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How to Get on in the World: A Ladder to Practical Success

by A. R. Calhoun · English · Gutenberg #20608 · 424,023 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: How to Get on in the World: A Ladder to Practical Success

Author: A. R. Calhoun


        
Release date: February 16, 2007 [eBook #20608]

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Theresa Yarkoni


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO GET ON IN THE WORLD: A LADDER TO PRACTICAL SUCCESS ***




Produced by Theresa Yarkoni





HOW TO GET ON IN THE WORLD; or, A LADDER TO PRACTICAL SUCCESS.

[pic]

by MAJOR A. R. CALHOUN.

PUBLISHED BY THE CHRISTIAN HERALD, Louis KLOPSCH, Proprietor,
BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.

Copyright 1895, BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.

PRESS AND BINDERY OF HISTORICAL PUBLISHING CO., PHILADELPHIA.


TABLE OF CONTENTS.

  I. What is Success?

  II. The Importance of Character

  III. Home Influences

  IV. Association

  V. Courage and Determined Effort

  VI. The Importance of Correct Habits

  VII. As to Marriage

  VIII. Education as Distinguished from Learning

  IX The Value of Experience

  X. Selecting a Calling

  XI. We Must Help Ourselves

  XII. Successful Farming

  XIII. As to Public Life

  XIV. The Need of Constant Effort

  XV. Some of Labor's Compensations

  XVI. Patience and Perseverance

  XVII. Success but Seldom Accidental

  XVIII. Cultivate Observation and Judgment

  XIX. Singleness of Purpose

  XX. Business and Brains

  XXI. Put Money in Thy Purse Honestly

  XXII. A Sound Mind in a Sound Body

  XXIII. Labor Creates the Only True Nobility

  XXIV. The Successful Man is Self-Made

  XXV. Unselfishness and Helpfulness



HOW TO GET ON IN THE WORLD



CHAPTER I

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

It has been said that "Nothing Succeeds Like Success." What is
Success? If we consult the dictionaries, they will give us the
etymology of this much used word, and in general terms the meaning
will be "the accomplishment of a purpose." But as the objects in
nearly every life differ, so success cannot mean the same thing to
all men.

The artist's idea of success is very different from that of the
business man, and the scientist differs from both, as does the
statesman from all three. We read of successful gamblers, burglars or
freebooters, but no true success was ever won or ever can be won that
sets at defiance the laws of God and man.

To win, so that we ourselves and the world shall be the better for
our having lived, we must begin the struggle, with a high purpose,
keeping ever before our minds the characters and methods of the noble
men who have succeeded along the same lines.

The young man beginning the battle of life should never lose sight of
the fact that the age of fierce competition is upon us, and that this
competition must, in the nature of things, become more and more
intense. Success grows less and less dependent on luck and chance.
Preparation for the chosen field of effort, an industry that
increasing, a hope that never flags, a patience that never grows
weary, a courage that never wavers, all these, and a trust in God,
are the prime requisites of the man who would win in this age of
specialists and untiring activity.

The purpose of this work is not to stimulate genius, for genius is
law unto itself, and finds its compensation in its own original
productions. Genius has benefited the world, without doubt, but too
often its life compensation has been a crust and a garret. After
death, in not a few cases, the burial was through charity of
friends, and this can hardly be called an adequate compensation, for
the memorial tablet or monument that commemorates a life of
privation, if not of absolute wretchedness.

It is, perhaps, as well for the world that genius is phenomenal; it
is certainly well for the world that success is not dependent on it,
and that every young man, and young woman too, blessed with good
health and a mind capable of education, and principles that are true
and abiding, can win the highest positions in public and private
life, and dying leave behind a heritage for their children, and an
example for all who would prosper along the same lines. And all this
with the blessed assurance of hearing at last the Master's words:
"Well done, good and faithful servant!"

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might." There is a
manly ring in this fine injunction, that stirs like a bugle blast.
"But what can my hands find to do? How can I win? Who will tell me
the work for which I am best fitted? Where is the kindly guide who
will point out to me the life path that will lead to success?" So
far as is possible it will be the purpose of this book to reply
fully to these all important questions, and by illustration and
example to show how others in the face of obstacles that would seem
appalling to the weak and timid, carefully and prayerfully prepared
themselves for what has been aptly called "the battle of life," and
then in the language of General Jackson, "pitched in to win."

A copy line, in the old writing books, reads, "Many men of many
minds." It is this diversity of mind, taste and inclination that
opens up to us so many fields of effort, and keeps any one calling
or profession from being crowded by able men. Of the incompetents
and failures, who crowd every field of effort, we shall have but
little to say, for to "Win Success" is our watchword.

What a great number of paths the observant young man sees before him!
Which shall he pursue to find it ending in victory? Victory when the
curtain falls on this brief life, and a greater victory when the
death-valley is crossed and the life eternal begins?

The learned professions have widened in their scope and number within
the past thirty years. To divinity, law, and medicine, we can now
add literature, journalism, engineering and all the sciences. Even
art, as generally understood, is now spoken of as a profession, and
there are professors to teach its many branches in all the great
universities. Any one of these professions, if carefully mastered
and diligently pursued, promises fame, and, if not fortune,
certainly a competency, for the calling that does not furnish a
competency for a man and his family, can hardly be called a success,
no matter the degree of fame it brings.

"Since Adam delved and Eve span," agriculture has been the principal
occupation of civilized man. With the advance of chemistry,
particularly that branch known as agricultural chemistry, farming
has become more of a science, and its successful pursuit demands not
only unceasing industry, but a high degree of trained intelligence.
Of late years farming has rather fallen into disrepute with
ambitious young men, who long for the excitement and greater
opportunities afforded by our cities; but success and happiness have
been achieved in farming, and the opportunities for both will
increase with proper training and a correct appreciation of a
farmer's life.

"Business" is a very comprehensive word, and may properly embrace
every life-calling; but in its narrow acceptance it is applied to
trade, commerce and manufactures. It is in these three lines of
business that men have shown the greatest energy and enterprise, and
in which they have accomplished the greatest material success. As a
consequence, eager spirits enter these fields, encouraged by the
examples of men who from small beginnings, and in the face of
obstacles that would have daunted less resolute men, became merchant
princes and the peers of earth's greatest.

In the selection of your calling do not stand hesitating and doubting
too long. Enter somewhere, no matter how hard or uncongenial the
work, do it with all your might, and the effort will strengthen you
and qualify you to find work that is more in accord with your
talents.

Bear in mind that the first condition of success in every calling, is
earnest devotion to its requirements and duties. This may seem so
obvious a remark that it is hardly worth making. And yet, with all
its obviousness the thing itself is often forgotten by the young.
They are frequently loath to admit the extent and urgency of
business claims; and they try to combine with these claims, devotion
to some favorite, and even it may be conflicting, pursuit. Such a
policy invariably fails. We cannot travel every path. Success must
be won along one line. You must make your business the one life
purpose to which every other, save religion, must be subordinate.

"Eternal vigilance," it has been said, "is the price of liberty."
With equal truth it may be said, "Unceasing effort is the price of
success." If we do not work with our might, others will; and they
will outstrip us in the race, and pluck the prize from our grasp.
"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,"
in the race of business or in the battle of professional life, but
usually the swiftest wins the prize, and the strongest gains in the
strife.



CHAPTER II

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER.

That "Heaven helps those who help themselves," is a maxim as true as
it is ancient. The great and indispensable help to success is
character.

Character is crystallized habit, the result of training and
conviction. Every character is influenced by heredity, environment
and education; but these apart, if every man were not to a great
extent the architect of his own character, he would be a fatalist, an
irresponsible creature of circumstances, which, even the skeptic must
confess he is not. So long as a man has the power to change one
habit, good or bad, for another, so long he is responsible for his
own character, and this responsibility continues with life and
reason.

A man may be a graduate of the greatest university, and even a great
genius, and yet be a most despicable character. Neither Peter Cooper,
George Peabody nor Andrew Carnegie had the advantage of a college
education, yet character made them the world's benefactors and more
honored than princes.

