• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-8266
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 10 2 1918
• Tags:
• advice

FROM THE NECK UP

From the neck down you are worth at the present rate of wage of the unskilled laborer the man who has nothing to sell but his strength, the noble stipend of three dollars per day; from the neck up your rating de- pends entirely upon yourself, now and in the future; you may be worth a million dollars a year, or more, or you may be a liability, asat present, with the State paying your board bill.

We arrive here with one, or two, or ten or more years of seclusion ahead of us, years in which we might with a little expenditure of time and energy make ourselves over to our and our wife’s taste, and go out pre- pared to startle the old folks at home by proving the neighbors, who openly pessimis- tic, opined that we were born to be hung, all wrong; by making two dollars—honest dollars—grow where but one grew before. It can be done, for to know how is to do a thing, and to unremittingly do it, is the secret of all success, and here’s the place to learn how, even tho it must be thru the me- dium of a correspondence course. Time is of absolutely no importance except to be rid of, there are few distractions; you are not called upon to pass upon the merits of the newest burlesque, or musical comedy, you don’t have to meet a fellow down-town every evening, and inspect with him the pool-rooms to see whether the balls are running right, or the corner saloon in an earnest endeavor to duplicate that dark-brown taste you had enjoyed the previous morning.

But what do the most of us do? The lim- its of the experiments of most seem to be an earnest seeking after a new and quicker way to roll a cigarette; do just enough work, if you have a job, to get by; keep out of the Hon. Bob’s way, when he’s out looking for workmen, or get in the Warden’s way when you think something is urgently needed. If the Administration would only issue ham-

mocks we’d sure have the greatest bunch of sailors in the Seven Seas. We forget en- tirely the menace of the future, the task that will be ours when for us the gates un- close; and we live in a state of sweet-do- nothing that so confirms us in our love of idleness that when we do go forth to compete with others in a bustling where only hustling counts, we find ourselves quite unable to keep up the pace, and find ourselves thinking with regret of the peaceful shades of the E. S. P; and how restful it is playing checkers in the shade of the 12th Block, with abso- lutely nothing to disturb one, except when the Hon. Bob decides to move a stone-pile, or something.

Here are both time and opportunity to de- velope the best that isin you, and only a relative few embrace it. It is the age of the skilled laborer; the man who thinks while he works, who has initiative, and isn’t afraid of responsibility, and great is your reward if you can measure up to such standard. Get busy and develope that head-piece and in a dozen years or so, you’ll be able to go to Florida for the winter, instead of the House of Correction, via a smashed window. No thief, however skillful can ever hope to re- alize as much money from the practice of his “profession’” as is now, and for years will be, the reward of the skilled workman; and it lies entirely with yourself whether you will be one, or no. You chiefly need stick-to-itiv- ness, for the other things will come of them- selves, it being possible to develope a flabby brain, the same as flabby muscles are de- veloped, by exercise. Pick some attractive goal, and go after it with -a bull-dog deter- mination which nothing ecan daunt; remove the word ‘‘quit’’ from your bright lexicon of youth, and in a score of years, or less, you’ll rate yourself so valuable above neck that nothing less than a silk-hat will seem an ap- propriate head-piece.