 Chapter number 85 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Poetry of Life. Poetry is more than verse making, more than the jingle of words, more than the sing song of meter, sunshine and flowers, brightness and joyousness, the harmonies of the passions and the inspiration of love. These are the poetry of life. Without poetry, life is a treadmill, a veil of tears, a dreary waste. Even religion is only a crucifixion, a death to sin, if we have not the resurrection into the new life of joy. Many of us make hard work of life by bending our backs too much. We get dirt in our eyes by keeping them too near the desk and we get narrow-minded and selfish by a narrow radius of vision. To become truly rich, we must stand in the dignity of our manhood, walk in the integrity of our calling and run in the rhythm of a poetic nature. Out of harmony is out of spear. The dignity, integrity and poetry of life are all lost by in harmony. Only the ashes of disappointment are left. But with these, we can dance at our work and turn irksome duties into joyous privileges. Instead of moping in the valley of the shadow of death, we may live in the sunshine where beautiful flowers and luscious fruits and delicious sweets grow. Yes, yes, we might as well live in light as in darkness. Make a joyful song as a funeral dirge. Live amid glory as shame. With a radiant countenance, a beaming eye and a loving hand, we can do more work and have more to do. We can get more out of life and have more life to enjoy. We can scatter more sunshine and have more left for ourselves. Christ came to bring to every toilet heaven. Let us get into it quickly. It is here and here only that we find the poetry of life. End of Chapter 85. Chapter 86 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. On being earnest. Of ten men who fail in life, nine men fail for want of zeal, earnestness, courage, where one man fails for want of ability. This half-heartedness, this lack of zeal, this timidity, this shrinking from duty and hard tasks is seen on all sides and among all classes. But I tell you boys and girls that the least enviable people in all the world are those who think that nothing is particularly worthwhile. That it does not matter how much a thing is done if it's only done with. Who dwell along in a shabby sort of way, considering only their own ease with little sense of responsibility and with no shame in being shirks. Every boy should make up his mind to live around full earnest, intense life. Every girl should do the same. Don't be satisfied boys and girls to be jellyfishes with only a capacity for drawing and nourishment and lingering on until your time comes to die. Be vertebrates, people of backbone, purpose, aim, enthusiasm, earnestness. At a public dinner, President Roosevelt asked Governor O'Dell of New York if he knew anything worth doing that was not hard in the doing and the governor could think of nothing. As a rule perhaps there is nothing and yet things once hard in the doing becomes easy as skill is gained by repetition. Be in earnest, be faithful and resolute and it will act like a tonic giving light to the eyes, springingness to the step and buoyancy to the heart. Don't be overcome by your circumstances no matter how distracting a man's surroundings may be. He may yet be able to focus his powers completely and to marshal them with certainty if he makes up his mind to do it. If things go hard with the self-mastered man or boy, he will be able to trample upon difficulties and to use his stumbling blocks as stepping stones. If a great misfortune overtakes him, he will simply use it as a starting point for a new departure, a turning point for more determined effort. He may be weighed down with sorrow and suffering, but he always starts anew with redouble determination to do the thing he has set his heart upon doing. He will not be discouraged. He will not give up. He will fight it out to the end. Put him in prison and he will write the pilgrim's progress. Deprive him of his eyesight and he will write the Paradise Lost. It was the spirit of earnestness which fired the soul of Martin Luther at the Diet of Varnes, who after being urged to recant said, Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. It was the spirit which characterized William Lloyd Garrison, the champion of the abolition of slavery, who when he was urged to stop fighting slavery exclaimed, I will not equivocate. I will not retract. I will not be moved one inch and I will be heard. So be in earnest boys and girls at home, at school, at work, and at play. It will help you a thousand fold. End of chapter 86. Chapter 87 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This Liber Fox recording is in the public domain. Young people and life insurance. Every little boy and girl and of course, every man and woman of the colored race in America should carry a life insurance policy of some kind in some reliable company. In this matter, the old people as in some other things ought to set the example for the young. But there are some reasons growing chiefly out of their previous condition of