ere. This is no reflection upon the janitor. You became a piano by the
Needful Knocks.

I can see you back in your callow beginnings, when you were just a
tree--a tall, green tree. You were green! Only green things grow. Did
you get the meaning of that, children? I hope you are green.

There you stood in the forest, a perfectly good, green young tree. You
got your lessons, combed your hair, went to Sunday school and were the
best young tree you could be.

That is why you were bumped--because you were good! There came a man
into the woods with an ax, and he looked for the best trees there to
bump. He bumped you--hit you with the ax! How it hurt you! And how
unjust it was! He kept on hitting you. "The operation was just
terrible." Finally you fell, crushed, broken, bleeding.

It is a very sad story. They took you all bumped and bleeding to the
sawmill and they bumped and ripped you more. They cut you in pieces and
hammered you day by day.

They did not bump the little, crooked, dissipated, cigaret-stunted
trees. They were not worth bumping.

But shake, Mr. Piano. That is why you are on this stage. You were
bumped here. All the beauty, harmony and value were bumped into you.

The Sufferings of the Red Mud

One day I was up the Missabe road about a hundred miles north of
Duluth, Minnesota, and came to a hole in the ground. It was a big
hole--about a half-mile of hole. There were steam-shovels at work
throwing out of that hole what I thought was red mud.

"Kind sir, why are they throwing that red mud out of that hole?" I
asked a native.

"That hain't red mud. That's iron ore, an' it's the best iron ore in
the world."

"What is it worth?"

"It hain't worth nothin' here; that's why they're movin' it away."

There's red mud around every community that "hain't worth nothin'"
until you move it--send it to college or somewhere.

Not very long after this, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I saw some of
this same red mud. It had been moved over the Great Lakes and the rails
to what they call a blast furnace, the technological name of which
being The College of Needful Knocks for Red Mud.

I watched this red mud matriculate into a great hopper with limestone,
charcoal and other textbooks. Then they corked it up and school began.
They roasted it. It is a great thing to be roasted.

When it was done roasting they stopped. Have you noticed that they
always stop when anything is done roasting? If we are yet getti