By Velma M. Rose Smith

Think! How many people think? Arnold does, he thinks of how he can repair machinery, make parts, make things other people wouldn’t know how to go about it. Papa Rose liked to think, I believe he got as much joy out of thinking as one gets now days watching T.V. He read good books and magazines, he didn’t care for cheap literature. He could talk on almost any subject, he liked to debate, he wrote papers. He had a large vocabulary and used excellent English.

I have preached to my Sunday School Class, to stop and think. Merritt said when he was a boy, he liked to go strawberrying by himself, so he could think. Not many of our young people have a chance to be alone, and think. They are kept in groups from head-start on to graduation. So they don’t learn to play games by themselves, to make up their own games, to entertain themselves. Little girls are given a doll house, furniture for it, a book of paper dolls and costumes. Boy’s toys come all put together. I had the fun of making my own doll house, papering and painting, and furniture from scraps. I made paper dolls from the Sears catalog and furniture and made them stand up. And no boys ever had more fun playing cops and robbers than Merritt, Emmett, Thurston, Bartoo boys and Rex Beuter had playing, Indians and Cowboys, with the guns they carved from wood, red hankerchiefs around their neck or head, a few rooster feathers and a lot of bang-bang.

I wager that the man who decided the world was round wasn’t in a crowd or the man that discovered gravity.

Housewives say, “Let me think”, think what they can get for supper. Think what clothes they can buy for the children for school, or what can be made over. How many peas, beans, or tomato plants to grow in the garden. They are so busy deciding all the everyday things in life, they don’t have time to think deeper thoughts.

“Think” is to use your mind – to have a thought and pursue it. You can think when you are in bed and all is quiet, or doing a job that doesn’t require your attention. I could think when I was milking by hand. But, when I got to “thinking” while helping Mama with the Saturday’s cleaning, I got in trouble, like carrying the lamp out to the back room and filling it with water from the spigot, instead of the spigot in the kerosene barrel. One day I took the coal skuttle and went for a pail of water. So, when you think, find a secluded spot, do try it, get acquainted with yourself, you may discover an interesting person.