T'S UpTo\bu! AivYoa SMfag'ffp orfatflMDewa O O Ralph Parleite presented to the UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by MR. . JEFFERSON DAVIS See! I help Little Bean to the top, and he rattles right back to the bottom. I increase his altitude without increasing his size and he reduces to his lowest terms! ITS UpTo You! orRatflingDown o Ralph Parlette PUBLISHED BY PARLETTE-PADGET COMPANY 122 SOUTH MICHIGAN AVENUE CHICAGO COPYRIGHTED, 1918 BY PARLETTE-PADGET COMPANY CHICAGO I "It's Up To You!" Shake the Jar! HOLD in my hand this glass jar contain- ing little white beans and big black wal- nuts. I mix them all up. Then I shake the jar. They un-mix. The walnuts go to the top and the little beans go to the bottom. This is no trick; I'll roll up my sleeves if you wish. Mix them up again. Now shake. Again the big ones go up and the little ones go down. That always happens. You have seen it happening all your life, all around you, in a thousand different ways. But have you seen it? Have you ever noticed how many times we have to see a thing before we see it? Won't you try that? Get a jar, a box or a bucket and put into it pebbles, marbles, blocks or any different-sized things of about the same specific gravity. Throw them in any way, and then shake. Note how more per- fectly than human hands can sort them, they will sort themselves just by the shaking. Each object finds its place according to its size. The littlest ones get on the bottom, the 5 next larger a little higher, the next larger a little higher, and the largest will shake to the top. When they shake into their place they stay there. Go on shaking, but they won't change the biggest will stay on the top and the littlest on the bottom. "Help Me Up!" Suppose these objects in the jar could talk. Do you 'see that littlest bean in the bottom? I think if he could talk, he would say, "Help, Help ! Help me up. Here I am in the bottom and so unfortunate and low down. I never had no chance like them big ones up at the top. Help me up ! " I say, "Yes, Little Bean, I'll help you. Cheer up and hold tight, for I am going to boost you." And you see I get him clear to the top. There, you see him up on the top. From bottom to top in four easy lessons by mail ! But the can shakes. Back to the bottom shakes Little Bean, right where he was be- fore I boosted him. I hear him say, "King's ex! I slipped. You try that over again, put me back to the top and I'll stick there." "All right, Little Bean, I'll put you back to the top. I'll write you some more testi- monials." So I put him back on top. But he cannot stay on top. Notice, I shake the jar 6 and lie shakes right down to the bottom. I can put him. up a thousand times, and he will shake right back to the bottom. Why? You know why. I increase his altitude without increasing his dimensions, and he re- duces to his lowest terms! "Put Him Down!" Then I hear Little Bean say, "Well, if I can't stay up, you make them big ones come down. Them Big Nuts haven't any business up there higher than I am. It isn 't fair. Put them down! Put us all down on a level and give us all the same chance. ' ' So I say, " You Big Nuts, do you hear what Little Bean says? You have no business up there higher than he is. Go down to the bot- tom where he is." And I put all the big ones right down on the bottom. But as I shake the jar, the Big Nuts all shake right back to the top. I can put them down a thousand times and they will shake right back to the top. Their size takes them up just as Little Bean's size takes him down. There is only one way to change their place in the jar. Putting them up or putting them down has nothing to do with it. Change their size. If Big Nut gets smaller he will shake down; if Little Bean gets larger he will not have to say, "Help me up!" He will shake up. Change their size and the shaking does the rest ! * * * The Shaking Jar of Life This little jar is a picture of what is going on everywhere in this world all the time. The world is just a big jar of life. All the people are in the jar getting jarred around all the time. All kinds of people are in the jar of life big people, little people, smart people, dull people, philosophers, fools honest, dishonest, capable, incapable, indus- trious, lazy, enthusiastic, discouraged, jaded, cynical, selfish, unselfish and a thousand other kinds. The jar of life goes on shaking all the time. It never stops shaking. Every community is shaking. Every office, shop, store, school, church, household every place where we live or work, is shaking. The same law that shakes Little Bean down and Big Nut up in this jar is acting conscious- ly or unconsciously upon every one of us in the jar of life. It is sending little people down and big people up. It is pushing everyone of us to the place our size and shape determine. The glory of our life is we are