Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/225

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The Memorials to Whitman
185

and became a Christian boy. Some weeks later, one of the smart young men half-sneeringly said to the boy, as he looked at his broken shoes and tattered garments, "Well, my boy, if I believed in God as you do, I would ask Him to tell some of those rich church people to give me some better shoes and nicer clothes." The little fellow looked troubled for a moment, and then replied, "I expect He did, but they forgot."

It was one of the great characteristics of the men and women of these pages, that they listened, heard, and never "forgot."

The world to-day, and in the generation to follow, is in need of strong men and noble women. Greater problems than the fathers have solved will the sons be called to solve. Be ready for them. Mistaken Christian teachers have sometimes used the words "Prepare to die." Change them to read "Prepare to live," and may you live long and bless the world by your living. In this land of ours, the poorest can aspire to and reach out for grand achievements. The poor, half-orphan boy, conning his lessons by a pine knot fire in his grandfather Whitman's old New England home, or as he went through his classical course, and the study of his profession, then learned to be a millwright, and learned all about machinery, perhaps never dreamed of the great work he was to be called to do. He