Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1907-09-19

Inc milwaukee journal: Boys and
girls, this is for you.
School time again, isn't it?
No more woods for a while; no more
country and big green meadows and
playing down by the creek. It's a
bundle of books now, and new pen
Gil and bookscrap, and a new teach
er. You have probably wondered
how you are going to like that new
teacher. You remember the big boy
who told you last year how strict she
was. And then perhaps you begin
fractions this year, or some Of those
other things in the big books that
everybody says are so much harder
than the little books were. "Oh both
er school, anyway" Is that the way
it is?
1t is pleasant to see all the children
again, but you know that wears off in
two or three days, and then comes the
tiresme old round Of recitations and
lessons and lessons and recitations,
and maybe some marks that aren't as
good as they ought to be. And the
lessons are hard, and you would so
much rather do something else than
study, and you say, ooh, I wish I
was like father and mother, and didn't
have to go to school any more"
That's where you make a great big
mistake. Father is going to school
yet. So is mother. Not your kind of
school, but great deal harder one.
You start to school as little bit of a
baby, and you never will stop as long
as you live. Nobody ever stops.
You don't remember it, but you had
to learn to walk. That was school.
Then you had to learn to obey, and
that was a hard lesson. You had to
learn ever so many things. After a
while you start to what we call school,
and that was to teach you, among
other things, what to do with the
brains inside of your head. Some of
these days, when you begin earning
money or keeping house, it won't
bring you in a single dollar more to
know where the Cape of Good Hope
is, but when you made your mind
learn that fact and keep it as a part
of its knowledge, and when you added
to that little bit of mind exercise
great many other mind exercises, you
prepared yourself a little more for
the grown-up days that are coming.
Your mind is just like your arm; if it
isn't exercised and developed it will
never be anything but a poor, little
puny mind.
At school you are doing more than
this. You are not only training and
developing your mind, but you are
training and developing yourself.
You learn respect, and observation,
and doing things along with other
people. School and lessons are
teaching you to control yourself, to
say, mo; [ would rather play, but I
ought to study.' And that is the
hardest lesson of all. Lots of grown
ups fail in life, just as some children
do in their lessons; and nearly all
the grown-ups who do fail, fail just
because they have never learned the
difference between 81 want to" and 81
ought to-"
Though it may seem very strange to
you, the thing that makes the differ
eOce between a good arithmetic lesson
and poor arithmetic lesson is just
the same thing that will decide one of
these days whether you have a salary
of $4,000 year or whether you work
for $40 q month. When you teach
yourself to say, 81 will have a good
lesson, and [ won't play until know
| have lrarned it''-that is the same
thing that is going to help you to be
happy instead of miserable, and is
going to make you go through the big
world at the head of the class instead
of at the foot.
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