Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1918-02-20
COMPOSITION BY
First Year High School Boy On What
A Boy Can Make of
Himself"


Selecting four compositions from
those written by her class, Miss Clara
Bell Kent, teacher Of the First Year
High School, has requested they be
given publication not only for their
worth, but as an incentive TO other
pupils.
The first of the series, by George
Basil, follows:
WHAT A BOY CAN MAKE OF
HIMSELF"
Remember everybody has some work
TO do. Whether he handles a pick or
pen, wheelbarrow or q set of
books, digging bitches or editing
paper, ringing an auction bell or writ
ing funny things, he MUST WORK.
If you look around you will see the
men who are most able to live the rest
of their days, without working are the
men who work the hardest Don't be
afraid of killing yourself with over
work 1t is beyond your power to do
that on the sunny side of thirty. Peo-
pie die sometimes before they reach
thirty, but it is because they quit
work at six a. m. and don't get home
until two a. m. 1t is always, or most
ly always the interval or lost and
wasted time that kills.
Work gives you an appetite for your
meals, il lends solidity to your sleep,
it gives you a perfect and grateful ap
probation of a holiday. There are
young men who do not work, but the
world is not proud of them. 1t does
not even know their names, and simp-
ly speaks of them as, "Ol6, So-snd-
So Boys" Nobody likes them, the
great busy world doesn't know that
they are there. So find out what you
want to be, and do, and take off your
coat, make dust in the world While
you are young STUDY. Most of our
great men won success through study.
But IL you feel you CAN'T study and
would rather work, WORK. The
buster you are the less harm you are
apt to get into. the sweeter will be
your slumbers, the brighter and hap
pier your holidays and the better salts
fed the world will be with you.
If YOU ever expect to obtain wealth
yo have GOT 20 work. Don't mind
failure, let that be stepping stone to
success. Poets sometimes chant the
beauties of poverty, but not those.
who write in cold garnet, with only
crust of bread and jug of water to
keep them alive. 1t is when he has q
snug little cottage of his own, with a
coy corner, looking out upon the trees
and flowers where he can sit and write
in pesce, and have proper food, he
may romance to his hearts content,
about the vanity of riches. Some pee
pie sacrifice everything for the sake of
accommodating wealth. this IS not right,
and should be scorned.
There are some men who become
rich, without rendering any service to
the world at all. While others be-
come rich and apparently have sue
cess, by giving short weight and poor
measure, for the money they receive.
1t is better to die in poverty than to
become rich by such device Others
become rich by accident, but they
have to work hard to keep their for
tune. So the best way of all to be-
come wealthy is to obtain it by honest
labor, then it stays By you.
Poets may be born. but success is
absolutely made, SO therefore let me
beg OF you, to dismiss from your
minds, all ideas of succeeding by
LUCK.
A very common thought among
Young people now is, that some day
something will turn up, by which they
! will achieve fame or fortune You
may follow lick to ruin, but not to
success. The great Napoleon, who
believed in his destiny, followed it un
til he saw his star go down in the
blacklist night, when the Old Guard
persisted around him, and Waterloo
was lost. A pound of pluck is worth
a ton of luck. You have got to win
the thing you really want. Any sue
cess you achieve is not worth having
unless you fight for it. Whatever you
win in. life you must conquer by your
! own efforts, then it 10 yours.
Be fit for more then any thing you
are now doing. If you are not to
| large for the place you occupy, you are
too small for it. If boy falls over
board and no ones around he has to
| sink or swim for himself. Now put
/ that thought in front of you, carry it
| through your school days ana after you
get out into the world, and you are
bound, to enjoy the honor and pleasure
| of success.
believe that when God created
man, He locked in his nature certain
capabilities Now what are you CO.
| ing to do with them? Don't destroy
them; but use them worthily, and you
will be an honor to yourself and to
your country.
Now is the time for Us to begin for
we boys are the coming men.
When you see ragged urchin,
Standing wistfCl in the street;
/ With torn hat and kneeless trousers,
Dirty face and bare red feet,
Pass not by the child unheecing,
Smile upon him, mark me, when
He's grown, he'll not forget it,
Fer remainder boys make men
G. B.