not helpless like the objects in this jar. They cannot change their size, but we can change our size. As we change our size, we automatically change our place. No matter what place we have shaken into, if we get smaller, we'll rattle down to a smaller place. If we get big- ger, we'll shake up to a bigger place. When I say "big" and "little", I do not mean children, I mean people who grow and people who shrink. I hear a good deal about "destiny". Some people seem to think that destiny is like a railroad train, and if we do not get down to the depot in time, our train of destiny will run off and leave us, and we will have no destiny! No ! Here is destiny this jar. If we are small, we will have a small destiny. If we are great we will have a great destiny. We cannot dodge our destiny. And it is in our own hands! "Good Luck" and "Bad Luck" This little jar tells me so much about luck. You have noted that lucky people shake up and unlucky people shake down. That is, the lucky people become great and the un- lucky people shrivel and rattle. Notice as I put all the Little Beans up and all the Big Nuts down. I bump this jar just once. That one bump did two things; it bumped all the Little Beans down and all the Big Nuts up. That same bump was both good luck and bad luck. It was good luck to the big ones and pushed them up. It was bad luck to the 9 little ones and pushed them down. The same bump ! Ah! Don't you see, Little Bean, luck does not depend upon the bump, but upon the size of the bump-ee? Don't you see that if you will grow bigger, your luck will change 1 The same bumps that push you down will push you up ! GROW BIGGER! We Cannot Change the Laws Everybody wants to go up. But everybody is not willing to pay the price by first grow- ing bigger so that he can shake higher. So many want to be boosted up. And if they get boosted higher than their size would take them anyhow, they rattle back ! Nobody can fool the jar of life. We must work with the laws of the jar of life. We cannot change the laws by any laws we write upon human statute books, any more than Xerxes could command the stormy sea by throwing fetters into it. Everybody is doing one of three things: Holding his place, rattling down, or shak- ing up. * * * How to Hold Our Place Whatever place we shake into, if we want to hold our place, we must hold our size. We 10 must fill the place, for if we shrink up smaller than the place, we rattle. Nobody can stay long where he rattles. Nature abhors a rattler. He shakes down to a place where he does not rattle. And you observe that in order to hold our size, we must keep on growing enough to sup- ply the loss by evaporation. Evaporation is going on all the time, in lives as well as in liquids. A plum becomes a prune by evapora- tion. I wish human plums became as valu- able when they become prunes. Now life is mainly routine. You and I and everybody must go on doing about the same things day after day. But if we let it become just routine we are going to rattle. If we go round and round, thinking the same thoughts, doing just the same things the same way, just turning round and round in our places, we are going to wear smaller, evaporate, rattle. The joy and juice will go out of our lives. We will shrivel and rattle. The very routine of r life must flash a new attractiveness each day. The farmer must be learning new things about farming each day to hold his place as a farmer. The merchant must be growing into a greater, better-informed merchant to hold his place among his competitors. The mini- ster must be getting larger visions of the ministry as he goes back week after week into the same pulpit, to keep on filling it. The teacher must be seeing new possibilities in the same old schoolroom or the school will 11 fossilize. The man in the shop must be grow- ing or he will rattle. You notice anybody who stays in the same place year after year is filling it. He does not rattle. Unless the place is a museum or a grave ! The "Unlucky" Ones My heart aches for the rattlers, the loafers, the drifters, the butterflies of the bright lights, the people who merely have a "job" and go round day by day following their noses without trying to grow and develop them- selves and their capabilities. As the train of progress speeds on and they find themselves falling farther and farther back toward the caboose, they wail, "I never had any chance like other people. The world is against me." The other day in a paper-mill I was stand- ing beside a long machine making shiny supercalendered paper. A man came along with an oil-can, squirting oil into the squirt- places along the side of the machine. I asked him some questions about the machine and he answered them fairly well. I am a newspaperman, a walking interro- gation-point, and I began to see the possibili- ties of a "story" here. So I asked him some