A Thought for Today
by Bob Fisher
Steam Engine
A wise teacher asked his students if they could tell him the difference
between a steam engine with water at 200oF. Or one with water
at the temperature of 212 degrees. He had gotten the attention of his students
and then he gave the reply. At 200 degrees you just have a tub of water.
At 212 degrees you have a locomotive with power enough to move a plow,
or light a city, or drive a steam boat, or a train.
Is your level of enthusiasm about life and about school or church or
your community or country at 200 degrees or have you reached the boiling
point and become a person of power?
Brothers went to school together in a country school. The older of
the two learned to read quickly; he loved to spell and could spell anyone
in the school down in a spelling match. He could add a column faster than
any other student in the class. The younger brother failed to learn to
read in the first years of his school, so he could not spell, and he was
sure since everyone knew that he was the dumb one in the family that he
could not add. His first years in school were a failure. Compared to his
brother, he was just a tub of water. Then one day his older brother read
to him the first installment of a serial novel in the Winnipeg Free Press.
When the next installment came his brother was away. He had to know what
happened in that novel so he struggled over the reading of it and finally
got the story. For six weeks the fascination of the serial novel kept him
reading. His temperature rose to 212 degrees and he could not be stopped.
His grades in school picked up and his life was different. He was no longer
a tub of water but he was a little engine who could do it.
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