The Glory of Creating

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Solitude

By George Matthew Adams

There isn't a human being who doesn't need solitude - yet there are many who can't appreciate it when they have it.

In the truest sense, however, there can be no real solitude for to make solitude beautiful and full of warmth, there must be something about it to stimulate as well as to heal the tired and restless heart of him or her who would seek it.

Solitude in a hotel room, far from loved ones, is not to be commended, nor is it to be sought.

But solitude "out where the west begins" or amongst the hills and valleys of some sylvan stretch is to feed the soul on honey.

Solitude under a tree by the banks of some running stream, with the scent of wild flowers and the song of wild birds about, and a book in hand emphasizing the makes of some fine grained mind - that is solitude - both to be sought and enjoyed. In solitude we meet ourselves. We are stripped of all glamour and conceit and made to feel our frailty as well as our strength. For there are times when a man gets to himself only to find that he is not the weakling he and others supposed him to be. To spend such time is to enrich all mankind.

It is not surprising that others do not understand us when we misunderstand ourselves so much and so often. Solitude helps us to appraise our own gifts, our own inheritance.

Solitude helps to sweep out the mind, too. The little petty annoyances scamper off for richer booty and the solitary soul is left to feed upon its own treasured gains.

In solitude we gain self-confidence, see our own follies in their tinseled coverings, and are resolved to be better and do better.

The Thing That Melts

The Thing That Melts

By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

There is a key to every heart in the universe, and every human being carries that key: It is this kindness!

Kindness will melt the hardest heart. Kindness is able to turn tears into smiles. Kindness makes enemies your friends. Kindness inspires, uplifts—leads.

Kindness softens, smoothes—heals.

Kindness sweetens life. It sweeps whole continents of misunderstandings away like hills of sand before a huge tide.

Kindness is positive. It never offers excuses. It looks you in the face. It takes you by the hand. It doesn't care about what you have been—it only wants to know what you are.

Kindness is heaven here and now. Kindness is God. Kindness is sunshine right after the storm. Kindness is the song that thrills and gladdens and floods everything with light.

Kindness is a kind of an angel!

JUST BELIEVE!

Just Believe

By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

There is very little difference between success and failure. But that difference means everything, for it's the difference between belief and unbelief.

Believe—and words may pass!

The man who writes a better book, who builds a better building, who contructs a finer machine, who paints a better picture, than anybody else, is the man who first believes that he can do these things better than they have ever been done before.

Would you wipe out the achievements of a Napoleon or an Edison, or a Schwab, or a Whistler, you would first have to wipe out from the hope canopied heart of each of them their belief in ultimate glory.

For belief is the thing that drives a man to his goal. Tell him that he is not going to win, that the path before him is obstructed, and he will turn on you with eyes flashing like 30-karat diamonds and say to you "But I believe!"

You could wipe away the Rocky mountains easier than you could wipe from the brain of an indomitable man his belief, his faith for winning.

For it is the belief that a man carries within him that spurs him on, that trips up every failure along the way and that leads him with a high head and a straight-faced vision for the thing ahead he is going to see done.

If you want to move mountains, if you want to stamp a city somewhere, or put your character between the pages of history: just believe!

From the Milwaukee Sentinel - Mar 4, 1919

On Saying Things

May 12, 1926

There is always a beautiful way to say things. Just as there is a beautiful way to act or to build a house or to finish a room.

The lovely character cannot help but give expression to beautiful thoughts that come out into words full of pleasing appeal.

Everyone, upon maturity, has a way of expressing themselves in words. And this way gives you the key to their character. It may be a beautiful or an ugly way that they may have.

But there is always a beautiful way to say everything. Nothing so cuts into one's heart as a mis-spoken word that falls clumsily. Rarely, perhaps, the hurt was meant at all. Nevertheless when a word has gone from the lips, it cannot be recalled. Yours may go, but so long as memory lives, the scar of a mis-spoken word may remain.