slavery, why our mothers and fathers have not as a rule taken very largely to the business of having their lives insured. But because our parents have been negligent in this matter, there is no reason why the younger generation should be. Life insurance is a good thing boys and girls. One of the best things in the world. American life insurance companies alone pay to policyholders or estates of policyholders over $100 million annually. Only a very small and almost insignificant portion of this vast sum goes into the hands of colored people and for the reason that very few colored people carry life insurance policies. Now, use a little common sense about this matter. Whatever is good in life insurance for other races is good for our race. Whatever in life insurance benefits, other races will benefit our race. In business as an education, whatever is good for a white man is good for a black man. I would therefore urge every boy and girl to join a life insurance company and where your mothers and fathers are not insured, I would urge you to do your utmost to persuade them to join at once. For one reason, a life insurance policy is not expensive. You might as well talk of the expense of buying bank stock or the expense of putting your money into a savings bank or any other safe place as to speak of the expense of keeping up a life insurance policy. It is accumulation and not expense. Every dollar put into life insurance is a dollar saved to yourself or your estate. For another reason, life insurance is a good business investment. Carefully collected statistics on file in Washington City prove that investments in life insurance are much safer and yield much larger returns than money placed in a savings bank. When you are older, you will perhaps be able to make these comparisons for yourself. For the present, you can take my word for it. A third reason life insurance is cheap. You can in an instant create a capital of $1,000, though you may be ever so poor by laying aside only a few cents a week. Young people chew up and drink up and smoke up and frolic up more money every week than would be sufficient to protect them against the rainy days that must come to everybody. And then, life insurance has a character value. It makes a young man a better man. It makes a young woman a better woman. That is to say, it makes them more economical, more business-like, happier, and I believe it will make them live longer. It's high time that black boys and girls were learning these things and acting upon them. When God commanded us not to serve money as a false God, he did not say that money would not serve us. And I beseech the boys and girls and the old people, too, to exercise some foresight and the same good sense about life insurance that other raises exercise. End of Chapter 87 Chapter 88 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Little Sailor Cat In September, 1893, grouped on the Fall River Line pier at the foot of Warren Street, New York, there stood a party of 23 sailors waiting for the Puritan to take them on to Boston. The central figure in the group, a short, thick-set man with bronzed and grizzled mustache, stood erect with arms folded over his chest. Upon the solid foundation, thus, made nestled a little white kitten. The man and the kitten were the Boston contingent of the crew of the steamship City of Savannah, which had been wrecked the week before on Hunting Island off the South Carolina coast. The story of the beaching of the steamship and of the taking off of her crew by the City of Birmingham had been told in all the newspapers, but nothing had been said about the cat, so the Boston Herald said. Before the shipwreck, the cat was nothing more than an ordinary ship's cat, and the captain had named him mascot, but that was the end of his distinction. After the disaster, nevertheless, all the sailors swore that the kitten was as good a sailor as any of them. He's a wonder, said the short, thick-set man, serving the cat proudly. Nobody thought of him in the rush, but he got there just the same. He climbed the rigging in that gale like an old tar and held on for hours. He wasn't a bit frightened, either. Only he would catarole when he got hungry. We were on board off the boat 50 hours after she struck before the sea was such that we could be taken off in boats. At night, the captain ordered all the crew into the rigging and made us stay there. We each took a piece of rope and lashed ourselves on, so as to keep from falling off when asleep. That's what the captain said the string was for, but I never slept at all. I don't think many others did. The cat got along without any rope and she was there in the morning all right. When we got away at last, nearly crazed with thirst and so faint that we could hardly climb down the Jacob's ladder into Birmingham's boat, that little fellow climbed out of his nest rigging and wanted to go too. We were glad to take him. End of chapter 88. Chapter 89 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This lip of Vox recording is in the public domain. Advice to little Christians. One, be punctual