more questions about a process over in the next room. He replied, "I don't know noth- 12 ing about it, boss, I don't work there." I asked hinl about another process. "I don't know nothing about it, I never worked there. ' ' I asked him about the pulp-mill. "I don't know nothing about it, I never worked in there." I asked him about the office, how many people work in the plant. "I don't know nothing about it, boss, I never worked in there." "Nobody home!" I asked him, "How long have you worked at this machine 1 ?" I hope I misunderstood him, but I think he said, "Twelve years." Twelve years and "don't know nothing about ' ' any more of the plant ! I took off my hat in the presence of the dead! As I went out of the room I asked the foreman, "Do you see that man over there with the oil-can! Is he a human being or do you wind him up?" The foreman's face clouded. "I hate to talk to you about that man. He is one of the kindest-hearted men in the plant, but we have got to 'can' him. He doesn't learn. He doesn 't know as much today as he did yester- day. He didn't know as much yesterday as he 'did the day before. We're afraid he'll dry up, fall in the machine and break it ! " The foreman was worried about the machine ! And that man went out of that plant say- ing, ' ' The world doesn 't use me right. Here I've given the best years of my life to that 13 company and now they heartlessly throw me out." Nobody can stay where he rattles. It's grow or go ! Jar the jar and see. The "Lucky" Ones So everywhere you look you see the jar of life sorting people according to size. Every big business concern can tell you stories like that of the Chicago house where a number of young ladies worked in the office. There came a raw, green girl from the country. It was her first office experience, and she got the bottom place. She was so green and raw. She was the office joke. She believed everything they told her and they told her a plenty! She made many blunders, but she did not make the same blunder twice. She learned the lesson from each bump. And she never ''got done." When she had finished her work, she could always see some- thing else that ought to be done, and 'she would go on doing it. Go on doing it without being told! She had developed that rare faculty the world is bidding for initiative. The other girls "got done." They had made a reputation in that office for "getting done. ' ' When they had finished the work they had been put at, they would wait 0, so pa- 14 tiently they would wait to be told what to do next. Within three months every other girl in the office was asking questions of the " office joke." She had learned more about the busi- ness in three months than the others had learned in their longer service there. Noth- ing got by her. She had grown to be the best posted, most capable worker there. It is now time to shake this little jar! It was not very long until she was made superintendent. She shook to the top. The other girls felt hurt about it. They had never seen this little glass jar. They said, ' ' There was nothing fair about it at all. Jen- nie ought to have been made superintendent. Jennie had been here for four years." But it wasn't an endurance contest at all! It was a matter of growing. Give Everybody a Jar! O, little jar, how you teach us the truths of life ! I am in favor of 110,000,000 of these jars distributed as Christmas presents over the United States. I want one on the mantel, right where I can shake it every day and ask, "Ralph Parlette, are you growing some today, or are you rat- tling!" I want one in every schoolroom so that the 15 But see again! I put Big Nut down in the bottom, and he shakes right back to the top. Big Nut shakes up because he is big just as Little Bean shakes down because he is little. pupils can learn the laws of human specific gravity. I want one in every business office so that any worker who says, "Why don't I get pro- moted?" may shake the jar and learn how we compel promotion. We grow bigger. We de- velop larger capabilities. We enlarge our use- fulness. We increase our efficiency. We do more than we are paid to do. We overfill our place. And as we grow bigger, we shake up to bigger place ! * * * We promote ourselves ! It's up to you and me ! Are we rising or rattling! Don't Get "Finished!" I am sorry when I hear somebody say, "Now don't try to tell me anything about that. I've been at this all my life, and what I don't know about it isn't worth knowing." That man has quit growing and is generally rattling. The greater and wiser the man, the more anxious he is to be told and to learn. I am sorry for the one who struts around saying, "I own the job. They can't get along without me!" I feel that they are already getting ready to get along without him. That kind of talk is rattle. The good boss is always keeping his ears open for rattles in the machinery. 