It is fine to forgive and forget so far as in your power lies, but to be highly tuned to the receipt of beautiful words from a warm and understanding heart is to own one of the finest gifts God gives to human beings.

The beautiful way of saying things to everybody you know or meet is the only way. The other way wasn't meant at all.

If you can't speak sincerely and well, then don't speak at all. Silence leaves no sad memories.

The happy voice over the telephone, the earyly morning greeting, the first words after separation from your friends—how important to make them full of beauty, vibrant with the soul of you!

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

May 11, 1926

Most of the way down the narrow road of this life, we have to travel alone. And a great deal of the way is passed in hunger.

But there are compensations, and these light the way and perfume the very air—even when it is heavy with the mist of yesterday's rain.

God has sprinkled beauty in this world in lavish fashion. The hills and moutains, the streams that clatter over their beds of white stones with a song upon their rippling lips, the music that leaps from the throats of hundreds of different varieties of birds, the matchless flowers in their gorgeous gowns and scented as only God could perfume them, and then your friends—few, perhaps—but many so genuine and true. And to a few, "love's brief immortality."

Everywhere compensations for our losses. And so often we dwell upon our losses without measuring our gains which may far outweight them.

So I would say: Believe in yourself. Look life in the eye. Smile at its hurts. Do not cringe under the lash.

William De Morgan was past 60 before his first novel was published, but when he died many years later he was one of the most noted writers in the world. Goethe finished "Faust" at the age of 80. Henry Ford was unknown in the world of businesses at 40. Col. W. R. Nelson was 40 when he started his Kansas City Star which has recently been appraised as worth more than six millions of dollars. Peary was around 50 years of age when he finally planted the stars and stripes at the North Pole.

These men had to believe in themselves. If they hadn't no one else ever would have known their remarkable abilities.

We sleep to wake.

Believe in yourself.

STRIVING TO UNDERSTAND

May 10, 1926

If we always understood, we wouldn't make any mistakes. The story of the human race has always been one of groping and striving. The unknowable. That something which might satify.

Moment by moment, hour by hour, days into years, this reaching, this dreaming, this longing of the mind and heart and soul goes on.

Every step out of ignorance is a step toward God and His world.

Happiness is a relative term, in its last analysis and yet unless there be interests in life that tend to create and build out of that which lies so dormant in our natures, we can know little happiness. We try to act independently. But that is impossible.

Everything we do or think is eternally woven into the endless skein of human throb and feeling. Somebody, somewhere is always affected by what we think or do.

You may this day be storing in your heart that which may not blood for years.

The explorer is always a benefactor. The achievement in itself is trivial to him. It is enough for him to feel that in the doing of his job there may also rest the end.

So it is that we have our expeditions to the ends of the earth. Our pole searchers, and those to whom dark continents and the charted "unexplored" mean only a search for knowledge and a desire to understand.

We are most misjudged by the ignorant by our sincerest searches after true expression and the largest development of our natures. Not being us, they, of course, are unable to travel with us.

What an epitaph for any man: "He strove to understand!"

The Passing of Old Ways

May 8, 1926

THE PASSING OF OLD WAYS

THE new today seems to be in the saddle. Changes are rapid and radical. So that we look upon the old as something far, far away.

But attractive as all new things are, there is something so mellow, rich and tried about the old. As in the case of an old friend who has gone through all our faults, our strange and often irritating ways, but who has caught the gold and lived on that.

Most of us prefer the new to the old, but every experience is blessed where we come in contact with something that has long been tried and which has stood the test.

To go into an old house a hundred or so years old, or to sit upon the ledge of a rock foundation that has held a beautiful structure for a long, long time is to feel the silent spirit of all that has hovered there.

I like the old farms that have stood for years. I like to wander over them. I like to listen to the stories of those who have worked them and loved them for so long.

What would we do without memory to sweeten this cup of life?

