I like the man who takes the stones Upon his rocky road With smiling lips instead of groans, Whate'er his heavy load Who seizes each as on he goes, And neatly crumbles it, And turns his share of pebbly woes To stores of inner grit.

Bangs praises a temperament of active, cheerful resilience. The “stones” on a “rocky road” stand for the inevitable obstacles and burdens of life; the admirable person neither denies their weight nor merely endures them with complaint. Instead, he “seizes each” difficulty as it comes, breaks it down (“crumbles it”) into manageable parts, and converts suffering into “inner grit”—character, toughness, and self-mastery. The stanza frames adversity as raw material for moral and psychological strength, suggesting that attitude and agency matter as much as circumstance. Its sing-song rhyme and plain diction reinforce the idea that this is practical wisdom meant for everyday conduct rather than abstract philosophy.