and regular at all the services of your church. Two, give close attention to the pastor in the public service. Here is me good preachers. Three, whenever you are aided by a sermon, tell the pastor about it. In this way you will help him more than you think possible. Four, do not neglect morning and evening prayer at home. Prayer daily for God's blessings upon the preaching and other labors of the pastor. Five, in the world let your life so shine before others that they may be led to glorify your Father which is in heaven. Let your light shine. Six, invite your friends to attend divine services. A drawing congregation is as good as a drawing preacher. Call for your friends often. Seven, remember day by day that you are not your own but have been bought with a price and that you are Christ's servant. Watch and pray. Eight, if any service is required of you in the church or in the Sunday school, do not shirk it. Always say, I will try for Jesus' sake. Nine, in the prayer meeting, speak briefly and to the point. If you pray, ask only for what you want. Be short and direct. Ask and ye shall receive. Ten, never subscribe more than you are able to pay and be sure to pay whatever you promise. Whether much or little, give it cheerfully. God loves a cheerful giver. Eleven, having found eternal life, use all appropriate means to develop Christian character. Prayer, reading the Bible, attending church and Sunday school, reading good books and Christian newspapers, keeping the best company. All these will help you. End of chapter 89. Chapter 90 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. A Word to Parents Children are a gift from God. Children are a heritage from the Lord. It depends largely on parents, whether they become a heritage of honor and delight or of sorrow and shame. It is not simply incumbent upon parents that their children be well cared for, fed and clothed, properly educated and so forth. But more than this, they are to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This being true then, the highest aim of rearing children is not simply that they may win success and command respect in the world. Respect and success are greatly to be desired and sought, but beyond them and beyond everything else is the highest and chiefest aim of parental love and care that their children may honor and command the righteousness of God in the life that now is and magnify the glory of God in the life that is to be. This is the mark and prize of their high calling. Admitting this then, the early conversion of children is all important. But if they are to be early converted, is it not wise, nay, absolutely essential that mothers and fathers prepare the way by restricting their natural impulses by which they are led to desire indulgences in the gay vanities of life? Is it not positively wrong for parents to indulge that pernicious and destructive delusion which some allow of permitting their children to have their own evil way in the hope that in due time they will in some way see their error and turn to the right path of their own accord? Father, you are a Christian. Mother, you are a Christian. Now, in your home, in the management of your children, are you doing the best you can to show what a Christian family should be? How is it, my friends? I'll leave that question with you. End of Chapter 90. Chapter 91 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This Lib of Arts recording is in the public domain. A helpful message. Life is too short to spend any time on a book that is not worth reading. But when you read a good book, you will be richly repaid if you stick a sort of mental pin in sentences that especially impress you and return to them again and again. If the book is your own, it is sometimes helpful to market neatly here and there and to copy some of the nuggets of thoughts. In that way, you help to fasten them in your brain and perhaps to engraft their meaning upon your lives. From a book of the writings and speeches of a New York preacher, Dr. Maltby D. Babcock, who went a year or two ago to The Better Land, I have culled the following sentences that hold, I think, a helpful message for boys and girls as well as for old people. Look out for your choices. They run into conduct, character, destiny. To make the best of things is the right way to let things make the best of you. Pay as little attention to discouragement as possible. This is the only world in which a Christian can suffer. Whenever you feel blue, remember that God loves you and think upon some kindness if no more than sending a flower to someone or writing a note. If you can help anybody, even a little, be glad. Do not let the good things of life rob you of the best things. What have you done today that none but a Christian would do? End of chapter 91. Chapter 92 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Unseen Charmer Carl Brickerman, a collection clerk in an Uptown bank in his accustomed daily routine, found it necessary, among other things, to call by telephone the downtown brokerage firm of Hope, Good and Co. One day he missed the familiar feminine