and go all to pieces as it did; for—­don’t forget this—­the things which hold you down to Sunday School, to Church, to Young People’s Meeting, to School and to work, are the things which hold you up and lift you up, and keep you up and build you up into strong, hopeful, helpful, useful, happy men and women.  Don’t forget what a fool the kite was, and what happened to it!  Go as high as you can in the world but don’t break the string!”

A STRANGE OLD EPITAPH
    —­Narrowness
    —­Broadness

A Talk to Boys Concerning the Narrow Life and the Broad Life—­A
Contrast.

THE LESSON—­That it is all wrong to be satisfied to be a
Mr. Nobody.  Do your best and be a Mr. Somebody.

The boy whose days in school and whose hours of serious thought in the home have opened his eyes to future years of responsibility, will drink in the sentiment of this talk and remember the lesson when he reaches the twists and corners of life’s pathway which lies before him.

The Talk. (By Chas. D. Meigs.)

“I am going to tell you today of a very narrow man.  Suppose we call him Mr. Slim Jim.  Later on, I will tell you about Mr. Broadman, and ask you which one you would rather be when you grow up.

[Illustration:  Fig. 128]

“But first, we will turn our minds to a strange old graveyard over in England, a burying ground where there are a good many old tomb-stones like this:  [Draw Fig. 128, complete].  If you were to walk among these old gravestones, you would find one there which would make you laugh, even though you were in a cemetery, because the epitaph, on it is the funniest you ever saw or heard of.  It says: 

“’Here Lies the Body of
John Blank. 
He Was Born a Man
But
Died a Grocer!’

[As you speak the words slowly, draw them on the tombstone, completing Fig. 129.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 129]

“Did you ever hear anything to beat that?  Now, that isn’t anything against grocery men.  A grocery man may be just as good a man as the preacher himself—­and just as respectable.  We can’t get along in this world without groceries, and we just have to have men who will sell them to us.  Then what was the matter with John?  Well, just this:  His business had swallowed him up!  He had given it his whole time for years, and he did nothing else.  It was groceries, groceries, groceries, and nothing but groceries.  It was groceries on Monday, groceries on Tuesday, groceries on Wednesday, groceries on Thursday, groceries on Friday and groceries till eleven o’clock Saturday night, and if John went to church Sunday morning, sat on the front seat, and looked straight at the preacher all the time (so the preacher would say to himself, ’John seems to be very much interested in the sermon this morning, bless the Lord’).  Ten to one John wasn’t thinking of the preacher or his sermon at all—­just only of groceries—­or some big bill he had to buy or pay on the morrow.