ed never to have digested any of the things in his memory. Since I
have grown up I always think of that man as an intellectual cold
storage plant.

The greatest book is the textbook of the University of Hard Knocks, the
Book of Human Experience the "sermons in stones" and the "books in
running brooks." Most fortunate is he who has learned to read
understandingly from it.

Note the sweeping, positive statements of the young person.

Note the cautious, specific statements of the person who has lived long
in this world.

Our education is our progress from the sweeping, positive, wholesale
statements we have not proved, to the cautious, specific statements we
have proved.

Tuning the Strings of Life

Many audiences are gathered into this one audience. Each person here is
a different audience, reading a different page in the Book of Human
Experience. Each has a different fight to make and a different burden
to carry. Each one of us has more trouble than anybody else!

I know there are chapters of heroism in the lives of you older ones.
You have cried yourselves to sleep, some of you, and walked the floor
when you could not sleep. You have learned that "beyond the Alps lieth
Italy."

A good many of you were bumped today or yesterday, or maybe years ago,
and the wound has not healed. You think it never will heal. You came
here thinking that perhaps you would forget your trouble for a little
while. I know there are people in this audience in pain.

Never do this many gather but what there are some with aching hearts.

And you young people here with lives like June mornings, are not much
interested in this lecture. You are polite and attentive because this
is a polite and attentive neighborhood. But down in your hearts you are
asking, "What is this all about? What is that man talking about? I
haven't had these things and I'm not going to have them, either!"

Maybe some of you are naturally bright!

You are going to be bumped. You are going to cry yourselves to sleep.
You are going to walk the floor when you cannot sleep. Some of you are
going to know the keen sorrow of having the one you trust most betray
you. Maybe, betray you with a kiss. You will go through your
Gethsemane. You will see your dearest plans wrecked. You will see all
that seems to make life livable lost out of your horizon. You will say,
"God, let me die. I have nothing more to live for."

For all lives have about the same element