“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 has 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 is why she won.
I stood with a man, overlooking a beautiful farm in Northern Maine.
I said to him, “Who cleared this land? Who stumped 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 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.
© Kenyon.
