38 TAKING OTHER PEOPLE'S DUST continual study with no recreation. Then you may be finding that there is a bad knock somewhere which is pulling down your power. Get the right mixture while you are in college! Do some experimenting. Find out how you work best, and when. Adjust your carburetor, clean off your sparkplugs, oil up your differential, make an occasional examination of your transmission, and tune yourself up to the best working schedule. Know yourself, if you would wish to be able to travel, if you would keep out of the repair shops. Don't take other people's dust! The beauty about us is that we have the ability to increase our physical and our brain power as we choose. There is no excuse for letting any one pass, if we get ourselves into proper working order and drive to win. DEUCE AND YOUR AD When a tennis game is at " deuce," the result is uncertain. When it is " your ad," the sky clears somewhat and you begin to think that at last you have found your form. Then it goes back to deuce again, and again several times, and realization comes that the game is hard and the chances for defeat numerous. 66 Instead of your ad, in a few seconds it may be game" for the opponent. Too many students, too many lovers, and too many unromantic schemers never get beyond the "ad" score. They never get the game, or the set, or the contest. Just a glimpse and an incentive to play hard comes to them with the approach of victory, and then chances go glimmering with a badly played ball, a poor stroke, or a bit of bad judgment. The test of the player is shown by the ability to get beyond the ad stage. A miss is as bad when the score is your ad, as though the game went "love" against you. And yet not nearly as bad. It is better far to reach deuce or ad than not to have scored at all. The sun may be in your eyes, the court may be rough, the ball 40 DEUCE AND YOUR AD may take an unexpected bound and you fail to be at home when the cutting racket of your opponent swishes the ball into the far corner or down the alley. Life is just one tennis game after another, just one set of games following another. The winner gets the credit. The loser is credited with losing, and soon loses even that credit. When one player finishes, another takes his place. The game of life goes on, with each succeeding set showing more capable players, better executed plays. Play the game fair and hard, use your brains as well as muscles, and be as good a loser as winner. ON THE LEVEL AND ON THE SQUARE "When the man is on the level and the girl is on the square" is a line from a popular song that we like. It says so much and it tells the entire story. There is another song entitled Playing the Game of Love." It contains similar philosophy to that in the saying that “all's fair in love and war." 66 Nothing is fair in love or war excepting the rules of fair play and square playing at all times. We heard a man say recently that he had been a rotter in a great many ways, but that he had always played fair with every girl that he had known, and we respected him for it. A fellow can get a reputation for being slow and out of date easily when he plays fair, but he can have satisfaction that over-balances such a reputation. We don't know anything about girls. After a puzzle has been worked, or solved, is a person interested in it farther? Tear a rose to pieces and the charm is lost. Is it worth while to tear the petals apart in quest of understanding? Isn't it better to appreciate the girl, or the roses, as they are? Tiny Tim's salutation |