The University of Hard Knocks(重击大学)

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The University of Hard Knocks

The University of Hard

Knocks

By Ralph Parlette

The University of Hard Knocks

Why It Is Printed

MORE than a million people have sat in audiences in all parts of the

United States and have listened to "The University of Hard Knocks." It has

been delivered to date more than twenty-five hundred times upon lyceum

courses, at chautauquas, teachers' institutes, club gatherings, conventions

and before various other kinds of audiences. Ralph Parlette is kept busy

year after year lecturing, because his lectures deal with universal human

experience.

"Can I get the lecture in book form?" That continuous question from

audiences brought out this book in response. Here is the overflow of many

deliveries.

"What is written here is not the way I would write it, were I writing a

book," says Ralph Parlette. "It is the way I say it. The lecture took this

unconscious colloquial form before audiences. An audience makes a

lecture, if the lecture survives. I wish I could shake the hand of every

person who has sat in my audiences. And I wish I could tell the lecture

committees of America how I appreciate the vast amount of altruistic work

they have done in bringing the audiences of America together. For lecture

audiences are not drawn together, they are pushed together."

The warm reception given "The University of Hard Knocks" by the

public, has encouraged the publishers to put more of Mr. Parlette's lectures

into book form, "Big Business" and "Pockets and Paradises" are now in

preparation as this, the third edition of "The University of Hard Knocks"

comes from the press.

The University of Hard Knocks

Chapter I

The Books Are Bumps

THE greatest school is the University of Hard Knocks. Its books are

bumps.

Every bump is a lesson. If we learn the lesson with one bump, we do

not get that bump again. We do not need it. We have traveled past it. They

do not waste the bumps. We get promoted to the next bump.

But if we are "naturally bright," or there is something else the matter

with us, so that we do not learn the lesson of the bump we have just gotten,

then that bump must come back and bump us again.

Some of us learn to go forward with a few bumps, but most of us are

"naturally bright" and have to be pulverized.

The tuition in the University of Hard Knocks is not free. Experience is

the dearest teacher in the world. Most of us spend our lives in the A-B-C's

of getting started.

We matriculate in the cradle.

We never graduate. When we stop learning we are due for another

bump.

There are two kinds of people--wise people and fools. The fools are

the people who think they have graduated.

The playground is all of God's universe.

The university colors are black and blue.

The yell is "ouch" repeated ad lib.

The Need of the Bumps

When I was thirteen I knew a great deal more than I do now. There

was a sentence in my grammar that disgusted me. It was by some

foreigner I had never met. His name was Shakespeare. It was this:

The University of Hard Knocks

"Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and

venomous, Wears yet a priceless jewel in its head; And thus our life,

exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

"Tongues in trees," I thought. "Trees can't talk! That man is crazy.

Books in running brooks! Why nobody never puts no books in no running

brooks. They'd get wet. And that sermons in stones! They get preachers to

preach sermons, and they build houses out of stones."

I was sorry for Shakespeare--when I was thirteen.

But I am happy today that I have traveled a little farther. I am happy

that I have begun to learn the lessons from the bumps. I am happy that I

am learning the sweet tho painful lessons of the University of Adversity. I

am happy that I am beginning to listen. For as I learn to listen, I hear every

tree speaking, every stone preaching and every running brook the

unfolding of a book.

Children, I fear you will not be greatly interested in what is to follow.

Perhaps you are "naturally bright" and feel sorry for Shakespeare.

I was not interested when father and mother told me these things. I

knew they meant all right, but the world had moved since they were young,

and now two and two made seven, because we lived so much faster.

It is so hard to tell young people anything. They know better. So they

have to get bumped just where we got bumped, to learn that two and two

always makes four, and "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also

reap."

But if you will remember some of these things, they will feel like

poultices by and by when the bumps come.

The Two Colleges

As we get bumped and battered on life's pathway, we discover we get

The University of Hard Knocks

two kinds of bumps--bumps that we need and bumps that we do not need.

