Pocahontas star herald., 1924-08-01

get your neighbors aroused. You must
carry knowledge to them, and not only
knowledge but inspiration. You must
work with them and at them-with in
finite patience-to make them n read
ing people-to read the books and
papers that will help you in carrying
out your ambition; and you must get
them together early and often in meet
ings and conferences. You must es-
pecially watch the boys and girls who
have ambition for progress, nor vet
despair of older men and women whose
inertia and conversation may yet be
broken through.
Then, too, you must work with one
and all with the knowledge that they
are your brothers and your sisters
that you are no better than they, and
, that some neglected man or boy in the
shabbiest clothes and in the meanest
house may have potentialities greater
than anybody else in the neighbor
hood. You must feel yourself always
co-worker and never a commander;
you mnst be more anxious to develop
leadership in others than to have any
prominence of leadership yourself.
But most of all, you must have faith
in men and women, boys and girls
and not only faith in them but genuine
love for them. 1t is a great saying of
Tolstoi's: I'VE think there are circum-
stances when we may deal with human
beings with love, and there are no such
circumstances: you may make bricks
cut down trees, or hammer iron with
out love, but you cannot deal with men
without it,"
And one of the greatest leaders of
men that this old world. has ever
known uttered one of his profoundest
thoughts when he said that man may
speak with the tongues of men and
angels, and have all knowledge, AMI
all faith, and all philanthrophy, aud
yet fail as a leader and man, il he
is without love for his fellows.
Let us all together then. friends and
readers, ask ourselves the question:
Have we kept the faith? Are we do
ing anything to make our communities
better for our having lived in them?
Is there a boy or girl, a young man
or young woman, a gray-haired father
or a toilng mother, into whose life we
have carried any ennobling ambition,
any CLEAN of inspiration, any passion
for service to his or her fellows and TO
the Husbandman Of all the earth?
And have we called out the noble
qualities Of service, cooperation, friend
ship, and comradeship in other men
by exhibiting and persevering in such
a spirit ourselves?
And II we would be true to the
charge committed to MS by the Master
of All Good Workmen, we must in
deed act quickly. Swiftly, so swiftly
the years fly by. The falling ledVes
of every autumn for thirty centuries
have but repeated the admonition of
the Wise Man of Israel: Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might for there is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the
grave whittier thou gOest." But a few
years are given us, in which we leave
our message with our fellows; but
few in which to do whatever work may
testify after us that we have lived
and loved and labored here"
My concluding appeal to each reader,
then, is to make yourself a neighbor-
hood leader, soldier of progress, u
missionary Of cooperation, a builder
Of the new civilization we must vet
work out a rural South "Oh, it is
great and there is no other greatness"
says Carlyle somewhere, ito make
some nook of Gods creation more fruit
full better, more worthy Of God" and
It is in the quest Of this form of great
ness that one is surest to find what
President Eliot has happily called "the
durable satisfactions Of life"
To the man who has an ideal of
richer and fuller life for his commun-
/ ity, and who unselfshly sets to work 20
bring about his ideal, the glorious re.
ward is usually seen with the material
eye long before age has dimmed its
vision. But to the triumphant spirit
of every man who seeks to hasten the
good day coming it is enough, even
If only with the eyes Of faith, "he
shall see the travail Of his soul ana
shall be satisfed.-Progressive Farmer.