voice which had usually responded to his calls. But the new voice seemed sweeter and much more passionately penetrating. For two or three days, Brickerman was puzzled. Not only because of the change at the other end of the phone, but also because of the strange and unaccountable fascination which the new voice possessed for him. At length one day, almost in desperation, he turned aside from his regular business inquiries to ask, Where's the other girl? Which other girl? Asked the malifilist's voice over the articulate wire. But one who's used to answer the phone and the Hope Goods explained Brickerman. Promoted came the response with a merry little laugh. And you have her old place? Asked Mr. Brickerman, somewhat encouraged. Yes, for a while. Said the same still small voice at the other end and sounded more and more sweetly to the would-be masher. Well, said Brickerman, laughing the while. I used to call her quite well and would like to meet you face to face if you don't mind. I'm so charmed with the music of your voice. I'm sure I should be perfectly entranced with the magic of your face. A merry peel of laughter from the other end greeted this sally. The young man continued, I used to come down some days about four o'clock to see Margie. Will you, my unseen charmer, grant me the same high favor? Why, certainly. Come any day, answered the sweet voice, which had so strangely bewitched the young man. In ecstasy, Brickerman shouted back, I'll be down this afternoon. Brickerman hung up the receiver and chuckling with delight. He turned to his other duties with the alacrity that a young spring chicken displays when it suddenly discovers a big fat worm. By three o'clock he had arranged his toilet and stood before the mirror, the finishing twirl to his budding moustache. He brushed his clothing the second time, brushed his hat, and figuratively speaking, arrayed in purple and fine linen, he sailed forth. He boarded an elevated train bound for the downtown district. On his way down, he tried to picture to himself the kind of a girl he should meet at the Hope Goods. Would she be tall or short of stature, blonde or brunette, above 21 years of age, or only sweet 16? The quick arrival of the train at Park Place put a period to Brickerman's revere. He went tripping across a few blocks to the place where all of his hopes had been centered during the past few hours. In fact, days. Arrived there, he stepped into the front office where Margie had formerly presided. It was the same snug and cozy room, but he failed to behold there the eager expected young lady. Instead, he ran amok a chubby little boy with a ruddy face and curly hair and perhaps not more than 14 or 15 years old sitting in Margie's place. Brickerman was visibly embarrassed. He did not know where to begin or what to say. He twitched nervously at the glove in his hand and he finally stammered, Mr. Hope, good in? No, sir, said the boy. Can I be of any service to you? Brickerman's face turned blood red and great drops of perspiration stood out upon his forehead. The accents of the little boy startled him for they were the same that had been wafted to him almost daily along the wire with which he thought he had been enamored. In the midst of his confusion, he managed to say, hoping almost against Hope, that his identity had not been discovered. Well, er, er, I'll call again. And without waiting to hear the unseen charmer speak again, he hastily retired with as good graces as was possible under the circumstances. End of chapter 92. Chapter number 93 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Our country. Boys and girls, we are all American citizens. The last one above. This is our country as much as it is the country of any other race. And we should love it and fight for it as our fathers have loved, fought, and died for it on many a battlefield. We may be the descendants of Africans, but we are citizens of the United States. This is our home, our country. Let us believe it in spite of what some foolish people say. Therefore, I'm going to give you one or two sentiments which you should learn early in life in order to stimulate your patriotism. One, may the honor of our country be without stain. Two, may the glory of America never cease to shine. Three, may every American manfully withstand corruption. Four, may reverence for the laws ever predominate in the hearts of the American people. Five, the sons and daughters of America may their union be cemented by love and affection and their offspring adorn the stations they are destined to fill. Six, may the growth of the American Union never be prevented by party spirit. Seven, the boys of America may they be strong and virtuous, manly and brave. Eight, the girls of America may they prove to be such in heart and life as will make them worthy mothers of a strong and noble race. Nine, health to our president, prosperity to our people, and may Congress direct its endeavors to the public good. Ten, may peace over America spread her wings and commerce fill her ports with gold. May arts and science comfort bring and liberty her sons enfold. End