Frank Merriwell's Trust; Or, Never Say DieStandish, Burt L.
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Frank Merriwell's Trust; Or, Never Say Die
Standish, Burt L.
Adventure stories; Dime novels; Merriwell, Frank (Fictitious character) -- Juvenile fiction; Popular literature
Dick was thinking of Inza as she had appeared to him once, and as she
appeared to him now.
“They’re all alike!” he thought bitterly. “Rosalind was like Inza in
many ways, and she threw me over for Dade Morgan. When she found out
what a scoundrel Morgan was she tried to make up with me, but I was not
quite so big a chump as she imagined. I think Inza is even worse than
Rose, for she has deceived Frank right along. He is so honest and square
himself that he never suspects others of deception. It’s useless to try
to convince him, for he believes in that girl implicitly.
“I’m sorry for him, but it’s plain he is desperately in love with her,
even though he may not really know it. Why, I fancy he’d marry her
to-morrow if she’d have him! That being the case, he is in danger, for
she is liable to decide at any minute that she’ll have him. If she
should, she’d find a way to let him know it and to lead him into a
proposal. How is that to be prevented? The only way is to convince him
beyond the shadow of a doubt that she is a treacherous, heartless flirt.
But how can I convince him? I must find a way. I will.”
Starbright still seemed to feel that he had done Merriwell a wrong, and
this added to his sense of duty toward the youth who had befriended him
when he first came to college. Having become convinced that Merry would
be led into a snare in case he ever married Inza, Dick determined to
find a way to prove to Frank that the dark-eyed, haughty girl was
unworthy of him.
“I must do it, even though it makes him despise me,” mentally decided
the big Andover man. “It will be nothing more than an act of pure
friendship.”
Jack Diamond’s story of his mistake had made not the slightest
impression upon Starbright. Frank had hoped it would open the youth’s
eyes to the folly of jumping at conclusions, but it had not, for Dick,
like old Captain Starbright, his father, was hard-headed and set, once
having formed an opinion.
A man of this character is almost always successful in life if he gets
started on the right track, for he will stick and hang like a bulldog
until he wins; but give him a wrong start, let him bend his energies in
the wrong direction, and he will persist in a bull-headed way in
carrying out plans that any one and every one else can see are certain
to bring disaster upon him.
The bulldog determination and stick-to-it-iveness is all right if it is
properly combined with reasoning ability. But the person who says he is
right because he thinks so, and refuses to listen to reason or argument,
is certain sooner or later to butt his head against a stone and knock
out what few obstinate brains he possesses. There are men so constituted
that they persist in declaring they are right, in the face of positive
evidence to the contrary. Sometimes they shut their eyes so they may not
see the evidence. This sort of bulldog persistency is simply
“foolishness.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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