"You insist," wrote Perthes to a friend, "on respect for learned men.
I say, Amen! But at the same time, don't forget that largeness of
mind, depth of thought, appreciation of the lofty, experience of the
world, delicacy of manner, tact and energy in action, love of truth,
honesty, and amiability--that all these may be wanting in a man who
may yet be very learned."

When someone in Sir Walter Scott's hearing made a remark as to the
value of literary talents and accomplishments, as if they were above
all things to be esteemed and honored, he observed, "God help us!
What a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine! I
have read books enough, and observed and conversed with enough of
eminent and splendidly-cultured minds, too, in my time; but I assure
you, I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of the poor
uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe, yet
gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their
simple thoughts as to circumstances in the lot of friends and
neighbors, than I ever yet met with out of the Bible."

In the affairs of life or of business, it is not intellect that tells
so much as character--not brains so much as heart--not genius so
much as self-control, patience, and discipline, regulated by
judgment. Hence there is no better provision for the uses of either
private or public life, than a fair share of ordinary good sense
guided by rectitude. Good sense, disciplined by experience and
inspired by goodness, issued in practical wisdom. Indeed, goodness
in a measure implies wisdom--the highest wisdom--the union of the
worldly with the spiritual. "The correspondences of wisdom and
goodness," says Sir Henry Taylor, "are manifold; and that they will
accompany each other is to be inferred, not only because men's
wisdom makes them good, but because their goodness makes them wise."

The best sort of character, however, can not be formed without
effort. There needs the exercise of constant self-watchfulness,
self-discipline, and self-control. There may be much faltering,
stumbling, and temporary defeat; difficulties and temptations
manifold to be battled with and overcome; but if the spirit be
strong and the heart be upright, no one need despair of ultimate
success. The very effort to advance--to arrive at a higher standard
of character than we have reached--is inspiring and invigorating;
and even though we may fall short of it, we can not fail to be
improved by every honest effort made in an upward direction.

"Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would
be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.
It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our
strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials
one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another
villas. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect
can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in
the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his
brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid ruins; the
block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak,
becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong."

When the elements of character are brought into action by determinate
will, and influenced by high purpose, man enters upon and
courageously perseveres in the path of duty, at whatever cost of
worldly interest, he may be said to approach the summit of his
being. He then exhibits character in its most intrepid form, and
embodies the highest idea of manliness. The acts of such a man
become repeated in the life and action of others. His very words
live and become actions. Thus every word of Luther's rang through
Germany like a trumpet. As Richter said of him, "His words were
half-battles." And thus Luther's life became transfused into the
life of his country, and still lives in the character of modern
Germany.

Speaking of the courageous character of John Knox, Carlyle says, with
characteristic force: "Honor to all the brave and true; everlasting
honor to John Knox, one of the truest of the true! That, in the
moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and
confusion, were still but struggling for life, he sent the
schoolmaster forth to all comers, and said, 'Let the people be taught;'
this is but one, and, indeed, an inevitable and comparatively
inconsiderable item in his great message to men. This message, in
its true compass, was, 'Let men know that they are men; created by
God, responsible to God; whose work in any meanest moment of time
what will last through eternity.'

. . . This great message Knox did deliver, with a man's voice and
strength, and found a people to believe him. Of such an achievement,
were it to be made once only, the results are immense. Thought, in
such a country, may change its form, but cannot go out; the country
has attained _majority_; thought, and a certain spiritual manhood,
ready for all work that man can do, endures there. The Scotch
national, character originated in many circumstances; first of all,
in the Saxon stuff there was to work on; but next, and beyond all
else except that, in the Presbyterian Gospel of John Knox."

Washington left behind him, as one of the greatest treasures of his
country, the example of a stainless life--of a great, honest, pure,
and noble character--a model for his nation to form themselves by in
all time to come. And in the case of Washington, as in so many other
great leaders of men, his greatness did not so much consist in his
intellect, his skill and his genius, as in his honor, his integrity,
his truthfulness, his high and controlling sense of duty--in a word,
in his genuine nobility of character.

Men such as these are the true life-blood of the country to which
they belong. They elevate and uphold it, fortify and ennoble it, and
shed a glory over it by the example of life and character which they
have bequeathed. "The names and memories of great men," says an able
writer, "are the dowry of a nation. Widowhood, overthrow, desertion,
even slavery cannot take away from her this sacred inheritance . . .
Whenever national life begins to quicken . . . the dead heroes rise
in the memories of men, and appear to the living to stand by in
solemn spectatorship and approval. No country can be lost which
feels herself overlooked by such glorious witnesses. They are the
salt of the earth, in death as well as in life. What they did once,
their descendants have still and always a right to do after them;
and their example lives in their country, a continual stimulant and
encouragement for him who has the soul to adopt it."

It would be well for every young man, eager for success and anxious
to form a character that will achieve it, to commit to memory the
advice of Bishop Middleton:

Persevere against discouragements. Keep your temper. Employ leisure
in study, and always have some work in hand. Be punctual and
methodical in business, and never procrastinate. Never be in a
hurry. Preserve self-possession, and do not be talked out of a
conviction. Rise early, and be an economist of time. Maintain
dignity without the appearance of pride; manner is something with
everybody, and everything with some. Be guarded in discourse,
attentive, and slow to speak. Never acquiesce in immoral or
pernicious opinions.

Be not forward to assign reasons to those who have no right to ask.
Think nothing in conduct unimportant or indifferent. Rather set than
follow examples. Practice strict temperance; and in all your
transactions remember the final account.



CHAPTER III

HOME INFLUENCES.

"A careful preparation is half the battle." Everything depends on a
good start and the right road. To retrace one's steps is to lose not
only time but confidence. "Be sure you are right then go ahead" was
the motto of the famous frontiersman, Davy Crockett, and it is one
that every young man can adopt with safety.

Bear in mind there is often a great distinction between character and
reputation. Reputation is what the world believes us for the time;
character is what we truly are. Reputation and character may be in
harmony, but they frequently are as opposite as light and darkness.
Many a scoundrel has had a reputation for nobility, and men of the
noblest characters have had reputations that relegated them to the
ranks of the depraved, in their day and generation.

It is most desirable to have a good reputation. The good opinion of
our associates and acquaintances is not to be despised, but every
man should see to it that the reputation is deserved, otherwise his
life is false, and sooner or later he will stand discovered before
the world.

Sudden success makes reputation, as it is said to make friends; but
very often adversity is the best test of character as it is of
friendship.

It is the principle for which the soldier fights that makes him a
hero, not necessarily his success. It is the motive that ennobles
all effort. Selfishness may prosper, but it cannot win the enduring
success that is based on the character with a noble purpose behind
it. This purpose is one of the guards in times of trouble and the
reason for rejoicing in the day of triumph.

"Why should I toil and slave," many a young man has asked, "when I
have only myself to live for?" God help the man who has neither
mother, sister nor wife to struggle for and who does not feel that
toil and the building up of character bring their own reward.

The home feeling should be encouraged for it is one of the greatest
incentives to effort. If the young man have not parents or brothers
and sisters to keep, or if he find himself limited in his leisure
hours to the room of a boarding house, then if he can at all afford
it, he should marry a help-meet and found a home of his own. "I was
very poor at the time," said a great New York publisher, "but
regarding it simply from a business standpoint, the best move I ever
made in my life was to get married. Instead of increasing my
expense's as I feared, I took a most valuable partner into the
business, and she not only made a home for me, but she surrendered
to me her well-earned share of the profits."

A wise marriage is most assuredly an influence that helps. Every
young man who loves his mother, if living, or reveres her memory if
dead, must recall with feelings of holy emotion, his own home.
Blest, indeed is he, over whom the influence of a good home
continues.

Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there
that every civilized being receives his best moral training, or his
worst; for it is there that he imbibes those principles that endure
through manhood and cease only with life.

It is a common saying that "Manners make the man;" and there is a
second, that "Mind makes the man;" but truer than either is a third,
that "Home makes the man." For the home-training not only includes
manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the
heart is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened,
and character moulded for good or for evil.

