“Boys, are you letting any bad habits grow into your life?  Are you wasting your time running after pleasures and amusements that don’t help you to be better boys?  Are you getting chummy with other boys whose companionship is not good and whose words and deeds you would not dare to talk about at home?  Are you reading useless books and letting the treasures of literature on mother’s bookshelf at home go untouched?  Are you trying to find short-cuts to success, when there isn’t any such thing, and neglecting the hard work which has brought honor and success to all who have reached a high place?  If you are doing any of these things, get out the pruning hook of good resolution and the sharp ax of determination.  Trim off all these useless things.  Gather them in a heap and burn them.  Then, in the years to come, will you find that you have been able to be of use to the world and to yourself.  But you can’t do it with these useless, strength-robbing things growing on your lives.  Among the last words of Jesus on earth were these:  ’Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.’  If we are to bear much fruit, we must trim off the useless things and allow the bright sunshine of His approval and guidance to come into our lives.”

THE PILGRIMS
    —­Thanksgiving Day
    —­Bravery

The Story of Their Steadfastness of Faith is an Inspiring Study for
Thanksgiving Day.

THE LESSON—­That the blessings for which we are thankful today have come through those whose faith was firmly grounded.

Thanksgiving Day should be one of mixed seriousness and smiles.  This chalk talk endeavors to meet this combination in its treatment of the character of the Pilgrims and of the present-time observation of the day which had its beginning in Plymouth colony.

The Talk.

“The thoughts of Christian people all over America should turn today back to the twenty-second day of December, 1620, when that company of noble men and women, after battling with the ocean waves for two months, succeeded in getting ashore from their sturdy little boat, the Mayflower, and set their feet upon the new land of America.  The spot where these Pilgrims landed is now a sacred one.  We call it Plymouth Rock, and there we may still see the rock on which they are said to have stepped as they came ashore in their row-boats.

“Who were these people?  And why did they come to America and start a colony when there were no white people anywhere around; when savage Indians would surely try to kill them; when they would have to labor hard to get any food or clothing, and where they would have to live in the wild country in huts which must be made from the logs which they would cut out of the forest?