Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1879-08-22
''Be True to Thyself. %

On Monday night fine audience assem-
bled at the Staunton Opera House to heal
the delivery of this lecture by Rev. J. B
Hawthorne. of Ala, under the auspices
OF the Y. NJ. G. Association. We give 6
sketch Of the lecture which made such 6
favorable impression at it's first delivery
in the Towu Hall, that large part of the
audience Monday night were hearing il
for the second time:
He said that every man is equipped with
faculties for his guidance in the world
and must render an account to his Creator
for the use he makes of them. He may
receive helps from others, but there can
can be no substitutes for his own, indl-
viduaI exertion. This rule applies not
only to those who are endowed by nature
with great qualities. but to the whole hui
man race. The will of God is not simply
that man shall do right in this world; il
1t were so He would have rendered it i'm
possible for him to do wrong. God has
not made man mere puppet-a piece of
machinery to run in a certain groove. The
great end for which we live and labor is
manhood; amplitude of being; variety of
being, and power of being. We are to
find out what is right and wrong, and it is
the labor of finding out what is right and
the exertion of our faculties in doing what
is right, that developes and expands and
ennobles us. God brings man up to the
high destiny fer which He has intended
him by laying upon him the necessity Of
| personal eXertiOn, and raising him out OF
weakness into power by the difficulties he
| encounters in striving after that which is
good and right, SO that it may be truly
Issaid of all men who have been distinguished
in any way that they have come up out of
great tribulation.
To be true to ourselves we must make
the most of those faculties with which we
| find ourselves endowed. Having this in
view the thing of first Importance is that
we k,ow ourselves; our gifts, aptitudes, and
the sphere of action best suited for the ex-
ertion Of our talents. A mistake here is
radical and fatal, and alas, how many
have made it.
| . The crow is true to himself when he acts
like crow. AS crow he is success, but
when he attempts to be an eagle he is a fail
ure. The snail may aspire to be race
horse, but he will never be anything but a
snail. And if God made you, my friend,
| to raise potatoes, you will never be poet
you will find ready sale for your yams.
but bad one for yourpoetry. Sometimes
| it is necessary for a man to do a deal Of
experimenting to find out what he is fitted
for. He, the speaker, imagined at one
| time he was a great musician, and antici-
pated an easy victory over Ole Bull and
| Paganini, but after twelve long months,
scraping for five hours per day, without
any progress, his wife told him she was
convinced he was called upon TO play upon
some other instrument. He tried the law
and after sending several of his clients to
| the penitentiary concluded he might quit
the profession without any wrong to jus.
tice Oh humanity. He tried politics and
after a speech, which he thought a great
success, an old gentleman approached him
and said: "My friend, the Lord only
knows how much you might do If you
would quit this business" He acted upon
the hint and thought he had never done
better thing for himself or politics. He
tried war, as captain of a company of home
guards and believed he might have made
success, bnt for three things: The first
was the meanness of the doctors. for his
company was made up of superanuated
doctors, gentlemen and preachers. The
doctors were always giving certificates of
sickness to his men and it was astonish-
ing how many got sick. The second was
the constant sch1sm in the ranks pro-
duced by the preachers. The third was a
little mistake Of his own in allowing the
| enemy to get between him and his men
for the rest Of the war. it was by these
mistakes that the saying of Sidney Smith
struck him. "Be what nature intended
you for and you will succeed; be anything
else, and be worse than nothing"
There are men who think that every
| man is endowed with faculties which if cul
tivated would make him a Newton or a
| Shakespeare. Man is capable of no grea-
| ter fall than attempting to be what the
architect of his being never designed him
for. If boy has passion for oratory, and
shows great aptitude of speech, give him
opportunity to exercise his royal gift and
| he will be true to himself, and rise to en-
during fame. How full the world is of
mistakes upon this subject; how many get
into the wrong place, and with what obsti-
ancy they stick there. That poor strug-
Cling lawyer might have had fine success
as cobbler. He had seen many dilapi-
| dated occupant of the editorial sanctum
who might have made handsome living
on the ta1lor's bench, and many a seedy
dentist who might have done far better at
pulling up stumps than pulling out teeth;
and many doctor starve for patients to
take his pills and wear his blisters, who
might have grown rich measuring tape;
| and he was certain that he had seen many
| a clergyman holding forth to empty pews,
who might have mmo1talized himself as
| an au ctioneer.
To be true to ourselves we must rely
upon ourselves. No man ever comes to
anything, without having to grapple with
difficulties. The young man who waits
| for some one to die, to get money to start
in business will never make d respectable
| figure in the world. The only money that
| benefits man is that which he makes
himself. Worthless and contemplate is
he who marres what he has not the man
hood to make, and escapes from the impe-
curiosity to which his idleness has brought
| him NV sett1jnp down upOn his mother-in-
law. The only consolation he 1.-THE speak
er) could find in thinking about such an
| individual ia that if she at all resembles