From that source, be it pure or impure, issue the principles and
maxims that govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes.
The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private
life afterward issue forth to the world, and become its public
opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries, and they who
hold the leading strings of children may even exercise a greater
power than those who wield the reins of government.

It is in the order of nature that domestic life should be preparatory
to social, and that the mind and character should first be formed in
the home. There the individuals who afterward form society are dealt
with in detail, and fashioned one by one. From the family they enter
life, and advance from boyhood to citizenship. Thus the home may be
regarded as the most influential school of civilization. For, after
all, civilization mainly resolves itself into a question of
individual training; and according as the respective members of
society are well or ill trained in youth, so will the community
which they constitute be more or less humanized and civilized.

Thus homes, which are the nurseries of children who grow up into men
and women, will be good or bad according to the power that governs
them. Where the spirit of love and duty pervades the home--where
head and heart bear rule wisely there--where the daily life is
honest and virtuous--where the government is sensible, kind and
loving, then may we expect from such a home an issue of healthy,
useful, and happy beings, capable, as they gain the requisite
strength of following the footsteps of their parents, of walking
uprightly, governing themselves wisely, and contributing to the
welfare of those about them.

On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and
selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and
grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more
dangerous to society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of
what is called civilized life. "Give your child to be educated by a
slave," said an ancient Greek, "and, instead of one slave, you will
then have two."

The child cannot help imitating what he sees. Everything is to him a
model--of manner, of gesture, of speech, of habit, of character.
"For the child," says Richter, "the most important era of life is
childhood, when he begins to color and mould himself by
companionship with others. Every new educator effects less than his
predecessor; until at last, if we regard all life as an educational
institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by
all the nations he has seen than by his nurse."

No man can select his parents or make for himself the early
environment that affects character so powerfully, but he can found a
home no matter how humble, at the outset, that will make his own
future secure, as well as the future of those for whose existence he
is responsible.

The poorest dwelling, presided over by a virtuous, thrifty, cheerful,
and cleanly woman, may be the abode of comfort, virtue, and
happiness; it may be the scene of every ennobling relation in family
life; it may be endeared to a man by many delightful associations;
furnishing a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from the storms of
life, a sweet resting-place after labor, a consolation in
misfortune, a pride in prosperity, and a joy at all times.

The good home is the best of schools, not only in youth but in age.
There young and old best learn cheerfulness, patience, self-control
and the spirit of service and of duty. Isaak Walton, speaking of
George Herbert's mother, says she governed the family with judicious
care, not rigidly nor sourly, "but with such a sweetness and
compliance with the recreations and pleasures of youth, as did
incline them to spend much of their time in her company, which was
to her great content."

The home is the true school of courtesy, of which woman is always the
best practical instructor. "Without woman," says the Provencal
proverb, "men were but ill-licked cubs." Philanthropy radiates from
the home as from a centre. "To love the little platoon we belong to
in society," said Burke "is the germ of all public affections." The
wisest and the best have not been ashamed to own it to be their
greatest joy and happiness to sit "behind the heads of the children"
in the inviolable circle of home. A life of purity and duty there is
not the least effectual preparative for a life of public work and
duty; and the man who loves his home will not the less fondly love
and serve his country.

At an address before a girls' school in Boston, ex-President John
Quincy Adams, then an old man, said with much feeling: "As a child I
enjoyed perhaps the greatest of blessings that can be bestowed upon
man--that of a mother who was anxious and capable to form the
characters of her children rightly. From her I derived whatever
instruction (religious especially and moral) has pervaded a long
life--I will not say perfectly, or as it ought to be; but I will
say, because it is only justice to the memory of her I revere, that
in the course of that life, whatever imperfection there has been or
deviation from what she taught me, the fault is mine and not hers."

So much depends on the home, for it is the corner-stone of society
and good government, that it is to be regretted, for the sake of
young women, as well as of young men, that our modern life offers so
many opportunities to neglect it.

As the home affects the character entirely through the associations,
it follows that the young man who has left his home behind him
should continue the associations whose memories comfort him. He
should never go to a place for recreation where he would not be
willing and proud to take his mother on his arm. He should never
have as friends men to whom he would not be willing, if need be, to
introduce his sister.

These are among the influences that help to success. But association
is a matter of such great importance as to deserve fuller treatment.



CHAPTER IV

ASSOCIATION.

The old proverb, "Tell me your company and I will tell you what you
are," is as true to-day as when first uttered. In the preparation
for success, association is one of the most powerful factors, so
powerful, indeed, that if the associations are not of the right
kind, failure is inevitable.

As one diseased sheep may contaminate a flock, so one evil associate--
particularly if he be daring, may seriously injure the morals of
many. Every young man can recall the evil influence of one bad boy
on a whole school, but he cannot so readily point to the schoolmate,
whose example and influence were for good; because goodness, though
more potent, never makes itself so conspicuous as vice.

Criminals, preparing for the scaffold, have confessed that their
entrance into a life of crime began in early youth, when the
audacity of some unprincipled associate tempted them from the ways
of innocence. Through all the years of life, even to old age, the
life and character are influenced by association. If this be true in
the case of the more mature and experienced, its force is
intensified where the young, imaginative and susceptible, are
concerned.

Man is said to be "an imitative animal." This is certainly true as to
early education, and the tendency to imitate remains to a greater or
less extent throughout life. Imitation is responsible for all the
queer changes of fashion; and the desire to be "in the swim," as it
is called, is entirely due to association.

In school days, the influence of a good home may counteract the
effect of evil associates, whom the boy meets occasionally, but when
the boy has grown to manhood, and finds himself battling with the
world, away from home and well-tried friends, it is then that he is
in the greatest danger from pernicious associates.

The young man who comes to the city to seek his fortune is more apt
to be the victim of vile associates than the city raised youth whose
experience of men is larger, and who is fortunate in his
companionship. The farmer's son, who finds himself for the first
time in a great city--alone and comparatively friendless, appears to
himself to have entered a new world, as in truth he has. The crowds
of hurrying, well-dressed people impress him forcibly as compared
with his own clumsy gait, and roughly clad figure. The noise
confuses him. The bustle of commerce amazes him; and for the time he
is as desolate in feeling as if he were in the centre of a desert,
instead of in the throbbing heart of a great city.

No matter how blessed with physical and mental strength the young man
may be, under these circumstances he is very apt, for the time at
least, to underestimate his own strength. He is powerfully impressed
by what he deems the smartness or the superior manners of those whom
he meets in his boarding house, or with whom he is associated in his
business, say in a great mercantile establishment. It requires a
great deal of moral courage for him to bear in a manly way the
ridicule, covert or open, of the companions who regard him as a
"hay-seed" or a "greenhorn." His Sunday clothes, which he wore with
pride when he attended meeting with his mother, he is apt to regard
with a feeling of mortification; and, perhaps, he secretly
determines to dress as well as do his companions when he has saved
enough money.

This is a crucial period in the life of every young man who is
entering on a business career, and particularly so to him coming
from the rural regions. He finds, perhaps, that his associates smoke
or drink, or both; things which he has hitherto regarded with
horror. He finds, too, they are in the habit of resorting to places
of amusement, the splendor and mysteries of which arouse his
curiosity, if not envy, as he hears them discussed.

Before leaving home, and while his mother's arms were still about
him, he promised her to be moral and industrious, to write
regularly, and to do nothing which she would not approve. If he had
the right stuff in him, he would adhere manfully to the resolution
made at the beginning; but, if he be weak or is tempted by false
pride, or a prurient curiosity to "see the town," he is tottering on
the edge of a precipice and his failure, if not sudden, is sure to
come in time.

Cities are represented to be centres of vice, and it cannot be denied
that the temptations in such places are much greater than on a farm
or in a quiet country village, but at the same time, cities are
centres of wealth and cultivation, places where philanthropy is
alive and where organized effort has provided places of instruction
and amusement for all young men, but particularly for that large
class of youths who come from the country to seek their fortunes.
Churches abound, and in connection with them there are societies of
young people, organized for good work, which are ever ready, with
open arms, to welcome the young stranger. Then, in all our cities
and towns, there are to be found, branches of that most admirable
institution, the Young Men's Christian Association. Not only are
there companions to be met in these associations of the very best
kind, but the buildings are usually fitted up with appliances for
the improvement of mind and body. Here are gymnasiums, where
strength and grace can be cultivated under the direction of
competent teachers. Here are to be found well organized libraries.
Here, particularly in the winter season, there are classes where all
the branches of a high school are taught; and there are frequent
lectures on all subjects of interest by the foremost teachers of the
land.

