登陆注册
15450200000023

第23章 CHAPTER VII(4)

You get the most beautiful and sublime truths from Emerson's essays. (How did they ever have commencements before Emerson?) But that is not knowing them. You cannot know them until you have lived them. It is a grand thing to say, "Beyond the Alps lieth Italy," but you can never really say that until you know it by struggling up over Alps of difficulty and seeing the Italy of promise and victory beyond. It is fine to say, "We are rowing and not drifting," but you cannot really say that until you have pulled on the oar.

O, Gussie, get an oar!

My Maiden Sermon Did you ever hear a young preacher, just captured, just out of a factory?

Did you ever hear him preach his "maiden sermon"? I wish you had heard mine. I had a call. At least, I thought I had a call. I think now I was "short-circuited." The "brethren" waited upon me and told me I had been "selected": Maybe this was a local call, not long distance.

They gave me six weeks in which to load the gospel gun and get ready for my try-out. I certainly loaded it to the muzzle.

But I made the mistake I am trying to warn you against. Instead of going to the one book where I might have gotten a sermon--the book of my experience, I went to the books in my father's library. "As the poet Shakespeare has so beautifully said," and then I took a chunk of Shakespeare and nailed it on page five of my sermon. "List to the poet Tennyson." Come here, Lord Alfred. So I soldered these fragments from the books together with my own native genius. I worked that sermon up into the most beautiful splurges and spasms.

I bedecked it with metaphors and semaphores. I filled it with climaxes, both wet and dry. I had a fine wet climax on page fourteen, where I had made a little mark in the margin which meant "cry here." This was the spilling-point of the wet climax. I was to cry on the lefthand side of the page.

I committed it all to memory, and then went to a lady who taught expression, to get it expressed. You have to get it expressed.

I got the most beautiful gestures nailed into almost every page.

You know about gestures--these things you make with your arms in the air as you speak. You can notice it on me yet.

I am not sneering at expression. Expression is a noble art. All life is expression. But you have to get something to express. Here I made my mistake. I got a lot of fine gestures. I got an express-wagon and got no load for it. So it rattled. I got a necktie, but failed to get any man to hang it upon. I got up before a mirror for six weeks, day by day, and said the sermon to the glass. It got so it would run itself. I could have gone to sleep and that sermon would not have hesitated.

Then came the grand day. The boy wonder stood forth and before his large and enthusiastic concourse delivered that maiden sermon more grandly than ever to a mirror. Every gesture went off the bat according to the blueprint. I cried on page fourteen! I never knew it was in me. But I certainly got it all out that day!

Then I did another fine thing, I sat down. I wish now I had done that earlier. I wish now I had sat down before I got up. I was the last man out of the church--and I hurried. But they beat me out--all nine of them. When I went out the door, the old sexton said as he jiggled the key in the door to hurry me, "Don't feel bad, bub, I've heerd worse than that. You're all right, bub, but you don't know nothin' yet."

I cried all the way to town. If he had plunged a dagger into me he would not have hurt me so much. It has taken some years to learn that the old man was right. I had wonderful truth in that sermon.

No sermon ever had greater truth, but I had not lived it. The old man meant I did not know my own sermon.

So, children, when you prepare your commencement oration, write about what you know best, what you have lived. If you know more about peeling potatoes than about anything else, write about "Peeling Potatoes," and you are most likely to hear the applause peal from that part of your audience unrelated to you.

Out of every thousand books published, perhaps nine hundred of them do not sell enough to pay the cost of printing them. As you study the books that do live, you note that they are the books that have been lived. Perhaps the books that fail have just as much of truth in them and they may even be better written, yet they lack the vital impulse. They come out of the author's head. The books that live must come out of his heart. They are his own life. They come surging and pulsating from the book of his experience.

The best part of our schooling comes not from the books, but from the men behind the books.

We study agriculture from books. That does not make us an agriculturist. We must take a hoe and go out and agricult. That is the knowing in the doing.

You Must Live Your Song "There was never a picture painted, There was never a poem sung, But the soul of the artist fainted, And the poet's heart was wrung."

So many young people think because they have a good voice and they have cultivated it, they are singers. All this cultivation and irritation and irrigation and gargling of the throat are merely symptoms of a singer--merely neckties. Singers look better with neckties.

They think the song comes from the diaphragm. But it comes from the heart, chaperoned by the diaphragm. You cannot sing a song you have not lived.

Jessie was singing the other day at a chautauqua. She has a beautiful voice, and she has been away to "Ber-leen" to have it attended to. She sang that afternoon in the tent, "The Last Rose of Summer." She sang it with every note so well placed, with the sweetest little trills and tendrils, with the smile exactly like her teacher had taught her. Jessie exhibited all the machinery and trimmings for the song, but she had no steam, no song. She sang the notes. She might as well have sung, "Pop, Goes the Weasel."

