Nixon Waterman - Boy Wanted

In presenting this book of cheerful counsel to his youthful friends, and such of the seniors as are not too old to accept a bit of friendly admonition, the author desires to offer a word of explanation regarding the history of the making of this volume.

So many letters have been received from people of all classes and ages requesting copies of some of the author’s lines best suited for the purpose of engendering a sense of self-help in the mind of youth, that he deems it expedient to offer a number of his verses in the present collected form. While he is indebted to a great array of bright minds for the prose incidents and inspiration which constitute a large portion of this volume, he desires to be held personally responsible for all of the rhymed lines to be found within these covers.

It may be especially true of advice that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but it is hoped that in this present form of tendering friendly counsel the precepts will be accepted in the same cheerful spirit in which they are offered.

The author realizes that no one is more urgently in need of good advice and the intelligence to follow it than is the writer of these lines, and none cries more earnestly the well-known truth —

While the title of this book and the character of its contents make it obvious that it is a volume designed primarily for the guidance of youth, no one should pass it by merely because he has reached the years of maturity, and presumably of discretion. As a matter of fact Time cannot remove any of us very far from the fancies and foibles, the dreams and dangers of life’s morning hours.

Nothing is impossible to the man who can will. – Mirabeau.

Ho, my brave youth! There’s a “Boy Wanted,” and – how fortunate! – you are the very boy!

Who wants you?

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you. – Joubert.

The big, busy, beautiful world wants you, and I really do not see how it is going to get on well without you. It has awaited your coming so long, and has kept in store so many golden opportunities for you to improve, it will be disappointed if, when the proper time arrives, you do not smilingly lay hold and do something worth while.

When are you to begin?

Things don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up. – Garfield.

Oh, I sincerely hope that you have already begun to begin; that is, that you have already begun to train your hand and head and heart for making the most of the opportunities that await you. In fact, if you are so fortunate as to own thoughtful, intelligent parents, the work of fitting you for the victories of life was begun before you were old enough to give the subject serious consideration.

Work has made me what I am. I never ate a bit of idle bread in my life. – Daniel Webster.

“When shall I begin to train my child?” asked a young mother of a wise physician.

“How old is the child?” inquired the doctor.

“Two years.”

In the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks. – Holland.

“Then you have already lost just two years,” was his serious response.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, when asked the same question, said: “You must begin with the child’s grandmother.”

Without courage there cannot be truth; and without truth there can be no other virtue. – Walter Scott.

But no matter what has or has not been done for you up to the present time, you and I know that from now on your future welfare will be largely of your own making and in your own keeping. If you will thoughtfully plan your purpose as definitely as conditions will permit and then learn to stick to it through thick and thin, your success in life is quite well assured, and you need not fear that at the end of the journey you will have to say, as does many a man while retrospectively viewing his years:

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement – these are the martial virtues which must command success. – Phelps.

What is there for you to do?

Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. – Tolstoi.

Everything and anything you can do or care to do. You are to take your pick of all the trades, professions, and vocations of mankind. Look about you and note the thousand and one things now being done by the men of to-day. It will not be so very long till all of these men will be old enough to retire from active service, and then you and the other boys, who in the meantime have grown to man’s estate, will be called upon to perform every one of the tasks these men are now doing. Doesn’t it look as if there would be plenty of honest, earnest, wholesome toil for hand and head in store for you as soon as you are ready to undertake it? You cannot wonder that the busy old world is ever and always hanging out its notice —

People do not lack strength; they lack will. – Victor Hugo.

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge one yourself. – Froude.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination. – Napoleon.

While we are considering when to begin, it is often too late to act. – Quintilian.

No, the world does not insist that you are to accept a position and begin work with your hands at once, but it wishes you to begin to think right things. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” What you think will have much to do in determining what you are to become.

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins. – Young.

Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools. – Napoleon.

This influence of the mind in thus shaping the man is very well set forth by James Allen, who says: “A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. He also reveals, within himself, the laws of thought, and understands, with ever-increasing accuracy, how the thought-forces and mind-elements operate in the shaping of his character, circumstances, and destiny.”