If the young man falls under these influences, and he will experience
not the slightest difficulty in doing so; indeed, he will find
friendly hands extended to welcome and to help, the result on his
character must be most beneficial. The clumsiness of rural life will
soon depart; he will regard his home-made suit with as much pleasure
as if it were made by a fashionable tailor, and he will soon learn
to distinguish between the vicious and the virtuous, while he
imitates the one and regards the other with indifference or
contempt.

Next to the association of companions met in every day life nothing
so powerfully influences the character of the young as association
with good books, particularly those that relate to the lives of men
who have struggled up to honor from small beginnings.

With such associations, and a capacity for honest persistent work,
success is assured at the very threshold of effort.



CHAPTER V

COURAGE AND DETERMINED EFFORT.

Carlyle has said that the first requisite to success is carefully to
find your life work and then bravely to carry it out. No soldier
ever won a succession of triumphs, and no business man, no matter
how successful in the end, who did not find his beginning slow,
arduous and discouraging. Courage is a prime essential to
prosperity. The young man's progress may be slow in comparison with
his ambition, but if he keeps a brave heart and sticks persistently
to it, he will surely succeed in the end.

The forceful, energetic character, like the forceful soldier on the
battle-field, not only moves forward to victory himself, but his
example has a stimulating influence on others.

Energy of character has always a power to evoke energy in others. It
acts through sympathy, one of the most influential of human
agencies. The zealous, energetic man unconsciously carries others
along with him. His example is contagious and compels imitation. He
exercises a sort of electric power, which sends a thrill through
every fibre, flows into the nature of those about him, and makes
them give out sparks of fire.

Dr. Arnold's biographer, speaking of the power of this kind exercised
by him over young men, says: "It was not so much an enthusiastic
admiration for true genius, or learning, or eloquence, which stirred
the heart within them; it was a sympathetic thrill, caught from a
spirit that was earnestly at work in the world--whose work was
healthy, sustained and constantly carried forward in the fear of
God--a work that was founded on a deep sense of its duty and its
value."

The beginner should carefully study the lives of men whose undaunted
courage has won in the face of obstacles that would cow weaker
natures.

It is in the season of youth, while the character is forming, that
the impulse to admire is the greatest. As we advance in life we
crystallize into habit and "_Nil admirari_" too often becomes our
motto. It is well to encourage the admiration of great characters
while the nature is plastic and open to impressions; for if the good
are not admired--as young men will have their heroes of some sort--
most probably the great bad may be taken by them for models. Hence it
always rejoiced Dr. Arnold to hear his pupils expressing admiration
of great deeds, or full of enthusiasm for persons or even scenery.

"I believe," said he, "that '_Nil admirari_' is the devil's favorite
text; and he could not choose a better to introduce his pupils into
the more esoteric parts of his doctrine. And therefore I have always
looked upon a man infected with the disorder of anti-romance as one
who has lost the finest part of his nature and his best protection
against everything low and foolish."

Great men have evoked the admiration of kings, popes and emperors.
Francis de Medicis never spoke to Michael Angelo without uncovering,
and Julius III made him sit by his side while a dozen cardinals were
standing. Charles V made way for Titian; and one day when the brush
dropped from the painter's hand, Charles stooped and picked it up,
saying, "You deserve to be served by an emperor."

Bear in mind that nothing so discourages or unfits a man for an
effort as idleness. "Idleness," says Burton, in that delightful old
book "The Anatomy of Melancholy," "is the bane of body and mind, the
nurse of naughtiness, the chief mother of all mischief, one of the
seven deadly sins, the devil's cushion, his pillow and chief
reposal . . . An idle dog will be mangy; and how shall an idle person
escape? Idleness of the mind is much worse than that of the body;
wit, without employment, is a disease--the rust of the soul, a
plague, a hell itself. As in a standing pool, worms and filthy
creepers increase, so do evil and corrupt thoughts in an idle
person; the soul is contaminated . . . Thus much I dare boldly say:
he or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never
so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy--let them have all things
in abundance, all felicity that heart can wish and desire, all
contentment--so long as he, or she, or they, are idle, they shall
never be pleased, never well in body or mind, but weary still,
sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing,
grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object,
wishing themselves gone or dead, or else carried away with some
foolish fantasy or other.".

Barton says a great deal more to the same effect.

It has been truly said that to desire to possess without being
burdened by the trouble of acquiring is as much a sign of weakness
as to recognize that everything worth having is only to be got by
paying its price is the prime secret of practical strength. Even
leisure cannot be enjoyed unless it is won by effort. If it have not
been earned by work, the price has not been paid for it.

But apart from the supreme satisfaction of winning, the effort
required to accomplish anything is ennobling, and, if there were no
other success it would be its own reward.

"I don't believe," said Lord Stanley, in an address to the young men
of Glasgow, "that an unemployed man, however amiable and otherwise
respectable, ever was, or ever can be, really happy. As work is our
life, show me what you can do, and I will show you what you are. I
have spoken of love of one's work as the best preventive of merely
low and vicious tastes. I will go farther and say that it is the
best preservative against petty anxieties and the annoyances that
arise out of indulged self-love. Men have thought before now that
they could take refuge from trouble and vexation by sheltering
themselves, as it wore, in a world of their own. The experiment has
often been tried and always with one result. You cannot escape from
anxiety or labor--it is the destiny of humanity . . . Those who
shirk from facing trouble find that trouble comes to them.

"The early teachers of Christianity ennobled the lot of toil by their
example. 'He that will not work,' said St. Paul, 'neither shall he
eat;' and he glorified himself in that he had labored with his hands
and had not been chargeable to any man. When St. Boniface landed in
Britain, he came with a gospel in one hand, and a carpenter's rule
in the other; and from England he afterward passed over into
Germany, carrying thither the art of building. Luther also, in the
midst of a multitude of other employments, worked diligently for a
living, earning his bread by gardening, building, turning, and even
clock-making."

Coleridge has truly observed, that "if the idle are described as
killing time, the methodical man may be justly said to call it into
life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object, not
only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organizes the
hours and gives them a soul; and by that, the very essence of which
is to fleet and to have been, he communicates an imperishable and
spiritual nature. Of the good and faithful servant, whose energies
thus directed are thus methodized, it is less truly affirmed that he
lives in time than that time lives in him. His days and months and
years, as the stops and punctual marks in the record of duties
performed, will survive the wreck of worlds, and remain extant when
time itself shall be no more."

Washington, also, was an indefatigable man of business. From his
boyhood he diligently trained himself in habits of application, of
study and of methodical work. His manuscript school-books, which are
still preserved, show that, as early as the age of thirteen, he
occupied himself voluntarily, in copying out such things as forms of
receipts, notes of hand, bills of exchange, bonds, indentures,
leases, land warrants and other dry documents, all written out with
great care. And the habits which lie thus early acquired were, in a
great measure the foundation of those admirable business qualities
which he afterward so successfully brought to bear in the affairs of
the government.

The man or woman who achieves success in the management of any great
affair of business is entitled to honor--it may be, to as much as
the artist who paints a picture, or the author who writes a book, or
the soldier who wins a battle. Their success may have been gained in
the face of as great difficulties, and after as great struggles; and
where they have won their battle it is at least a peaceful one and
there is no blood on their hands.

Courage, combined with energy and perseverance, will overcome
difficulties apparently insurmountable. It gives force and impulse
to effort and does not permit it to retreat. Tyndall said of
Faraday, that "in his warm moments he formed a resolution and in his
cool ones he made that resolution good." Perseverance, working in
the right direction, grows with time and when steadily practiced,
even by the most humble, will rarely fail of its reward. Trusting in
the help of others is of comparatively little use. When one of
Michael Angelo's principal patrons died, he said: "I begin to
understand the promises of the world are for the most part vain
phantoms and that to confide in one's self and become something of
worth and value is the best and safest course."

