l Whackem." He was an orphan. He had little chance.
He had a new black eye almost every day. But he seemed to fatten on
bumps. Every time he was bumped he would swell up. How fast he grew! He
became the most useful man in the community. People forgot all about
Bill's lowly origin. They got to looking up to him to start and run
things.

So when the courts were looking for somebody big enough to take charge
of the wrecked mill, they simply had to appoint Hon. William Whackem.
It was Hon. William Whackem who put the wreckage together and made the
wheels go round, and finally got the hungry town back to work.

Colleges Give Us Tools

After that a good many people said it was the college that made a fool
of Gussie. They said Bill succeeded so well because he never went to
one of "them highbrow schools." I am sorry to say I thought that way
for a good while.

But now I see that Bill went up in spite of his handicaps. If he had
had Gussie's fine equipment he might have accomplished vastly more.

The book and the college suffer at the hands of their friends. They say
to the book and the college, "Give us an education." They cannot do
that. You cannot get an education from the book and the college any
more than you can get to New York by reading a travelers' guide. You
cannot get physical education by reading a book on gymnastics.

The book and the college show you the way, give you instruction and
furnish you finer working tools. But the real education is the journey
you make, the strength you develop, the service you perform with these
instruments and tools.

Gussie was in the position of a man with a very fine equipment of tools
and no experience in using them. Bill was the man with the poor,
homemade, crude tools, but with the energy, vision and strength
developed by struggle.

The "Hard Knocks Graduates"

For education is getting wisdom, understanding, strength, greatness,
physically, mentally and morally. I believe I know some people
liberally educated who cannot write their own names. But they have
served and overcome and developed great lives with the poor, crude
tools at their command.

In almost every community are what we sometimes call "hard knocks
graduates"--people who have never been to college nor have studied many
or any books. Yet they are educated to the degree they have acquired
these elements of greatness in their lives.

They realized how they have been handicapped by their poo