The University of Hard KnocksParlette, Ralph Albert
Philosophy
The University of Hard Knocks
Parlette, Ralph Albert
Character; Conduct of life; Success
There was one boy in the class who was not naturally bright. It was not
the one you may be thinking of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He had no
brilliant career in view. He was dull and seemed to lack intellect. He
was "conditioned" into the senior class. We all felt a little sorry for
Jim.
As commencement day approached, the committee of the class appointed
for that purpose took Jim back of the schoolhouse and broke the news to
him that they were going to let him graduate, but they were not going
to let him speak, because he couldn't make a speech that would do
credit to such a brilliant class. They hid Jim on the stage back of the
oleander commencement night.
Shake the barrel!
The girl who was to become the authoress became the helloess in the
home telephone exchange, and had become absolutely indispensable to the
community. The girl who was to become the poetess became the goddess at
the general delivery window and superintendent of the stamp-licking
department of the home postoffice. The boy who was going to Confess was
raising the best corn in the county, and his wife was speaker of the
house.
Most of them were doing very well even Jim Lambert. Jim had become the
head of one of the big manufacturing plants of the South, with a lot of
men working for him. The committee that took him out behind the
schoolhouse to inform him he could not speak at commencement, would now
have to wait in line before a frosted door marked, "Mr. Lambert,
Private." They would have to send up their cards, and the watchdog who
guards the door would tell them, "Cut it short, he's busy!" before they
could break any news to him today.
They hung a picture of Mr. Lambert in the high school at the last
alumni meeting. They hung it on the wall near where the oleander stood
that night.
Dull boy or girl--you with your eyes tear-dimmed sometimes because you
do not seem to learn like some in your classes can you not get a bit of
cheer from the story of Jim?
Hours pass, and still as I sat in that hotel room I was lost in that
school picture and the twenty-one years. There were fifty-four young
people in that picture. They had been shaken these years in the barrel,
and now as I called the roll on them, most of them that I expected to
go up had shaken down and some that I expected to stay down had shaken
up.
Out of that fifty-four, one had gone to a pulpit, one had gone to
Congress and one had gone to the penitentiary. Some had gone to
brilliant success and some had gone down to sad failure. Some had found
happiness and some had found unhappiness. It seemed as tho almost every
note on the keyboard of human possibility had been struck by the one
school of fifty-four.
When that picture was taken the oldest was not more than eighteen, yet
most of them seemed already to have decided their destinies. The
twenty-one years that followed had not changed their courses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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