orth. We all start about alike. It
wabbles around thru the woods of Minnesota. It doesn't know where it is
going, but it is "on the way."

It keeps wabbling around, never giving up and quitting, and it gets to
the place where all of us get sooner or later. The place where Paul
came on the road to Damascus. The place of the "heavenly vision."

It is the place where gravity says, "Little Mississippi, do you want to
grow? Then you will have to go south."

The little Mississippi starts south. He says to the people, "Goodbye,
folks, I am going south." The folks at Itascaville say, "Why,
Mississippi, you are foolish. You hain't got water enough to get out of
the county." That is a fact, but he is not trying to get out of the
county. The Mississippi is only trying to go south.

The Mississippi knows nothing about the Gulf of Mexico. He does not
know that he has to go hundreds of miles south. He is only trying to go
south. He has not much water, but he does not wait for a relative to
die and bequeath him some water. That is a beautiful thought! He has
water enough to start south, and he does that.

He goes a foot south, then another foot south. He goes a mile south. He
picks up a little stream and he has some more water. He goes on south.
He picks up another stream and grows some more. Day by day he picks up
streamlets, brooklets, rivulets. Business is picking up! He grows as he
flows. Poetry!

My friends, here is one of the best pictures I can find in nature of
what it seems to me our lives should be. I hear a great many orations,
especially in high school commencements, entitled, "The Value of a Goal
in Life." But the direction is vastly more important than the goal.
Find the way your life should go, and then go and keep on going and
you'll reach a thousand goals.

We do not have to figure out how far we have to go, nor how many
supplies we will need along the way. All we have to do is to start and
we will find the resources all along the way. We will grow as we flow.
All of us can start! And then go on south!

Success is not tomorrow or next year. Success is now. Success is not at
the end of the journey, for there is no end. Success is every day in
flowing and growing. The Mississippi is a success in Minnesota as well
as on south.

You and I sooner or later hear the call, "Go on south." If we haven't
heard it, let us keep our ear to the receiver and live a more natural
life, so that we can hear the call. We are al