Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of NervousnessCarroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Science
Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
Carroll, Robert S. (Robert Sproul)
Nervous system -- Hygiene
Grandfather Scott was a blacksmith. He was much more-a natural amateur
mechanic-the only man in those early days in the little town of
Warren, who could successfully tinker sewing-machines, repair clocks,
or make a new casting for a broken Franklin heater. He was a hale,
ruddy man who lived, worked and died with much peace. There were
girls, but David was the only boy, and a lusty youth he was. The
absence of brothers, or possibly an excess of sisters, gave him, both
as youth and young man, much more liberty of action and right of way
than was good for his soul. At any rate, he early developed a
steadfastness which, throughout his life, stood for both strength of
purpose and hard-headed, sometimes hard-hearted wilfulness. His father
had dreamed a dream: his smithy was to grow into a shop, and later the
shop was to become a factory where a hundred men would do his bidding
and supply the country with products of his inventive genius. But so
far as his own life was to realize, it remained a dream. The shop was
never built; the genius failed to invent. But his son, David! Yes, he
would have the schooling and advantages that the father had not known.
And so it was: at thirty, David Scott had been well educated in
mechanics; at forty, he had made improvements on the sewing-machine,
which gave him valuable patents; at fifty, his factory employed ten
times the number his father had visioned. Thus was fulfilled the dream
of the ancestor.
Business success was large for Mr. David Scott. But what of his
success as a father? He married at twenty-eight, a handsome woman
whose pride in appearance stood out through the years and influenced
the training given her three children. Little David, or "Dave," as he
was early called in distinction to his father, was petted by his
mother and, in spite of evidences to the contrary, was his father's
pride. The family moved to Cleveland when Dave was a little fellow.
His father would not be cramped, so, with what proved to be rare
foresight, bought part of an old farm on Mayfield Heights. Both here
and at Granddad's, where Dave was sent each summer, there was ample
out-of-doors, and the lad grew sturdy of limb. With a flaming shock of
curling, copper hair, his eyes deepest blue, and skin as fair as a
girl's, he was a boy for mother, teachers and later for maidens to
spoil. But an attractive personality, an inherent fineness never left
him while he was conscious, and seldom when he was irresponsible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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