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Wittgenstein at the Movies
Wittgenstein at the Movies
Cinematic Investigations
Edited by Béla Szabados and
Christina Stojanova

LEXINGTON BOOKS
A division of
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Lexington Books
A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.lexingtonbooks.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2011 by Lexington Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wittgenstein at the movies : cinematic investigations / edited by Béla Szabados and

Christina Stojanova.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-4885-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-4887-7
(electronic)
1. Wittgenstein (Motion picture) 2. Wittgenstein Tractatus (Motion picture) 3.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889-1951—In motion pictures.
PN1997.W5863W553 2011
791.43'72—dc22 2010052935

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

 For Haya and Stan Stein

and Yuli and Iskra Stojanov

 Contents

Introduction ix
Béla Szabados and Christina Stojanova

1 Showing, Not Saying: Filming a Philosophical Genius 1

William Lyons
2 Remarks on the Scripts for Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein 25
Michael O’Pray
3 The World Hued: Jarman and Wittgenstein on Color 33
Steven Burns
4 Sketches of Landscapes: Wittgenstein after Wittgenstein 49
Daniel Steuer
5 “How It Was Then”: Home Movies as History in Péter Forgács’s
Meanwhile Somewhere . . . 79
William C. Wees
6 Meaning through Pictures: Péter Forgács and Ludwig Wittgenstein 91
Béla Szabados and Andrew Lugg
7 Beyond Text and Image: Péter Forgács and his Wittgenstein
Tractatus 121
Christina Stojanova

Index 139
About the Contributors 145

vii
 Introduction
Béla Szabados and Christina Stojanova

The title of this book, Wittgenstein at the Movies, is deliberately ambiguous.

It promises to say something about Ludwig Wittgenstein’s love of movies,
the role they played in his life and philosophy, and recent films made about
him or his philosophy.
Wittgenstein loved the movies, especially American movies. He was fond
of Carmen Miranda and Betty Hutton and before visiting the United States in
the late 1940s, demanded in jest that he be introduced to Ms. Hutton. In his
memoirs Norman Malcolm, a former student, gives a lively idea of what it
was like to go to the movies with Wittgenstein. After a demanding lecture or
seminar, Wittgenstein would invite one of his favorite students to see “a
flick” and on the way to the cinema he would buy a bun or a pork pie and
munch on it while he watched the film.
Malcolm recalled that Wittgenstein’s “observation of the film was not
relaxed or detached. He leaned tensely forward in his seat and rarely took his
eyes off the screen. He hardly ever uttered comments on the episodes of the
film no matter how trivial or artificial it was, in order to free his mind
temporarily from the philosophical thoughts that tortured and exhausted
him.” He would sit in the front row as close to “the action” as he could get.
“This way the screen would occupy his whole field of vision, and his mind
would be turned away from the thoughts of the lecture and his feelings of
revulsion. Once he whispered ‘This is like a shower bath!’” (Malcolm 1966,
27–28).
What did Wittgenstein mean by saying such a thing? A shower cleanses
and refreshes. Was it his “sins” committed in the self-perceived flaws of his
lecture and discussion that had to be washed away? Did he need release and
distraction? One wonders why he felt this way about his seminars that by all
accounts were lively and nourishing albeit a struggle both for him and his
ix
x Introduction

students. Perhaps because in his passionate struggle to give expression to and

engage with “the problems that trouble us,” he was sometimes frustrated
because he could not articulate to his own satisfaction the difficult problems
he was treating. And in the discussion that followed, Wittgenstein said things
to students that he may have regretted: “It’s like talking to a stove.” Perhaps
in retrospect he was haunted by the realization that such remarks were not
helpful—they did not promote his aim to erect sign posts to help people
avoid the danger points at all the junctions where language—that immense
network of well-kept wrong turnings—set the same traps for everyone (Witt-
genstein 1998, 25). In any event, there is compelling biographical evidence
that Wittgenstein went to the movies to get away from philosophy rather than
to do philosophy as the title of this book might suggest.
But not so fast. Some remarks in his notebooks indicate a more complex
attitude toward the movies. In 1930, after watching “a very old film” at the
cinema, Wittgenstein remarked:

A modern film is to an old one as a present-day motor car is to one built 25 years
ago. The impression it makes is just as ridiculous and clumsy & the way film-
making has improved is comparable to the sort of technical improvement we see in
cars. It is not to be compared with the improvement—if it’s right to call it that—of
an artistic style. . . . What distinguishes all these developments from the formation of
a style is that spirit plays no part in them. (Wittgenstein 1998, 5)

This remark suggests that watching films was not merely a “rest for the
mind” but sparked thoughts in Wittgenstein that connect up with the role of
style in his aesthetics. For him, style is the “picture of the man” that is
expressive of “spirit” and puts a face on the work in contrast to its merely
mechanical or technical aspects. His “take” on art is that unless a work
exhibits a distinctive style, sensibility, or expressive cast, it is merely techne
rather than art. For Wittgenstein the epigram “Le style c’est l’homme même”
opens up a fresh perspective on artistic style: “It says that style is the picture
of the man” (Wittgenstein 1998, 89).
Wittgenstein’s remarks on “a very old film” can be read several ways: as
an observation that films of the early period were preoccupied with mastering
the techniques of the movie camera; as expressing doubts about the possibil-
ity that a film could exhibit a distinctive style or sensibility characteristic of
works of art; or even as conjuring up, by its conspicuous absence, the pos-
sibility of a film as a picture of its director or cinematographer—the film-
maker as auteur. But no matter how we read Wittgenstein’s remarks, it is
clear that for him the cinema was not simply a holiday for the mind.
Reflecting on his enjoyment of the cinema in his private notebooks in
1931, Wittgenstein linked being modern with enjoying film: “In one regard,”
he remarked,
 Introduction xi

I must be a very modern person since the cinema has such an extraordinarily benefi-
cial effect on me. I cannot imagine any rest for the mind more adequate to me than
an American movie. What I see & the music give me a blissful sensation perhaps in
an infantile way but therefore no less powerful. In general . . . a film is something
very similar to a dream & the thoughts of Freud are directly applicable to it. (Witt-
genstein 2003, 29–31)

He goes on to make further interesting remarks:

