Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1913-07-31
The Home Circle
Thoughts from the Editorial Pen
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Mrs. Jimkins' boy has gone to
work. Day before yesterday he was
in swaddling clothes. Yesterday he
was husky school boy. Today he
is a business man.
Mrs. Jimkins had tried to find a
way to tie knots in her apron strings,
to keep her boy by her side. She
had devised plans to keep him from
realizing that his was the nature of
"a man. She had even kept him in
knickerbockers until he was so big
that he looked ridiculous.
His first insurrection, in fact, had
been when he had made enough
money with lemonade stand to buy
a new suit, and had not taken his
mother along to make the selection.
When he showed up in long trousers,
awkward and i'll at ease, but ecstatic-
ally happy, Mrs. Jimkins began to
have a vague notion that the apron
strings were slipping a little.
And now he has gone to work,
like any other man, buoyant with
hope, and fired with the zeal of
youth. l hope for the sake of the
boy and of the mother that he is.
going to be faithful over a few
things"
/ once knew two boys who started
in at the same time, to take a mans
place in the world of business. Each
one being youngest in the office he
began in, was made to do the most
menial work of any of the staff of
employees.
The result was so different as to
warrant comment. One boy did his
menial work so thoroughly and con-
scientiously that he was soon given
work of higher order, and constant
ly advanced until he finally became
partner in the concern.
The other one felt that he was too
smart to have been given menial
work. He was employed in a news
paper office, and he thought that he
should have been put to writing the
heavy editorials at once Thinking
that, he sighted the work he was re-
quired to do, and his place was soon
filled by another.
He drifted from office to office,
with the same result. He is still
drifting, still an incompetent; not
because he set high goal for him
self, but because he was not willing
to attain that goal by the usual
route, that OF industry and intelli-
gent application to the intermediate
steps.
He found a woman who cared
enough to share his haphazard fate,
and she, too, has become impregnated
with the same views, and regards his
many failures as proof that the world
is too rotten and corrupt to appreci-
ate talent.
They have, somehow, raised a
couple of girls to young womanhood,
who are today earning more than
their father, and whose eyes are not
blinded to the real cause of his fail
ure to achieve distinction in any one
of the many things he has under
taken.
This may seem like depression, but
it is the same problem that confronts
Mrs. Jimbins' boy today. He is a
normal boy. He has the average
amount of intelligence, a fair idea
of business methods, and good prin-
ciples.
But whether he is going to charge
windmills, or fight real battles in the
world Of commerce, remains to be
seen. Whether he is going to attain
the height of success, or sink to the
vale of dependency and failure;
whether he will 6e able to become
prosperous without any accompany
ing pomposity, or go down under the
first wave of adversely, only time will
tell.
But wherever he goes, whatever
he does, he knows, as does every man
who ever Jared forth from the shell
tering arms of mother, that the
mind of his mother follows him into
the thick of the battle, her love goes
with Rim through every experience,
and her prayers are for him, unceas-
ingly.