Silas X. Floyd's Short Stories for Colored People Both Old and Young: Entertaining, Uplifting, InterestingFloyd, Silas Xavier
General
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
“Above all things, teach children what their life is. It is not
breathing, moving, playing, sleeping, simply. Life is a battle. All
thoughtful people see it so. A battle between good and evil from
childhood. Good influences, drawing us up toward the divine; bad
influences, drawing us down to the brute. Midway we stand, between the
divine and the brute. How to cultivate the good side of the nature is
the greatest lesson of life to teach. Teach children that they lead
these two lives: the life without and the life within; and that the
inside must be pure in the sight of God as well as the outside in the
sight of men.
“There are five means of learning. These are: Observation, reading,
conversation, memory, reflection.
“Educators sometimes, in their anxiety to secure a wide range of
studies, do not sufficiently impress upon their scholars the value of
memory. Now, our memory is one of the most valuable gifts God has
bestowed upon us, and one of the most mysterious. Take a tumbler and
pour water into it; by-and-by you can pour no more: it is full. It is
not so with the mind. You cannot fill it full of knowledge in a whole
lifetime. Pour in all you please, and it still thirsts for more.
“Remember this:
“Knowledge is not what you learn, but what you remember.
“It is not what you eat, but what you digest, that makes you grow.
“It is not the money you handle, but that you keep, that makes you rich.
“It is not what you study, but what you remember and reflect upon, that
makes you learned.
“One more suggestion:
“Above all things else, strive to fit the children in your charge to be
useful men and women; men and women you may be proud of in after-life.
While they are young teach them that far above physical courage, which
will lead them to face the cannon’s mouth; above wealth, which would
give them farms and houses and bank stocks and gold; is moral
courage--that courage by which they will stand fearlessly, frankly,
firmly for the right. Every man or woman who dares to stand for the
right when evil has its legions, is the true moral victor in this life
and in the land beyond the stars.”
These brave and true words were spoken by Mr. Colfax long years ago.
They were true then; they are no less true now. Every boy in America
should treasure them in his heart. Every girl in America should commit
them to memory and make them the rule of her life. Mothers and fathers,
school teachers and preachers, and all who have the care of the young in
any way would do well to study these wise counsels and reflect upon them
and strive to impress upon those for whom they are laboring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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