Walks and talks
William Hawley Smith
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, June 26, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...make here are only "to yourself" and not " out loud," be honest, and out with the bottom facts in the case, just for this once, at least. Pause here a full minute by the clock! Well, now if you are ready, we will go on. You realize now, do you not, as a result of your reflections just made, that there are some places in your make-up in which you are, as it were, born "short?" (You know "on 'change" they say a man is "long" or "short," according as he has on hand much or little of any commodity that the market deals in.) not only " short' now, at one point or another, but, whatever your shortage is, it was born with you. And that is what I mean when I say that you were "born short." Just what that shortage is, in your particular case, I am not at all curious to know. That is a matter that pertains strictly to yourself, and cuts no figure in what I am about to say. All I care for is to have you realize that there is something (perhaps there are a good many things) that you can't do, never could do, never can learn to do with any degree of success, and that you will never even try to do if you can have your own way about it. Perhaps you cannot sing; may be you cannot dance, cannot paint, cannot draw, cannot spell! cannot remember dates! cannot remember the fundamental principles of of natural philosophy, or a hundred and one other common or curious things that some other people can do easily enough, but which you know you cannot do--in other words, which you were " born short " on. Now I came across this somewhat curious fact the other day, during one of my "walks abroad," among my own mental furnishings. I was strolling along through my intellectual...