• Author: Unknown
• Editor:
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 12 11 1918
• Tags:
• advice

Be a Real Man"A boy hearing his father say, ‘Twas a poor rule that wouldn't work both ways, said: If father applies this rule about his work, I will test it in my play." So setting up a row of bricks, he tipped over the first, which, striking the second, caused it to fall on the third, which overturned the fourth, and so on, until the bricks lay prostrate before him. "Well," said the little boy, "each brick has knocked down his neighbor, I only tipped one. Now I will raise one and see if he will raise his neighbor." He looked in vain to see them rise. "Here father," said the boy, "tis a poor rule that will not work both ways. They knock each other down but will not raise each other up." My son, bricks and mankind are alike made of clay, active in knocking each other down, but not disposed-to help each other up." "Father" said the boy, "does the first brick represent the first Adam?" The father replied: "When men fall, they love company, but when they rise they love to stand alone, like your brick, and see others prostrate before them. It is true what this father stated to his boy, that when a man falls he loves company, but if he has succeeded in rising to any station in life he begrudges another man a similar chance, and from this moral we in here should draw a lesson. If you have made yourself so insecure that you must fall, do not drag with you some other fellow; be a man, and stand the consequences like one. Should you on the other hand succeed in reaching a place in the sun and there is room for another; be again a man and share it with him.