iences. "The audience laughed with you and thought it
very funny," said he. "I couldn't laugh. It was too pathetic. It was a
picture of what is going on in our own little community year after
year. I wish you could see what I have to see. I wish you could see the
thousands of hard-earned dollars that go out of our community every
year into just such wildcat enterprises as you described. The saddest
part of it is that the money nearly always goes out of the pockets of
the people who can least afford to lose it."

Absalom, wake up! This is bargain night for you. I paid eleven hundred
dollars to tell you this one thing, and you get it for a dollar or two.
This is no cheap lecture. It cost blood.

Learn that the gambler never owns his winnings. The man who accumulates
by sharp practices or by undue profits never owns it. Even the young
person who has large fortune given him does not own it. We only own
what we have rendered definite service to bound. The owning is in the
understanding of values.

This is true physically, mentally, morally. You only own what you have
earned and stored in your life, not merely in your pocket, stomach or
mind.

I often think if it takes me thirty-four years to begin to learn one
sentence, I see the need of an eternity.

To me that is one of the great arguments for eternal life--how slowly I
learn, and how much there is to learn. It will take an eternity!

Those Commencement Orations

The young person says, "By next June I shall have finished my
education." Bless them all! They will have put another string on their
fiddle.

After they "finish" they have a commencement, not an end-ment, as they
think. This is not to sneer, but to cheer. Isn't it glorious that life
is one infinite succession of commencements and promotions!

I love to attend commencements. The stage is so beautifully decorated
and the joy of youth is everywhere. There is a row of geraniums along
the front of the stage and a big oleander on the side. There is a
long-whiskered rug in the middle. The graduates sit in a semicircle
upon the stage in their new patent leather. I know how it hurts. It is
the first time they have worn it.

Then they make their orations. Every time I hear their orations I like
them better, because every year I am getting younger. Damsel Number One
comes forth and begins:

"Beyond the Alps (sweep arms forward to the left, left arm leading)
lieth Italy!" (Bring arms down, letting finge