When I am gripped by a tragedy, in the cinema, for example, I always tell myself:
no, I won’t do it like that! Or: no, it shouldn’t be like that. I want to console the hero
& everyone. But that amounts to not understanding the occurrence as a tragedy.
That’s why I only understand the happy end (in the primitive sense). The downfall
of the hero I don’t understand—I mean, with the heart. So what I always want is to
hear a fairy tale. Therefore my enjoyment of movies. And there I am truly gripped &
moved by thoughts. . . . As long as it is not frightfully bad, [a film] always provides
me with food for thoughts & feelings. (Wittgenstein 2003, 97)

If this is one of the effects of the cinema on Wittgenstein, then Malcolm’s

remarks about it being a mere “shower”—simply a catharsis as it were—are
misleading. On Wittgenstein’s own account, movies nourish thoughts as well
as feelings, so for him, it seems, there is no getting away from philosophy.
There is only the peace of mind that comes with having a method that allows
him to do philosophy whenever he wants to:

The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy
when I want to.—The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer
tormented by questions which bring itself into question.—Instead, we now demon-
strate a method, by examples; and the series of examples can be broken off.—
Problems are solved (difficulties eliminated), not a single problem. There is not a
philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.
(Wittgenstein 2001, §133)

These biographical fragments give us a more complete picture of Wittgen-

stein at the movies and also suggest connections with his philosophy. There
is however another sense in which Wittgenstein is at the movies. In the art of
recent cinema two rather different but equally striking films invoke his name
and work. Out of Hungary comes Péter Forgács’s Wittgenstein Tractatus
(1992) and out of England comes Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993), two
films discussed at length in this book. Both films explore Wittgenstein’s
philosophical themes and character but they differ in approach, style, look
and feel, as well as ambition. If “rest for the mind” was exclusively what
Wittgenstein wanted out of the cinema, neither of these films would satisfy
him. Both are complex and experimental in character, both put a face on the
xii Introduction

work of art, both are a far cry from the “resting place” of the fun-films of
Carmen Miranda and Betty Hutton.
Although Jarman said that his film is “not a film of Ludwig Wittgenstein”
(Eagleton and Jarman 1993, 63), he takes a biographical narrative approach.
Throughout the film the historical subject Wittgenstein—not some fictional
character named Wittgenstein—is palpably in the foreground. The narrator is
the boy-Wittgenstein, a character immune to age, with an intimate personal
voice. He traces his existential and philosophical journey from Vienna to
Cambridge, his travels to the wilderness of Norway, his active military ser-
vice in the Great War, and so on. We are also given—in snapshot carica-
tures—insight into Wittgenstein’s attitude to his family and Cambridge
friends, in particular to Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes, as well
as indications about his distinctive teaching methods and style, his struggles
with logic and language, his relationship with students, and the evolution of
his philosophical perspective from the early work of the Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus to the later work of the Philosophical Investigations.
The film also delves into Wittgenstein’s character, his ethical/aesthetic
perspective, his love of music and his sexuality. Jarman takes Wittgenstein to
be unequivocally gay and attributes great philosophical significance to Witt-
genstein’s “discovery” of his gay sexual identity—indeed he traces the tran-
sition between the early and later philosophy to this discovery. Here we see
Jarman, the gay filmmaker, working on himself through working on Wittgen-
stein.
The script is witty, ironic, and often humorous, and its treatment of the
Bloomsbury Group brings out a lively sense of the absurd with its masterly
caricatures of Bertrand Russell, Lady Ottoline Morrell, and Lord Keynes.
The film is also effective as a source of inspiration for engaging with Witt-
genstein’s works as it draws the viewer into his world. Enough of Wittgen-
stein’s character, appearance, and accent are captured by Karl Johnson, an
actor who has a striking resemblance to the philosopher himself. Through his
expressive gestures and characteristic moods, Wittgenstein’s passionate en-
gagement with philosophical problems comes through clearly, making it easy
to see why he had such an effect on many of those who came in contact with
him.
The biographical and philosophical infelicities in the film reduce to ab-
surdity the idea that it is to be understood as a documentary. Jarman himself
brings this to the viewer’s attention when he remarks that “this is not a film
of Ludwig Wittgenstein,” although surely it is also true, for reasons already
mentioned, that it is a film about Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jarman is partly right
and partly wrong: right in the sense that the film is not a visual biography, a
documentary, or anything in the historical realm; nor is it a representation of
Wittgenstein. “My film,” Jarman remarks, “does not portray or betray Lud-
wig. It is there to open up. It’s logic” (Eagleton and Jarman 1993, 67). Yet he
 Introduction xiii

is also wrong, since the film’s significance, quips, ironies, insights, serious-
ness, and humor depend on what we know about the historical Wittgenstein
and his works. The film is best seen as a window into Wittgenstein’s life and
work since it engages both, and to Jarman the artist working on himself as he
is working on the film. So this is and is not a film about Ludwig Wittgen-
stein.
In sharp contrast to Jarman’s film, the voice in Forgács’s Wittgenstein
Tractatus is a distanced impersonal voice rendered even stranger by the
Hungarian accent of the “voice-over.” Wittgenstein’s head, detached from a
widely disseminated photograph, occasionally hovers above as a disembod-
ied voice intones central propositions from the seven sections of the Tracta-
tus, which in turn are accompanied by home movies. Aside from such photo-
graphic traces, Wittgenstein as a historical individual seems to disappear in
Forgács’s film, even though the script occasionally includes fragments from
Wittgenstein’s private notebooks. In contrast to the Jarman where the story
of a life and philosophy move and unfold sequentially, watching the Forgács
film we get a sense of the sub specie aeterni. In the Jarman there is theatre
and dialogue, characters and actors; in the Forgács there is the monotone
impersonal voice with a series of home movies showing unnamed individuals
and groups. The slices of filmed life are presented as isolated fragments
leaving a similar impression to that we get on first looking into the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus. The film not only throws light on the Tractatus, but
raises deep questions about that work and the core of Wittgenstein’s early
philosophy.
Another difference worth highlighting here: Terry Eagleton’s original
film script was extensively rewritten by Derek Jarman, so the script is twice
removed from the original source—namely Wittgenstein’s writings. This
contrasts with Forgács’s film, where the scriptwriter is Wittgenstein himself,
though Forgács does the selection and the editing. The same goes for the
images in the film by Forgács: it is found footage, as is the musical score.
Everything is already there but was gathered and made anew. This is very
much in the spirit of Wittgenstein’s philosophy: “You must say something
new & yet nothing but what is old. You must indeed say only what is old—
but all the same something new!” (Wittgenstein 1998, 45–46).
What aspects of the relationship between film and philosophy can we
uncover from reflecting on these two films? Two rather general questions
arise: What can cinema do for philosophy? And what can philosophy do for
cinema? To begin with the first: Both films can be used to inform people
about the facts of Wittgenstein’s life as well as his early and later philosophy.
Like biographies, a cinematic recreation of Wittgenstein’s life—his world,
milieu, and times—may draw us in and stimulate us to read his works.
Certainly, Jarman’s film is compelling enough to do this. But through the
mini-lectures and the conversations with the green Martian, Wittgensteinian
xiv Introduction

