This ox is kept in the stockyards at Chicago.  In those stockyards they kill thousands of cattle every year to give us beef to eat.  When the cattle come to these stockyards they are not tame cattle like the cows we see out in our pastures, but they are cattle that have pastured out on the great broad prairies, and they have seen very few people.  And for that reason they are very timid and hard to get close to.  So it is difficult to get them near the pens where they want them.

Here is where the tricky ox comes in.  In one of those yards they keep a black, short-tailed ox known as “Bob,” and he just walks along in an unconcerned way toward the pens, and he looks so calm and unafraid that the other cattle just take confidence and follow along after him.  And then, before they know it, they are in a trap and can never get out.  But in the meanwhile Bob has slipped away, to play the same trick on other cattle.

There are some boys and girls just like that ox.  They are always urging other boys and girls on to do wrong things, telling them that they are cowards if they don’t take the “dare” and do it, and showing how brave they are.  But when they have got you into a scrape, and the real business of punishment begins, they can’t be found anywhere:  they have slipped out like old Bob.

You must be on the lookout for boys like that.  Don’t be afraid to be called a coward by them.  Don’t let them “dare” you to do things which your conscience tells you are foolish or wrong.  You will be a bigger coward if you do these things because you are ashamed not to take the dare.

“Shine inside”

As I was passing along the street the other day I saw on the window of a bootblack’s parlour the words, “Shine Inside.”

I want to turn these words around and make a motto of them for you boys and girls.  For I think that if every boy and girl would shine inside, our homes, and the world in general, would be a much happier place.

Of course there are some boys and girls who shine only on the outside.  A little while ago I read a story about Byron, a great poet, of whom you will learn later in school.  A man said to Sir Walter Scott that he wished he might have seen Byron when he was alive.  He said he had only seen a photograph of him.  Scott said, “Yes, the luster is there [in the photograph], but it is not lighted up.”  Now, there are some boys’ and girls’ faces that have a luster, but it is not lighted up.

Or their faces are like a mirror that shines brightly only when there is sunlight or some other light falling upon it.  The mirror only shines outside.  The luster is not always lighted up.  I know boys and girls who shine outside only when other boys and girls play the game which they want them to play, or when they get the clothes they want to wear or the food they want to eat, or when they are out in pleasant company.  But when they don’t have their own way, then their faces are very cloudy.