but it tends to corrupt the mind, to give the boy false ideas
of life, and it gives him such opinions as are not real, and therefore
very injurious to any one. It is much better that a boy's valuable time
should be spent in reading good books and good papers, and securing such
information as will be of value and assistance to him all through life.
For the life of every boy and of every girl is a very great struggle,
and no boy or girl can afford to waste time in the beginning. If they
are ever to amount to anything in this world, it is important that they
should begin very early in life.

I want to call your attention to another characteristic of these seeds.
And that is when a single seed is planted, it grows up and produces a
very great number of other seeds. If you plant a seed of wheat, it will
produce 30, 60, or sometimes 100 other seeds. If you plant one sunflower
seed it might produce as many as 4,000 seeds. If you plant one single
thistle seed, it has been known to produce as high as 24,000 seeds in a
single summer. If you were to plant only one grain of corn and let it
grow until it is ripe, and then plant the seeds again which grew on
these few ears of corn, and thus continue to re-plant again and again,
we are told by those who have calculated it very carefully, that in only
five short years the amount of corn that could be grown as the result of
the planting of the one single seed would be sufficient to plant a hill
of corn, with three grains in every square yard of all the dry land on
all the earth. In ten years the product would be sufficient to plant not
only this entire world, both land and sea, but all the planets, or
worlds which circle around our sun, and some of them are even a thousand
times larger than our own globe. So you see that there is wonderful
multiplying power in the different kinds of grain which you plant.

So it is with the thoughts and the words which we have in our minds.
Good thoughts enter into good acts, and these acts influence others just
as though the same thought was sown into their minds, and then it
springs up into their lives and influences them. Just so when we have
read a book, whether the book is good or bad, its influence goes on
reproducing itself, over and over again in our lives, every time in a
multiplied form. Suppose with your money you send some Bibles to the
heathen, and as a result a single person is converted. Immediately that
person would influence other heath