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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (March 25, 1925)
1525 WAY ^6 * COPY - 1956 v The Chemawa American Printed at Chemawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education Vol. XXVI Wednesday, March 25, 1925 WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION A foolish person never learns, even by experience. The average person learns by his own experiences, while the wise person learns by the experiences of others, added to his own. Right here at Cheniawa, young people, you have a chance to find to which class you belong. Make your efforts while here and enable the precepts of your instructors to save you from making many a blunder and thus be the means of crowning your lives with virtue, honor and happi ness. Any young manor woman here who will work hon estly for an education, who will read, study, digest and follow the rules, teaching and principles laid down for his or her advancement never need to land in the poornouse or stand adjudged a fool’s failure. Students it will pay you to try. There are two kinds of people in the world—those who work presistently to a plan and those who just drift. Those who deliberately choose what they will do. where they will go, and skillfully and boldly shape their own course; and those who drift along without any place in particular to land. The persons who shape their own course arrive; those who drift never get anywhere. Success of the real kind, young men and young women, is always in the individual who wins it, not in conditions. You get what you pay for, in character, in work, in energy, and in the ability to stick. There are few really fine things which you cannot get if you are willing to pay the price. No one can cheat you out of success but yourselves. Every one of you would like to attain success, honor and influence. Observation shows that a good many people are failures. Why? Because there are diffi culties in the way; hard things in the lessons of obe dience and work. What is the customary way of treating these things? Do you dodge them? Why do a good many boys and girls dodge the hard things? We’ll tell you—because it is the easy way. To yield is easy; to resist is hard. So it follows that surrender to obstacles is the rule, successful resistance the excep tion. But here and there you find a young man or woman w7ho does overcome every obstacle, because they have acquired the conquering habit, and we find them rejoicing in the strength that comes from re No. 23 peated and apparently easy victories. There seems to be two ways of dealing with hard problems: First to give up; yield to that tired feeling, give up in arith metic because you think it is tough; give up history because you think it is dull; give up the fight for an education because it takes too much effort; abandon the idea of finishing school because it is too hard work. Follow this trail of surrender in whatever comes up and then examine your backbone; test your mind, your moral strength, your ability to do things, and then see how your whole capacity for achievement has been weakened until you are incapable, perhaps for ever, of taking your place where, had you started out with a determination ro win, you might have been honored and looked up to. Instead of being a failure, practically a fit subject for the scrap heap, try the first method. Grapple the first difficulty that comes up, wrestle till you down it, if it take» all day an^ “then some.” Master the arithmetic problems and taste the joy of victory; mas ter the hard things in the other studies; the hard things in connection with your industrial instruction and see what tonic it is, and observe how strong you will be for the next day. Master your lower nature, also, and know w7hat it is to have your own approval. Do all these things faithfully until they become ha bitual. Then see how strong your mind has become, bow you jump ahead in your work, and how’ you grow7 to be a strong man, or a strong woman. It will pay. Commence this obstacle-conquering habit tomorrow morning and take your place with the really successful—among those at the top. We wish to enumerate a few of the essential qualities which will win against all the powers in the world: 1. Absolute, unswerving honesty. Is that attain able? 2. Energy and force of character. This is a ques tion of grit enough to stick to a job, to overcome lazi ness and love of ease. 3. Capacity to do things; ability to secure results. This is the product of industry; it is the art of mak ing every stroke count. 4. politeness, manners, engaging address. This is gained by close, unselfish adherence to the rules for making a lady or a gentleman. It is, therefore, in your ow7n choosing whether you will reap the reward of a few at the very top, or will mingle with the hungry crowd at the bottom.
