Those who, in early life, learn to be courageous in the face of
difficult tasks will be ready for the temptation that is apt to come to
most young people to compromise with what they know to be right and
true, to allow an exception "just this once!" in the straightforward
course they have marked out for themselves. And the worst of it is that
such a temptation is apt to come without the slightest warning and to
present itself in such a light that it is easy to find an excuse for
yielding, and to deem it quixotic and unreasonable not to yield.
Once a young teacher who later became famous at Harvard, had occasion to
censure a student who had given, as he believed, the wrong solution of
a problem. On thinking the matter over at home, he found that the pupil
was right and the teacher wrong. It was late at night and in the depth
of winter, but he immediately started for the young man's room, at some
distance from his own home, and asked for the man he had wronged. The
delinquent, answering with some trepidation the untimely summons, found
himself the recipient of a frank apology.
"Why, in the name of reason, do you walk a mile in the rain for a
perfectly unimportant thing?" this man was asked on another occasion.
"Simply because I have discovered that it was a misstatement, and I
could not sleep comfortably till I put it right," was the reply.
Again the story is told of him that he borrowed a friend's horse to ride
to a town where he expected to take the stage. He promised to leave the
animal at a certain stable in the town. Upon reaching the place he found
that the stage was several miles upon its way. This was a serious
disappointment. A friend urged him to ride to the next town, where he
could come up with the vehicle, promising himself to send after the
borrowed horse and forward it to its owner. The temptation to accept the
offer was great. The roads were ankle deep in mud, and the stage
rapidly rolling on its way. The only obstacle was his promise to leave
the horse at the appointed place. He declined the friendly offer,
delivered the horse as he had promised, and, shouldering his baggage,
set off on foot through the mud to catch the stage.
At this time he was eighteen years old, but he had learned the lesson
that made him remarkably efficient and dependable through life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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