of chapter 93. Chapter 94 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The don't care girl. About the worst girl in all this world is the girl who doesn't care what people think or say about her conduct. The girl who goes to every hop, to every party, who stays out late at night with the boys, who hangs over the gate and talks to them and who cuts a number of foolish capers and then when anyone speaks to her, shoots her head way up in the air and turns up her nose if she can and say boldly, oh, I don't care. Nobody has anything to do with me. She is the worst girl in the world and she will never come to any good end. Every girl who is a law unto herself in regards to all that she says or does is certain not only to bring upon herself the condemnation of those whose good opinion it is worthwhile to have, but she will most certainly incur the punishment of a just God. And sometimes I'm sorry to say, I think that when a girl proudly declares that she doesn't care for the good opinion of others, she does so because she knows that she's already lost all right to that good opinion. It is wrong boys and girls to undertake to run roughshod over the so-called prejudices of the public. It is a foolish thing to take the light and try to shock people by your boisterous and unladylike and unbecoming conduct. Every really wise and nice girl does care a good deal for the good opinion of others and particularly for the good opinion of persons older than she is. She recognizes the fact that the law of conventionality and of good society are based upon what is right and what is proper and that no girl can with propriety set them at naught. Some girls go so far as to say that they don't care what their own fathers and mothers think. The wild girl who says this is setting at defiance not only the human parental law but also the law of God which plainly commands children to obey their parents. Haven't you ever seen a don't care girl? She's nearly always reckless in manner and speech. She is bold and defiant. She is impudent beyond mention and she is very fond of ridiculing girls who do care a great deal what others think about them. No matter whose children they are no matter what school they have attended these don't care girls are no good and good girls ought not to associate with them. Every day such flippant girls are treading on dangerous ground and someday unless a merciful God prevents it she will come to open disgrace and die and go to torment. I'm hoping to see the day when the don't care girls will have passed out of existence and then all of our girls will be of the refined and womanly kind who do care a great deal about their conduct their manners and their morals. I don't want my daughter to associate with any other kind. End of chapter 94 Chapter 95 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Negro Heroes No true history of the American continent can be written without giving due credit to the part which brave Negro men have played on the field of battle and the defense of liberty. At the head of the list of great Negro soldiers stands unquestionably Toussaint Louverture the emancipator of Haiti the little republic to the south of the island of Cuba. This black hero who never saw a soldier until he was 50 years old crossed swords with the great Napoleon who is said to be the greatest general the world has ever known and he outwitted that great warrior. Wendell Phillips a great oration places the names of Toussaint at the head of the list of all of the world's great leaders and statesmen above the name of even our own George Washington. Next comes Christmas Attics who was killed in the Boston massacre on the night of March 5th, 1770. His blood was the first blood shed in the cause of the American independence. John Adams and Daniel Webster both date the beginning of the American independence from that terrible massacre. Later on when the Revolutionary War came the Negro played a valiant part in many individuals one just fame. For instance, Peter Salem and Salem Poor both distinguished themselves at the Battle of Bunker Hill and at other points. Today a monument stands on Boston Common erected in honor of Christmas Attics Peter Salem, Salem Poor, Samuel Maverick and James Caldwell. All the boys and girls now living know about the heroism of Antonio Maceo in behalf of the freedom of Cuba and how that brave general laid down his life or his own people shortly before the United States in 1898 took up arms in defense of Cuban liberty and drove the Spanish tyrants out. Of course there were many colored soldiers who took notable parts in the work done by our country during that short and decisive war. It is even claimed on good authority that the black soldiers save the regiment of rough riders which was commanded by the intrepid Colonel Roosevelt who afterwards became governor of New York and president of the United States. But before the Spanish American War the Nero's had given good account of themselves on many a well fought field in the War of 1812 and again in the Great Civil War. In the Civil War which resulted in the restoration