Editor’s Table

864 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself un-^ spotted from the world." If our officers can not answer some such questions as these,

they are not doing their full duty, and should turn their attention in a spiritual and religious direction; not forgetting, however, nor laying aside, their meetings, the study of the manual, the fund, the Era, conferences, lectures, libraries, and other educational machinery and vehicles.

AVOID "OLD ABE."

Don't be afraid to fight alone against the wrong, or to stand for the right, as God has given you to see it. "If I were as prompt in doing as others do, in matters of merit, as I am in matters of demerit, it would change my whole career," said a young man recently. There are many like him. Have you not noticed how quickly we copy things forbidden in the moral teachings of The Church, and how loth to do and adopt the works commanded in the gospel? It is the same old human char- acter that Paul contended with: "When I would do good, evil is present with me. * * * The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." It is natural for boys and for men also, to do as the other fellows do, especially if that is evil; to follow the crowd in the easy, popular way. And, strange to say, frequently the crowd goes wrong, and what is popular in the world of young people is

often wrong entirely, or at most unwise and forbidden. However, the boy who does things because the other fellows do them is apt to be wading constantly in deep and troubled waters. This applies to financial, social, and business conditions as well as to morals. A person who ignorantly does as others do because it is popular, is sure to "scratch a poor man's back" all his days: is bound to go wrong, and, like Paul, must in the end exclaim: "0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?"'^ He

EDITORS TABLE. 865

is led by the nose by those who cry, "0 be like us!" and before he comes to his senses, is often socially, morally and financially un- done. Young men be not led ignorantly in anything. Permit no one to lead you who has not gained the confidence of the community in which you live. As young men get off by themselves, they are always confronted with some companions who think recklessness in money and morals brands them as good fellows, while the cautious^ careful boy is classed as mean or cowardly. Beware of such com- panions! Think for yourselves when they make proposals, and don't be afraid to stand alone. Don't follow the crowd, just to be a good fellow. Nine chances in ten, you will lose your self-respect: while, by taking a determined stand for the right, as you see it> you will in the end become the respected leader. If you follow blindly, the chances are that you will become a laughing-stock, and be left to mend your own sores as best you can. Here is a fitting though homely illustration on this subject from John Graham, a wealthy Chicago pork packer, who writes in the Philadelphia Post to his son in Harvard University: "We've got an old steer out at the packing-house that stands around at the foot of the runway leading up to the killing pens, looking for all the world like one of the village fathers sitting on the cracker box before the grocery — sort of sad-eyed, dreamy old cuss — always has two or three straws from cud sticking out of his the corner of his mouth. You never saw a steer that looked as if he took less interest in things. But by and by the boys drive a bunch of steers toward him, or cows maybe, if we're canning, and then you'll see Old Abe move off up that runway, sort of beckon- ing the bunch after him with that wicked old stump of a tail of his, as if there was something mighty interesting to steers at the

top, and something that every Texan and Colorado, raw from the prairies, ought to have a look at to put a metropolitan finish on him. Those steers just naturally follow along on up that runway and into the killing pens. But just as they get to the top Old Abe someways gets lost in the crowd and he isn't among those present when the gates are closed and the real trouble begins for his new friends. "I never saw a dozen boys together that there wasn't an Old