Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/494

 "Yet I do not doubt that I shall find a field of usefulness. Deep as you hurl me down, I do not doubt but that there are some to whom even if condemned, spurned, unfrocked—oh, the eternal silliness of that! as if any decrees of men could affect the standing or potentiality of a soul—I can come as a welcome messenger of helpfulness. To them I shall go! They may be found here. If so, I shall remain here—go in and out—pointed at as the man who failed.

"Perhaps I can even make failure popular. It ought to be. There is a great need of failures just now, for men who will fail for their true success's sake.

"The world needs a new standard of appraisal. It honors the man whose success bulks to the eye. It needs to be a little more discriminating; to find out why some men failed, and to honor them because they are failures. Some of the greatest men in America and in history were failures. Socrates with his cup was a failure. Jesus was a failure. It was written on his back in lines of blistering welts. It was nailed into his palms, stabbed into his brow, hissed into his ear as he died.

"Re-reading at this midnight hour what I have written, I perceive that it sounds slightly frenzied. But my soul just now is slightly frenzied. If I wrote calmly, unegoistically, it would be a lie. What is written is what I feel.

"Here and there some will approve this document. More will sneer at it. But it is mine. It is I. I sign it. It is my last will and testament in this community where once—daring to boast again—I have been a power.

"Friends—and enemies alike!—this final word.

"I have not grasped much, but this: To be true. When somebody trusts you worthily, make good. Be true, children, to the plans and to the hopes of parents. Be true, lad, to the impetuous girl who has trusted you