A Morning Lecture

One pleasant morning in early spring the man was strolling along the shore of a pond when his steps were arrested by the loud boom of a frog. He soon caught sight of the pond dweller just a short distance away. “Boof! boof!” said the frog again, and swelled himself out with some importance. It looked to the man much like a challenge, and so he responded.

“Ho, you are making a great fuss this morning, aren’t you?” said the man. “One would think from your noise and actions that you have a huge idea of your own importance, while the fact is that you are only an insignificant frog.” “Insignificant!” it seemed to him the frog replied. “Insignificant, indeed!

I am not so insignificant as you might think. I have my place and fill it.” Again he swelled himself out and boomed as loudly as before.

“Doubtless you fill your place,” the man thought in reply. “You can swell out big enough to fill twice as much space as one would think a frog would occupy.” But the frog did not notice this sarcasm; he went on with his sermon, for sermon it seemed to be.

“Yes,” the frog apparently said, “I have my place and fill it; I know my place and keep it; and that, you will admit, is considerable. Now, I have experienced the value of little things in a way that I think you never did, though you think yourself so much greater than I. I was once but a little slimy egg, floating about in the water, and the real part of me was not much bigger than the point of a pin.

I think I was rather insignificant then.” At this remark the frog swelled out as large as he could well do. “After a while I became a tadpole, and wriggled about in the water.

I had plenty of enemies, you may be sure, but I was always on my guard. I couldn’t do very much, but when anything made a lunge at me, I could beat the world at wriggling, and I always got away.

“Those days I lived under the water most of the time, and breathed water through my gills like a fish. But after a time I lost my gills, lost my tail, got four good legs, and finally became a frog, growing to be what I am now.

“Boof! boof! I couldn’t make a sound when I was a tadpole, but I can sing now.

I think I am a pretty big fellow to come from nothing but a pin point, and I make even more noise than my size would indicate. And so I can say a few things out of my experience on the value of little things that some others can’t; therefore, I contend that I have a place in this big world of a pond.”

The man was about to go on, feeling that the frog had something the best of the situation, when he discovered that the frog apparently had not finished. “But that is not the most important thing I can say to you this morning,” continued the frog.

“There is something I can point to in my life, that, perhaps, you can’t. I always live strictly in harmony with the great laws of my life; do you do that?” The man could not say that he did; for instantly he thought of many things wherein he had violated the great laws of his being; therefore, he kept silent rather than confess that he did not do what a frog always does.

“For instance,” said the frog, “when I was a tadpole, and had gills and a tail, I didn’t try to live out in the air. Those days I never crawled out onto the bank, because I was made to live under water; for me to get out of the water, as I can now, would have been the death of me. If I had wriggled out onto the bank, I fear I would never have wriggled back again. I didn’t try to be a frog until I really was one.

“And now that I am a frog, I never try to be a tadpole. If I should stay under water very long, I should surely drown. If I should undertake to live now as I lived then, it would be my death.

If there is anything that is absurd in this world, it is trying to be something that you simply can not be. I live according to the great laws of my life. I have my place, and fill it; I know my place, and keep it; do you?” But the frog did not wait for an answer.

“Boof! boof!” he said, and dived into the water. He had seen a boy coming along the farther side of the pond; he had doubtless had an experience with boys, and so, true to the great laws of his life, he hid away. He knew his place and found it. As the man walked away, he was thoughtful.

He realized as never before that every creature of the world has some lesson which, in its own peculiar way, it can teach us. The man realized that the frog had learned to do what as yet he had not attained to. The frog lived according to the great laws of his life. If a man should do that, how much it would mean.

True to the laws of his body— that would mean health. True to the laws of his mind— that would mean mental vigor. True to the laws of his soul— that would mean sound character. And all of this together would mean always and forever life, life, life.

And what is that but eternity? The man fears that it will be some time before he can do what the frog does; and until he can, he has determined never again to call the frog insignificant.