Nuggets of the New Thought: Several Things That Have Helped PeopleAtkinson, William Walker
Philosophy
Nuggets of the New Thought: Several Things That Have Helped People
Atkinson, William Walker
New Thought
Another man, to whom I related the story of the man on the wheel, said
that he had the same trouble when he was learning to ride the wheel.
He was getting along pretty well and could manage to steer half-way
straight, although in a wobbly manner, until one day he happened to
see a certain telegraph pole in front of the place where he was
learning to ride. The pole seemed to hypnotize him, and from that day
he couldn't keep his front wheel away from it. He couldn't keep away
from that pole--he was afraid of it. The pole seemed to have magnetic
qualities and the result was "Bump." He remounted, over and over
again, but the result was the same. At last he made up his mind that
he was going to get ahead of that pole somehow, and he mounted the
wheel with his back toward the pole (but his Mind was still on it) and
lo! the front wheel described a semi-circle, and back to the pole he
went. Moral: Don't let a pole hypnotize you with Fearthought--keep
your Mind on the place to which you wish to go.
But the best example was given by a boy who had kept his eyes open and
his thinker working. Maybe I had better tell you in his own words.
This is what he said, just as he said it:
"Oh, pshaw!" said the Boy, "you're making a big fuss over nothing.
Every feller knows that you've got to _think_ about a thing if you
want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why, you'll
hit the wrong thing. If I fire a stone at a tin can, why, I just look
square at the can and think about the can for all I'm worth, and the
can's a dead one, sure. If I happen to let my mind wander to the cat
what's on the shed over to the left of the can--well, so much the
worse for the cat, that's all. _To shoot straight, you've got to aim
straight; and to aim straight you've got to look straight; and to look
straight you've got to think straight._ Every kid knows that, or he
couldn't even play marbles. If I get my heart set on a beauty marble
in the ring, I just want it the worst way and says I to myself,
'You're my marble.' Then I look at him strong and steady-like and
don't think about nothing else in the world but that beauty. Maybe I'm
late for school, but I clean forget it. I don't see nothing--nor think
nothing--but that there marble what I want. As the piece in my reader
says, it's my 'Heart's Desire,' and I don't care whether school keeps
or not, just so as I get it. Then I shoot, and the marble's mine. And,
at school, when our drawing teacher tells us how to draw a straight
line, she makes two dots, several inches away from each other. Then
she makes us put our pencils on the first dot and look steady at the
other and move our pencil towards it. The more you keep thinking about
the far off dot, and the less you think about the starting dot or your
hand, the straighter you're going to get your line. Wonst I looked
straight at the far-off dot with my eyes, but I kept thinking about a
red-headed girl on the other side of the room, and what do you think,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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