skills and techniques are also imparted: the method of example, the reduction
of the idea of a logically private language to absurdity, and the generation of
ethical problems in unexpected everyday settings; presenting and exploring
different possible worlds from our own; depicting counter-examples to gen-
eral theses. This is film at work in the service of philosophy.
All this, however, may seem a rather passive affair, since all we do is look
at and listen to representations of others doing philosophy. We ourselves may
not be involved at all. What is more, too many aphorisms asserted dogmati-
cally may mislead about the nature of philosophy as an activity. After all,
argument, questions, conversation, dialogue with those present as well as
past philosophers are at the very core of philosophy as a practice. So the
films may also be used to point to the limitations of film in doing philosophy:
to represent is one thing; to engage in the to and fro of an open philosophical
exploration—in analysis, conversation, and argument—another.
In their different ways both films act on and release the viewers’ imagina-
tive capacities as they carve out their own terrain and jurisdiction without
being reduced to a mere device in the service of philosophy. Viewers must
decide for themselves which film is more in tune with the spirit of Wittgen-
stein’s aesthetics and which, more closely, enacts the strange aphorism that
“ethics and aesthetics are one” (Wittgenstein 1961, 6.421).
Since these two films are rather different, and do different sorts of things,
a fruitful approach that is in keeping with Wittgenstein, is to “look and see”
what they do and how they shed light on Wittgenstein the person and his
philosophy, and the other way around. The Forgács film releases our imagi-
native capacities using the Tractatus as a spur to explore meaning through
pictures. The Jarman uses biographical vignettes, mini-lectures, and conver-
sations to provide insight into Wittgenstein’s character and his philosophical
activity. Factual errors do not seem to matter since the film is admittedly not
a historical document, even though it relies on Wittgenstein’s life as a back-
drop.
Few if any among the great philosophers have engaged artists and critics
more than Ludwig Wittgenstein. Novelists, composers, and critics have been
inspired and nourished by his works and methods, yet his influence on the art
of cinematography has not been adequately investigated by philosophers or
film theorists. The aim of this book of essays is to explore Wittgenstein’s
influence on the art of filmmaking and draw connections between philoso-
phy, film, and broad cultural issues. The exploration proceeds with close
attention to Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein and Péter Forgács’s Wittgenstein
Tractatus.
The essays take up various themes including the relation of the films to
the early philosophy of the Tractatus and the later philosophy of the Investi-
gations; affinities between Wittgenstein’s methods and how the two films are
made and cut; issues concerning meaning as picture and picture as meaning;
 Introduction xv

the status of assertions about the past in the Tractatus; how to write a film
script in the spirit of Wittgenstein’s philosophy that shows, rather than bab-
bles. Since films show as well as say, do the films under consideration show
the problematic nature of the say/show distinction? How are we to make
sense of a picture or visual representation unless we already have a back-
ground against which the picture has meaning? Are there affinities between
the role of retrieved home movies and the role of ordinary language in the
Tractatus and the Investigations? How is the ordinary and the everyday
transformed respectively into art and philosophy?
The essays also address issues concerning the historical, social, and cultu-
ral context of Jarman’s and Forgács’s films and their reception; questions of
biography and authenticity; of Freudian preoccupations about how film and
philosophy relate to desire and sexuality; whether film’s value is essentially
cathartic and expressive, or does it lie in its content and the representations of
actions and events. Are film and philosophy essentially humanistic disci-
plines in that both are primarily concerned with the generation of meaning
and the enhancement of our expressive powers? Other topics broached in-
clude whether philosophy is in the films or is externally imposed on the
films. Finally, what might be the connection between film and modernity.
The book project “Wittgenstein at the Movies” began in the winter of
2009 at the Humanities Research Institute, University of Regina, where we
organized a Wittgenstein mini-film festival. A screening of Jarman’s and
Forgács’s films on Wittgenstein was followed by our presentations that
prompted lively public discussion. The project continued in a more formal
scholarly setting with symposia at the Canadian Society for Aesthetics at the
Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities in Ottawa, May 2009, and
subsequently at the 2010 meetings of the Canadian Philosophical Association
in Montréal. We then solicited additional contributions from prominent
scholars in film and Wittgenstein studies, thus commissioning papers from
Steven Burns, William Lyons, Michael O’Pray, Daniel Steuer, and William
C. Wees. Here are brief sketches of the papers written with the aim of
enlivening readers’ interest in them rather than to summarize their contents.
In “Showing, Not Saying: Filming a Philosophical Genius” William
Lyons sets out to explore some of the immense practical problems involved
in writing a film script about a cult intellectual figure that is not intellectually
meretricious. Using the example of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the
author confronts such problems as how to show, rather than didactically and
boringly talk about Wittgenstein’s philosophical genius, and how to generate
iconic intellectual “quotations,” both visual and auditory, that will come to
inhabit the viewers’ memories long after they have left the cinema.
Michael O’Pray’s “Remarks on the Scripts for Derek Jarman’s Wittgen-
stein” discusses the two scripts for Derek Jarman’s film Wittgenstein, the
original written by the Marxist literary theorist Terry Eagleton and the final
Random documents with unrelated
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 VIII
"I FORGOT"

Oh, how much trouble this little fox causes!

