Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
History
Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
African American orators; African Americans -- History -- Sources; Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- African American authors
"Would that I had served my God
With half the zeal I served my king,
He would not in mine old age
Have left me naked to my enemies."
Was the game worth the candle?
Another young man starts life with a wrong idea regarding city and
country life. Born in the country he is free, his thoughts and ambitions
can feed on a pure atmosphere, but he thinks his conditions and his
surroundings are circumscribed, he longs for the city, with its bigness,
its turmoil, and its conflicts. He leaves the old homestead, the quiet
village, the country people, and hies himself to the city. He forgets to
a large extent the good boy he used to be, in the desire to keep up
with the fashions and to make the people forget that he was once a
country boy. City life, as is often the case, breaks up his youth,
destroys his morals, undermines his character, steals his reputation,
and finally leaves the promising youth a wrecked man. Was the game worth
the candle?
Young men, never be ashamed of the old log-cabin in the country, or the
old bonnet your mother used to wear, or the jean pants your father used
to toil in. I had rather be a poor country boy with limited surroundings
and a pure heart than to be a city man bedecked in the latest fashions
and weighted down with money, having no morals, no character. I had
rather have the religion and faith of my fathers than to have the
highest offices. I had rather have glorious life, pure and lofty, than
to have great riches. Sir Walter Scott was right when he said,
"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife,
To all the sensual world proclaim:
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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