A Man’s Prayer
Teach me that sixty minutes make one hour, sixteen ounces one pound, 100 cents one dollar.
Help me so to live that I can lie down at night with a clear conscience, without a gun under my pillow and unhaunted by the faces to whom I have brought pain.
Grant that I may earn my meal ticket on the square and that in earning it I may do unto others as I would have them do unto me.
Blind me to the faults of the other fellow, but reveal to me my own.
Keep me young enough to laugh with little children and sympathetic enough to be considerate of old age, and when the day comes of darkened shades and the smell of flowers, the tread of soft footsteps and the slow procession, make the ceremony short and the epitaph simple—“HERE LIES A MAN.”
Source: Meadow Grove News, July 17, 1925, page 1.