---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Holmes
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 8
number: 2
published: 1904-12
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Holmes, "Stick to Your Aim: A Poem," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 2 (December 1904): 91.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0802unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0802unse
start_page: 91
end_page: 91
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1904-12)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0802unse
  publication_year: 1904
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1904, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Stick to Your Aim: A Poem

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THE VALUE OF SOUL.                              91

when standing before  Festus, the power to say, "I am not mad,
most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness."
     Here you have the secret of the orator's power who sways
the souls of men, as the winds sway the fields of ripening grain;
this gave Pitts and      Brougham the strange popularity so long        enjoyed.   It is this which,   through Prof. MeClellan, evokes the multiplied tones of   our majestic organ, until a highly prominent and
gifted musician from Washington, D.          C, said, the other day, that
he was so entranced "he forgot to app'aud;" and another                 who
said, when under the spell of the     same inspirational manipulation,
"I was nearer to heaven than ever        I   expected to be in this life,
and may ever be again!"
     This influx and efflux from higher spheres          is   already beginning to influence the thought of the religious and the moral world;
example and assertion, working together, are laying bare the
foundations of crude and erroneous superstition, and the process
will continue and increase by silent transfusion of new impulse, and

a consequent new life, meaning the redemption of man.
     The little leaven is working out        its   own and yet God-given
powers, and its mission will never end, until the whole is leavened.
Spiritual communion will be the normal condition with many earnest, seeking souls who will "vindicate       the ways of      God to man,"
so enabling the willing to live as becomes the children of the one
great Father, who is over all, above all, to whom be glory forever
and ever.
 Salt Lake City, Utah.

                         STICK TO YOUR AIM.
               Be firm; one constant element of luck
               Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck,

              Stick to your aim; the mongrel's hold will slip;
               But only crowbars loose the bull-dog's grip;
               Small though he looks, the jaw that never yields
               Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields!
                                                               — Holmes.