Young man, if you get to be a preacher and cannot put force into your sermon, the world doesn’t want to hear you preach, but if you are a good cobbler it will wear your shoes, if a good baker it will eat your bread, or if a good barber it will let you put your razor to its throat.  Remember in making your choice,

  “Honor and fame from no condition rise,
  Act well your part; there the honor lies.”

If I could live life over, I would not be content with a common school education.  In my youth circumstances lifted a dead wall against my hopes, but if given another chance I would somehow press my way to where higher education scatters its trophies at the feet of youth, for while it is true some of the most successful men of our country graduated from the high school of “hard knocks” and universities of adversity, yet the humblest toil is more easily accomplished and better done where college education guides.

To college education, however, I would add the education which comes from rubbing against the world.  Some one has said:  “For every ounce of book knowledge one needs a half dozen ounces of common sense with which to apply it.”  Douglas Jerrold said:  “I have a friend who can speak fluently a dozen different languages but has not a practical idea to express in any one of them.”

An old woman suffering from rheumatism was asked by a friend:  “Did you ever try electricity?”

She answered:  “Yes, I was struck by lightning once but it didn’t do me any good.”

In this many sided age one needs to educate muscle, nerves, heart and conscience as well as brain.  That man who is all brain and no heart, goes through the world with his intellect shining above his bosom like an electric light over a graveyard.

Young people, do you know you live in a testing world, a world in which all buds and blossoms are tested?  The bud that stands the test of wind and frost goes on to flower and fruitage; the bud that can’t stand the test goes with the dust to be trampled under foot.  Every cannon made by the government is tested; the cannon that can stand the test goes into battleship or land fort, the cannon that can’t stand the test goes into the junk pile.

Yonder in Virginia a few years ago, there was a young man who had everything an indulgent father could give him, but in school his character could not stand the test, and he exchanged his books for wine and cards.  He married a beautiful young woman, shot her to death in his automobile and died himself in the electric chair, leaving his old father in a desolate home with harrowing memories tearing his heart; while over the life of an innocent babe he hung a cloud as dark as was ever woven out of the world’s misfortune, and sent another life to wander in painted shame outside life’s eden of purity, the barb of conscious guilt to be driven deeper and deeper into her soul by the scorn of a pitiless world.  All because young Beatty could not stand the test!