How did you ever do it? Keep at it |Quizesoft
How did you ever do it? I can't see how anyone could do a thing like that."
We were in a curio shop. On the table there
was a whole army of little figures that had been
whittled out by hand.
What hours of work must have been spent
on them.
This friend of mine stood there, and looking
at them said, "How did you ever do it?"
The man smiled and said, "I just kept at it."
I went out of the door.
I walked the street and I heard those three
words, "Kept at it, kept at it, kept at it."
How they rang through my soul.
That man had "Kept at it."
He had put life into it.
He had made a success.
People were coming from all parts of the
country to see the effect of that cultivated,
trained genius.
All that man had done was to train his mind
and hand, and then whittle his dreams out of
wood, of soft stone and ivory.
I was thrilled through and through at the
possibilities that were wrapped up in common
folk like you and me.
I heard a girl play the piano. She was not
over sixteen. I know something about music. We
had a music department in our institution for
many years.
I looked into her face and I whispered in my
own heart, "Girl, you have spent hours
pounding the keys while other girls were
walking the street. While others were sleeping
and mother was trying to get them out of bed,
you were pounding those keys.”
"You have lost a heap of good times, but
what a musician you are!"
She kept at it. That's why she won.
I stood with a man, overlooking a beautiful
farm in Northern Maine.
I said to him, "Who cleared this land? Whostumped it?"
He answered, "Do you see that little log
house down there by the creek?"
"I built that, and wife and I moved into it
before there was an acre of this land cleared. I
vowed that I would clear every acre of it and put
it into crops, and I have done it."
That is the spirit that conquers.
"I vowed I would do it, and I have done it."
I stood by the loom in the factory as a boy
and vowed that I would become an educator. I
did not know what it meant, but I knew that
within me was a teaching gift, an undeveloped
thing.
I vowed I would do it. I did it.
I was handicapped as few men have been
handicapped, but I did it.
I am passing it on to you to show that they
cannot conquer you if you will to do it.
Struggle to improve. In every effort improve
the dream.
Every time you play that piece on the piano,
play it better than you played it before.
Every time you sit down to that typewriter,
make up your mind that you are going to be
more efficient than you have ever been.
Make your brain work. It will sweat, but
make it work. It will improve. It will develop
until you become a wonder to those around you.
Don't depend on an alarm clock. Don't
depend on mother's waking you.
Make up your mind that you will have the
alarm clock in your soul.
Never depend on another man's car. Get one
of your own.
Be self-reliant.
Be punctual. Be diligent.
Think through on every problem.
Conquer your difficulties as a part of the
day's job.
We are out in the fight and we will win the
crown.