It ought to be a first principle, in beginning life to do with
earnestness what we have got to do. If it is worth doing at all, it
is worth doing earnestly. If it is to be done well at all it must be
done with purpose and devotion.

Whatever may be our profession, let us mark all its bearings and
details, its principles, its instruments, its applications. There is
nothing about it should escape our study. There is nothing in it
either too high or too low for our observation and knowledge. While
we remain ignorant of any part of it, we are so far crippled in its
use; we are liable to be taken at a disadvantage. This may be the
very point the knowledge of which is most needed in some crisis, and
those versed in it will take the lead, while we must be content to
follow at a distance.

Our business, in short, must be the main drain of our intellectual
activities day by day. It is the channel we have chosen for them
they must follow in it with a diffusive energy, filling every nook
and corner. This is a fair test of professional earnestness. When we
find our thoughts running after our business, and fixing themselves
with a familiar fondness upon its details, we may be pretty sure of
our way. When we find them running elsewhere and only resorting with
difficulty to the channel prepared for them, we may be equally sure
we have taken a wrong turn. We cannot be earnest about anything
which does not naturally and strongly engage our thoughts.



CHAPTER VI

THE IMPORTANCE OF CORRECT HABITS.

As has been stated, habit is the basis of character. Habit is the
persistent repetition of acts physical, mental, and moral. No matter
how much thought and ability a young man may have, failure is sure
to follow bad habits. While correct habits depend largely on self-
discipline, and often on self-denial, bad habits, like pernicious
weeds, spring up unaided and untrained to choke out the plants of
virtue. It is easy to destroy the seed at the beginning, but its
growth is so rapid, that its evil effects may not be perceptible
till the roots have sapped every desirable plant about it.

No sane youth ever started out with the resolve to be a thief, a
tramp, or a drunkard. Yet it is the slightest deviation from honesty
that makes the first. It is the first neglect of a duty that makes
the second. And it is the first intoxicating glass that makes the
third. It is so easy not to begin, but the habit once formed and the
man is a slave, bound with galling, cankering chains, and the
strength of will having been destroyed, only God's mercy can cast
them off.

Next to the moral habits that are the cornerstone of every worthy
character, the habit of industry should be ranked. In "this day and
generation," there is a wild desire on the part of young men to leap
into fortune at a bound, to reach the top of the ladder of success
without carefully climbing the rounds, but no permanent prosperity
was ever gained in this way.

There have been men, who through chance, or that form of speculation,
that is legalized gambling, have made sudden fortunes; but as a rule
these fortunes have been lost in the effort to double them by the
quick and speculative process.

Betters and gamblers usually die poor. But even where young men have
made a lucky stroke, the result is too often a misfortune. They
neglect the necessary, persistent effort. The habit of industry is
ignored. Work becomes distasteful, and the life is wrecked, looking
for chances that never come.

There have been exceptional cases, where men of immoral habits, but
with mental force and unusual opportunities have won fortunes. Some
of these will come to the reader's mind at once, but he will be
forced to confess that he would not give up his manhood and
comparative poverty, in exchange for such material success.

The best equipment a young man can have for the battle of life is a
conscience void of offense, sound common sense, and good health. Too
much importance cannot be attached to health. It is a blessing we do
not prize till it is gone. Some are naturally delicate and some are
naturally strong, but by habit the health of the vigorous may be
ruined, and by opposite habits the delicate may be made healthful
and strong.

No matter the prospects and promises of overwork, it is a species of
suicide to continue it at the expense of health. Good men in every
department and calling, stimulated by zeal and an ambition
commendable in itself, have worked till the vital forces were
exhausted, and so were compelled to stop all effort in the prime of
life and on the threshold of success.

The best preservers of health are regularity in correct hygienic
habits, and strict temperance. Alexander Stephens, of Georgia, it is
said contracted consumption when a child, and his friends did not
believe he would live to manhood, yet by correct habits, he not only
lived the allotted time of the Psalmist, but he did an amount of
work that would have been impossible to a much stronger man, without
his method of life.

It should not be forgotten that good health is quite as much
dependent on mental as on physical habits. Worry, sensitiveness, and
temper have hastened to the grave many an otherwise splendid
character.

The man of business must needs be subject to strict rule and system.
Business, like life, is managed by moral leverage; success in both
depending in no small degree upon that regulation of temper and
careful self-discipline, which give a wise man not only a command
over himself, but over others. Forbearance and self-control smooth
the road of life, and open many ways which would otherwise remain
closed. And so does self-respect; for as men respect themselves, so
will they usually, respect the personality of others.

It is the same in politics as in business. Success in that sphere of
life is achieved less by talent than by temper, less by genius than
by character. If a man have not self-control, he will lack patience,
be wanting in tact, and have neither the power of governing himself
nor managing others. When the quality most needed in a prime
minister was the subject of conversation in the presence of Mr.
Pitt, one of the speakers said it was "eloquence;" another said it
was "knowledge;" and a third said it was "toil." "No," said Pitt,
"it is patience!" And patience means self-control, a quality in
which he himself was superb. His friend George Rose has said of him
that he never once saw Pitt out of temper.

A strong temper is not necessarily a bad temper. But the stronger the
temper, the greater is the need of self-discipline and self-control.
Dr. Johnson says men grow better as they grow older, and improve
with experience; but this depends upon the width and depth and
generousness of their nature. It is not men's faults that ruin them
so much as the manner in which they conduct themselves after the
faults have been committed. The wise will profit by the suffering
they cause, and eschew them for the future; but there are those on
whom experience exerts no ripening influence, and who only grow
narrower and bitterer, and more vicious with time.

What is called strong temper in a young man, often indicates a large
amount of unripe energy, which will expend itself in useful work if
the road be fairly opened to it. It is said of Girard that when he
heard of a clerk with a strong temper, he would readily take him
into his employment, and set him to work in a room by himself;
Girard being of opinion that such persons were the best workers, and
that their energy would expend itself in work if removed from the
temptation of quarrel.

There is a great difference between a strong temper, "a righteous
indignation," and that irritability that curses its possessor and
all who come near him.

Mr. Motley compares William the Silent to Washington, whom he in many
respects resembled. The American, like the Dutch patriot, stands out
in history as the very impersonation of dignity, bravery, purity,
and personal excellence. His command over his feelings, even in
moments of great difficulty and danger, was such as to convey the
impression, to those who did not know him intimately, that he was a
man of inborn calmness and almost impassiveness of disposition. Yet
Washington was by nature ardent and impetuous; his mildness,
gentleness politeness, and consideration for others, were the result
of rigid self-control and unwearied self-discipline, which he
diligently practiced even from his boyhood. His biographer says of
him, that "his temperament was ardent, his passions strong, and,
amidst the multiplied scenes of temptation and excitement through
which he passed, it was his constant effort, and ultimate triumph,
to check the one and subdue the other." And again: "His passions
were strong, and sometimes they broke out with vehemence, but he had
the power of checking them in an instant. Perhaps self-control was
the most remarkable trait of his character. It was in part the
effect of discipline; yet he seems by nature to have possessed this
power in a degree which has been denied to other men."

The Duke of Wellington's natural temper, like that of Napoleon, was
strong in the extreme and it was only by watchful self-control that
he was enabled to restrain it. He studied calmness and coolness in
the midst of danger, like any Indian chief. At Waterloo, and
elsewhere, he gave his orders in the most critical moments without
the slightest excitement, and in a tone of voice almost more than
usually subdued.

Abraham Lincoln in his early manhood was quick tempered and
combative, but he soon learned self-control and, as all know, became
as patient as he was forceful and sympathetic. "I got into the habit
of controlling my temper in the Black Hawk war," he said to Colonel
Forney, "and the good habit stuck to me as bad habits do to so
many."

Patience is a habit that pays for its own cultivation and the
biographies of earth's greatest men, prove that it was one of their
most conspicuous characteristics.