17 I am sorry for the youngster who goes to some place to " finish his education," for he is likely to come back finished with "outside finish." I remember in my old reader in school about the young lady who went away to a "finishing school," and she came back 1 1 finished. ' ' She admitted that she had been ' * finished. ' ' She said, ' * Isn 't it wonderful to be 'finished!' And isn't it wonderful that one small head can contain it all ! " But over on the next page of my reader was the soliloquy of the philosopher who saw the truth and said what Sir Isaac Newton said after giving the world a new science, ' ' I seem to have been only the child playing on the seashore," playing with a few pebbles, "while the great ocean of truth lay all unex- plored before me." I am sorry for the man, community or in- stitution that spends much time pointing backward with pride, recounting how many years "established," or talking about "in my clay. ' ' For it is so often a symptom of rattle. The live one's "my day" is today and to- morrow. The dead one's is yesterday. Our funeral is held right after we "finish." Go on growing up ! And stay alive ! Life's Jar the Leveler We could fill books with just such stories of how people have gone up and down. Did 18 you ever notice two brothers start with the same chance and presently you noted one was going up and the other was going down? One grew and the other rattled. Some of us begin life on the top of the jar, right in the sunshine of popular favor, in a big house and father's name in the "blue book." We belong to the exclusive set. Others of us begin down in the bottom, out of sight, and we do not even get invited. We often become discouraged as we look at the top layers, and we say, " 0, if I only had his chance! If I were only up there I might amount to something. But I have no chance, I am too low down. ' ' We have exactly the same chance, top or bottom the same chance to grow or rattle! And as the jar of Hfe goes shaking us year after year, the world does not ask us, "Were you born on the bottom or the top?" but "Are you big enough to fill this place without rattling?" We Must Get Ready to Get 0, I wish they had shown me this little jar earlier in my life! I wasted so many years sympathizing with myself but not trying to grow. I used to think the way to get up into a great place was just to get into it. Just get enough boosters, get enough testimonials 19 and "pull" and friends in the firm to get pulled up into it. I thought if I could once get into a great place I would be great. I would have been a great joke ! I would have rattled. We do not become great by getting into a great place any more than a boy becomes a man by get- ting into his father's boots. He is in great boots, but he rattles. He must get greater feet before he gets greater boots. But he must get the feet before he gets the boots ! We first grow greater and the jar shakes us higher. y I am getting " leery" of the man with testi- monials. I discover the man with the most testimonials generally needs them most, like excelsior, to deaden his rattle. I am learning that the man who thinks permanent promotion comes from "pull" rather than from self-development, sooner or later rattles. / All life is preparation for a greater to- [ morrow. All education is a series of coin- Vmencements not end-ments. Moses was eighty years getting ready to ^ do forty years' work. The work was ready all this time, but Moses wasn't ready for it. It took Moses eighty years to get up steam, to get great enough to handle the work. Jesus was thirty years getting ready to do three years' work. So many of us expect to get ready in "four easy lessons by mail." 20 We can be a pumpkin in one summer. With the accent on the "punk." We can be a mushroom in a day. With the accent on the "mush." But it takes years to become an oak. ._ Keep on growing! Fix the People, Not the Jar I used to say, "Nobody uses me right. No- body gives me a chance." But if chances had been snakes, I would have been bitten a hundred times a day. We need oculists, not opportunities. I used to work on the "section" and get a dollar fifteen a day. I rattled there. I did not earn my dollar fifteen. I tried to see how little I could do and look like I was doing. I was doing "doing" the railroad company out of a dollar fifteen a day. There was only one joyful moment in my work each day when the whistle blew to quit. O, joyful sound! I would come out of my trance. I would leave my pick hang right up in the air. I wouldn't bring it down again for a "soul- less corporation." I used to pass a bank on the way to the section-house. "Why don't they make me president of a bank, naturally bright as I am? I ought to be president of a bank in- stead of wearing my life away on section six- teen. ' ' 21 I am so glad now they didn't make