Out West near Fort William, once occurred a serious collision—all
because an engineer forgot to watch the safety signals! A great train
was wrecked and a whole railway district held up for hours; and some
lives were lost—because a brakeman forgot to guard an open switch!
It's a bad fox, girls and boys!
It makes your character ragged and slovenly. It wastes people's
time. It causes endless confusion. It holds up plans. Somebody forgets
to do his duty and that upsets all some one else has to do; and so it
goes on and around, until things become a regular mix-up.
There is a place for a good forgetter!
It is just to forget your worries and to forget yourself; and to
forget the nasty things people do to you; and to forget your mistakes,
if you are sorry for them; and to forget that you were not invited to
somebody's party; and to forget that you fell down yesterday, if you got
up again and are still on your feet!
But it is important to have a good memory too.
A little girl forgot to post her mother's letter, and it stopped the
chance of a pleasant holiday for her grandmother, who was waiting for
directions.
A little boy forgot to close the door of the nursery when he was
told, and the baby nearly died of pneumonia.
In the days of the great war so recently closed, they had to spend
millions of dollars on making shells. They had to be very carefully
made. If a shell was more than 3/1000 of an inch more in diameter
than was called for, it was sent back. It was important not to forget
this. In fact, they had to watch against fuzz getting on the shell from
the gloves worn by the workers.
One day an inspector found a shell that would not fit. Some one
forgot to watch against the fine lint and sent in the shell which was at
once sent back.
And surely if it was so important to remember all these fine points
about a death-dealing shell, it is just as important not to forget the
little things of life, that may spoil the whole day.
A bridge-builder made out all his plans and set the men to work,
and when it was put together it was seventeen feet too short, because
the plan-maker forgot one little measure that knocked the whole work
out.
I read a rather strange thing that occurred across the line among
our Southern neighbours.
A bill was passed, allowing certain goods to come in free of paying
duty. Among them were what was called foreign fruit-plants. You know
what that stroke between the two words is. It is a hyphen that joins
the words and makes them one. A clerk was copying the bill and forgot
all about the hyphen, and made the bill read "fruit, plants," etc., and
for a whole year, until their parliament met, all foreign fruit came in
free; and they say the government lost nearly $2,500,000, all because
a clerk forgot a hyphen and put in a comma instead.
But it is not only the mistake that costs, but if we will just think
that it is the memories that store up our thoughts. It is the things
marked in memory that we use for all our mind's growth.
A girl or boy who is always forgetting will some day find the life
grown up and full of emptiness; for it is what you remember that
makes the furniture in your soul's living-rooms; and if you keep on
forgetting, your soul will have bare walls, and bare floors, and all you
will hear will be echoes.
Be alert. Keep your eyes open. Attend to business. Put your mind
on things. Do not say, "I forgot!" Be ashamed to! You have no right to
forget!
You can pardon an old man whose teeth are all out and whose hair
is all off, and who is bent with age, but you have no excuse.
Your forgetter has no right to be working at all.
Stop forgetting!—Remember!

IX
"BY-AND-BY"

"Oh, dear me! What a child that is! Johnny, will you please do that
errand for me?"
"Yes, Mother, by-and-by!"'
"Mary, will you pick up your things and tidy your room? It looks as
though a storm had struck it!"
"Oh, yes, I will, by-and-by!"
When are you going to do your home work? By-and-by!
When are you going to start that job you wanted to do? By-and-
by!
When are you going to be useful? By-and-by!
When are you going to bed? By-and-by!
When are you going to get up? By-and-by!
When? When? When?—By-and-by! By-and-by! By-and-by!
 "By-and-by is a very bad boy,
Shun him at once and forever;
For he that goes with By-and-by
Soon comes to the town of Never!"

They say that Rothschild, one of the wealthiest men of the world, made
the beginning of his fortune by acting at the moment. He was in
Brussels and heard the report of the battle, and spurred his horse and
paid a large sum to be ferried across a river; and got to London early in
the morning before the news was abroad; and laid the foundations of
his wealth in a few hours.
That is one of the roads to success—being prompt.
The dilly-dallying, shirking, waiting girl or boy will always be at the
tail-end of things, and will never catch up enough to catch on.
Do you want to catch on?
Then do it now—not by-and-by!
There is a little poem printed in Messenger for the Children. I want
to repeat it to you:

PUT-OFF TOWN

Did you ever go to Put-Off town,

Where the houses are old and tumble-down,
And everything tarries and everything drags,
With dirty streets and people in rags?

On the street of Slow lives Old Man Wait,

And his two little boys named Linger and Late;
With unclean hands and tousled hair,
 And a naughty little sister named Don't Care.

Grandmother Growl lives in this town,

With her two little daughters called Fret and Frown;
And Old Man Lazy lives all alone
Around the corner on Street Postpone.

Did you ever go to Put-Off town

To play with the little girls, Fret and Frown,
Or to the home of Old Man Wait,
And whistle for his boys to come to the gate?

To play all day in Tarry Street,

Leaving your errands for other feet?
To stop or shirk, or linger, or frown,
Is the nearest way to this old town.

X
BOLDNESS

There is a splendid kind of boldness.

One day, years ago, sometime after the death of Jesus, two of His
disciples, Peter and John, were arrested and brought before their bitter
enemies who were ready and able to kill them. And Peter, the noble
soul, stood up without a pang of fear and just told them face to face
what he thought; and then the New Testament story says: "When they
saw the boldness of Peter and John they marvelled."
It is a fine thing to see men and women and girls and boys who
are not afraid to do and stand for the right.
Listen to this story which I will give you just as I got it:

He was small for his age, worked in a signal box, and booked the
trains. One day the men were chaffing him about being so small. One
of them said:
"You will never amount to much. You will never be able to pull
these levers; you are too small."
The little fellow looked at them.
"Well," said he, "as small as I am, I can do something which none
of you can do."
"Ah! what is that?" they all said.
"I don't know that I ought to tell you," he replied.
But they were anxious to know, and urged him to tell what he
could do that none of them were able to do. Said one of the men:
"What is it, boy?"
"I can keep from swearing and drinking!" replied the little fellow.
There were blushes on the men's faces, and they didn't seem
anxious for any further information on the subject.

Was not he the right kind of a bold boy?

Or what do you think of a lot of officers at a dinner, drinking and
telling unclean tales.
Everybody had to tell a story or sing a song.
One young, shy fellow said, "I cannot sing but I will give a toast in
water." And the toast he gave was "Our Mothers."
 The rest were so touched by his splendid courage that they shook
his hand and thanked him, and the Colonel said it was one of the
bravest acts he ever saw.
A great Scotch preacher was so brave that it was said, "he never
feared the face of man."
Every girl and boy should be bold in that way—fearless, heroic, full
of courage and with a stiff, brave heart.
Some day you will read and study Shakespeare, and he will give
you this message:

"What's brave, what's noble, let's do it, and

make death proud to take us."

