And he has gotten his lecture out of that home town. The heroes and villains live there within striking distance. Perhaps they have come to hear him. "Is not this the carpenter's son?" Perhaps this is why some lecturers and authors are not so popular in the home town until several generations pass.
I went back to the same hall to speak, and stood upon the same platform where twenty-one years before I had stood to deliver my graduating oration, when in impassioned and well modulated tones I had exclaimed, "Greece is gone and Rome is no more, but fe-e-e-e-ear not, for I will sa-a-a-a-ave you!" or words to that effect.
Then I went back to the little hotel and sat up alone in my room half the night living it over. Time was when I thought anybody who could live in that hotel was a superior order of being. But the time had come when I knew the person who could go on living in any hotel has a superior order of vitality.
I held thanksgiving services that night. I could see better. I had a picture of the school in that town that had been taken twenty-one years before, just before commencement. I had not seen the picture these twenty-one years, for I could not then afford to buy one. The price was a quarter.
I got a truer perspective of life that night. Did you ever sit alone with a picture of your classmates taken twenty-one years before? It is a memorable experience.
A class of brilliant and gifted young people went out to take charge of the world. They were so glad the world had waited so long on them. They were so willing to take charge of the world. They were going to be presidents and senators and authors and authoresses and scientists and scientist-esses and geniuses and genius-esses and things like that.
There was one boy in the class who was not naturally bright. It was not the one you may be thinking of! No, it was Jim Lambert. He had no brilliant career in view. He was dull and seemed to lack intellect. He was "conditioned" into the senior class. We all felt a little sorry for Jim.
As commencement day approached, the committee of the class appointed for that purpose took Jim back of the schoolhouse and broke the news to him that they were going to let him graduate, but they were not going to let him speak, because he couldn't make a speech that would do credit to such a brilliant class. They hid Jim on the stage back of the oleander commencement night.
Shake the barrel!
The girl who was to become the authoress became the helloess in the home telephone exchange, and had become absolutely indispensable to the community. The girl who was to become the poetess became the goddess at the general delivery window and superintendent of the stamp-licking department of the home postoffice. The boy who was going to Confess was raising the best corn in the county, and his wife was speaker of the house.
Most of them were doing very well even Jim Lambert. Jim had become the head of one of the big manufacturing plants of the South, with a lot of men working for him. The committee that took him out behind the schoolhouse to inform him he could not speak at commencement, would now have to wait in line before a frosted door marked, "Mr. Lambert, Private." They would have to send up their cards, and the watchdog who guards the door would tell them, "Cut it short, he's busy!" before they could break any news to him today.
They hung a picture of Mr. Lambert in the high school at the last alumni meeting. They hung it on the wall near where the oleander stood that night.
Dull boy or girl--you with your eyes tear-dimmed sometimes because you do not seem to learn like some in your classes can you not get a bit of cheer from the story of Jim?
Hours pass, and still as I sat in that hotel room I was lost in that school picture and the twenty-one years. There were fifty-four young people in that picture. They had been shaken these years in the barrel, and now as I called the roll on them, most of them that I expected to go up had shaken down and some that I expected to stay down had shaken up.
Out of that fifty-four, one had gone to a pulpit, one had gone to Congress and one had gone to the penitentiary. Some had gone to brilliant success and some had gone down to sad failure. Some had found happiness and some had found unhappiness. It seemed as tho almost every note on the keyboard of human possibility had been struck by the one school of fifty-four.
When that picture was taken the oldest was not more than eighteen, yet most of them seemed already to have decided their destinies.
The twenty-one years that followed had not changed their courses.
The only changes had come where God had come into a life to uplift it, or where Mammon had entered to pull it down. And I saw better that the foolish dreams of success faded before the natural unfolding of talents, which is the real success. I saw better that "the boy is father to the man."
The boy who skimmed over his work in school was skimming over his work as a man. The boy who went to the bottom of things in school was going to the bottom of things in manhood. Which had helped him to go to the top of things!
Jim Lambert had merely followed the call of talents unseen in him twenty-one years before.
The lazy boy became a "tired" man. The industrious boy became an industrious man. The sporty boy became a sporty man. The domineering egotist boy became the domineering egotist man.
The boy who traded knives with me and beat me--how I used to envy him! Why was it he could always get the better of me? Well, he went on trading knives and getting the better of people. Now, twenty-one years afterwards, he was doing time in the state penitentiary for forgery. He was now called a bad man, when twenty-one years ago when he did the same things on a smaller scale they called him smart and bright.