The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1922-05-25

simply make up his mind 10 look clean. 10 shop
sclt-respect; nothing else matters.
The hard thing for young men and others to
remember is that their work is their real occupation
Take the average young man playing a game of
cards, Of baseball, or of any other mere dmuce-
mcnt. If you should try at that time to interest
him in some outside thing, some new kind of
hat band, some new color for the cravat, he would
say to you, Don't bother me, | am busy nom,
you will make me lose the game.
How many know enough to say the same when
they are playing lfes real game, which is the game
of worka
Many young men act like man who has for
gotten the road or like drunken man staggering
to the right and to the left falling down, getting
up and finally landing in Jail instead of landing
at home
The road before every man is perfectly clear,
and there is only just one way of getting over that
road. which is 10 walk straight ahead TO the end
of it.
Suppose a man were locked up in Jail and
had to make his way out. What would you think
of him if one day he started to bore hole in one
spot and the next day started hole in another spot
and kept on all his life starting little holes in differ
ent spots and never going with any one of them?
You would thing him lunatic Yet that is what
ninety-nine men cut of hundred do in this life.
We are all of us locked up here, all of us
imprisoned by conditions by which we must bore
a hole if we want to get out and amount to any,
thing We try this way and try that way and try
the other, and do nothing, whereas by trying one
may and keeping al that nay ne could get out in
the end.
We have talked on this subject of ccncentra-
ton before We shall talk about it again. You
cannot succeed in The big thing if you let The lille
things take up pour mind and your time.
IF your best thought goes to the selection of a
straw hat, and your second best thought to the
selection of your clothes, and your third best
thought to some profound speculation on the races
or the result of the baseball competition, what hind
of thought is left for the real work9
when you wake up in the morning say to
yourself, Il am going to keep at my work and
tnlnK CT noulnS else toddy Lon mink now
little work you can get through today, but, on the
contrary, hon much work can you get into it.
Whatever you have undertaken to do do it better
than the next man, and not only better than the
next man. but as nell as it is possible for you TO
do ii.
I'VE do not share the comfortable theory that
any man can achieve anything that he desires if
he will work hard enough. That is not true. Edi-
could not possibly have painted as well as Sar-
gent, and Sargent could not possibly have devel-
oped Edison's inventive genius.
But neither Edison nor Sargent, nor any other
man that you hear about, would have been sue
if he hadn't Kept one thing in his mind all the
time.
our mind is the tool that you have to work
with Hands and feet are the small tools, the
servants of the working brain, the real tool Keep
your brain clear, clean and concentrated Don't
load it up with unnecessary burdens unnecessary
interests Toward fe's frivolilies and useless dis
misunderstanding those that really improve the
mnd-let your mental attitude be l don't know
and | don't care. am playing game against
time and against life | have got to win it, and
| cant let other things interfere with it, -