Page:Stanwood Pier--Harding of St Timothys.djvu/188

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160
HARDING OF ST. TIMOTHY'S

for I suppose most of you are going a year or two years from now. And it seems to me that the case of Clark Harding—which is the same, you see, as the case of Rupert Ormsby—gives me a good starting-point. Those two fellows are out to do something—not just to be prominent. At least, that's the way it was with Clark, and from having known Rupert since he was a kid, I think I can say the same for him. But we'll leave him out of it now; it's not fair to embarrass him any more by singing his praises. I'll stick simply to Clark.

"He was a fellow, I can tell you, that never once thought of the importance of being personally prominent. He never did things with that purpose in view. Now in that respect he was different from nearly every other fellow of his age; he was certainly different from me. Here at school I'd got into the habit of mistaking prominence for success; nearly every boy makes that mistake. It's only the rare fellows like Clark who don't make it.

"But the rest of us find out after a while that it is a mistake. We've gone to college,