The Chemawa American
Printed at Chomawa,
Vol. XXVI
Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education
Wednesday, April 1, 1925
CHARACTER AND REPUTATION
Students, you who remain at Chemawa for a term
of years and complete your full course in whatever
vocation you have chosen and graduate with good
principles and a fine character, backed with a good
reputation, are made for life. This reputation is bet
ter than the greatest financial capital. It will make
you friends and open up a sure way to honor, hap
piness and easy circumstances.
How mortified some of us would be if we knew
just how our associates rated us. For instance, one
of us might be rated 100 for politeness, 75 for kind
ness, 50 for truthfulness, 25 for ability, and so on.
Every time we have dealings, or come in contact with
another, we get a rating. People know whether we
are advancing or retrograding. Each and every one
of us go through life labeled all over with tags for
those who know us. We may be rated high in most
respects, but the general average may be cut low by
some vicious habit. If you have put your whole self
into your daily life while here your words will have
much force, your influence much weight. If that
whole self be true and high, pure and kind, vigorous
and forceful, you can do what you will.
Every act of yours is a guide board that tells people
about you and indicates the way you have lived, so,
aside from having a definite aim, and that aim lived
up to conscientiously and efficiently, it pays in con
tentment and success.
Do we have many students here who live day by
day without a rudder to steer them? Shiftless, pur
poseless, drifting along day after day without purpose
or plan, with no strong aim to advance. Do we have
any of that kind here?
Chemawa resorts to every means to expand and de
velop your possibilities; she urges you to struggle
along day by day, securing a little here and a little
there until you have reached the stature of a rounded
out man or woman. We try in every reasonable way
to induce you to progress, to arouse the best that is in
you, presenting to you pictures of success in order to
have you put forth your best efforts until you make
them real in your life. This is what we are trying to
do. We want your co-operation, your perseverance,
No. 24
your application to your work, then by patience and
industry you can graduate with honor.
You cannot get there, however, by counterfeiting
and imitations, for cunning and crafty counterfeits are
soon detected—you will get just what you have earned.
Your advancement comes in proportion to your work
—your worth. Only the true and pure can stand the
test. By your work and perseverance you show what
you are made of; dare to be yourself; have the courage
to be somebody. Every deed you perform stands
forth to your credit or discredit and prophesies your
future. Keep your record clean.
The test of the student is manifested in the spirit
in which he goes about his work. If he goes about
it grudgingly, if his enthusiasm and love for it do
not lift it out of the “commonness” and make it a de
light instead of a bore, he will not go very far. What
you do is a part of yourself. It is the expression of
what you stand for. When you see a student’s work
you see him practically as he is. We cannot think
very much of ourselves when we are not honest in our
work—when we are not doing our best. You cannot
plead weakness or handicap for failure. The fact is,
a large part of the failures on part of some boys and
girls is due to downright laziness, an unwillingness to
make an effort. When a student ceases to fight,
ceases to try, you cannot do much for him except to
endeavor to imbue him with self faith, and even that
is impossible unless such a student will show some
interest in himself. This kind of a student will drift
along from one thing to another and be a “no body,”
just because he does not face the right way.
If you feel that you are down and out, and every
thing about you looks black and discouraging, just try
the experiment of facing the other way—toward hope
and expectancy. Resolve with all the vigor you can
muster that you are going to have an education. Keep
at it persistently and take it from us that very soon
things will appear more bright, hopeful and cheerful.
Grit is the master key which unlocks all difficulties.
No substitute for tenacity of purpose has ever been
discovered. Nothing takes the place of clean grit.
L,ook out for the period in your school life when you
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