Silas X. Floyd's Short Stories for Colored People Both Old and Young: Entertaining, Uplifting, InterestingFloyd, Silas Xavier
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Silas X. Floyd's Short Stories for Colored People Both Old and Young: Entertaining, Uplifting, Interesting
Floyd, Silas Xavier
African Americans -- Fiction; African Americans -- Juvenile fiction; Didactic fiction; Short stories, American
Thirdly, look well to the ventilation of your bedrooms. No one can have
a clear skin who breathes bad air. Fresh air is a preventive of a
multitude of diseases. Bad air is the cause of a great many premature
deaths.
Fourthly, cleanliness of the entire body is of vast importance. Some one
has said that “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” and some one else has
added, “And soap is a means of grace.” Handsome people not only eat
regularly and simply; they not only sleep regularly and look well to
proper ventilation; but handsome people will take regular baths.
Fifthly, more than all else, in order to look well you must wake up the
mind and soul. When the mind is awake, the dull, sleepy look passes away
from the eyes. Keep thinking pleasant and noble thoughts; do not read
trashy novels or books; read books which have something good in them.
Talk with people who know something. Be often in the company of those
who know more than you do. Hear lectures and sermons and profit by them.
If we listen and understand and heed, the mind and soul are awakened. So
much the better if the spiritual nature is aroused. Sometimes a plain
face is really glorified with the love of God and of man which shines
through it.
Lastly, keep a strong and vigorous body by taking plenty of wholesome
outdoor exercise, and do all the good you can.
Why not begin to grow handsome today?
[Illustration]
PATIENCE.
Patience is one of the marks of a high character. It might well be
called the habit of closing the mind against disagreeable and annoying
conditions. To acquire this habit so effectually as to hide even from
one’s self any sense of suffering or offense from contact with such
conditions is what the truly cultivated aim at. Life, it is true, is
full of trying things, but to let the mind dwell upon them only serves
to increase their offense to the feelings or the senses.
[Illustration: PATIENCE.]
There are people, of course, who are incapable of self-concentration,
and whose imagination, if left free to gad about, seems always to fix
upon and exaggerate every element of disturbance. They live in what is
called an elementary stage of moral discipline, and are perpetually
fretting about things they cannot help. They are never able to shut down
the will against any unpleasantness. They permit merely accidental
conditions to exercise a kind of tyrannical sway over them, which, if
their minds were once bent to the practice of putting up with things,
would cease to present any annoyance whatever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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