How memory beautifies every experience of life. I lifted from my desk among some choice papers today a letter that was written to me by my mother over a quarter of a century ago. It took me back to all that boyhood. The familiar hand, the quiet smile and warm arms that were always warm. The quaint humor but always and always that gentle solicitation for "my darling boy."

One works better, surer and happier anyway after one has crept back into he old things and old ways of old friends—if only to get a new, fresh breath.

THIS LITTLE TYPEWRITTER

May 7, 1926

By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

THIS LITTLE TYPEWRITTER

For 15 years this little machine has been my companion. In a room of quiet, and one so often silently lonely, each small key has imprinted upon the page the simple thoughts from my heart.

It has written nothing new. Just human expressions of one mind, colored by the better thoughts of other minds, but bathed in the heart of this writer's desires.

Have they been worth while? This little typewritter won't say. It simply serves these fingers. Fingers that have tried at so many other tasks—but this at least the happiest of all.

Just thoughts from a very imperfect and often blundering life. Thoughts inspired by the beauty and loveliness of others, sweetened by the sweetness of nobler lives.

This little typewritter is my sacred shrine sometimes. Because I tell it so much. Often what I tell it never gets farther than its imprint—and then is tucked away or else destroyed. Because we had our little talk anyway. And sometimes all we need is the little talk—even though merely given to the faithful and obedient machine.

For, you see, the one you want most of all to talk to isn't always around. Maybe just in your heart where you store your hunger and your love.

But many of the simple talks go out into the big world, as this and others have gone.

This little typewritter is always ready. It never finds fault. But I think it does keep saying: "Do better, do better, do better!"

Of course, we never know whether it is worth its keep, but we keep talking to it anyway.

We do so much not knowing why. Perhaps sometime it will all be explained.

ACORNS

RISKS

RISKS

All risks are a test of faith.

Obscurity may be the greatness with nobody around to announce it.

This we know, that God took great risks in placing each one of us in the world. But it isn't what we fail or achieve in that marks our worth. Often it is what we fail in totally, so long as the purpose and intention were fine.

The chambered nautilus casts off its outgrown shell. Each changing purpose of our lives gives newer zest and clothes new tasks.

If we do nothing that involves risks, we are apt to do nothing worth mentioning.

The tiny baby in its warm, soft clothes sleeps to its risks. But in a few years it finds itself wound about with their urge.

We are enveloped with risks. What we gain, we gain by risking.

With the crumbling or our fondest desires, we are faced with an horizon of risks. We challenge our ignoreance again and again. And our intelligence is asserted only as we newly arise and determine to risk more.

When things don't look plain, there is always the cloud of confusion about. And you have to risk a great deal to get out of a cloud. You say: "Why are clouds?" But you know why when they have passed.

"If winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

And if risks gather, isn't happiness worth the risk?

WASTED TIME

Gettysburg Times - Apr 30, 1926

WASTED TIME
By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

You cannot recall hours. They trot by in single file one by one—but they never turn and look back. When they have passed, they have gone forever.

Those hours mean all in all to you. They glitter with gold. They are saturated with the most precious perfume. They dangle with opportunities. But they say nothing. They have no publicity agenda. Their silence is as impressuve as the grave. And yet all the color of life and hope beams from their separate 60 minutes!

Walt Mason, the unique and original writer of rhymes, once spoke of these travelling hours by telling people to "ride them till their backs are sore." "For," said he, "60 minutes have you—60 minutes—and no more."

The great task of education should be, not to fill our mind with things that would clog it, but with ideas that would move other ideas through that mind—keep it clean, fit to easily and quickly grasp useful information and interests, and as quickly to discard that which might never prove of use.

Fifteen minutes today given to selected reading every day in the year would give to any man or woman a fund or information in a very short time that the wisest, a hundred years ago, would have been proud to possess.

But how many—even the most intelligent—ever give this brief space of time to additional learning? How many make it a point to hunt out some new item of information each day?