Bumps that we bump into and bumps that bump into us.

We discover, in other words, that The University of Hard Knocks has

two colleges--The College of Needless Knocks and The College of

Needful Knocks.

We attend both colleges.

The University of Hard Knocks

Chapter II

The College of Needless Knocks

The Bumps That We Bump Into

NEARLY all the bumps we get are Needless Knocks.

There comes a vivid memory of one of my early Needless Knocks as I

say that. It was back at the time when I was trying to run our home to suit

myself. I sat in the highest chair in the family circle. I was three years old

and ready to graduate.

That day they had the little joy and sunshine of the family in his high-

chair throne right up beside the dinner table. The coffee-pot was within

grabbing distance.

I became enamored with that coffee-pot. I decided I needed that

coffee-pot in my business. I reached over to get the coffee-pot. Then I

discovered a woman beside me, my mother. She was the most

meddlesome woman I had ever known. I had not tried to do one thing in

three years that that woman had not meddled into.

And that day when I wanted the coffee-pot--I did want it. Nobody

knows how I desired that coffee-pot. "One thing thou lackest," a coffee-

pot-- I was reaching over to get it, that woman said, "Don't touch that!"

The longer I thought about it the more angry I became. What right has

that woman to meddle into my affairs all the time? I have stood this

petticoat tyranny three years, and it is time to stop it!

I stopped it. I got the coffee-pot. I know I got the coffee-pot. I got it

unanimously. I know when I got it and I also know where I got it. I got

about a gallon of the reddest, hottest coffee a bad boy ever spilled over

himself.

O-o-o-o-o-o! I can feel it yet!

There were weeks after that when I was upholstered. They put

applebutter on me--and coal oil and white-of-an-egg and starch and

The University of Hard Knocks

anything else the neighbors could think of. They would bring it over and

rub it on the little joy and sunshine of the family, who had gotten

temporarily eclipsed.

Teaching a Wilful Child

You see, my mother's way was to tell me and then let me do as I

pleased. She told me not to get the coffee-pot and then let me get it,

knowing that it would burn me. She would say, "Don't." Then she would

go on with her knitting and let me do as I pleased.

Why don't mothers knit today?

Mother would say, "Don't fall in the well." I could go and jump in the

well after that and she would not look at me. I do not argue that this is the

way to raise children, but I insist that this was the most kind and effective

way to rear one stubborn boy I know of. The neighbors and the ladies' aid

society often said my mother was cruel with that angel child. But the

neighbors did not know what kind of an insect mother was trying to raise.

Mother did know. She knew how stubborn and self-willed I was. It came

from father's "side of the house."

Mother knew that to argue with me was to flatter me. Tell me, serve

notice upon me, and then let me go ahead and get my coffee-pot. That was

the quickest and kindest way to teach me.

I learned very quickly that if I did not hear mother, and heed, a coffee-

pot would spill upon me. I cannot remember when I disobeyed my mother

that a coffee-pot of some kind did not spill upon me, and I got my blisters.

Mother did not inflict them. Mother was not much of an inflicter. Father

attended to that in the laboratory behind the parsonage.

"Stop, Look, Listen"

And thru the bumps we learn that The College of Needless Knocks

The University of Hard Knocks

runs on the same plan. The Voice of Wisdom says to each of us, "Child of

humanity, do right, walk in the right path. You will be wiser and happier."

The tongues in the trees, the books in the running brooks and the sermons

in the stones all repeat it.

But we are not compelled to walk in the right path. We are free im-

moral agents.

We get off the right path. We go down forbidden paths. They seem

easier and more attractive. It is so easy to go downward. We slide

downward, but we have to make effort to go upward.

Anything that goes downward will run itself. Anything that goes

upward has to be pushed.

And going down the wrong path, we get bumped harder and harder

until we listen.

We are lucky if we learn the lesson with one bump. We are unlucky

when we get bumped twice in the same place, for it means we are making

no progress.

When we are bumped, we should "stop, look, listen." "Safety first!"

