Oh, forget it! Drop it all. Purify your life and go on south all sweet again. We forget what we ought to remember and remember what we ought to forget. We need schools of memory, but we need schools of forgettery, even more. As you go on south and bless your valley, do you notice the valley does not bless you very much? Have you sadly noted that the people you help the most often are the least grateful in return? Don't wait to be thanked. Hurry on to avoid the kick! Do good to others because that is the way to be happy, but do not wait for a receipt for your goodness; you will need a poultice every time you wait. I know, for I have waited! We get so discouraged. We say, "I have gone far enough south." There is nobody who does not have that to meet. The preacher, the teacher, the editor, the man in office, the business man, the father and mother--every one who tries to carry on the work of the church, the school, the lyceum and chautauqua, the work that makes for a better community, gets discouraged at times. We fail to see what we are doing or why we are doing it. Sometimes we sit down completely discouraged and say, "I'm done. I'm going to quit. I have done my share. Nobody appreciates what I do. Let somebody else do it awhile." Stop! You are not saying that. The evil one is whispering that into your heart. His business is to stop you from going south. His most successful tool is discouragement, which is a wedge, and if he can get the sharp edge started into your thought, he is going to drive it deeper. You do not go south and overcome your obstacles and bless the valley for praise or blame, for appreciation or lack of it. You do it to live. You do it to remain a living river and not a stagnant, unhappy pond or swamp. YOU ARE SAVING YOURSELF BY SAVING OTHERS. GO ON SOUTH! Almost everybody is deceived. We work from mixed motives. We fool ourselves that we are working to do good, when as we do the good, if we are not praised or thanked for it, if people do not present us a medal or resolutions, we want to quit. That is why there are so many disappointed and disgruntled people in the world. They worked for outside thanks instead of inside thanks. They were trying to be personal saviours. They say this is an ungrateful world. O, how easy it is to say these things, and how hard it is to do them! Reaching the Gulf But because the Mississippi does these things, one day the train I was riding stopped in Louisiana. We had come to a river so great science has not yet been able to put a bridge across it. I watched them pile the steel train upon a ferry-boat. I watched the boat crossing a river more than a mile wide. Standing upon the ferry-boat, I could look down into the lordly river and then far north perhaps fifteen hundred miles to the little struggling streamlet starting southward thru the forests of Minnesota, there writing the first chapter of this wonderful book in the running brook.