Self Confidence
One day he was playing in the yard and noticed that the back gate
had been left open. In all of his life he had never been outside of that
gate alone, and naturally that was just the thing that he wished to do.
During a moment when the servants were not looking he dashed out at the gate, and was run down and killed by an automobile before he reached the middle of the street. He had used his servants' eyes until his own no longer served him as they might have done had he learned to rely upon them.
Twenty years ago the man whom I served as secretary sent his two sons away to school. One of them went to the University of Virginia and the other to a college in New York. Each month it was a part of my task to make out a check for $100.00 for each of these boys. This was their "pin money," to be spent as they wished.
How profitably I remember the way I envied those boys as I made out those checks each month. I often wondered why the hand of fate bore me into the world in poverty. I could look ahead and see how these boys would rise to the high stations in life while I remained a humble clerk.
In due time the boys returned home with their "sheep-skins." Their
father was a wealthy man who owned banks and railroads and coal
mines and other property of great value. Good positions were waiting
for the boys in their father's employ.
But, twenty years of time can play cruel tricks on those who have
never had to struggle. Perhaps a better way to state this truth would
be that time gives those who have never had to struggle a chance to
play cruel tricks on themselves!
At any rate, these two boys brought home from school other things besides their sheep-skins. They came back with well-developed capacities for strong drink - capacities which 'they developed because the hundred dollars which each of them received each month made it unnecessary for them to struggle. Theirs is a long and sad story, the details of which will not interest you, but you will be interested in their "finis."
As this lesson is being written I have on my desk a copy of the newspaper published in the town where these boys lived.