One who loves right can not be indifferent to wrong, or wrong-doing.
If he feels warmly, he will speak warmly, out of the fullness of his
heart. We have, however, to be on our guard against impatient scorn.
The best people are apt to have their impatient side, and often the
very temper which makes men earnest, makes them also intolerant. "Of
all mental gifts, the rarest is intellectual patience; and the last
lesson of culture is to believe in difficulties which are invisible
to ourselves."

One of Burns' finest poems, written in his twenty-eighth year, is
entitled "A Bard's Epitaph." It is a description, by anticipation,
of his own life. Wordsworth has said of it:

"Here is a sincere and solemn avowal; a public declaration from his
own will; a confession at once devout, poetical, and human; a
history in the shape of a prophecy." It concludes with these lines:

"Reader, attend--whether thy soul
 Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
 Or darkling grubs this earthly hole
   In low pursuit;
 Know--prudent, cautious self-control,
   Is Wisdom's root."

Truthfulness is quite as much a habit and quite as amendable to
cultivation as falsehood. Deceit may meet with temporary success,
but he who avails himself of it can be sure that in the end his "sin
will find him out." The credit of the truthful, reliable man stands
when the cash of a trickster might be doubted. "His word is as good
as his bond," is one of the highest compliments that can be paid to
the business man.

Be truthful not only in great things, but in all things. The
slightest deviation from this habit may be the beginning of a career
of duplicity, ending in disgrace.

But truthfulness, like the other virtues, should not be regarded as a
trade mark, a means to success. It brings its own reward in the
nobility it gives the character. An exception might be made here as
to that form of military deceit known as "stratagem," but it is the
duty of the enemy to expect it, and so guard against it. The word of
a soldier involves his honor, and if he pledges that word, to even a
foeman, he will keep it with his life.

Like our own Washington, Wellington was a severe admirer of truth. An
illustration may be given. When afflicted by deafness, he consulted
a celebrated aurist, who, after trying all remedies in vain,
determined, as a last resource, to inject into the ear a strong
solution of caustic. It caused the most intense pain, but the
patient bore it with his usual equanimity. The family physician
accidentally calling one day, found the duke with flushed cheeks and
blood-shot eyes, and when he rose he staggered about like a drunken
man. The doctor asked to be permitted to look at his ear, and then
he found that a furious inflammation was going on, which, if not
immediately checked, must shortly reach the brain and kill him.
Vigorous remedies were at once applied, and the inflammation was
checked. But the hearing of that ear was completely destroyed. When
the aurist heard of the danger his patient had run, through the
violence of the remedy he had employed, he hastened to Apsley House
to express his grief and mortification; but the duke merely said:
"Do not say a word more about it--you did all for the best." The
aurist said it would be his ruin when it became known that he had
been the cause of so much suffering and danger to his grace. "But
nobody need know any thing about it: keep your own counsel, and,
depend upon it, I won't say a word to any one." "Then your grace
will allow me to attend you as usual, which will show the public
that you have not withdrawn your confidence from me?" "No," replied
the duke, kindly but firmly; "I can't do that, for that would be a
lie." He would not act a falsehood any more than he would speak one.

But lying assumes many forms--such as diplomacy, expediency, and
moral reservation; and, under one guise or another, it is found more
or less pervading all classes of society. Sometimes it assumes the
form of equivocation or moral dodging--twisting and so stating the
things said as to convey a false impression--a kind of lying which a
Frenchman once described as "walking round about the truth."

There are even men of narrow minds and dishonest natures, who pride
themselves upon their Jesuitical cleverness in equivocation, in
their serpent-wise shirking of the truth and getting out of moral
backdoors, in order to hide their real opinions and evade the
consequences of holding and openly professing them. Institutions or
systems based upon any such expedients must necessarily prove false
and hollow. "Though a lie be ever so well dressed," says George
Herbert, "it is ever overcome." Downright lying, though bolder and
more vicious, is even less contemptible than such kind of shuffling
and equivocation.



CHAPTER VII

AS TO MARRIAGE.

Mention has been made of the great influence on character of the
right kind of a home, in childhood and youth. The right kind of a
home depends almost entirely on the right kind of a wife or mother.

The old saying, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure," will never
lose its force. "Worse than the man whose selfishness keeps him a
bachelor till death, is the young man, who, under an impulse he
imagines to be an undying love, marries a girl as poor, weak, and
selfish as himself. There have been cases where marriage under such
circumstances has aroused the man to effort and made him,
particularly if his wife were of the same character, but these are
so exceptional as to form no guide for people of average common
sense.

Again, there have been men, good men, whose lives measured by the
ordinary standards were successful, who never married; but those who
hear or read of them, have the feeling that such careers were
incomplete.

The most important voluntary act of every man and woman's life, is
marriage, and God has so ordained it. Hence it is an act which
should be love-prompted on both sides, and only entered into after
the most careful and prayerful deliberation.

It is natural for young people of the opposite sex, who are much
thrown together, and so become in a way essential to each other's
happiness, to end by falling in love. It is said that "love is
blind," and the ancients so painted their mythological god, Cupid.
It is very certain that the fascination is not dependent on the
will; it is a divine, natural impulse, which has for its purpose the
continuance of the race.

Here, then, in all its force, we see the influence of association,
which has been already treated of. The young man whose associations
are of the right kind is sure to be brought into contact with the
good daughters of good mothers. With such association, love and
marriage should add to life's success and happiness, provided,
always, that the husband's circumstances warrant him in establishing
and maintaining a home.

Granting, then, the right kind of a wife, and the ability to make a
home, the young man, with the right kind of stuff in him, takes a
great stride in the direction of success when he marries.

No wise person will marry for beauty mainly. It may exercise a
powerful attraction in the first place, but it is found to be of
comparatively little consequence afterward. Not that beauty of
person is to be underestimated, for, other things being equal,
handsomeness of form and beauty of features are the outward
manifestations of health. But to marry a handsome figure without
character, fine features unbeautified by sentiment or good nature,
is the most deplorable of mistakes. As even the finest landscape,
seen daily, becomes monotonous, so does the most beautiful face,
unless a beautiful nature shines through it. The beauty of to-day
becomes commonplace to-morrow; whereas goodness, displayed through
the most ordinary features, is perennially lovely. Moreover, this
kind of beauty improves with age, and time ripens rather than
destroys it. After the first year, married people rarely think of
each other's features, whether they be classically beautiful or
otherwise. But they never fail to be cognizant of each other's
temper. "When I see a man," says Addison, "with a sour, riveted
face, I can not forbear pitying his wife; and when I meet with an
open, ingenuous countenance, I think of the happiness of his
friends, his family, and his relations."

Edmund Burke, the greatest of English statesmen, was especially happy
in his marriage. He never ceased to be a lover, and long years after
the wedding he thus describes his wife: "She is handsome; but it is
a beauty not arising from features, from complexion, or from shape.
She has all three in a high degree, but it is not by these she
touches the heart; it is all that sweetness of temper, benevolence,
innocence, and sensibility, which a face can express, that forms her
beauty. She has a face that just raises your attention at first
sight; it grows on you every moment, and you wonder it did no more
than raise your attention at first.

"Her eyes have a mild light, but they awe when she pleases; they
command, like a good man out of office, not by authority, but by
virtue.

"Her stature is not tall; she is not made to be the admiration of
everybody, but the happiness of one.

"She has all the firmness that does not exclude delicacy; she has all
the softness that does not imply weakness.

"Her voice is a soft, low music--not formed to rule in public
assemblies, but to charm those who can distinguish a company from a
crowd; it has this advantage--you must come close to her to hear it.

"To describe her body describes her mind--one is the transcript of
the other; her understanding is not shown in the variety of matters
it exerts itself on, but in the goodness of the choice she makes.

"She does not display it so much in saying or doing striking things,
as in avoiding such as she ought not to say or do.

"No person of so few years can know the world better; no person was
ever less corrupted by the knowledge of it."