Another writer, whose name I do not know, is quoted as saying:

"We make way for the man who boldly pushes past
us."

Dear girls and boys, was it not a great moment for Canada when a little
handful of Canadians stood at Ypres, in the first poison gas attack and
dare to face it, and stand fast? Their boldness helped to stem the tide,
and that first stand was the beginning of the events that won the war
for the Allies.
That sort of a bold person makes history, and makes the history of
their country.
The poet Emerson puts it this way:
 "Not gold, but only men can make
A people great and strong.
Men who for truth and honour's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly—
They build a nation's pillars deep
And lift them to the sky."

But there is a boldness that acts on life like foxes in a garden.

It is seen in the rude, rough, saucy, forward girl or boy.
The boy who becomes a "smart Alec." Sometimes other boys call
him "Smarty."
Or the girl who does not know how to blush; with no sense of
shame. You can always tell them. She dresses loud, and laughs loud,
and makes a fool of herself on the street; and he stares at you and acts
impudently, and thinks he is manly.
They like to be looked at, and stare back.
They lack gentle, quiet refinement, and if that spirit grows, it will
ruin the character and make the girl or boy disliked by everybody who
cares for a gentleman or a lady; and in later years they will be
ashamed.
Take a dictionary if you have one, and see the two uses of the
word.

Bold—heroic, brave, gallant, courageous, fearless.

Bold—rude, without shame, impudent.
Which are you going to be?

XI
REVENGE

This is a fox whose bite brings blood.

It represents a very bad spirit.
It means, "I am going to pay him back." "I am going to get even."
"You just see, I'll catch him and make him sorry!"
It does make him sorry, not in the sense of being penitent and
wishing he had not done it, or longing to undo it; but sorry because of
the blow he gets in return.
It is a bitter heart that takes revenge. It goes with a hard,
unforgiving spirit.
It is an awful way for girls and boys to act, because they should be
so bright and smiling. They are so fresh and sunny. They are so young
they should not grow hard like an old shell.
They ought to be all mercy, forgiveness, kindness, because they
have so much of it shown to them.
I hate to see a kiddie who is always looking for a chance to hit
some one who happened to hit him.
Johnny Pay-him-back once was hurt when he was playing with a
schoolmate, and instead of turning up a rosy face and laughing it off,
the way the sun does when a piece of mud flies up in the face of the
sky, he opened the door of his heart and this little fox began to chew
away all his finer feelings. As the fox chewed, Johnny chewed on his
hurt, just the way he was chewing a wad of gum in his mouth. The
more he chewed the hotter he grew under his collar.
You see, in your heart there is a cooling plant called Love, but the
pesky little fox chewed it all up, and he got so hot that he paid the boy
back and sent him to bed for a whole month to suffer pain; simply
because he wanted revenge.
I read of a man once who was injured by another man of high
rank in society, and he said to a friend, "Would it not be manly to
resent it?" The friend answered, "Yes, but it would be God-like to
forgive!"
It is not easy to forgive. It takes a real man to do it, but it makes
you very much like God, who forgives us so much day after day!
And the gentle, forgiving spirit does so much to make the world
bright, while the revengeful spirit adds so much to its gloom. Put that
in a house or a school, and you pull down all the blinds and stop all the
music of life.
Part of the horrors of the war were bred of revenge.
Germany had piled up all she could on France in 1870. France
could not forget it, and the terrible thing about revenge is it burns so
long. It may be that even now after victory, sparks of that old fire are
still burning in the heart of France. If it should blaze up nobody can tell
how awful the results would be.
Brighten up your hearts by keeping them sweet with mercy.
Instead of making yourself dark with the desire to pay back—just
shine up a little. Keep the air fresh, and polish off your windows and
put the flowers of kindness on the sills and hand out mercy to those
who pass by.
Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy."
And if you and I can't forgive, how can we hope to be forgiven?
 Oh, there is nothing like the sunny life to cast out the shadows of
hate.
It was the radiant sunshine of Pollyanna that changed a whole
community and brought two people together who had not spoken for
years; so
Smile, don't frown. Love, don't hate.

"Are you feeling cross to-day?

Stop and smile.
And of course, if you feel gay,
Why, you'll smile.
You will find that it will pay
If everywhere and every day
At your work or at your play
You will smile. Just smile."

It was a piece of fine advice one gave another. It was this:

"Smile a while,
And while you smile
Another smiles!
And soon there will be miles
And miles
Of smiles.
And life's worth while
Because you smile."
May I add:

Don't frown and groan

Or throw your stone.
But pile up high
Yes, just sky-high
Your joy and love.
Then by-and-by
Down from above
The holy dove
Will come and move
Our world with love.

XII
UNTRUTHFULNESS

"Oh, what do you want to talk so much about that?" said a boy to his
mother. "It was only a white lie!"
And the poor little silly thought that you got your opinion of a lie
by its colour!
A bad man may be white, or brown, or black, or yellow, but he is a
bad man all the same! The colour does not matter; and so is a lie a bad
thing, whether it is little or big, or white or black. I'll tell you why, girls
and boys!
1. White lies give you a habit of telling lies, and when you get the
habit you become a liar! In fact, white lies are almost the worse of the
two, because a big black lie would scare you, but the little white lie
eats into you without you knowing it.
2. White lies are like that awful disease called Cancer.
We hear a lot about it to-day, and the doctors are puzzled because
they do not know how to trace it. But it eats and eats away until some
of us have seen most loathsome forms of it consuming the poor body,
while the life is still there, often in very intense suffering. And the
doctors say, "Take care of the first pimple and have it cut out." Cancer
often starts in a tiny spot or the smallest growth.
Now, the liar is just the same. He starts with lie pimples—just little
white spots on his language tongue, but they grow until they eat away
his best life.
In the East there is a dread disease called Leprosy.
It often begins with a little white spot, which grows and grows
until the body gets rotten, and the poor fellow who has the disease has
to be sent away by himself. And white lies grow and grow until the man
becomes an evil one, who sometimes has to be sent off by himself in a
jail, and the boy is sent off to some industrial home to keep him away
so he cannot hurt others, until he has learned a better way of talking
and living.
Be afraid of a lie!
3. They make people whom you cannot trust, and almost anything
else I would wish for you than to be one who cannot be trusted.
You can't rely on a liar. Not only one who lies with his tongue, but
who acts lies. He gets by-and-by so full of lies that if you try to lean on
him, down you go!
Out in the West, one of the great wheat elevators at Fort William
suddenly slid down into the river, because the foundation was too weak
to hold it up.
 And a liar is like that! He is a bad foundation for home or school or
society!
He caves in if any weight is put on him.
Let the girls and boys who study about these foxes watch this bad
one, and be straight and true and upright and strong, so people can be
sure of them.
I like the story I read once of a Scottish schoolboy who was called
"Little Scotch Granite." When the boys were supposed to tell how often
they had whispered in school—and if they had not at all, got a perfect
mark called "Ten"—they got the habit of saying "Ten," even when they
had broken the school rule. Little Scotty came, and although he was
bright and full of fun he would not say "Ten"—although his record got
very low.
But he changed the whole school.
He was always a good sport, but he never would tell a lie to save
himself.
At the close of the term he was away down on the list, but when
the teacher said he had decided to give a special medal to the most
faithful boy in the school and asked to whom he would give it—forty
voices called out together, "Little Scotch Granite!"