of the Union and the freedom of the slaves there were 186,000 colored soldiers. Today a monument stands on Boston Common also in memory of the 54 Massachusetts Regiment of the United States soldiers. This was a colored regiment which was commanded by a gallant white man named Robert Gould Shaw. He and a large proportion of his command were killed at Fort Wagner, South Carolina in July 1863. In the Civil War we were not allowed to have our own officers all the officers being wiped. In the Spanish American War this was changed and we had over 200 officers including some as high as colonels and two paid masters with the rank of majors. When another war comes we are going to have some generals as well as colonels and captains and majors. Some of the little boys who are reading these words may be called on to render this higher service for the country and the race. I hope boys if it should be so that you will be prepared to give us good an account of your stewardship as those who have gone before. I hope you will learn a good deal about the lives of the great heroes above named and about others whom I cannot stop to mention now. In this way you will gain inspiration for the future. End of chapter 95. Chapter 96 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Frederick Douglass to young people. Shortly before he died Frederick Douglass made a tour through the south among other places he visited Atlanta University. At that place he made an address to the young people. It is so full of hope and help that I wanted to place it where every ambitious black boy and girl in America can see it. It has never been published before except in the Bulletin of Atlanta University. Mr. Douglass said, my young friends, I see before me an assemblage of young people full of the blood of youth just entering upon the voyage of life. It is an interesting spectacle to me as to us all to meet such an assembly as I see before me this morning in an institution of learning, of knowledge and of ethics and of Christian graces. I experience great pleasure in what I see today. There is no language to describe my feelings. It was no mere image that John saw and described in the Apocalypse. It was a new heaven and a new earth indeed. When I look back upon the time when I was a fugitive slave, I recollect the evils and cruelty of slave hunting. No mountain was so high, no valley was so deep, no glen so secluded, no place so sacred to liberty that I could put my foot upon it and say I was free. But now I am free. Contrasting my condition then and now, the change exceeds what John saw upon the Isle of Patmos. The change, vast and wonderful, that came by the fulfilling of laws. We got freed by laws, marvelous in our eyes. Men, brave men, good men, who had the courage of their convictions were arrested and subjected to persecutions, moms, lawlessness, violence. They had the conviction of truth. Simple truth lasts forever. Be not discouraged. There is a future for you and a future for me. The resistance encountered now predicates hope. The Negro degraded, indolent, lazy and different to progress is not objectionable to the average public mind. Only as we rise in the scale of proficiency do we encounter opposition. When we see a ship that lies rotting in the harbor, it seems yawning, its sides broken in, taking water and sinking. It meets with no opposition. But when its sails are spread to the breeze, its top sails and its royals flying, then there is resistance. The resistance is in proportion to its speed. In Memphis, three Negro men were lynched, not because they were low and degraded, but because they knew their business and other men wanted their business. I'm delighted to see you all. Don't be despondent. Don't measure yourselves from the white man's standpoint, but measure yourselves by the depths from which you have come. I measure from these depths, and I see what Providence has done. Daniel Webster said in his speech at the dedication of Bunker Hill Monument. Bunker Hill Monument is completed. There it stands, a memorial of the past, a monitor of the present, a hope of the future. It looks, speaks, acts. So this assembly is a monitor of the present, a memorial of the past, a hope of the future. I see boys and girls around me. Boys, you will be men someday. Girls, you will be women someday. May you become good men and women, intelligent men and women, a credit to yourselves and your country. I thank you for what I have experienced today, and I leave you reluctantly, and shall always carry with me the pleasantest impressions of this occasion. End of chapter 96. Chapter 97 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in a public domain. Too High a Dam Once upon a time, a criminal, sentenced to a 20-year term of punishment, declared that his ruin was due to the fact that Too High a Dam had been built around his early life. He was a boy on a farm, the son of strict parents who never unbent into friends and comrades, but had iron ideas of parental duty along the lines of restraints and gave large doses of the catechism and the Ten Commandments, interspersed with