ng
roasted, perhaps we are not done!

Then they pulled the plug out of the bottom of the college and held
promotion exercises. The red mud squirted out into the sand. It was not
red mud now, because it had been roasted. It was a freshman--pig iron,
worth more than red mud, because it had been roasted.

Some of the pig iron went into another department, a big teakettle,
where it was again roasted, and now it came out a sophomore--steel,
worth more than pig iron.

Some of the sophomore steel went up into another grade where it was
roasted yet again and rolled thin into a junior. Some of that went on
up and up, at every step getting more pounding and roasting and
affliction.

It seemed as tho I could hear the suffering red mud crying out, "O, why
did they take me away from my happy hole-in-the-ground? Why do they
pound me and break my heart? I have been good and faithful. O, why do
they roast me? O, I'll never get over this!"

But after they had given it a diploma--a pricemark telling how much it
had been roasted--they took it proudly all over the world, labeled
"Made in America." They hung it in show windows, they put it in glass
cases. Many people admired it and said, "Isn't that fine work!" They
paid much money for it now. They paid the most money for what had been
roasted the most.

If a ton of that red mud had become watch-springs or razor-blades, the
price had gone up into thousands of dollars.

My friends, you and I are the raw material, the green trees, the red
mud. The Needful Knocks are necessary to make us serviceable.

Every bump is raising our price. Every bump is disclosing a path to a
larger life. The diamond and the chunk of soft coal are exactly the
same material, say the chemists. But the diamond has gone to The
College of Needful Knocks more than has her crude sister of the
coal-scuttle.

There is no human diamond that has not been crystallized in the
crucibles of affliction. There is no gold that has not been refined in
the fire.

Cripple Taught by Bumps

One evening when I was trying to lecture in a chautauqua tent in
Illinois, a crippled woman was wheeled into the tent and brought right
down to the foot of the platform. The subject was The University of
Hard Knocks. Presently the cripple's face was shining brighter than the
footlights.

She knew about the knocks!

Afterwards I went to her. "Little lady, I want to thank you for coming
here. I have the feeling that I spoke the