If there are days in which you find it impossible to read, a few moments given at odd times to what you have read, or seen or heard, in serious thinking, will be as fresh food to the mind.

It was said of Hercules, the god or force, that "whether he sat, or walked, or whatever he did, he conquered." So, with you, no matter where you are, or what you may be doing, think, use your eyes, and rise just a little higher in thought space.

Don't waste a single minute. You need them all. Everybody does.

ON STARTING ALL OVER

Gettysburg Times - Apr 24, 1926

ON STARTING ALL OVER
By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

One of my friends, who is a famous writer, Don Herold by name, told me the other day that he had discarded all his idea files and memoranda slips, and that now he just wanted a clean mind and a clean piece of paper.

I have thought a great deal of my friend's statement. I wonder if most of us wouldn't profit if we started each day with a clean mind and a clean piece of paper.

The trouble with many of us is that we carry too much with us as we go along until we get our lives themselves all cluttered up and confused.

I have a friend who never gets stampeded. He cleans up as he goes. He seems ready at all times for the handling of a big or small problem. I often consult him feeling the strength of his superior control.

I have noted that when catastrophe or misfortune comes to such a part he never flinches and though all may be wiped from under his feet, he stands on his feet as nobly proud as before—and just goes on to rebuild better for all that he has lost.

Chicago and San Francisco built greater and better after having been burned and earthquaked.

That man or woman whose character has been through the fire, tried, tested and refined, has something to show the world for it all. And such people nearly always live to prove their worth.

It is no disgrace to start all over. It's usually an opportunity.

A clean mind, a clean piece of paper, an appreciation of all worth and goodness, of all beauty in this world, is something that no legacy no matter how rich or great, could possibly give.

THAT SOMEBODY

Gettysburg Times - Apr 24, 1926

THAT SOMEBODY

By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

There is in the lives of all of us at times—that somebody. That somebody who understands, who steps up and helps without being asked, that somebody who gives the glass of cool, fresh water, who soothes the troubled brow and presses the hand—just knowing, that's all.

That somebody who comes from nowhere seemingly, who wasn't expected, who didn't want to be detected—but how only wanted to be of service.

That somebody who is so fully acquainted with trouble, who has known defeat, who has walked the wine-press of genuine sorrow, that somebody who doesn't parade, who cares not at all for show, but who never hesitates at convention, or anything else if something generous and useful and beautiful may be performed.

That somebody who smiles at disaster, who brushes aside unjust criticism and walks proudly to the place where he feels that he can do a good job and then pass on.

That somebody to whom sleep and rest seem trivial when another cannot sleep and rest, that somebody with the super-human soul who sweetens the world with his breath as a flower with its perfume.

That somebody who is not afraid to soil his hands in toil, that somebody who who would go hungry to feed another, that somebody who doesn't care for display, acclaim or applause.

That somebody who is always looking around that he may find something unique to do at some unexpected moment for someone who needs it most.

You can't do too much for that somebody. You can't be too kind, too gentle, too thoughtful, too generous to that—somebody.

FAITH IN SOMEONE ELSE

Gettysburg Times - Apr 23, 1926

FAITH IN SOMEONE ELSE
By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

It is a little strange how just faith works. Especially when that faith comes out of the heart of someone else and is applied to you.

We keep our chins quite a deal higher because someone else has faith in us.

The misfortune of others touch us because we, too, have had them.

We have wanted people to pat us on the back, encouraging us. And so we take our opportunity to pat someone else on the back.

In reading a lovely book the other evening, called "Footsteps in a Parish" by John Timothy Stone, I came across this sentence about the man for whom the book was written: "To know Dr. Babcock well, to realize what a friend he could be—one must have trouble."

Faith given one in trouble often changes the course of one's life. A large number of the failures that are strewn about us are failures largely because faith wasn't poured their way.

When somebody has faith in us, and we know it, then we begin to climb.