much fault-finding and complaints of the waywardness of boys in general and their own boy in particular. As a consequence, the boy chafed against the High Dam, burst its bounds early and came to the city with a zest for freedom and a reaction to the restraint he had undergone and an admiration for the fast life. This was by way of reaction from his disgust for the farm and its slow ways. Don't build your dams Too High was the brief sermon preached by this condemned criminal and directed to parents, especially those who were rearing children in the country or in small towns. Human nature will continue to be human nature and boys will continue to be boys. Youth will long, and naturally so, for variety and amusement. The house in which parents never unbent in sympathy with their children's longing for a little brightness and jollity, where work goes on in unretrieved monotony and home means only a place to sleep and eat in. Such a home sends its boys and girls to the city before they are panoply to meet its temptations. Either this or else it hardens and saddens them into mere machines or beasts of burden. Books, music, flowers, games, social clubs, cheerful pictures, love and sympathy, these will bind the young heart to home and right living and will obviate the necessity of the high dams of restraint. End of Chapter 97 Chapter number 98 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Lola Janey. A Good Fellow He was a good fellow. He spent his money like a prince. There was nothing too good for him to do for those with whom he kept company. He lived rapidly and had no thought of tomorrow. He burned the candle of life at both ends. Today he is dead and those vampires who sucked his life's blood and helped him to spend his money have no time to give him one thought. Ah, how insincere and empty is the title of Good Fellow when it is applied to the man whose money is always on tap for those who are desirous of having a good time. And how corrupt and undesirable are the so-called friendships which spring from a lavish expenditure of money? Boys, the roof over your heads covers the best fringe you could possibly have on earth. Those who slap you on the shoulder and say hilariously, Good Boy, our seldom ever worth their salt. They like you for what they can get out of you. That's all. Real happiness in this world comes, if at all, from living right and doing right. If you are a Good Fellow in the sense of giving everybody a good time with your hard-earned needs, I warn you that when your money gives out, all your friends will desert you and when you die they will be the last ones to come near you and may even laugh at what a fool you made of yourself. End of Chapter 98 Chapter 99 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Future of the Negro My dear boys and girls, I have written nearly 100 stories for this book and I have not said one word about the so-called race problem. I have done this on purpose. I believe that the less you think about the troubles of the race and the less you talk about them and the more time you spend in hard and honest work believing in God and trusting in him for the future, the better it will be for all concerned. I know, of course, that the sufferings which are inflicted upon the colored people in this country are many and grievous. I know that we are discriminated against in many ways on common carriers, in public resorts, and even in private life. The right to vote has been taken away from us in nearly all of the southern states. Lynchings are on the increase. Not only are men, but our women also are being burned at the stake. What shall we do? There are those who say that we must strike back, use fire and torch and sword and shotgun ourselves. But I tell you plainly that we cannot afford to do that. The white people have all the courts, all the railroads and all the newspapers, all the telegraph wires, all the arms and ammunition, and double the men that we have. In every race riot, the Negro would get the worst of it finally. But there's a higher reason than that. We cannot afford to do wrong. We cannot afford to lose our decency, our self-respect, our character. No man will ever be the superior of the man he robs. No man will ever be the superior of the man he seals from. I would rather be a victim than a victimizer. I would rather be wronged than to do wrong. And no race is superior to the race it tramples upon, robs, maltreats and murders. In spite of prejudice, in spite of proscription, in spite of nameless insults and injuries, we cannot as a race afford to do wrong. But we can afford to be patient. God is not dead. His chariots are not unwielded. It is ordained of God that races as well as individuals shall rise through tribulations. And during this period of stress and strain through which we are passing in this country, I believe that there are unseen forces marshaled in the defense of our long suffering and much oppressed people. They that be with us are more than they that be with them. What should we care then? Though all the lowlands be filled with threats, if the mountains of our hope and courage and patience are filled with horses and chariots of divine rescue. End of Chapter 99, Chapter 100 of Floyd's Flowers by Silas X. Floyd. