Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1917-04-22
There Is a Great Deal Of Encour-
agement in History for
Most Of Us

HOoI VI 70
A MOTHER writes very discouraged letter. Her
boy good and Woodworking, but he is very back
L - ward in school.
In fact his teachers have about given him up in
despair.
Both the boys father and his mother stood well in
their classes they fond of books and study They
not understand what is the matter with their boy.
Fortunately, there are two very encouraging things
that can be said in reply to letter like this.
One Of them have just been reading in Life of
Kitchener by Harold Begbie:
Nothing Herbert Kitchener created passionate friendships
stirred the admiration of smaller the cadets He
remarkable for qucness mathematics but in everything
else accounted thckheadeda slow coach climbing the
dull hill of duty which has dazzle of adventure the
He managed scramble into Woowch: he high
the lists and thought anything about him. After leaving
Woolwh he his commission in the Royal Engineers; and
still no thought much about him.
The boy who was dull and thick headed-whom
nobody thought much about-grew up to become the
idol of an empire.
Cardinal Wse,aan, as a boy, was termed adull and
stupid
Charles Darwin, who changed the whole channel of
thought in the scientific world lazy and doless
boyhood that his father predicted he would be disgrace
to the family.
Heine by his own confession aidled away his school
days and was horribly bored" by the instruction given
him.
Wordsworth lazy up to the age of seventeen
work.
Henry Ward Beecher barely succeeded in graduating
from Amherst having stood almost at the foot OF his
class; and James Russell Lowell suspended by
Harvard con account of continued neglect of his college
duties"
First of all, to this mother of backward" boy l
would say: Have courage He travels in good company.
Hundreds of those of whom the world is proud have
been given up in despair by their parents in youth.
Only when the spark of their special interest was struck
have they shown the stuff that in them.
And the second thing that may be said to such a
mother is even more encouraging
Dizziness is the rule in the world brlliance is the
exception.
Business and government and law and medicine and
the church ruled by mediocrities.
II have talked with great men," said Lincoln, "and
do not see how they differ from Others"
The truest bit of business philosophy penned is
contained in the story Of the tortoise and the hare
Any who watches business life carefully for any
length of time is continually seeing brilliant unstable
men overtaken and surpassed by with half their
inherent ability, whose very mental slowness has ncul
Gated IN them mastering persstency.
The mother of the boy who invariably leads his class
has to be concerned the mother of the dull boy
might wish him ceverly endowed but she need not
despair only his sowness to learn fosters thoroughness
MY master whipped me very hard, says Dr. Johnson
without that, sir, would have done nothing"
Yet he who a boy had to be whipped to learn, set
himself in later life doggedy and unreentngy to task
that raised him high above the brilliant of his time
in literary prominence, and made him citizen Of the
ages