The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1910-08-04
WHAT TO MAKE OF POVERTY.

WHAT TO MAKE OF POVERTY.
God pity the young man who has reached
his majority and stands facing life, obliged
to 60 in for himself and has never learned
to work-learned to do something which
the world really needs and to do that some
thing we'll. 1t may not be a merely me-
chanical craft, though it would be bless
ing if more of our young men were me-
:chanics, but something useful and worthy
and necessary the world wants and
must have. Would that all our boys might
remember that for every fortune suddenly
made-by luck, as it is called, hundred
fortunes are slowly made-by pluck; and
that in times of commercial crash the sud-
den fortunes almost always 60 first, while
the slowly built fortunes are more likely to
weather the storm; that the lasting repu-
tations in every department of activity are
the slowly built, solid regulations; in short,
that when God means really to bless man
by riches He does it as He blesses the
earth by rain. The gentle rain continued
through days penetrates the soil and soaks
the roots; the sudden dashing rain only
vets the surface of the ground. Yes, pow
erty is an obstacle, poverty is difficulty,
poverty brings many and powerful tempta-
tons.
But the obstacles are surmountable, the
difficulties are removable, the temptations
may all be overcome.
About eighty years ago there was an
orphan boy in Georgia who was very poor,
but gifted and full of mental eagerness.
An education society heard of him, sent
him to school and helped him through COL
lege. He began to practice law, he swept
his own office, built his own fires, BACKED
his own boots and managed to live on Sc a
month. His course was steadily upward
in the thoughts of all men and in the path
of honor. He was elected to the House of
Representatives in 1886, State Senator in
1912, and member of Congress in 1843.
He was the first and only Vice President
of the Confederate States. Some years
later had you looked down from the gallery
you might have seen feeble, emaciated
old man with sallow cheeks and blazing
eyes rolled about in the House of Repre-
sentatives at Washington in his invalid
chair; but when in a shrill, piping voice he
said, "Mr. Speaker! Mr.. Speaker!" the
great Republican leaders, as we'll as South
ern Democrats, ran down the aisles to hear
what Alexander H. Stephens had to say.
Essential manliness, wherever it finds
itself in the world, fights it's battles and
wins the victory. Gregory VII, the great
est Of the popes, was poor boy. Martin
Luther was the son of Saxon miner.
Jeremy Taylor, Sir Richard Arkwright and
Joseph Mallord William Turner, the great
landscape painter, all graduated from the
BARRIERS shop. Shakespeare's father was
a grazier; John Bunyan was tinker;
Copernicus was the son of Polish baker.
and Benjamin Franklin the son of a tallow-
chandler. Nearly all the great reformers,
great statesmen, great merchants, great
captains of industry, began life in poverty.
What is poverty to man who has the
material in him out of which men are made
but the opportunity to force victory from
apparent defeat, and despite obscurity, ill
health, lack of friends and the great world g
stony Indifference to press to the front?