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recorded by Lola Janney of Northern Virginia, September 2019. The Training of Children My last words shall be to parents. Many parents neglect the training of their children until the boys and girls have grown to be almost men and women. And then they expect all at once to develop them into well-rounded characters, as if by magic. Others fix upon a definite time in life, say 10 or 12 years old, before which time they say it is unnecessary to seek to make lasting impressions upon the minds of children all unconscious of the fact that the character may have been long before that period biased for good or evil. I say it deliberately. It is a deep and abiding conviction with me that the time to begin to shape the character of children is as soon as they begin to know their own mothers from other mothers, or as soon as they become awake to the events which are taking place around them. The farmer who has the notion that his child can wait does not dare to let his corn and cotton wait. He has observed that there are noxious weeds which spring up side by side with the seed he has planted and marvelous to say the weeds outgrow the plants. They must therefore be cut down and kept down or else they will ruin the crop. Side by side with your tender babe in arms there are growing down, dear mothers, the poisonous tears. They are rooted already in the child's heart and unless they are stricken down pretty soon they will dominate the child's life. And of course there's only one way to destroy evil that is to plant good in its stead. If there is one untenated chamber in your child's heart inhabited, I pray you, with nobler and purer thoughts which before long shall bring forth fruit unto God. Satan does not wait, I assure you. He never allows a vacancy to remain unoccupied in anybody's heart, old or young. He rushes into empty hearts and idle lives and sows tears thicker than the strewn leaves of autumn. It is an old and senseless and barbarian custom which has taught us that the child can wait or must wait. If anybody must wait at table to be served it is usually the little child who may be the hungriest of all. If someone must remain away from church or Sunday school it's often the youngest child who perhaps needs most to go. If someone must be kept out of day school it is the smallest child of course and during the year that he remains idle he may receive impressions and learn lessons that will mar his whole future life. Let us have done with this barbaric practice. Make room for the children. Give them not only the first place but the best place. In almost any city in the south any Sunday in the year you will find more children, more boys and girls outside of the Sunday schools than you will find inside. There's a loud and crying call sounding from the past and from the future and bidding mothers and fathers to be more diligent in the matter of having their children embrace opportunities of growth and spiritual culture which are almost within a stone's throw. If mothers and fathers will not hear and obey this clarion call I believe that they will be brought to account for it in the day of judgment. Not only so but in the years to come they will be compelled to wail out their sorrow over prodigal sons and daughters who might have proven to be ornaments to society and to the church if their parents had devoted half the care upon them that they expended upon colts and calves, kittens and puppies that grew up with them. In all earnestness I implore those to whom God has given winsome little children to begin early as early as I find it possible to train their young lives for God in heaven. Let their little voices learn early to list the precious name of Jesus and be attuned to sing his praise. If you leave them this legacy there is none greater. There will come peace and joy to your old age and the light of heaven like the golden glow of a radiant sunset will rest on your dying bed. And now as I close these stories there comes to me across the intervening space of silence and of tears fond memories of a sweet and patient mother. I cannot remember when she began to talk to me of Jesus nor read to me the word of God. I remember well when she taught me how to read and the old fashioned blueback spelling book is as plainly before me now as in those long past days. But long before that I had heard her read the Bible and raised her voice in prayer for all whom she loved and to date those memories live when a thousand busy scenes of afterlife lie dead and when old age comes on if God should spare me to be old the memory of my mother's words and her reverential prayer will be the brightest of all the joys that shall light up the evening of my life. And of chapter 100 end of Floyd's flowers or duty and beauty for colored children being 100 short stories gleaned from the storehouse of human knowledge and experience simple amusing elevating by Silas X. Floyd. Thank you.