or the Earl of York State should remember that the matter of perspiration
and posterity should not be left solely to the foreigner.

There are too many Americans who toil not, neither do they spin. They
would be willing to have an office foisted upon them, but they would
rather blow their so-called brains out than to steer a pair of large
steel-gray mules from day to day. They are too proud to hoe corn, for fear
some great man will ride by and see the termination of their shirts
extending out through the seats of their pantaloons, but they are not too
proud to assign their shattered finances to a friend and their shattered
remains to the morgue.

Pride is all right if it is the right kind, but the pride that prompts a
man to kill his mother, because she at last refuses to black his boots any
more, is an erroneous pride. The pride that induces a man to muss up the
carpet with his brains because there is nothing left for him to do but to
labor, is the kind that Lucifer had when he bolted the action of the
convention and went over to the red-hot minority.

Youth is the spring-time of life. It is the time to acquire information,
so that we may show it off in after years and paralyze people with what we
know. The wise youth will "lay low" till he gets a whole lot of knowledge,
and then in later days turn it loose in an abrupt manner. He will guard
against telling what he knows, a little at a time. That is unwise. I once
knew a youth who wore himself out telling people all he knew from day to
day, so that when he became a bald-headed man he was utterly exhausted and
didn't have anything left to tell anyone. Some of the things that we know
should be saved for our own use. The man who sheds all his knowledge, and
don't leave enough to keep house with, fools himself.