But just let one person who is near and dear to us lose faith in us—and then the sun goes behind a cloud at once.

We would rather have our pay in this life come to us in the shape of faith in any other way.

Then why not put your faith in someone else? Why not keep giving your faith away—out at "interest", for instance?

THE VALUE OF TRIFLES

Gettysburg Times - Apr 20, 1926

THE VALUE OF TRIFLES
By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

Every day we live with things of marvelous value—not realizing or appreciating their worth. Most of these things are small in themselves.

It seems to be the habit of most people to let the most interesting, most beautiful, and the most fascinating things of human life just pass along. Like the tiny flower that waits so patiently in the valleys for someone to come along and love it—or even to notice it.

The little trifles of courtesy, thoughtfulness and consideration to many appear old fashioned and trite.

But it is by rightly appraising these very things in their value to human life, character and happiness that we learn the true and beautiful value of friendship itself.

Trifles of love and thoughtfulness are what make up the great spots in this universe.

There are plenty of people who go out of their way to do something spectacular, something that will attract attention to their deeds, but to do the out-of-the-way thing, and just be happy and satisfied over doing it is quite the rare thing.

Trifles that spring from the heart to be poured into someone's life are like rare gems.

Simple gifts, small remembrances, sacrifices that are genuine—these things renovate the heart and cleanse it for the larger efforts of life.

The little things, trifles, are the privilege of all.

I BELIEVE IN YOU

Gettusburg Times - Apr 17, 1926

I BELIEVE IN YOU
By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

In the summer of 1909 Theodore Roosevelt and Robert E. Peary met. Peary was about to set out on the ship “Roosevelt” for his final dash to attain the North Pole.

Each man grasped the other's hand. Roosevelt looked into the eyes of the great and intrepid explorer and gave this as his final goodbye: “I believe in you, Peary.”

April 6, 1909, the North Pole listened to the waving of the Stars and Stripes!

Many who visited the World's Fair in Chicago in the early nineties remember that famous picture: “Breaking Home Ties.” There were the different members of the family, including the dog. But the face and figure of the mother predominated in interest. It silently uttered: “My boy, I believe in you.”

You can walk around with a darkened heart. Tears may wash its walls. The lights may all be dimmed, and the wind and rain of the outer world may chill each one of its chambers. But if there can yet be heard within this divine creation of the great God just one echoing voice of faith and love from but a single one beloved and that voice saying but this “I believe in you,” then nothing else matters.

All of us at times breathe with an instinct of heaven in our souls.

Empires have been lost, states have been dissolved, cities have been deserted, and choice human beings have stumbled, starved in heart, and fallen in their trucks—all because there wasn't somebody around to say: “I believe in you!”

How cheap and gross is admiration, flattery, adulation and mechanical applause beside this little touch of words, imported from the stars: "I believe in you.”

After that, life, with all its impossible tasks, becomes possible. And worries melt like fresh dew before the morning sun.

LITTLE ENOUGH

Gettysburg Times - Apr 16, 1926

LITTLE ENOUGH
By GEORGE MATTHEW ADAMS

It is only when the brave and simple nobility of some unheard of one shames us that we come to realize how really unimportant and useless we are.

No matter how hard we try to be somebody or to do something worth while it is little enough.

We shuttle too much through this life.

Ideals don't always have the gold rays of the sun upon them. Often they are darkened by the clouds of a storm. But it is our faith—that comes from somewhere—that leads us always and eventually into the light again.

No matter what we do for others, no matter how we try to make this world a little happier, it is never enough.

We can never be too kind, never do too much to make the way of some one else less difficult, never give too much of love.

The world is full of cravers. The hunger of the heart, of the soul, is a far nobler hunger than ever that of the body.

When the rain falls and the winds blow, adding gloom and loneliness, it is a little enough to go out of your way to do something that will put a light into the window of a life darkened by discouragement and loss.

How just a little bunch of white daisies changes all!