Newport High School - Blunita Yearbook (Newport, PA)

Page 9 text:

i iuj oiLur, Ai'ijj inu TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON Abraham Lincoln Dear Johnston: Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little you have said to rae, '7e can get along very well now , but in a very short time I flind you in the some difficulty again. Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct. ',7hat that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt vvhther , since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly time is important to you, and still more so to your children, th t you should break the habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in. You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is that you shall go to work, tooth and nail, for somebody who will give you raonev for it. Let father and your boys take charge of your things at Home, prepare fox- a crop, and make a crop, and discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you that for every dollar you will, between this a and the first fo May, get for your own labor, either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will give then to you one dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this I do not mean that you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines in California, but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles County. Now, if you will dot this, you will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting in debt again. But, if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep as ever. You say you would be just in giving your place in heaven for seventy or eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven very cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five month's work. You say if I will furnish you the money you will deed me the land, and if you don't pay the money back you will deliver possession. Nonsense 1 If you can't live now with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been very kind to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eighty times eighty dollars to you. Affectionately your brother, A. Lincoln TALTAVION CF T Listen to the exortation of the dawn. Look -o this day 1 For it is life, The very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities And realities of your existence; The bliss of growth, The glory of action, IE DAT' The splendor of beauty. For yesterday is a dream And tomorrow is only a vision. But to-day well lived Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness And every to-raorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this

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