Advice To A Young Man

Cultivate self-control until it becomes natural to you. Self-repression isn't self-control. One time I knew one of these men that are accustomed to self-repression. He was a quiet, soft-spoken man, with the most ungovernable temper that ever tore a human passion into rags. But he rarely showed it. One day in the autumn he was trying to make a joint of six-inch stove pipe fit into the end of a five and one-half inch length. And during the struggle he smote his thumb, about mid-way between the nail and the joint, with a round-backed hammer. He arose with a sad, sweet smile, laid the hammer softly on the carpet, changed the lengths of pipe fitted them and put the pipe up, and never said a word. But he was pale, and there was a glowing light in his eyes. And the next day, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, that man walked out of town, up the B. & M. grade, and stood in the woods, and foamed at the mouth, and howled and raved about stove-pipes and people who make them until he frightened a thirty-two-ton engine off the track. Self-repression isn't self-control, my son.
— Burdette.

Mr. C— was pastor of a Baptist church in a certain town in one of the Western States. He had been on very bad terms with his flock for some time. They abused him whenever they could find occasion, and he reciprocated with equal readiness. Before his contract with the parish expired, he received the appointment of Chaplain at the State prison. Elated at this lucky opportunity of getting rid of him, the congregation came in full numbers to hear his farewell sermon, perhaps less to compliment than to annoy him with their presence. Great was the astonishment, and still greater their anger, when the reverend gentleman chose for his text the following words: "I go to prepare a place for you . . . that where I am, there ye may be also."