me president of a bank. They are glad, too 1 If they had put me up into such a great place, I would have lasted about fifteen minutes be- fore I rattled out. I wasn't president of a dollar fifteen a day. I wasn't faithful over a few things, I would have rattled over many. Revised Version ! Remember the handcar job is just as hon- orable as the bank presidency. But I wasn 't filling my handcar place, how could I fill a larger place! I used to say, "Just wait till I get to Con- gress and I'll pass laws requiring the jar to. turn upside- down, so all us Little Beans will be on top and all the Big Nuts in the bottom. ' ' But I had not seen that it wouldn 't matter which end was the top or bottom, the Big Nuts would shake up, and the Little Beans would shake down. For the jar will go right on shaking. We cannot fix the jar, we can only fix the people in the jar. Have you ever noticed that the man who is not willing to fix himself is the one who wants the most laws passed to fix the jar? He wants something for nothing! He can never get it. But this blessed old jar of life is just wait- ing and anxious to shake everybody up to what everybody wants, just as fast as every- body grows great enough. 22 BUT remember that going up in life means so much more than merely going up in salary. Or getting more acres, autos, pigs or pennies. Going up in life means growing greater in our life, and then the jar shakes us up higher. We may grow very great and go very high, and yet never get out of our kitchen or out of our shop. But we will take the kitchen or shop right up with us. We will make it a great kitchen or a great shop. Make it our throne-room. We get great on the inside, not on the out- side. Greatness is not measured in inches, dollars, acres, votes, hurrahs, or by any other ()f the world's yardsticks or barometers. We go up from idleness to industry. We go up from inefficiency to efficiency. 'We go up from impurity to purity. We go up from unhappiness to happiness. We go up from weakness to strength. We go up from low ideals to high ideals. We go up from selfishness to unselfishness. We go up from foolishness to wisdpjn. We go up from fear to faith. We go up from ignorance to understanding. 23 Notice I bumped the jar just once. That bump does two things: It bumps every Little Bean down and every Big Nut up. Little Bean has the bad luck and shakes down, while Big Nut has the good luck and shakes up with THE SAME BUMP! The same bump is both Good Luck and Bad Luck. Luck does not depend upon the bump but upon the size of the BUMP-EE! If Little Bean will only grow bigger, his luck will change. The same bumps that are Bad Luck will change to Good Luck. If Big Nut gets smaller, he will rattle down. We go up by our own growing. Nobody can do it for us. Getting things is mere- ly an indication of our development as we get them for greater service, like a car- penter gets tools that he can become a greater carpenter. If we want to become a greater financier, perhaps we may have to get more dollars. If we want to become a greater farmer, perhaps we may have to get more acres. But we who do not need great outfits of things to render great service, do not need a great lot of tilings to become great. 1 1 G etting to the top ' ' is the world 's pet de- lusion. There is no top. Every top we reach is the bottom of the next ascension. Go on growing! "The sky is the limit!" The Master said to the two disciples who wanted to be greatest, Let him become the greatest servant. I do not know who fitted the boards into the floor I stand upon. I do riot know all the great people who may come and stand upon this floor. But I do know that the one who made the floor and the one who sweeps it is just as great as anybody in the world who may come and stand upon it, if each be doing his work with the same great love, faithfulness and capability. The test of our greatness is not what we are doing, but how we are doing it. Not what we are doing, but that it is the work we are best fitted to do. "Blessed is the man who hath found his work!" 25 The great people in every community are so busy serving that they have little time to strut and pose and get half toned for the Sun- day papers. Few of them are "prominent clubmen." You rarely find their names on the society pages. They rarely give "bril- liant social functions." Their idle families attend to these things, while they have more joy in real service. Help Him to Help Himself Everybody wants to go up, But so few understand they must first grow greater and then they shake up. The multitude wants to be lifted, uplifted, boosted, helped, and there is only one way to help anybody up without helping him to rattle, as you see by shaking the jar help him to help himself. That is why you cannot help many people. They will not cooperate by growing. The old tramp out on the