The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1906-06-08

NATURE GREW THAT PINE o I'll NAN
WITH THE ~JACKKNIFE."
shire, Wisconsin or Canada work off a
"just as good pine single on you, but
stick to the old reliable. :
What I want to say to you as we
white isn't what the books are al.
ways s~aying-be honest, respect truth,
obey the Golden Rule, and so forth and
SO on. In this day and age you can get
a chap to sit down for SIS per week
and write you out whole columns of
books and advice and give you q hun
dred different notices and watchwords
to choose from. What I've got on my
mind is this: Don't swell up and bust.
If l was offered a hundred dollars a
word to give you better advice I
couldn't do it.
l don't care how smart and how slick
a young man is when he starts put in
life, he's going to foller the natural
[ tendency of human nature unless some
old dOZer like me sits down with a
single and a iackknife and whites a
bit n talks a bit and points out the
dangers in his path. The watered
stock of corporations that we hear so
much about and which is one of the
great evils Of the kentry is but a natu-
raj sequence. Each and every one of
Us is inclined to overdo things. In 9th
e. words, we swell up. We swell I'D
without fggering that we may bust
after going about so far.
Take any one of those old Roman
and Greek warriors you will and you
will find that he started out with steam
at high pressure. He was backed by a
pull, and good luck hung to his coat
tails till he got the idea that he was
the earth itself. He didn't swell up
to a certain limit. like a barl of new
cider, and then stop and buy him q
chicken farm and begin to enjoy life.
but he kept right on swelling until one
day an explosion vas due, and he was
blown sky high. If Caesar had stopped
at a certain pint he could have retired
to some pleasant spot in the country
and had a cider mill, a flock of Jersey
cows and a fishpOnd and been the boss
of the county, but he hung on and
busted.
What did Napoleon do? You know
AAoh liz went NI L lO upset SONCLu-
| ments and licked the earth and swelled
around until nature had to ask his per-
mission to have a thunderstorm or to
TOW huckleberries. A month before
Waterloo he could have started out
with a Buffalo Bill show and taken in
money by the barrel, and every boy
baby born that year would have been
named after him. He'd been swelling
up year after year, like a yaller pump
kin left behind the cook stove, and it
lever occurred to him that there would
be a bust-up. No n dared sit down
and white and talk with him. He
was left to go his own road, and he
went it, and when the explosion came
it was heard all over the world.
You've read all about Christopher Co.
lumbus, of course. When the king of
Spain grub staked him to go on a voy-
age Of discovery Christopher naturally
swelled up. He couldn't help it. Things
had come his way, and he was boss.
When he stumbled across America he
swelled some more. He'd been called a
fool for saying that Spain didn't in
clude all the land on the face of the
globe, and, having proved his case, he
was naturally on the swell. When he
returned home and received a royal
welcome Nnd all the theaters were
sending him deadhead tickets, he was
pretty near ripe for bursting. Did he
70 ahead until the calamity came? No,
stri He sat down with himself one day
&nd said:
"See here, Chris, this thing has gone
about far enough. Don't run a good
thing into the ground. You are a devil
of a fellow, and don't put any further
stratS on your suspenders. You've