"Come to the edge.""We can't. We're afraid."
"Come to the edge.""We can't. We will fall!"
"Come to the edge." And they came.
And he pushed them. And they flew.
~Guillaume Apollinaire, 1880-1918 French Poet, Philosopher
Breaking through the terror barrier takes courage and determination and a willingness to pay the price, not knowing what might happen. The following true story illustrates this well. Imagine being this little girl and the fear she must have felt throughout this situation.
...One afternoon, Mr. Darby had the good fortune to be present on an occasion that proved to him that "no" does not necessary mean no. He was helping an uncle grind wheat in an old fashioned mill. The uncle operated a large farm on which a number of black sharecropper farmers lived. Quietly, the door was opened and a small child, the daughter of one of the tenant families, walked in and took her place near the door. The uncle looked up, saw the child and barked at her roughly, "What do you want'? Meekly,the child replied, "My momma say to send her fifty cents."
"I'll not do it, the uncle retorted. "Now run on home."
"Yes sir", the child replied but she did not move. The uncle went ahead with his work, so engaged ...that he did not observe that she did not leave. When he looked up and still saw her standing there he yelled at her, I told you to go home! Now go or I'll take a switch to you." The little girl said, Yes sir" but she did not budge.
The uncle dropped a sack of grain he was about to pour into the mill hopper,picked up a barrel stave, and started towards the child with an expression on his face that indicated trouble.
Darby held his breath. He was certain he was about to witness a horrible beating. He knew his uncle has a fierce temper. In those days, poor children, especially sharecropper children, simple were not allowed to exhibit such overt defiance. When the uncle reached the spot where the child was standing, she quickly moved forward one step, looked up into his eyes, and screamed at the top of her shrill voice, "MY MOMMA'S GOTTA HAVE THAT FIFTY CENTS!"
The uncle stopped, looked at her for a minute, then slowly laid down the barrel stave on the floor, put his hand in his pocket, took out a half-dollar and gave it to her.
The child took the money and slowly backed towards the door, never taking her eyes off the man she had just conquered. After she had gone, the uncle sat down on a box and looked out the window into space for more than ten minutes. He was pondering with awe, the whipping he had just taken.
Mr. Darby, too was doing some thinking. That was the first time in all of his experience that he had seen a black child deliberately master a white adult. How did she do it? What happenned to his uncle that robbed him of his fierceness and made his as docile as a lamb? What strange power did this child use that made her master over this man?.....
Excerpt taken from the best selling book, Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill,the original version, restored and revised-pages 14 & 15
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