XIII
"I CAN'T BE BOTHERED!"

Did you ever hear any girl or boy say that?

"Sonny, go and do that little job, will you?" "Oh, I can't be
bothered!"
 "Johnny, your sister Mary is having a hard time with her home
work. Go and see if you can help her." "Oh, I can't be bothered!"
A load of firewood was dumped at the back gate and Billy, who
was lying kicking up his heels on the porch in the sun, was asked to go
and pile some of it in the cellar. "Oh, I can't be bothered! Wait till Dad
comes home, he'll do it!"
The next door neighbour had a sick baby and Nellie was asked to
go to the drug store for something. Now, Nellie really loved babies and
she was a good little kiddie usually; but she was busy on some ribbons
she was fixing for herself—so busy she forgot to shut the garden gate
and that fox came in and bit one of the flowers off her soul, and she
said, "Oh, don't bother me!"
My, girls and boys, you let that fox loose in your garden, and he'll
make an awful mess of it! He'll chew up the loveliest thing and leave a
wreck!
If he gets abroad in the home or the church or the city, or society,
he'll ruin things without a doubt.
Because:
1. If everybody said that nothing ever would be done to help
anybody, this poor old world would be left so that none of us would
want to live in it.
Of course, I know there is a lot of "bother" that we should not
bother with—the "bother" that your mother means when she says,
"Stop bothering the baby!"—the "bother" that means teasing, and
vexing and annoying, and making yourself a nuisance.
But think where you would have been if your mother and father
had never bothered over you.
Think of where the world would have been if all men and women
had refused to be bothered about its history. It would have had no
heroes, no authors, and no leaders, and what we call history would
have been a perfect mess!
It is because savages do not bother that we have the dark places
where the missionary goes and bothers his soul to help; and if he did
not, there would be no progress; and if he never had gone, you and I
would still be savages!
Whenever you are tempted to say, "Don't bother me!"—just
remember and be glad that it was bothering about things gave you
home and friends and school and all that makes your life worth while!

2. There is another queer thing about bothering.

A lot of girls and boys never think it half as much a bother to bother
about some people outside as they do to bother about people in their
own homes. Some boys, and girls too, can be as sweet as an all-day
sucker when some other lady asks them to go a message, and as sour
as a dose of vinegar when their own mother wants something done!
"Oh, yes, dear Mrs. Smith, it will be no trouble at all to take that
letter to the post. I'll gladly go!"
"Oh, confound it, Mother! I can't do that! I wanted to go down to
the pond to skate!"
Girls and boys! Don't say, "I can't be bothered!"
Bothering for others is the bliss of life!
If you want to be happy, aid some one to-day!

XIV
THANKLESSNESS
Don't you love to hear the gentle voice of a child say, "Thank you!"?
Don't you like to see a girl or boy that feels and shows gratitude?
Everything in Nature seems to have it!
The birds twittering in the tree-tops always seem to be chirping,
"Thanks." The flowers bordering the green lawn breathe out a
fragrance that makes you so glad, it must be the odour of thanks! The
sun is so glorious and scatters its rays so brightly, I think if you could
hear it speaking as it shines, you would hear it saying, "Oh, I am so
thankful I have all this power of sifting down these drops of sunlight!"
When the rain sees the brown-burnt grass starting up into bright
greenness, how thankful it must feel for its ability to refresh! I think
even the wind is glad it can shake things up and scatter nasty germs
and clean the air that people breathe!

"All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all."

And I really believe there is not one that is not glad and thankful for
being and doing!
There is no spirit so dark, unhappy and unattractive as the one
that is thankless.
Shakespeare says:

"Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend

More hideous in a child
Than the sea monster."
And again he says:

"How sharper is it than a serpent's tooth

To have a thankless child."