A man's real character will always be more visible in his household
than anywhere else; and his practical wisdom will be better
exhibited by the manner in which he bears rule there than even in
the larger affairs of business or public life. His whole mind may be
in his business; but, if he would be happy, his whole heart must be
in his home. It is there that his genuine qualities most surely
display themselves--there that he shows his truthfulness, his love,
his sympathy, his consideration for others, his uprightness, his
manliness--in a word, his character. If affection be not the
governing principle in a household, domestic life may be the most
intolerable of despotisms. Without justice, also, there can be
neither love, confidence, nor respect, on which all true domestic
rule is founded.

It is by the regimen of domestic affection that the heart of man is
best composed and regulated. The home is the woman's kingdom, her
state, her world--where she governs by affection, by kindness, by
the power of gentleness. There is nothing which so settles the
turbulence of a man's nature as his union in life with a high-minded
woman. There he finds rest, contentment, and happiness--rest of
brain and peace of spirit. He will also often find in her his best
counselor, for her instinctive tact will usually lead him right when
his own unaided reason might be apt to go wrong. The true wife is a
staff to lean upon in times of trial and difficulty; and she is
never wanting in sympathy and solace when distress occurs or fortune
frowns. In the time of youth, she is a comfort and an ornament of
man's life; and she remains a faithful helpmate in maturer years,
when life has ceased to be an anticipation, and we live in its
realities.

Luther, a man full of human affection, speaking of his wife, said, "I
would not exchange my poverty with her for all the riches of Croesus
without her." Of marriage he observed: "The utmost blessing that God
can confer on a man is the possession of a good and pious wife, with
whom he may live in peace and tranquility--to whom he may confide
his whole possessions, even his life and welfare." And again he
said, "To rise betimes, and to marry young, are what no man ever
repents of doing."

Some persons are disappointed in marriage, because they expect too
much from it; but many more because they do not bring into the co-
partnership their fair share of cheerfulness, kindliness,
forbearance, and common sense. Their imagination has perhaps
pictured a condition never experienced on this side of heaven; and
when real life comes, with its troubles and cares, there is a sudden
waking-up as from a dream.

We have spoken of the influence of a wife upon a man's character.
There are few men strong enough to resist the influence of a lower
character in a wife. If she do not sustain and elevate what is
highest in his nature, she will speedily reduce him to her own
level. Thus a wife may be the making or the unmaking of the best of
men. An illustration of this power is furnished in the life of
Bunyan, the profligate tinker, who had the good fortune to marry, in
early life, a worthy young woman, of good parentage.

On hearing of the death of his wife, the great explorer, Dr.
Livingstone, wrote to a friend: "I must confess that this heavy
stroke quite takes the heart out of me. Every thing else that has
happened only made me more determined to overcome all difficulties;
but after this sad stroke I feel crushed and void of strength. Only
three short months of her society, after four years' separation! I
married her for love, and the longer I lived with her I loved her
the more. A good wife, and a good, brave, kind-hearted mother was
she, deserving all the praises you bestowed upon her at our parting
dinner, for teaching her own and the native children, too, at
Kolobeng. I try to bow to the blow as from our Heavenly Father, who
orders all things for us . . . I shall do my duty still, but it is
with a darkened horizon that I again set about it."

Besides being a helper, woman is emphatically a consoler. Her
sympathy is unfailing. She soothes, cheers, and comforts. Never was
this more true than in the case of the wife of Tom Hood, whose
tender devotion to him, during a life that was a prolonged illness,
is one of the most affecting things in biography. A woman of
excellent good sense, she appreciated her husband's genius, and, by
encouragement and sympathy, cheered and heartened him to renewed
effort in many a weary struggle for life. She created about him an
atmosphere of hope and cheerfulness, and nowhere did the sunshine of
her love seem so bright as when lighting up the couch of her invalid
husband.

Scott wrote beautifully and truthfully:

 "Oh, woman, in our hours of ease,
  Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
  And variable as the shade
  By the light, quivering aspen made,
  When pain and anguish wring the brow,
  A ministering angel thou."



CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATION AS DISTINGUISHED FROM LEARNING.

Although not the same kind, there is as much difference between
education and learning, as there is between character and
reputation.

Learning may be regarded as mental capital, in the way of accumulated
facts. Education is the drawing out and development of the best that
is in the heart, the head, and the hand.

The civilized world has a score of very learned men, to the one who
may be said to be thoroughly educated. The learned man may be
familiar with many languages, and sciences, and have all the facts
of history and literature at his fingers' tip, and yet be as
helpless as an infant and as impractical as a fool. An educated man,
a man with his powers developed by training, may know no language
but his mother tongue, may be ignorant as to literature and art, and
yet be well--yes, even superbly educated.

The learned man's mind may be likened to a store house, or magazine,
in which there are a thousand wonderful things, some of which he can
make of use in the battle of life. He resembles the miser who fills
his coffers with gold and keeps it out of circulation. Beyond the
selfish joy of possession, his wealth is worthless, and its
acquisition has unfitted him for the struggle. The educated man, to
continue the illustration, may not be rich, but he knows how to use
every cent he owns, and he places it where, under his energy, it
will grow into dollars.

Far be it from us to underestimate the value of learning. Many of the
world's greatest men have been learned, but without exception such
men have also been educated. They have been trained to make their
knowledge available for the benefit of themselves and their fellow
men.

The athlete who develops his muscles to their greatest capacity of
strength and flexibility, and this can only be done by observing
strictly the laws of health, is physically an educated man. Every
mechanic whose hands and brain have been trained to the expertness
required by the master workman, is well-educated in his particular
calling. The man who is an expert accountant, or a trained civil
engineer, may know nothing of the higher mathematical principles,
but he is better educated than the scholar who has only a
theoretical knowledge of all the mathematics that have ever been
published.

The educated man is the man who can do something, and the quality of
his work marks the degree of his education. One might be learned in
law in a phenomenal way, and yet, unless he was educated, trained to
the practice, he would be beaten in the preparation of a case by a
lawyer's clerk.

There are men who can write and talk learnedly on political economy
and the laws of trade, and quote from memory all the statistics of
the census library, and yet be immeasurably surpassed in practical
business, by a young man whose college was the store, and whose
university was the counting room.

It should not be inferred from this that learning is not of the
greatest value, or that the facts obtained from the proper books are
to be ignored. The best investment a young man can make is in good
books, the study of which broadens the mind, and the facts of which
equip him the better for his life calling.

But books are not valuable only because of the available information
they give; when they do not instruct, they elevate and refine.

"Books," said Hazlitt, "wind into the heart; the poet's verse slides
into the current of our blood. We read them when young, we remember
them when old. We read there of what has happened to others; we feel
that it has happened to ourselves. They are to be had everywhere
cheap and good. We breathe but the air of books. We owe everything
to their authors, on this side barbarism."

A good book is often the best urn of a life, enshrining the best
thoughts of which that life was capable; for the world of a man's
life is, for the most part, but the world of his thoughts. Thus the
best books are treasuries of good words and golden thoughts, which,
remembered and cherished, become our abiding companions and
comforters. "They are never alone," said Sir Philip Sidney, "that
are accompanied by noble thoughts." The good and true thought may in
time of temptation be as an angel of mercy, purifying and guarding
the soul. It also enshrines the germs of action, for good words
almost invariably inspire to good works.

Thus Sir Henry Lawrence prized above all other compositions
Wordsworth's "Character of the Happy Warrior," which he endeavored
to embody in his own life. It was ever before him as an exemplar. He
thought of it continually, and often quoted it to others. His
biographer says, "He tried to conform his own life and to assimilate
his own character to it; and he succeeded, as all men succeed who
are truly in earnest."

Books possess an essence of immortality. They are by far the most
lasting products of human effort. Temples crumble into ruin;
pictures and statues decay; but books survive. Time is of no account
with great thoughts, which are as fresh to-day as when they first
passed through their authors' minds, ages ago. What was then said
and thought still speaks to us as vividly as ever from the printed
page. The only effect of time has been to sift and winnow out the
bad products; for nothing in literature can long survive but what is
really good.

To the young man, "thirsting for learning and hungering for
education," there are no books more helpful than the biographies of
those whom it is well to imitate. Longfellow wisely says:

"Lives of great men all remind us,
   We can make our lives sublime,
 And departing leave behind us,
   Footprints on the sands of time--

 Footprints which perhaps another,
   Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
 A forlorn and ship-wrecked brother,
   Seeing, may take heart again."

