red and sometimes black or yellow, scratched off the wheels of these carriages that are so anxious to cut corners. And the wheels that cut corners soon get to looking shabby from lack of paint.

That is the way it nearly always happens with people who try to cut corners. I know boys and girls who try it in school.

They try to skim through by doing just as little work as possible. They cut the corners as closely as possible with their lessons, so that they can have time for play. They do that with the work in subtraction, and then, when they get into multiplication or division, they have all sorts of trouble. And soon their arithmetic looks very shabby indeed.

Other boys and girls try to cut corners with the truth. They see just how near a lie they can come, and yet keep within the bounds of truth.

Something inside tells them it is not quite fair. And again, when that happens, they have rubbed some of the bright, beautiful paint, so to speak, off their consciences. And before long their consciences get to be quite shabby, and not at all new, and people begin to say that they don't quite trust that boy or girl.

And so I say to you, boys and girls, it does not pay to cut corners.

Give yourselves plenty of room. Be open and fair and industrious. For one who cuts close corners as a boy or girl, usually grows up into a very small sort of man or woman.

HABITS

I wonder if I can make plain to you what a habit is. Have you ever seen men laying concrete sidewalks here in the city, and they put boards across to keep people from walking on the pavements before they were thoroughly dry? I am sure you have. These men keep people off the walk while it is soft because, if any one steps on it, then his footprints harden into the walk as it dries, and will always remain there.

Now, boys' and girls' minds are just like those cement walks when they are wet and soft; and if you do a thing over and over again as a boy or girl, you will make such a deep mark in your brains that when you grow up you cannot get the mark out, and you just keep on doing it, whether you want to or not.

When once you do a thing, it is easier to do it again. Even cloth and paper find it easier to do a thing a second time than the first. The sleeves of your dresses and coats fall into the same wrinkles and creases every time you put them on. That is what we call the ”hang” of a dress or coat. And if you fold a piece of paper once, it quickly gets the habit of folding along the same crease again.

And so you see that it is very important for you to get good habits as boys and girls, for first you make the habits, and then the habits make you.

You have often seen a little brook running along between its banks and over its pebbly bed. Well, once there was no brook-bed there, but gradually, years ago, a little stream began to trickle through, and finally it wore out a bed for itself. Now it cannot leave the bed if it wishes to. That is just what you do when you make a habit: you make a course which you will follow later in life.

First you take the train, then the train takes you. First the stream makes the bed, then the bed guides the stream.

They tell us that after we are thirty years of age we are little more than a bundle of habits. I suppose thirty years seems a long way off for you boys and girls, but you will reach it if you live. And there will be men living somewhere who will hear the name that you boys now have, and you are deciding now by the habits you make what sort of man he is going to be. If you want him to be a good, honorable, strong man, be sure you form good habits now.

A LESSON IN COURTESY

I read a story recently of how a young man got his start in life through being courteous. This young man was an a.s.sistant doorkeeper in the capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton. His work was to direct people where they wanted to go in that great building.

One day he overheard a stranger ask one of the other doorkeepers for help in finding one of the senators from California. The doorkeeper answered in a very discourteous way that it was none of his business where the senators were.

”But can't you help me?” the stranger said. ”I was sent over here because he was seen to come this way.”

”No, I can't,” the doorkeeper answered. ”I have trouble enough looking after the representatives.”