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get ahead of that pole somehow, and he mounted the wheel with his back toward the pole (but his Mind was still on it) and lo! the front wheel described a semi-circle, and back to the pole he went. Moral: Don't let a pole hypnotize you with Fearthought. --- keep your Mind on the place to which you wish to go.

But the best example was given by a boy who had kept his eyes open and his thinker working. Maybe I had better tell you in his own words. This is what he said, just as he said it:

"Oh, pshaw!" said the Boy, "you're making a big fuss over nothing. Every feller knows that you've got to think about a thing if you want to hit it, and if you think about the wrong thing, why, you'll hit the wrong thing. If I fire a stone at a tin can, why, I just look square at the can and think about the can for all I'm worth, and the can's a dead one, sure. If I happen to let my mind wander to the cat what's on the shed over to the left of the can --- well, so much the worse for the cat, that's all. To shoot straight, you've got to aim straight; and to aim straight you've got to look straight; and to look straight you've got to think straight. Every kid knows that, or he couldn't even play marbles. If I get my heart set on a beauty marble in the ring, I just want it the worst way and says I to myself, 'You're my marble.' Then I look at him strong and steady like and don't think about nothing else in the world but that beauty. Maybe I'm late for school, but I clean forget it. I don't see nothing --- nor think nothing --- but that there marble what I want. As the piece in my reader says, it's my 'Heart's Desire,' and I don't care whether school keeps or not, just so as I get it. Then I shoot, and the marble's mine. And, at school, when our drawing teacher tells us how to draw a straight line, she makes two dots, several inches away from each other. Then she makes us put our pencils on the first dot and look steady at the other and move our pencil towards it. The more you keep thinking about the far off dot, and the less you think about the starting dot or your hand, the straighter you're going to get your line. Wonst I looked straight at the far-off dot with my eyes, but I kept thinking about a red-headed girl on the other side of the room, and what do you think, the line I was drawing slanted away off in her direction, although I had kept my eyes glued on the far-away dot and never even peeped in the kid's direction. That shows, sure, that it's the thinking as well as the looking. See?"

All of the examples above given contain within them the principles of a mighty truth --- a working illustration of a great law of Life. If we are wise we will profit by them. Many things are happening around us every day, from which we might gain lessons if we would only think a little, instead of playing "follow my leader" and accepting other people's thought, ready made. We have gotten so accustomed to these "hand-me-down" thoughts, that we have almost forgotten how to turn out thoughts for ourselves.