Anything that goes downward will run itself. Anything that goes upward has to be pushed. And going down the wrong path, we get bumped harder and harder until we listen. We are lucky if we learn the lesson with one bump. We are unlucky when we get bumped twice in the same place, for it means we are making no progress. When we are bumped, we should "stop, look, listen." "Safety first!" One time I paid a seeress two dollars to look into my honest palm. She said, "It hain't your fault. You wasn't born right. You was born under an unlucky star." You don't know how that comforted me. It wasn't my fault--all my bumps and coffee-pots! I was just unlucky and it had to be. How I had to be bumped to learn better! Now when I get bumped I try to learn the lesson of the bump and find the right path, so that when I see that bump coming again I can say, "Excuse me; it hath a familiar look," and dodge it. The seeress is the soothing syrup for mental infants. Blind Man's Fine Sight The other day I watched a blind man go down the aisle of the car to get off the train. Did you ever study the walk of a blind man? He "pussyfooted" it along so carefully. He bumped his hand against a seat. Then he did what every blind man does, he lifted his hand higher and didn't bump any more seats. I looked down my nose. "Ralph Parlette," I said to myself, "when are you going to learn to see as well as that blind man? He learns his lesson with one bump, and you have to go bumping into the same things day after day and wonder why you have so much 'bad luck'!" Are You Going Up or Down? Let me repeat, things that go downward will run themselves. Things that go upward have to be pushed. Going upward is overcoming. Notice that churches, schools, lyceums, chautauquas, reform movements--things that go upward--never run themselves. They must be pushed all the time. And so with our own lives. Real living is conscious effort to go upward to larger life. If you are making no effort in your life, if you are moving in the line of least resistance, depend upon it you are going downward. Look out for the bumps! Look over your community. Note the handful of brave, faithful, unselfish souls who are carrying the community burdens and pushing upward. Note the multitude making little or no effort, and even getting in the way of the pushers. Majorities do not rule. Majorities never have ruled. It is the brave minority of thinking, self-sacrificing people that decides the tomorrow of communities that go upward. Majorities are not willing to make the effort to rule themselves. They are content to drift and be amused and follow false gods that promise something for nothing. They must be led--sometimes driven--by minorities. People are like sheep. The shepherd can lead them to heaven--or to hell. Bumping the Prodigals