Improvement Era, 1923 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Religion

The Egotist By H. L. Johnston

"My boy, you are starting out to win your way in the world. You will find pitfalls and temptations around every corner in your path through life. One of these temptations will be the lure of money, another, the power of position, and perhaps the greatest of all these evils is the smug blinding idea of ego or belief in your own individual self.

"My boy, always remember that self-confidence is a very good quality to find in a man, but when it blinds him to the fact that self confidence in reality comes through asking and receiving this gift from God, then it becomes a great evil and breaks one of the ten commandments, for he is a worshiper of a false god-himself."

These words uttered by my aged father years ago now persisted in ringing in my ears as I lay gazing into the starlit heavens from my blanket on the windswept sands of a California desert.

It had been a day of bitter disappointment and I had been voicing my troubles to my solitary companion, Silent Terry, known all over the mining districts of eastern California.

Silent Terry had prospected since a young man of thirty. He was now old and grizzled, bent and stiffened, but his years of solitude, close to the works of God had made him a philosopher. It was seldom that Silent Terry said much, but on rare occasions he talked and then it seemed as if the flood-gates had been opened and wisdom came from his lips in a veritable torrent.

He listened patiently as I talked in my egotistical manner, hour after hour. At last he showed signs of life, and grunting, he sat up and said:

"Harrington, I understand from your talk that you have been the late Superintendent of the Ajax Quarries."

"Yes."

"And that you have been discharged because the 'coyote' you placed in the tunnel didn't pan out the way you thought it would. Go ahead and tell me all about it."

"Well, Silent, three months ago the Ajax came to the conclusion that they would tunnel from the lower quarry to the upper one, place a carload of powder or so in the tunnel, key it, and thus blow the two quarries together. There was a solid wall of granite between the two places and if the thing was worked right this wall would be broken up into three of four ton boulders which they intended to ship to the San Pedro breakwater. Then the two quarries would be made into one and much time and labor saved, not to mention a lot of money.

They sent for me. Of course, I could do it, and soon told them so. I was so confident in myself that I wrote into the contract that in case of failure I would forfeit the two thousand dollars they offered me to do the work. There wasn't a thing about that 'coyote' that I didn't know about, and I started to work on it the very next morning.

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