p. 26 | How to Spend Vacation by C. S. Longacre

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 4, 1907

How to Spend Vacation

By C. S. Longacre

VACATION has come, and how shall it be improved? If parents have sufficient means at hand to pay the way of their children through school, they are strongly tempted to let them have an easy time during vacation. They pity them, thinking they ought to rest because they had to work so hard at their studies during the school year. They forget that good physical exercise is just what they need for harmonious development, and that the change to manual labor is the highest kind of rest to an overtaxed mind. If it is possible, parents ought to let their children earn and pay their own way in their preparation for life's duties. A person never learns the true value of a dollar or how to appropriate it until it is personally earned under trying circumstances.

There is a principle underlying this plan that is worth far more than the immediate expenditure involved. If the student is educated to be a consumer instead of a producer, that defective and wicked principle will follow him in all his future career, and will unfit him to occupy a position of trust in the cause of God or in the marts of the world. He knows not how to sacrifice, nor how to teach others to be self-reliant and economical. His unsavored judgment and false education will lead him to presume on the earnings of others, and he is strongly tempted to start new enterprises that involve much indebtedness, to harass those who were not consulted in the creation of the same. He can not discern the equal and natural rights of his brethren.

Let us educate our youth to be self-reliant, and to earn and pay for their own education. This will be a great help in the building of their character.

Young man, young woman, are you seeking a place of future usefulness? Then learn early to hoe your own row. Do not allow somebody else to pick all the weeds out for you. Be a self-supporter. Otherwise you will be always poor, and will make others poor. Be a producer and a blessing to the world and to the cause you represent, and not a consumer or the creator of perplexities, blocking the wheels of progress and consuming the time and energies of scores to devise a way out of them for you. Driftwood will float, but it takes a live fish to swim up the stream.

Dear students, vacation is your opportunity to prove your worth and the temper of your characteristics. Give evidence of your willingness to do anything for the Master, and to do it with your might. The canvassing work, with all its trials and hardships, is the golden avenue to future success. It pays better dividends all round to the prospective student during vacation than working in a gold-mine. Aspiring youth, try it, master it; and you will be as a precious jewel much sought after.

C. S. LONGACRE.