Yesterday I had a birthday. I looked in the glass and communed with my
features. I saw some gray hairs coming. Hurrah!
You know what gray hairs are? Did you ever get a headmark in school?
Gray hairs are silver headmarks in our education as we go on south.
You children cheer up. Your black hair and auburn hair and the other
first reader hair will pass and you'll get promoted as you go on south.
Don't worry about gray hair or baldness. Only worry about the location
of your gray hair or baldness. If they get on the inside of the head,
worry. Do you know why corporations sometimes say they do not want to
employ gray-headed men? They have found that so many of them have quit
going on south and have gotten gray on the inside—or bald.
These same corporations send out Pinkertons and pay any price for
gray-headed men—gray on the outside and green on the inside. They are
the most valuable, for they have the vision and wisdom of many years
and the enthusiasm and "pep" and courage of youth.
The preacher, the teacher—everyone who gets put on the retired list,
retires himself. He quits going on south.
The most wonderful person in the world is the one who has lived years
and years on earth and has perhaps gotten gray on the outside, but has
kept young and fresh on the inside. Put that person in the pulpit, in
the schoolroom, in the office, behind the ticket-window or on the
bench—or under the hod—and you find the whole world going to that
person for direction, advice, vision, help, sympathy, love.
I am happy today as I look back over my life. I have been trying to
lecture a good while. I am almost ashamed to tell you how long, for I
ought to know more about it by this time. But when anybody says, "I
heard you lecture twenty years ago over at——" I stop him. "Please
don't throw it up to me now. I am just as ashamed of it as you are. I
am trying to do better now."
O, I want to forget all the past, save its lessons. I am just beginning
to live. If anybody wants to be my best friend, let him come to me and
tell me how to improve—what to do and what not to do. Tell me how to
give a better lecture.
Years ago a bureau representative who booked me told me my lectures
were good enough. I told him I wanted to get better lectures, for I was
so dissatisfied with what little I knew. He told me I could never get
any better. I had reached my limit. Those lectures were the "limit." I
shiver as I think what I was saying then. I want to go on south
shivering about yesterday. These years I have noticed the people on the
platform who were contented with their offerings, were not trying to
improve them, and were lost in admiration of what they were doing, did
not stay long on the platform. I have watched them come and go, come
and go. I have heard their fierce invectives against the bureaus and
ungrateful audiences that were "prejudiced" against them.
Birthdays are not annual affairs. Birthdays are the days when we have a
new birth. The days when we go on south to larger visions. I wish I
could have a birthday every minute!
Some people seem to string out to near a hundred years with mighty few
birthdays. Some people spin up to Methuselahs in a few years.
From what I can learn of Methuselah, he never grew past copper-toed
boots. He just hibernated and "chawed on."
The more birthdays we have, the nearer we approach eternal youth!