Once Jesus cured ten lepers, and you know leprosy was a dreadful
disease that little by little ate away the body and turned it into a rotting
sore; and of the ten who were healed of that frightful trouble, only one
came back to say, "I thank you!"
Isn't it a lovely sight to see the sweet spirit of a thankful heart
saying it—to find people who appreciate what you do—that is, who
think it is worth something, for appreciation just means putting a value
on, and they say so!
The Bible says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so."
Don't keep it to yourself. Say so! Pass it on! Tell some one you are
glad they did something for you!
Everybody dislikes a girl or boy who is like a sponge, always
soaking in!
I saw a lovely flower once. At first it was only a dirty-looking bulb.
But it was put in nice clean water, in a glass, and soon beautiful white
rootlets began to fill up the bottle; and one day the bulb was so glad
that it was no longer a nasty earthy-looking brown bulb, but had
graceful white roots, and a bud shooting out that it burst in a splendid
poem of thanks; only the poem was called a flower, and its name was
Hyacinth!
We all love to see a thankful life—At home it makes the
atmosphere so soft and helpful—At school it straightens wrinkles off
the teacher and fills the room with light—With one another it acts like
good oil in an automobile. It makes things run smoother.
And girls and boys, God likes it too!
There is a fable of a lion that lay hot and tired, trying to sleep,
when some field mice ran over his body and made him so mad he
clapped down his paw and was going to tear it when the little mouse
pled for mercy in such a way that the lion set him free.
Sometime later he heard a great roaring and found it was the lion
caught by hunters in a great net. He remembered the mercy of the
lion, and telling him not to fear, he set to work with his little sharp
teeth and gnawed away at the cords and knots of the trap and set the
lion free.
It is fine to be thankful.
It is even finer to prove it by doing things that make others
thankful.
Be thankful for home, and school, for church and gospel.
Be thankful you are not children in a heathen land.
Be thankful for your happy girl and boy life.
Be thankful God cares for you.
A minister once told a bishop of a wonderful escape he had from a
burning ship. He called it a "great providence of God."
"Yes," said the bishop, "but I know a greater. I know a ship where
nothing happened and it arrived safely." That was God's providence
too, for which he was thankful.
And all your life God is working over you.
Are you thankful?
And do you show it by helping others and being kind to those who
are kind to you?
 There is a legend from Norway, that wonderful sea-washed land in
Europe, so full of tales that girls and boys like. It is called the legend of
the "Gertrude Bird."
It is a woodpecker that is said to have been a woman once, who
was making bread, when two men passed by who happened to be
Christ and His disciple Peter, although she did not know.
They asked for some of the dough, for they had had a long walk
and fast; and she pinched a piece off when lo, it grew till it filled the
bake box. So she said, "No, that is too much," and pinched a piece off
it, when the same thing happened! Three times it happened, and each
time she got more selfish and hard and stingy. At last, as she saw how
much dough she was getting, she said to the two strangers, "I cannot
give you any. Go on, you can't stop here!"
They passed on and then she knew them; and oh, she got humble
and sorry, and fell down asking for pardon, and the Christ said, "I gave
you much, but you had no thanks. Now I'll try poverty. After this you
must get your food between the bark and the tree. But because you
are sorry, when your clothing is all black with your sorrow, it will stop,
because then you will have learnt to be thankful!"
And so she was punished for a while by becoming a woodpecker,
picking her food between the bark and the tree, until as she grew older
her back and wings all got black; and then God turned them all white
again!
Dear girls and boys, God loves you and me to be thankful!

XV
CRUELTY
There are two ways you can get a bad bite from the fox called Cruelty.
(1) By being cruel to people. Of course, most normal girls and
boys would hardly like to be called cruel; and yet how often you can be
without just knowing its name.
A boy that is a bully is a cruel boy. At school he likes to lord it over
other boys, especially if they are smaller than he is.
I knew a boy once in a school in Toronto, who at recess was
knocked down by a bigger boy who pushed his face into a snow bank
and sat on him until he was in an agony of suffocation. I don't suppose
the boy realized what he was doing, but he was a bully just the same.
He is the fellow who likes to see smaller fellows afraid of him, and
likes to strut around with the feeling that he is cock of the walk!
I was going to a funeral one day, and saw a large boy on the
street, seated on a small boy who was lying helpless on his back and
enduring all kinds of nasty actions by the young bully. If I had not been
at the head of the funeral, I would have stopped and gone and
spanked him!
How boys hate a bully. He is a coward, you know, at heart. A real
brave boy will never take advantage of some one weaker and smaller
than himself. A real brave hero protects others. The boy who hurts
some one who can't defend himself is a mean coward. It does not
matter how big his breast is or how far it sticks out, his inside heart is
small, and narrow and hard. Now, don't you be like that!
(2) You can be cruel to animals—torturing them—loving to hurt
them, just for the fun of killing. It is so strange the way some people
think they are having no sport unless something is suffering.
"It's a fine day," some one is reported as saying, "let us go out and
kill something."
 We live in a day when Children's Aid Societies and Humane
Societies are telling us of the beauty of a kind life, and that even
animals are God's creatures and should be treated with reverence, or at
least with the gentleness that will not cause unnecessary pain.
The cruel spirit hardens us. It takes away what learned men call
sensitiveness; i.e., it makes us so we do not feel. It makes our hearts
like our hands sometimes get when not cared for—it makes callous
marks; and when fine feeling is lost, we are less than we ought to be.
A little Indian girl, the educated daughter of a chief, said she could
never forget the first time she ever heard God's name.
In her play she found a wounded bird by her tent and picked it up
and said, "This is mine." One of the men who saw her said, "What have
you?" "A bird," she said, "it's mine."
He looked at it and said, "No, it's not yours. You must not hurt it."
"Not mine," she said, "then whose is it?" "It's God's," he said. "He can
care for it. Give it back to Him." She felt scared and awed. "Who is
God? Where is God? How will I give it back?" "Go and lay it down near
its nest," he said, "and tell God there is His bird."
She went very softly back and laid it down and said, "God, there is
your bird."—And she never forgot!
Be kind to all things, girls and boys.

"There's nothing so kingly as kindness

And nothing so royal as truth."

And watch carefully that you may not be a cruel girl or boy to any
person or to any of God's creatures.
 XVI
COWARDLINESS

If there is any one in the world that a boy or a girl admires, it is a hero.
You are all hero-worshippers.
You know how big you feel if you ever get a chance to shake
hands with a great man who had made a name for himself, and if he is
a great national hero and he speaks to you, why you never forget it;
and you blow about it to all your chums!
When the Prince of Wales was in Vancouver, a little girl presented
a bouquet to him, and I fancy she felt so big that her dress-waist grew
very tight as she swelled up.
When I was a little boy, I had a very learned and eloquent
minister; and I used to watch him, and made up my mind to be just
like him, and to wear a gray silk hat some day. He was my hero.
It is a fine thing to be a hero and to love a hero; and one of the
things we all believe our heroes possess is bravery.
No girl or boy would ever knowingly worship a coward.
The very fact that we have heroes that always stand to us for big,
brave, noble people, should make us anxious to be big, brave and
noble ourselves.
Everybody admires Scott who died in the search for the South
Pole; and Shackleton who died on his way to explore that part of the
earth. Everybody has learned to think highly of the fearless John Knox,
who was not afraid to talk back to the Queen when she did wrong; or
Luther, who defied the Emperor and the whole Empire because he
knew he was right. It was one of the greatest moments in history when
the little monk stood straight up and looked his enemies in the eye, and
said, "I will not retract. I can do no other. Here I stand!"
 When you think of people like that, how it makes us ashamed of
ourselves when fear grips our heart.
And yet, cowardice is not quite the same as fear.
Wellington, England's great general, once in a battle ordered a
young officer to a dangerous spot. The young fellow turned deadly
pale, but put spurs to his horse and went straight to duty. And General
Wellington said, "There goes a courageous man. He is afraid, but he
only thinks of duty!"
Nor is physical courage the highest kind. That is a matter of
physical nerve and sometimes of health. But moral courage is still
higher—the very highest kind.
A poet once wrote:

"One dared to die, a swift moment's pace

Fell in war's forefront, laughter on his face,
Bronze tells the tale in many a market-place.