One time I paid a seeress two dollars to look into my honest palm. She

said, "It hain't your fault. You wasn't born right. You was born under an

unlucky star." You don't know how that comforted me. It wasn't my fault--

all my bumps and coffee-pots! I was just unlucky and it had to be.

How I had to be bumped to learn better! Now when I get bumped I try

to learn the lesson of the bump and find the right path, so that when I see

that bump coming again I can say, "Excuse me; it hath a familiar look,"

and dodge it.

The seeress is the soothing syrup for mental infants.

Blind Man's Fine Sight

The other day I watched a blind man go down the aisle of the car to

get off the train. Did you ever study the walk of a blind man? He

"pussyfooted" it along so carefully. He bumped his hand against a seat.

The University of Hard Knocks

Then he did what every blind man does, he lifted his hand higher and

didn't bump any more seats.

I looked down my nose. "Ralph Parlette," I said to myself, "when are

you going to learn to see as well as that blind man? He learns his lesson

with one bump, and you have to go bumping into the same things day after

day and wonder why you have so much `bad luck'!"

Are You Going Up or Down?

Let me repeat, things that go downward will run themselves. Things

that go upward have to be pushed. Going upward is overcoming. Notice

that churches, schools, lyceums, chautauquas, reform movements--things

that go upward--never run themselves. They must be pushed all the time.

And so with our own lives. Real living is conscious effort to go

upward to larger life.

If you are making no effort in your life, if you are moving in the line

of least resistance, depend upon it you are going downward. Look out for

the bumps!

Look over your community. Note the handful of brave, faithful,

unselfish souls who are carrying the community burdens and pushing

upward. Note the multitude making little or no effort, and even getting in

the way of the pushers.

Majorities do not rule. Majorities never have ruled. It is the brave

minority of thinking, self-sacrificing people that decides the tomorrow of

communities that go upward. Majorities are not willing to make the effort

to rule themselves. They are content to drift and be amused and follow

false gods that promise something for nothing. They must be led--

sometimes driven--by minorities.

People are like sheep. The shepherd can lead them to heaven--or to

hell.

The University of Hard Knocks

Bumping the Prodigals

Human life is the story of the Prodigal Son. We look over the fence of

goodness into the mystery of the great unknown world beyond and in that

unknown realm we fondly imagine is happiness.

Down the great white way of the world go the million prodigals,

seeking happiness where nobody ever found happiness. Their days fill up

with disappointment, their vision becomes dulled. They become anaemic

feeding upon the husks.

They just must get their coffee-pot!

How they must be bumped to think upon their ways. Every time we do

wrong we get a Needless Knock. Every time! We may not always get

bumped on the outside, but we always get bumped on the inside. A bump

on the conscience is worse than a bump on the "noodle."

"I can do wrong and not get bumped. I have no feelings upon the

subject," somebody says, You can? You poor old sinner, you have bumped

your conscience numb. That is why you have no feelings on the subject.

You have pounded your soul into a jelly. You don't know how badly you

are hurt.

How the old devil works day and night to keep people amused and

doped so that they will not think upon their ways! How he keeps the music

and the dazzle going so they will not see they are bumping themselves!

Consider the Sticky Flypaper

Did you ever watch a fly get his Needless Knocks on the sticky

flypaper?

The last thing Mamma Fly said as Johnny went off to the city was,

"Remember, son, to stay away from the sticky flypaper. That is where your

poor dear father was lost." And Johnny Fly remembers for several minutes.

But when he sees all the smart young flies of his set go over to the

flypaper, he goes over, too. He gazes down at his face in the stickiness.

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TheUniversityofHardKnocks1TheUniversityofHardKnocksByRalphParletteTheUniversityofHardKnocks2WhyItIsPrintedMOREthanamillionpeoplehavesatinaudiencesinallpartsoftheUnitedStatesandhavelistenedto"TheUniversityofHardKnocks."Ithasbeendeliveredtodatemorethantwenty-fivehundredtimesuponlyceumcourses,atchautau...

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