street says, "Help me ! Help ! Help me up ! " He does not want to be helped; he wants to be propped. He wants me to put money in his hand or his hat. That is not helping him up, but helping him to rattle. That is professionalizing his help- lessness. Here is the failure of most of our "char- ity," most of our uplift campaigns and in- 26 stitutions. They help people to rattle. They uplift with a derrick. They boost somebody up faster than he can grow, then run with the derrick to uplift somebody else, and the first victim rattles back. I confess to you that one of the hardest things for me to do in a city is to walk along the street past beggars, panhandlers and sym- pathy stunters, and be kind enough to them not to give them anything ! We must feed the hungry and clothe the naked, but save in emergencies, if we go no farther than that we have not helped them, we have pauperized them. I could write a book of confessions of how I have tried to uplift my fellow man with a derrick. I have taken scores of derelicts, have given them baths and new clothes, have filled their stomachs and cried on their necks. I have put money in their hands and bade them turn over a new leaf and set out to live a new life. And with tears in their eyes I have cruelly sent these rattlers out to rattle back, leaning upon the broken staff of their own weak will power. O, it is a big job being patient enough to uplift to stand by and encourage at each step, line upon line and precept upon precept, forgiving ' ' seventy times seventy. ' ' This is all there is to civilization, to educa- tion, to applied Christianity helping some- body to grow bigger, that he may go higher. 27 The Tragedy of the Big House The teachers in school will not do the work of the pupils, for they know they would be robbing their pupils. Their pupils must do their own work to get the development of greatness from the struggle. I used to wonder why my teacher wouldn't solve my problems for me. He would over- load me with work, and crush my young life out. "Why doesn't he solve these problems himself? He could do them in a minute, tlio old brute!" But I know now my teacher loved me too much to rob me that way. I wish all parents were as wise as the teachers. In every community there are parents who have struggled and have become strong. But somehow they think their chil- dren can get it some other way. They think they can give it to their children ! I am very often the guest in a big mansion. They put me in the parlor, in the big, fat, Christmas gift chair. They show me the album and play "Lucia Sextet" on the phono- graph. In olden time they used to unqan fruit, but now they uncan music. Then they bring in the offspring. They say, "Here is our little Elizabeth and here is our little James. We have never had any opportunity in our lives. All ouir lives we have only known toil and sacrifice, but our children ah, we are living for OUT precious children. We shall give them every- 28 tiling our money can buy. We shall secure them every advantage." Buy it ! Going to buy wisdom, understand- ing, greatness. Going to make a great place in the jar of life and put their little children in it. After I hear about five minutes of that, I feel like saying, "Toll the bell for little Lizzie and little Jirn! They are going to rattle. Father thinks he can go to New York or to Chicago or to ' Sears Roebuck, ' and get a bucketful or barrelful or perhaps lay a private pipe-line right up to the house and squirt it into them regularly until he gets them inflated." "Inflated" is right. There is going to be - a "blowout" afterwhile. Little Lizzie and Jim are going to run on their ' ' rims ' ' after- while. All father and mother can do is to open the gate and say, "Sic, 'em, Tige!" Tige has got to get all he ever owns. What we own is not what we have in our pockets or in our heads, but what we have assimilated into our lives. All that we own we have earned our- selves. All that we own is what nobody gave us and nobody can take away from us. Father and mother might as well say, "All our lives we have struggled with the keyboard to become pianists. All our lives we have had scales, and practice, and technic! Our children shall become greater pianists than we are, but they shall never know the horrors of the five-finger exercises." 