"One dared to live the whole day through,

Felt his life blood ooze like morning dew,
And smiled for duty's sake, and no one knew."

Neither were cowards, but I think the second was the braver, don't
you?
Now, there are different ways of being cowards and of being
brave. If you can't stand sneers when you are right, but give in
because of laughs, you are a coward at heart. If you are afraid to do
right, you are a coward, but if you can do it even when you are afraid,
you are a brave hero.
 If you can stand against a crowd when the crowd is wrong, and
stand there even if you are the only one, you are brave and will never
have the coward heart!
The coward spirit, especially the spirit of a moral coward, eats the
power out of your life, and the only way to avoid it is to dare to do
right, and dare to be true.
Sometimes it takes a lot out of you, but it is worth while.
The boys who stood the trenches and braved bullets and shells
and mud stains and never faltered, were courageous. Those who
funked were always despised cowards; and the girl or boy who stands
strong wherever duty calls is a brave life, and will never be bitten by
the fox called Coward.

XVII
DISHONESTY

Did you ever really hear in your heart and believe in your very soul that
"An honest man's the noblest work of God"?
What is honesty?
It is the quality of your character that always rings true.
You can always tell when a bell has a crack in it. It does not ring
true.
And you can tell when a girl or boy has a crack somewhere in his
character. He or she does not give a clear ringing sound. One of the
worst kind of cracks is dishonesty.
You can't trust that kind of person. He always has to be watched.
 What a horrid kind of child that is, from whom you dare never take
your eyes!
But when you see a real honest girl or boy, how you admire the
sight.
They will not cheat. They play fair. They are true sports. They
won't take advantage of you when your back is turned.
You know how even in school games you like a real sport, who
plays the game and obeys the rules of the game.
You can't have a game with any other kind. He spoils everything
and you can't have real life with a cheat. He spoils the school and
disgraces a house.
More than that, an honest person will not take what does not
belong to them. A lot of girls and boys forget the difference between
"mine" and "thine."
Then when they grow up they spoil society, and if they go far
enough, they become that awful thing, "a thief."
An honest girl and boy is one with honour bright.
A looking-glass always shines when it is polished bright.
A pool of water is very beautiful when you can look right down into
it and see clear through it—
And so is a boy and girl who has no mud in the eye or in the soul.
It is simply great to be a life on the square, aboveboard, with
nothing to conceal; what is called transparent, so that the light shines
throughout, with no pretending to be what it is not; no scamping work
and trying to get things without paying for them. You can't anyhow!
You always get in the end what you pay for.
Did you ever hear some one described as "four square"—standing
true, upright, facing everywhere with a clear eye and an undimmed
soul?
 It is a fine thing to have a life with no spots in it, and one of the
very worst spots is to be false and dishonest—
And it always comes home some day—
A wonderful book called "Silas Marner" tells of a young man who
stole the money that old Silas had gathered and kept under the boards
of his cottage floor.
For many years no one ever knew where it went.
It nearly broke the heart of Silas, only in hunting for it he found
the golden curls of a little child who helped to save him and make a
good man of him.
Near by was an old pit, full of water, and some years later in
draining off the water, they found a skeleton with a bag of gold beside
him. It was the bones of the young fellow who stole it, and who had
fallen in, years before, and been drowned.
But there at last, it was all seen, and his dishonesty was published
to the whole district.
And dishonesty does come out, and even if the dishonest act is
never known in itself, it comes out in the life that has lost its truth and
beauty and grown mean and unworthy, so that nobody believes in it.
It leaves a bad black stain wherever any one is dishonest.
Therefore, dear girls and boys, be honest.

"Be true, little laddie, be true,

From your cap to the toe of your shoe."

XVIII
"LIMPY LATE"
There are some people who are like a cow's tail—they are always
behind.
They go to bed late and they get up late. They go to school late
and to church. The only thing they are never late for is their meals, and
if their mothers were like them their meals would be late too.
You sometimes read in the papers of "the late Mr. So and So,"
which means they are dead and are no longer Mr. So and So that used
to be.
But there are some who do not have to wait till they die to be
called "the late Johnny" and "the late Mary." They come strolling along
after everything is started.
I taught school once, and had a scholar who came in any old time.
He was a most trying sort of a boy. He always missed his lessons, and I
did not know what to do with him. He loitered on the way and was
absent-minded; and spoiled his class; and took up my time, for I
always had to say a thing all over again for him.
One day I saw him coming and met him at the door with a very
big welcome and offered to shake hands, and told him how glad we all
were to see him; and he was so ashamed he cried and was never late
again. He did not want any more such greetings.
Even big people are like that.
If a Committee meets, they come in when it is partly through and
waste everybody's time by asking what was done, and it has to be said
all over again, and is very hard on one's temper.
They are not often late for a party, or for anything that is going to
give them fun, but for real earnest things, they are never early.
They are like the Irishman who came panting to the station just in
time to see the train moving away up the yard, and cried out, "Hie,
there! There's a man aboard left behind!"—And girls and boys, if you
practice the habit of being late, you'll be left behind too, and life's train
will go off without you.
It's a very bad habit. It makes you slovenly. It puts ragged edges
in your work. Nothing is ever done. You are always trying to catch up.
You knock everybody's plans in pieces. It makes a nuisance of you; for
who wants girls and boys who are always running up when they should
be running ahead?
It puts a limp into you, and you stay at the tail-end instead of
being what every bright smart girl and boy ought to be—up in the van,
right at the front.
You don't want to be a tail-ender, I am sure—a kind of "might-
have-been."
You should have some business get-up to you.—

"Alert and at the prow

Of life's broad deck
To seize the passing moment big with fate
From opportunity's extended hand."

Take care of being Limpy Late, for if you let that spirit grow, some day
you will be "Too late" and that makes two of the saddest words in the
language.

XIX
"SISSY SLOW"
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