Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1907-12-27
KNOW ONE THING WELL.
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By Rev. George Clarke PEI

By Rev. George Clarke Peck.
Knowing one thing-not a very long
curriculum, surely, even for a man
born blind. Yet that single piece Of
knowledge was worth a ton of the
things ordinarily known. Moreover he
did not say that lone thing was all he
knew. He merely seized upon the one
thing which meant most to him just
then, the thing which he supremely
knew, and thrust it in the faces Of his
tormentors-"One thing l know"
For men who can say that same
thing the age is always waiting. Men
who know one thing and who know that
one thing supremely we'll are always in
demand. Many a brilliant fellow has
been spoiled by his versatility OF such
one, prominent in professional circles,
his friend said recently: HE failed by
knowing too many things and not know
ing any one Of them profoundly"
Not our versatility but our grip on
one particular thing is what really
counts. Most of US begin life as Eileen
in Chambers recent novel said she be-
gan; expecting to know "everything
about everything" Soon, however, we
reach the stage at which we are content
to know Everything about something"
And We probably end as she did by con-
Tossing that the most we can hope is to
know something about something"
But to know that something Supremacy
well and to subordinate every other
knowledge to it, is one part of great
ness.
There were many things, doubtless,
which Gen. Grant did not know. AS a
wood seller he was worsted by all his
neighbors in the business. He was so
little fitted for commercial life that all
the world knew Of his failure. In a
certain clerkship he was accounted a
dreaming nobody. But he knew lone
thing'-knew it so thoroughly that he
left his whole country in debt to him !;
knew it so splendidly that his name
has gone down in history as one Of it's
greatest military strategists
It was said of a certain professor
that he knew nothing but Greek" So
cially he was hopeless so absent-mind-
ed that If his head had been detached
he would have left it In the hall. He
lived Greek, dreamed Greek and If one
might judge from his cadaverous
cheeks he might have subsisted on
Greek roots. But he knew a thing
which his plying students had yet to
learn-that all the world asks of any
man is that he know one thing well,
and dying he will leave the whole
world in his debt
Darwin once sadly confessed that he
had lost his early love for poetry and
music. But that confession registers
also the value of such a man to the
world He had to live his own life on
the principle Of natural selection. To
turn in at one gate meant the shutting
Of other gates behind him. And who
shall say but that the cultivation Of
an early taste for music and Shak-
sleare might have lessened the peerless
contribution he made to human knowl-
edge?
To know one thing and to know it
thoroughly; to dig into subject rather
than to make the leaves fly over it, is
the surest way to large place in life.
But let it be remembered what this
former blind man said he knew. 1t
was very simple. 1t was not something
which he had done. Something had
been done for him. He had been recipi-
ent, not actor. God had opened his
eyes. His was that fundamental, ire
fragible, final knowledge on which the
pillars Of ali knowledge rest--experi-
ence
Whereas, I was blind, now I see"
He was not so much believer as beloved
Ha had learned his greatest lesson by
letting another do something for him.
To know what that blind man knew,
and to know 1t in the way he knew it,
Is the greatest thing in the world.
STRENGTH FOR THE DAILY TASK.
By Henry f. Cope.
But they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their Strengths. xii, 81.
1t is the dull grind and monotony Of
life that makes it so hard to bear for