29 Then little Lizzie and little Jimmie will never become pianists. They will become pianolas ! , Most advantages are generally disadvan- tages. Giving a child a chance generally means getting out of its way. Many an orphan can really be grateful that he was jolted from his life-preserver and cruelly forced to sink or swim. Thus he learned to swim. All colleges can -give us is better tools. I know some "hard knocks" graduates who are liberally educated, who cannot write their own names. They are illiterate but not igno- rant. They are wise and great and have gone high in the jar of life. They served with the old, crude, home-made tools, the "maul and wedge ' ' and the ox-cart. We go to school to- day to get better and more efficient tools. You can no more get an education out of a book than you can get to New York by read- ing a railroad guide. Most Helping Is Hindering I once read of a man who found a cocoon, the little chrysalis thing that is the inter- mediate stage between the caterpillar and the butterfly. He put it in his library, up betAveen two books. He watched the little life develop- ing inside. One day he saw that the little butterfly was struggling inside the envelope 30 that held it. It was trying to get out, but somehow could not free itself. It seemed to need help. He got a knife and helped it. He opened the envelope and set the struggling insect free. But out came a monstrosity, with under-developed wings and over-developed body. It fluttered a few feeble flutters and then died. He had killed it by helping it. He learned afterwards that that struggle must go on until the butterfly has freed itself. It must wear out that envelope. That struggle is what develops its wings and reduces its body. That law of life holds true everywhere. It is our own effort the develops us. Strength must come from struggle. It does not mean log cabins and poverty today, but it assuredly does mean that we must learn to stand upon our own feet, bear our own burdens and solve our own problems. Anybody who does for us regularly what we can do for ourselves, or anybody who .gives us regularly what we can earn for ourselves, is robbing us of our birthright our right to grow greater and go higher. # * * Make a Place to Put It! And so the message of life to young and old is, Grow or go ! Rise or rattle ! We want a great arm. We cannot buy a 31 great arm and nobody can give us a great arm. We must make our arm a great servant. The world knows that. But the world does not know so well that to have a great mind, we must grow that, too. AVe must learn to think. Many a man who would feel degraded to be a physical loafer is a mental loafer. Go study the bills of the movies and the theatres, go look over the piles of loud-covered fodder on the news-stands. There are ten literary drunkards to one alco- holic drunkard. There are a hundred amuse- ment drunkards to one booze slave. And all just as hard to cure. We have to have amusement as relaxation, but all relaxation and no contraction, phys- ically, mentally or morally, spells degenera- tion. If we live to outshine our neighbors we will become all outshine and no in-shine. If we fill our lives with amusement, we will go thru our lives as babies with new rattle- boxes and "sugar-tits." I can hire a hall in any city or town in the land and engage the greatest speakers in the land to come to it and speak. I can go out on the street and say to scores of kind- hearted, whole-souled people, " won't you come to the hall ! Here is a free ticket to hear one of the great lecturers of the land. ' ' I might as well say, "Smallpox," as lec- ture. They will say, ' ' I don 't want to go. I don't like lectures." They are perfectly honest about it. They have no place to put a 32 lecture. They are confessing they do not want to think. They want to follow their noses around thru life. And somebody gen- erally leads the nose. The menace of a republic is the man who will not think for himself, and learn to think straight as he learns to walk straight. The world can be made "safe for democracy," but democracy will never be safe for the world until the mental rattler is saved from himself. That is the trouble with poor old Russia. Her people have never learned to think. Thousands of lives were sacrificed on the west front in the world war because Russia rattled on the east front. And so it is morally. If we want a great character, we must grow it by great moral service. We have got to go with the Master into the Wilderness and overcome every temptation. Then the angels come and min- ister. Then we rise to the heavenly visions of real life ! Thus we become great ! The First Step at Hand Everybody's privilege and duty is to get promoted, to go up, to become greater. And the joy of it is that the first step is right at hand. We do not have to go off to Chicago or New York, do not have to have a relative in the firm, nor go chasing around for testi- monials and boosters. 