The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1919-12-06
LEISURE HOUR REFLECTIONS
FROM A QUIET CORNER.
Ry Dennis 6 ThomnsOn.

By Dennis S. Thompson.
Every pupil in school gets, as .
rule, monthly report card, on which
his standing is set down. Not only
is he given a standing in his vari-
Gus studies, but in department. 1t
would be a decided advantage to
many of us who are out of school if
we had a chance to see ourselves as
we appear. If we knew that in the
estimation of some close acquaint-
ances our manners were ranked sixty
to seventy-fve instead of one hundred,
that our dispositions were rated at
about fifty and SO on, it would cause
us to take serious thought. The stu
dent who knows that he must i'm
prove twenty-five or fifty per cent to
stand where he should, has an advan-
tage over some of us who are going
on the supposition that we are marked
one hundred in all good qualities.
One of the first essentials to improve
ment is to know where we really
stand. From this fact we may infer
that as long as we remain astride the
fence or attempt to ride two horses,
that we cannot get very far in the
world. 1t is always a good thing to
know ourselves, who we are, where
we stand and then-where we are 60
ing.
One must look downwards as well
as upwards in human life. Though
many have passed you in the race,
there are many you have left behind.
Every noble character, every admir-
able personality, every winsome and
lovely self whom God permits us to
see and know is revelation of God
to US and is call to US to journey
Godward. Unless we saw and
knew those to whom we must look
up with reverence and trustful affec-
ton, we could have no true under
standing of a personality above our
own, no forceful impelling toward
standard higher than our personal
conceptions. Hence it is that a wor-
thy friend is a gift from God.
To be the best worker, one must
know how to play. Sometimes we
meet people to whom all recreation
| looks like waste time and they toll
on in the same monotonous, care-re-
! lieved round and wonder why their
persistent effort does not accomplish
more. If they possessed the art Of
forgetting their work, of throwing
themselves into some remote interest,
they would go back to their toll with
zest revived, and would accomplish
vastly more in years time than
they do by the policy of never
stopping.
Recreation should be entered into
heartily, not as if you felt yourself
above it, and knew you were indulg-
ing in a weakness, Read your book
with the same attention with which
you study your algebra lesson. Put
your heart and soul into whatever
amusement you indulge in with the
same earnestness you put into work
at the office. To belittle your recrea-
tion means that it will do little for
you.
The first twenty years of our lives
are employed chiefly in getting a
start. After that we do not change
very much except to become more
thrifty. The habits of industry or
idleness are fixed before you reach
your majority. If you do not love
work by that time, in all probability
you never will. Circumstances may
force you to work, but it will always
be drudgery. The boy or girl who
has not learned to care for books and
study and thinking, by the time they
finish high school, will always be an
intellectual laggard. Even in the
matter of becoming Christian, habit
rules. The vast majority of pro-
fessed Christians took the step be-
fore they were twenty.
1t is true that moral intellectual un-
heavals sometimes occur in human
nature, just as they do in the world
about us. Men and women who have
reached maturity or even middle life
may undergo an experience so trans
forming that their tastes and activi-
ties are completely changed. Drunk
ards have become reformers; igno-
rant laborers, leaders of thought, baG
men have done their best to counter
act years of wickedness by unright-
ness and helpfulness. But this does
not happen very often and it is not
safe to depend on it. AS a rule, the
young woman of twenty, if lima
tured, untruthful or complaining, will
show at forty the same faults inten.
sified to an intolerable degree. And
: there is very little likelihood that .
girl of that age who is sweet, sincere