The University of Hard Knocks | Page 3

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The University of Hard Knocks
by Ralph Parlette
The School That Completes Our Education
"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son"--Revelation 21:7.
"Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And thus our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
Shakespeare

Why It Is Printed
MORE than a million people have sat in audiences in all parts of the United States and have listened to "The University of Hard Knocks." It has been delivered to date more than twenty-five hundred times upon lyceum courses, at chautauquas, teachers' institutes, club gatherings, conventions and before various other kinds of audiences. Ralph Parlette is kept busy year after year lecturing, because his lectures deal with universal human experience.
"Can I get the lecture in book form?" That continuous question from audiences brought out this book in response. Here is the overflow of many deliveries.
"What is written here is not the way I would write it, were I writing a book," says Ralph Parlette. "It is the way I say it. The lecture took this unconscious colloquial form before audiences. An audience makes a lecture, if the lecture survives. I wish I could shake the hand of every person who has sat in my audiences. And I wish I could tell the lecture committees of America how I appreciate the vast amount of altruistic work they have done in bringing the audiences of America together. For lecture audiences are not drawn together, they are pushed together."
The warm reception given "The University of Hard Knocks" by the public, has encouraged the publishers to put more of Mr. Parlette's lectures into book form, "Big Business" and "Pockets and Paradises" are now in preparation as this, the third edition of "The University of Hard Knocks" comes from the press.

Contents
SOME PRELIMINARY REMARKS--The lecturer the delivery wagon--The sorghum barrel--Audience must have place to put lecture--Why so many words
The University of Hard Knocks
I. THE BOOKS ARE BUMPS--Every bump a lesson--Why the two kinds of bumps--Description of University--"Sweet are the uses of Adversity"--Why children are not interested
II. THE COLLEGE OF NEEDLESS KNOCKS, the bumps that we bump into--Getting the coffee-pot--Teaching a wilful child--Bumps make us "stop, look, listen"--Blind man learns with one bump--Going up requires effort--Prodigals must be bumped--The fly and the sticky fly-paper--"Removed" and "knocked out"
III. THE COLLEGE OF NEEDFUL KNOCKS, the bumps that bump into us--Our sorrows and disappointments--How the piano was made--How the "red mud" becomes razor-blades--The world our mirror--The cripple taught by the bumps--Every bump brings a blessing--You are never down and out
IV. "SHAKE THE BARREL"--How we decide our destinies--Why the big ones shake up and the little ones shake down--The barrel of life sorting people--How we hold our places, go down, go up--Good luck and bad luck--The girl who went up--The man who went down--The fatal rattle--We must get ready to get--Testimonials and press notices--You cannot uplift people with derrick--No laws can equalize--Help people to help themselves--We cannot get things till we get ready for them
V. GOING UP--How we become great--We must get inside greatness-- There is no top--We make ourselves great by service--the first step at hand--All can be greatest--Where to find great people--A glimpse of Gunsaulus
VI. THE PROBLEM OF "PREPAREDNESS"--Preparing children for life--Most "advantages" are disadvantages--Buying education for children--The story of "Gussie" and "Bill Whackem"--Schools and books only give better tools for service--"Hard knocks" graduates-- Menace of America not swollen fortunes but shrunken souls-- Children must have struggle to get strength--Not packhorse work-- Helping the turkeys killed them--the happiness of work we love-- Amusement drunkards--Lure of the city--Strong men from the country-- Must save the home towns--A school of struggle--New School experiment
VII. THE SALVATION OF A "SUCKER"--You can't get something for nothing--The fiddle and the tuning--How we know things--Trimmed at the shell game--My "fool drawer"--Getting "selected to receive 1,000 per cent"--You must earn what you own--Commencement orations--My maiden sermon--The books that live have been lived--Singer must live songs--Successful songs written from experience--Theory and practice--Tuning the strings of life
VIII. LOOKING BACKWARD--Memories of the price we pay--My first school teaching--Loaning the deacon my money--Calling the roll of my schoolmates--At the grave of the boy I had envied--Why Ben Hur won the chariot race--Pulling on the oar
IX. GO ON SOUTH!--The book in the running brook--The Mississippi keeps on going south and growing greater--We generally start well, but stop--Few go on south--The plague of incompetents--Today our best day, tomorrow to be better--Birthdays are promotions--I