33 yThe great stairway that leads up to infinite heights of success and happiness leads right from where our feet are now planted. We can rise with our next step. We must take the first step now. Most of us want to take the hundredth step or the thousandth step now. We want to make some spectacular stride of a thousand steps at once. That is why we rattle and fall so hard. We must go right back to our old place- back into our kitchen, our workshop or our office and take the first step, solve the problem nearest at hand. We must make our old work luminous with a new devotion. We must de- velop greater efficiency, physically, mentally, morally. We must push out our skyline inch by inch. And as we rise to a higher vision, we will see the next step, and the next. As we solve and dissolve the difficulties and turn the burdens into blessings, we find love, the universal solvent, shining out of our lives. As we rise to greater usefulness, as we solve our own problems, the w r orld is drawn to us to solve its problems. We find our kitchen or workshop or office becoming a new throne of power. We find the world around us rising up to call us blessed. ^ As- we grow greater our opportunities grow greater. We find they were waiting all these years for us to grow great enough to see them. As we grow greater our troubles grow \/ smaller, for we see them thru greater eyes and look down upon them from loftier peaks of vision. And each day becomes a greater, liappier day, for our horizon of life is widening as we rise. Bless you, my reader friend! I bid you farewell and godspeed, hoping some day to have the joy of shaking your hand, and with the same words I first greeted you: "It's Up to You ! Are You Shaking Up or Rattling Down!" 35 In His First Lecture-Book The University By Ralph Parlette Humorist- Philosopher Hard Knocks Parlette Says: "The greatest school is The University of Hard Knocks. Its playground is the Universe; its President is the Almighty. Its books are bumps. "Here we learn all we ever know, and write it in the only book we ever own The Book of Our Experience. "Every bump we get is a lesson. If we learn the lesson with one bump, we don't get that bump any more; we get promoted to the next bump." JUDGE BEN B. LINDSEY, COLORADO'S FAMOUS JUVENILE JUDGE, ENDORSES "HARD KNOCKS" " 'The University of Hard Knocks' is a great, big boost for everybody that will read it and every- body ought to read it. I am glad that so many nuggets from that delightful and wonderful litera- ture of Ralph Parlette have been put in book form. People ought to buy them by the gross and send them to their friends." Ben B. Llndsey. "WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN COMMENDS "HARD KNOCKS" "Having had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Ralph Parlette lecture and knowing the interest which he arouses and the pleasure that he gives to his audience, I am glad to commend his book, 'Hard Knocks,' which is full of simple and practical philosophy." William Jennings Bryan. BIGGEST DOLLAR'S WORTH I'VE HAD "I paid a dollar for the 'Hard Knocks' and read it aloud to my boy. And, honestly, it was the biggest dollar's worth I've had in many moons." J. C. Chamberlayne, Associate Editor, Schenectady, (N. Y.) Union Star. Price $1.00 Net PARL.ETTE-PADGET COMPANY 122 South Michigan Ave., Chicago RALPH PARLETTE'S SECOND LECTURE-BOOK BIG BUSINESS OR A BOOK OF REJOICING BIG BUSINESS is the Business of Being Happy is the Business of Turning' Work Into Play is the Business of Being What We are Cre- ated to Be is the Business of Getting Our Happiness NOW in Our Work and NOT TOMORROW for Our Work "Biff Business is a real joy to read. It is big and ought to be read today and tomorrow and forever- more everywhere. It is truly "A Book of Rejoic- ing." Dr. J. G. Crabbe, President State Teachers College, Greeley, Colo. "In Big Business we have the practical philosophy that it is everyone's business to abolish work and turn this world into a playground. Who will not confess that many mortals take their work too seriously, and that to them it is a joyless, cheerless thing? To be able to find happiness, and to find it when we are bending to our duties, is to possess the secret of living to the full. And happiness is to be sought within, and not among the things that lie at our feet. The book before us is wholesome and vivacious. It provokes many a smile, and beneath each one is a bit of wisdom it would do us a world of good to learn. It recalls the saying of the wise man, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." The Augsberg Teacher. "Perhaps because being happy is not as easy just now as it is at normal times, Ralph Parlette has written about it as if it were an achievement and not an accident. The business of being happy is one of paramount importance as this author points out rn Big Biisiness. More than just being happy, this big business means turning our work Into play. The author writes in a genuinely humorous and popular vein, with an understanding of in- dividuals as well as of life in general. But there is a dead earnestness beneath the surface which penetrates the reader's consciousness and leaves him much impressed." The Christian Advocate. Price $1.OO Net PARLETTE-PADGET COMPANY 122 South Michigan Avenue. CHICAGO