Floyd's Flowers Or Duty and Beauty For Colored Children Being One Hundred Short Stories Gleaned from the Storehouse of Human Knowledge and Experience Simple Amusing Elevating — Three Words to Young People
LXXVII. THREE WORDS TO YOUNG PEOPLE.
The first word is, Be true.
The second word is, Be trustworthy.
The third word is, Dare to do right.
First: Be true!
Be what you seem to be or what you pretend to be; do not be a hypocrite; be firm and steady in adhering to friends, promises or principles.
Be a true boy; be a true girl.
Secondly: Be trustworthy!
Be worthy of trust; be reliable; make your word your bond.
Conduct yourself in such a way that people can depend on you.
Thirdly: Dare to do right!
Whatever comes or doesn’t come, stand by what you believe to be right, even if you have to stand alone.
Be honest, upright, faithful, sincere, abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good.
True boys and girls are scarce; they are not easily found; they do not grow on trees.
But, to tell you the truth, we need good boys and girls, true boys and girls, much more than we do educated boys and girls.
All education without character is a dead weight!
Let me give you one or two reasons why you should be true, trustworthy, and brave for the right.
In the first place, for the sake of your influence.
Every boy and girl in this world has some influence.
Every boy in this world, white or black, rich or poor, high or low, is helping his friends and playmates to grow better or worse, higher or lower in the scale of being.
Every girl in this world is likewise helping or hindering others.
If we are harsh and unkind, cruel and unjust—in every wrong, every baseness, meanness, selfishness, we are harming not ourselves alone but the whole great family of man.
On the other hand, when we speak fearlessly a brave, true word, when we perform cheerfully a hard and trying task, whenever we are faithful, honest, earnest, patient, pure, trustworthy, whether we know it or not, we are strengthening the unseen impulses which make for nobility and higher manhood and womanhood throughout the world.
In the economy of God, by his infinite wisdom, the humblest life reaches forward to the highest and the highest life reaches backward to the lowest.
But perhaps you are saying that I am taking too much for granted.
Perhaps you think that it is not true that there is not one of the very least of the great human family who is not every day exercising some personal influence for good or evil upon the world.
If you think so, boys and girls, or older people, you are mistaken.
No human being can escape from the world’s atmosphere.
Though you fly to the uttermost parts of the sea or hide in the depths of the dense city, some life is affected by your life.
Not only some life is affected by your life, but many lives are affected by your life.
It is a thought of this kind that Charles Dickens beautifully expresses in his story called “David Copperfield.
” He says: “There is nothing—no, nothing—beautiful and good that dies and is forgotten.
An infant, a prattling child, dying in his cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it, and plays its part, though its body be burned to ashes or drowned in the deepest sea.
There is not an angel added to the hosts of heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those who loved it here.
Dead!
Oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear.
For how much charity, mercy, and purified affection would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves!
” No, children, it is no idle dream, no fancy story that I tell when I say that the humblest member of the human family, as well as the highest, is exercising daily, whether he is conscious of it or not, some influence for good or evil upon the world.
Viewed in this light who can measure the possibilities—the divine possibilities—that are wrapped up in little boys and girls?
Viewed in this light, how the slightest action, the smallest of our little duties, takes on new importance!
It was with this thought in mind that James A. Garfield said: “I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than a man.
I never meet a ragged boy on the street without feeling that I owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his shabby coat.
” Yes, boys and girls, by every brave and cheerful effort that we put forth we are reforming, uplifting, renewing, inspiring, hearts and souls we never heard of, never knew, the whole world becoming stronger for every bit of moral courage we create, sweeter for every kindly look we give, and holier for every good deed we do.
And, of course, the contrary is true.
When we fail, when we come short, when we sin, the consequences are not ours alone—they extend to all humanity.
We are all, white and black, rich and poor, old and young, male and female, children of one family.
Just as the quivering circles from a pebble thrown into a lake stretch on and on from shore to shore, so the silent impulse of a single life thrills from heart to heart until the very edges of humanity are touched.
There is another reason still why we should be true, trustworthy, brave.
That reason is that somebody else takes us as his ideal—his standard.
Poor as we are, weak as we are, as unworthy as we are, somebody else is looking up to us—especially those of us who have been favored with educational advantages and opportunities.
And you know that the failure of one who is invested in another’s mind with ideal qualities is a failure beyond the actual.
That is one reason why people say that, as a rule, a preacher’s children are the worst children in the world.
As a matter of fact, they are not the worst children in the world; but, being the children of preachers, everybody expects more of them than of others,—they are taken as ideals, as standards—that’s all.
And what might be excused in others will not be excused in one who is taken as an ideal.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America’s greatest writers, in speaking of this truth says in his story called “The Marble Faun:” “The character of an individual beloved one having invested itself with all the attributes of right—that one friend being to us the symbol and representative of whatever is good and true,—when he falls, the effect is almost as if the sky fell with him, bringing down in chaotic ruin the columns that upheld our faith.
We struggle forth again, no doubt bruised and bewildered.
We stare wildly about us, and discover—or it may be we never make the discovery—that it was not actually the sky that has tumbled down but merely a frail structure of our own rearing, which never rose higher than the housetops, and has fallen because we founded it on nothing.
But the crash, and the affright and trouble are as overwhelming, for the time, as if the catastrophe involved the whole moral world.
Remembering these things, let them suggest one generous motive for walking heedfully amid the defilement of earthly ways.
Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure ideal of those who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so high again.
” Now, I have said my three words.
You see they have stretched themselves out to a great length, but I hope the boys and girls who read this book may profit by them.
Strive to be true, strive to be trustworthy, strive to be brave.
In the long run the prizes of this world, and of that which is to come, are won by boys and girls of strong moral character, not by those who are merely learned or rich.
But, of course, I believe in education and I believe in money.
I think you ought to strive to obtain both—both are useful, and both are necessary; but, with all your getting, boys and girls, be sure to get those things which will reach beyond this world and which will count for more than money or good looks or education or any such thing when the world is on fire, when the moon shall be turned into blood, when the trumpet sounds, and all must go to stand before the Great King to give an account of the deeds done in the body.
