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Progress and Achievements of the Colored People / Containing the Story of the Wonderful Advancement of the Colored Americans—the Most Marvelous in the History of Nations—Their Past Accomplishments, Together With Their Present-day Opportunities and a Glimpse Into the Future for Further Developments—the Dawn of a Triumphant Era. A Handbook for Self-improvement Which Leads to Greater Success cover

Progress and Achievements of the Colored People / Containing the Story of the Wonderful Advancement of the Colored Americans—the Most Marvelous in the History of Nations—Their Past Accomplishments, Together With Their Present-day Opportunities and a Glimpse Into the Future for Further Developments—the Dawn of a Triumphant Era. A Handbook for Self-improvement Which Leads to Greater Success

Chapter 109: IMPROVE PRESENT OPPORTUNITIES
By Kelly Miller
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History - AmericanHistory - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

The text surveys the social, educational, economic, and moral advancement of Colored Americans since emancipation, combining narrative chapters on leadership, labor, business, religion, health, and physical training with a detailed compendium of institutions. It presents statistics and government-sourced reports, profiles of schools and agencies (more than three hundred institutions described) and numerous photographs and portraits (over sixty illustrations), and offers practical advice on self-improvement, professional development, and community organization. Chapters address education, vocational and professional training, entrepreneurship, public employment, and civic life, aiming to document achievements and to guide further progress.

IMPROVE PRESENT OPPORTUNITIES

If you knew that by pulling up a rope hanging down a well, you would get a rich prize, a bag of gold, or a box of diamonds, you would keep on pulling.

Now, life is nothing but pulling at something at the end of which we hope and expect to find something worth while.

What we pull at consists of a long string of opportunities, and if we let go, then we lose.

The fact is, we must improve our present opportunities, for they lead to other and better ones. Small opportunities are not to be despised for several of them make one large one which is what you are aiming at. “Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean and the beauteous land.”

Some people want to get rich immediately, and venture into all kinds of speculations to get there. These are not opportunities, they spell ruin in the end. They are the destroyers of opportunities.

An opportunity always makes good if you stick to it, but flies away from you if you neglect it.

Opportunity says to you: “Oh, well, if you do not care for my company, there are others who do,” and away it goes to the others, and then you have regrets, too late perhaps, some other man has appropriated it.

It is a common saying: “Everything comes to him who waits,” but Napoleon said: “Everything comes to him WHO KNOWS HOW to wait.” There is a vast difference.

Do you know HOW to wait, friend? If you do then you are ready to grasp opportunity when it comes your way.

Christ said: “Seek and ye shall find.” To this may be added the saying of St. Paul the great Apostle who was certainly a wise man: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Do it now, for time flies. “The Bird of Time has but a little way to fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”