Around the World in 88 Years -E Book - Arthur Burt

oom house, as if he were important. Whatever money he had,he spent on himself, gambling and drinking.Rhoda’s papersLittle Rhoda was my first sweetheart, though I’m not certain whyshe was. Maybe it was because she smelled good from the perfumeon her hanky and I so liked the smell of her handkerchief.We sat next to each other, a boy and a girl, in Mr. Cormack’sclass. Rhoda was a clever little girl getting eight and nine sumsout of 10, while I was getting only two or three, so I began tocopy Rhoda’s answers.“What do you get for number three?” I would whisper.She wouldn’t speak but would just point. If her answer was differentfrom mine, I would copy her answer. My scores jumpedfrom about three out of 10 to eight or nine out of 10. This waswonderful, until one day Mr. Cormack pointed to me.“Arthur Burt, come here!” he commanded, beckoning with hisfinger. “How do you, with these workings, get these answers?”What could I say? I couldn’t tell him I had copied the answersfrom Rhoda’s papers. I just stood numb and dumb.“You are a cheat,” the teacher said. “In the future, even if youranswer is correct, unless your workings are correct, I’ll mark yoursums wrong.”I learned a valuable lesson there — it isn’t sufficient to have theright answers, but I must also know how to obtain the right answers.In later years I read Psalm 51, where David said to theLord, “Thou requirest truth in the inward parts.” It isn’t sufficientto have your “what’s” right, you must have your “why’s” right— not so much what you do, but why you do it. If you don’t doworks for the glory of God, however presentable they may lookon the outside, it is still not acceptable with God. If you have thewrong motivation for doing good, you are not right, you arewrong.Big duck on a little pondAs I grew, I developed my own interests. Another boy, WilfieCross, and I brought out a paper, The Weekly Wonder, duplicat-6