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 十尾倾天下

    十尾倾天下

    世人都说女娲乃上帝之神女,远古之正神,却不知为达其目的也会不折手段!只知九尾狐,却不知道九尾狐有一妹妹名叫小狸,都说狐狸最多九尾,却不知道狐狸原来也可以长出十条尾巴!本文讲述了九尾狐和她妹妹之间的情意,小狸为姐姐报仇的辛苦历程,以及女娲的不折手段!看不一样的女娲,不一样的狐妖就在本书。这些都是个人观点,不喜勿喷!注:本文第一卷姐妹情深大部分都是由封神演义改编而成的,希望原著党们不要骂婷婷。
  • 剪刀·石头·布

    剪刀·石头·布

    作者对一个事件、一种现象的原因与意义的反复追问,可以集束性地敞开一类命题的意义……生活自身的魅力就在于其始终像一个万花筒,发散着无数种让人难以澄清辨析的风景。抓住一个端点,延伸这一条脉络上可能有的N种故事。
  • 感谢青春有你陪伴

    感谢青春有你陪伴

    她,圣凌学院的转学生,开学第一天,撞到了他。高冷却又痴情他对她一见钟情,家庭变故,留学三年,他等她。"待我们功成名就,你穿上洁白婚纱,我娶你"一辈子的承诺,见证了最美好的青春。
  • 齐书

    齐书

    中原板荡,五胡乱华。生灵有倒悬之急,社稷有累卵之危。天生的帝王,在阴谋与背叛中坚强,在忠诚与战火间成长。扫清六合,席卷八荒,并吞四海,臣服万邦。幅员之广,远迈秦汉。成功骏烈,卓乎盛矣!
  • 一帘红楼泪

    一帘红楼泪

    21世纪的林嘉穿越到了莫名的时空,却发现在即变了众人熟知的林黛玉那《红楼梦》里的林黛玉又是谁?自己的命运难道已经被那本书确定了吗?难道自己无力回天了吗?在她苦苦挣扎的时候,却发现了一个惊人的阴谋是谁,让她一生牵挂?
  • 南倾

    南倾

    昭兴三年,宣帝废太子奕枫,另立奕澈为太子,封废太子为枫诚王,划地咸州。?昭兴四年,宣帝驾崩,太子奕澈登基。?九月,枫诚王出征北岘,收北岘为附属领地。?昭兴五年?三月,枫诚王叛乱,率兵攻京都。?五月,枫诚王兵败,澈帝念兄弟情分,划江南,咸州,临州为封地,另派鹄鶪辅佐,求宣兰国内安定。?八月,叶家庄庄主为爱女选亲,轰动全国。昭兴六年,枫诚王出征北渊,半途失踪。?五月,叶家庄庄主续弦江氏,婚礼浩大,听闻江氏貌美,却无人亲眼见过。七月,澈帝访叶家庄,据说澈帝离开咸州的时候面色铁青,龙颜大怒。?八月,澈帝改年号为缪顷。缪顷一年,叶家庄大火,全庄无一人生还。据言,大火连绵数日,火到之处,寸草无存。?
  • 那年夏天,风吹过

    那年夏天,风吹过

    那个用整整一个青春爱着的人,无法忘怀的时光。
  • 以农梦三斤

    以农梦三斤

    作为一棵垃圾堆的草她原本是没有机会遇到男神范以农的。她没有妈妈,爸爸也被关进了监狱。生活无望,未来渺茫。幸亏有兰秋阿姨,她才能遇到他。能相遇便能相爱,何况他刚刚被甩。男神大家都爱的,她自然也很爱他。一场往事深埋在心里。回不去的不仅仅是昨天还有被抛弃的爱情。当整个城市的合(欢)花树为一人而栽,所有的合欢花为一人而开,我们不得不相信爱情真的存在。只是,相爱,注定要分开吗?
  • 劫之恋

    劫之恋

    作者:“黎小曦,你说你抢劫谁不好,非要抢劫一个权利与金钱几乎可以撼天的一个集团董事长呢?自己没抢到人家分毫不说,还被他给掠走了!还有,你拿一把没有装刀片的剃须刀抢劫是几个意思,我看你这智商基本和一只猪没差了!”“小子,你骂谁是猪呢?”“猎天!不不不...天哥,听我解释,听我....!”作者,卒
  • 星辰家族之战皇传奇

    星辰家族之战皇传奇

    浩瀚的大陆,宗门林立,势力无数。他,得到无上的传承,但是肩负复兴一个强大家族的使命。面对强敌,他能否战胜强敌,战胜自己,登上位面之主的宝座......