Evening Round Up Part 14

One cup of coffee, an egg or two, some cereal and toast, no red meat, no potatoes.

Walk to your office if it is less than three miles; if over three miles ride the extra distance, but walk three miles anyway.

Walk alone. This is most important; it relaxes your brain. Walking with company makes it a physical exertion and a mental pull as well, for a man will talk when he has company.

Eat a light lunch; be sure to eat an apple; with it drink two or three gla.s.ses of water, cool but not cold.

Let your hearty meal be supper, eat slowly and don't talk business.

After supper play with the kids or joke with your wife; get a smile on your face.

Just before you retire read a chapter from a worth-while book. The last thoughts which you take in at night are the ones which stick.

Leave your business in your business clothes, and get in a good night's sleep.

Keep a sharp look-out for tendencies to change your habits and morals.

At 50 you are walking on thin ice; look out, danger is near.

After you are 55 your habits are pretty well established. If you have lived rightly till then you're safe thereafter and likely on your way to a good ripe old age if you take reasonable care of yourself.

OUR SONS

They Pattern After Us; Be Worth Copying

We love our own the best; maybe that's why we indulge our own too much.

Our duty to our boys: that's a subject old as the hills and it is as important as it is old.

Today I had the boy problem forcibly presented to me. Today in court twenty-four boys were brought before the Judge charged with petty crimes. Three were sent to the penitentiary, seven to reform school and fourteen let go temporarily on good behavior.

A friend of mine interested in criminology tells me the great bulk of hold-ups, thefts, burglaries and murders are committed by boys between 16 and 22 years of age.

These twenty-four boys I mention were just ordinary boys, capable of making good citizens if they had had the right kind of home treatment and surroundings. Most of them got in trouble through their a.s.sociation with "gangs" or "the bunch," or the "crowd," and this because daddy didn't have his hand on the rein.

That boy must have companions.h.i.+p; he must have a confidante to whom he can share his joys, his sorrows, his hopes, his ambitions. If he doesn't get this comeraderie at home he gets it "round the corner."

We know where the boy is when he is at school, but how few know the boy's doings between times.

Pool halls tempt the boys, and these places are breeding places where filthy stories, criminal slang and evil practices are hatched.

Pool halls and saloons invite and fascinate the boy. He sees the lights.

There is a keen pleasure in watching the pink-s.h.i.+rted dude with cigarette in his mouth making fancy shots.

There is no one to nag him or bother him; it gets to be his "hang-out,"

and soon he drifts into a crowd that knows the trail to the red light district.

Painted fairies dazzle the giddy boy. It takes money to go the pace.

Crime is gilded over with slang words. Stealing is called "easy money."

Robbery is "turning a trick," and so on.

A boy becomes what he lives on mentally and physically; that's the net of it.

If Dad is his chum, if sister shares with him his amus.e.m.e.nts, if the family work and live on the "all for one and one for all" plan, if the boy is kept busy and interested, he can be easily trained.

Neglect him and he will neglect you. Love him and he will love you. Meet him half way; he's impressionable.

Show him kindness, he will respond. Show him example, he will follow.

You have to be with him or know where he is every minute.

During his period of adolescence, say from twelve or thirteen to sixteen or seventeen, that boy is a ma.s.s of plaster of paris, easily shaped while plastic, but once set, impossible to recast.

That's the time, Dad, you must be on YOUR job with your boy.

Your counsel, example, love, interest and teaching will MAKE the boy.

Think of these things, Dad, and think hard, and think hard NOW. Tomorrow may be too late.

RELIGIOUS EXTREMES

Form, Frills, Ceremony vs. Excitement, Ecstacy, Enthusiasm

Many churches today are running to extremes one way or the other.

On the one hand they are conducted along the lines of form, ceremony and ritualism, while the other extreme is excitement, ecstacy and enthusiasm.

The church of form, rituals and ceremonies attracts the pa.s.sive who are willing to let the priest or pastor or prelate take charge of the religious work while they, the attendants or wors.h.i.+ppers, sit quietly by and say amen and join in the responses.

Paul said, "Away with those forms." Christ in ministering to humanity gave no forms or made no set sentences for his followers. The Lord's Prayer was given with the admonition, "After this manner pray ye," and certainly not with the command, pray ye with these words.

Form, ceremony and rituals are much like most a.s.sociated charities, a sort of convention. Forms can not express the deep emotions, the natural longings, or the human desires; they are echoes, hollow and unsatisfying.

For those who do not feel, for those who do not act, for those who belong to churches because of convention, or for social reasons, form and frills fill the bill.

Form is an exterior religion, an outward show. Form doesn't touch the heart or awaken the soul. Form in religion is like a formal dinner. It is show rather than a plan to satisfy human heart hunger.

Opposite to formal religion is the frenzied "scare-you-to-death"

excitement method, which relies upon mental intoxication to stir the people, and like other forms of intoxication, the effect soon wears off.

I have little patience or sympathy for the business men who hire professional evangelists to come to town to start revivals. The sensational revivalists have too acute appreciation of the dollar to convince me of their sincerity in their work.