At the head of all biographies stands the Great Biography--the Book
of Books. And what is the Bible, the most sacred and impressive of
all books--the educator of youth, the guide of manhood, and the
consoler of age--but a series of biographies of great heroes and
patriarchs, prophets, kings and judges, culminating in the greatest
biography of all--the Life embodied in the New Testament? How much
have the great examples there set forth done for mankind! How many
have drawn from them their best strength, their highest wisdom,
their best nurture and admonition! Truly does a great and deeply
pious writer describe the Bible as a book whose words "live in the
ear like a music that never can be forgotten--like the sound of
church-bells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its
felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It
is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national
seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent
traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of
all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. It is
the representative of his best moments; and all that has been about
him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to
him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which
doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. In the length
and breadth of the land there is not an individual with one spark of
religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his
Saxon Bible."

History itself is best studied in biography. Indeed, history is
biography--collective humanity as influenced and governed by
individual men. "What is all history," says Emerson, "but the work
of ideas, a record of the incomparable energy which his infinite
aspirations infuse into man? In its pages it is always persons we
see more than principles. Historical events are interesting to us
mainly in connection with the feelings, the sufferings, and
interests of those by whom they are accomplished. In history we are
surrounded by men long dead, but whose speech and whose deeds
survive. We almost catch the sound of their voices; and what they
did constitutes the interest of history. We never feel personally
interested in masses of men; but we feel and sympathize with the
individual actors, whose biographies afford the finest and most real
touches in all great historical dramas."

As in portraiture, so in biography--there must be light and shade.
The portrait-painter does not pose his sitter so as to bring out his
deformities; nor does the biographer give undue prominence to the
defects of the character he portrays. Not many men are so outspoken
as Cromwell was when he sat to Cooper for his miniature: "Paint me
as I am," said he, "wart and all." Yet, if we would have a faithful
likeness of faces and characters, they must be painted as they are.
"Biography," said Sir Walter Scott, "the most interesting of every
species of composition, loses all its interest with me when the
shades and lights of the principal characters are not accurately and
faithfully detailed. I can no more sympathize with a mere eulogist
than I can with a ranting hero on the stage."

It is to be regretted that in this day the country is flooded with
cheap, trashy fiction, the general tendency of which is not only not
educational, but is positively destructive. The desire to read this
stuff is as demoralizing as the opium habit.

There are works of fiction, cheap and available, too, whose influence
is elevating, and some knowledge of which is essential to the young
man who is using his spare hours for the purpose of self-education.

There is no room for doubt that the surpassing interest which
fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds arises
mainly from the biographic element which it contains. Homer's "Iliad
"owes its marvelous popularity to the genius which its author
displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so
much describe his personages in detail as make them develop
themselves by their actions. "There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson,
"such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes,
that the united powers of mankind ever since have not produced any
but what are to be found there."

The genius of Shakespeare, also, was displayed in the powerful
delineation of character, and the dramatic evolution of human
passions. His personages seem to be real--living and breathing
before us. So, too, with Cervantes, whose Sancho Panza, though
homely and vulgar, is intensely human. The characters in Le Sage's
"Gil Bias," in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," and in Scott's
marvelous muster-roll, seem to us almost as real as persons whom we
have actually known; and De Foe's greatest works are but so many
biographies, painted in minute detail, with reality so apparently
stamped upon every page that it is difficult to believe his Robinson
Crusoe and Colonel Jack to have been fictitious persons instead of
real ones.

Then we have a fine American literature, which should be read after
the history of the country is mastered, the stories of Cooper are
fresh and invigorating, and those of Hawthorne are life studies and
prose poems. Holmes, Lowell, Emerson, Bayard Taylor, and scores of
other American writers, whose pens have added lustre to the country,
will well repay the reader.

Good books are among the best of companions; and, by elevating the
thoughts and aspirations, they act as preservatives against low
associations. "A natural turn for reading and intellectual
pursuits," says Thomas Hood, "probably preserved me from the moral
ship-wreck so apt to befall those who are deprived in early life of
their parental pilotage. My books kept me from the ring, the dogpit,
the tavern, the saloon. The closet associate of Pope and
Addison, the mind accustomed to the noble though silent discourse of
Shakespeare and Milton, will hardly seek or put up with low company
and slaves."

It has been truly said that the best books are those which most
resemble good actions. They are purifying, elevating, and
sustaining; they enlarge and liberalize the mind; they preserve it
against vulgar worldliness; they tend to produce high-minded
cheerfulness and equanimity of character; they fashion, and shape,
and humanize the mind. In the Northern universities, the schools in
which the ancient classics are studied are appropriately styled "The
Humanity Classes."

Erasmus, the great scholar, was even of opinion that books were the
necessaries of life, and clothes the luxuries; and he frequently
postponed buying the latter until he had supplied himself with the
former. His greatest favorites were the writings of Cicero, which he
says he always felt himself the better for reading. "I can never,"
he says, "read the works of Cicero on 'Old Age,' or 'Friendship,' or
his 'Tusculan Disputations,' without fervently pressing them to my
lips, without being penetrated with veneration for a mind little
short of inspired by God himself."

It is unnecessary to speak of the enormous moral influence which
books have exercised upon the general civilization of mankind, from
the Bible downward. They contain the treasured knowledge of the
human race. They are the record of all labors, achievements,
speculations, successes, and failures, in science, philosophy,
religion, and morals. They have been the greatest motive-powers in
all times. "From the Gospel to the Contrat Social," says De Bonald,
"it is books that have made revolutions." Indeed, a great book is
often a greater thing than a great battle. Even works of fiction
have occasionally exercised immense power on society.

Bear in mind that it is not all we eat that nourishes, but what we
digest. The learned man is a glutton as to books, but the educated
man knows that, no matter how much is read, benefit is only derived
from the thoughts that develop our own thoughts and strengthen our
own minds.



CHAPTER IX

THE VALUE OF EXPERIENCE.

"What experience have you had?" This is apt to be the first question
put by an employer to the applicant for a place, be he mechanic,
clerk, or laborer. If you need a doctor, you would prefer to trust
your case to a man of experience, rather than to one fresh from a
medical college. Apart from the established reputation, that comes
only with time, and natural abilities which count for much, the
principal difference between men in every calling is the difference
in their experiences.

If this experience is so essential, we must regard as wanting in
judgment the young man, who, after a short service, imagines he is
as well qualified to conduct the business as his superior in place.
No amount of natural ability, and no effort of energy can compensate
for the training that comes from experience. Indeed, it is only
after we have studied and tested ourselves, and overestimated our
talents to our injury, more than once, that experience gives us a
proper estimate of our own strength and weakness.

Contact with others is requisite to enable a man to know himself. It
is only by mixing freely in the world that one can form a proper
estimate of his own capacity. Without such experience, one is apt to
become conceited, puffed up, and arrogant; at all events, he will
remain ignorant of himself, though he may heretofore have enjoyed no
other company.

Swift once said: "It is an uncontroverted truth, that no man ever
made an ill-figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one
who mistook them." Many persons, however, are readier to take
measure of the capacity of others than of themselves. "Bring him to
me," said a certain Dr. Tronchin, of Geneva, speaking of Rousseau--
"bring him to me that I may see whether he has got anything in
him!"--the probability being that Rousseau, who knew himself better,
was much more likely to take measure of Tronchin than Tronchin was
to take measure of him.

A due amount of self-knowledge is, therefore, necessary for those who
would _be_ anything or _do_ anything in the world. It is also one of
the first essentials to the formation of distinct personal
convictions. Frederick Perthes once said to a young friend, "You
know only too well what you _can_ do; but till you have learned what
you _can not_ do, you will neither accomplish anything of moment nor
know inward peace."

Any one who would profit by experience will never be above asking
help. He who thinks himself already too wise to learn of others,
will never succeed in doing anything either good or great. We have
to keep our minds and hearts open, and never be ashamed to learn,
with the assistance of those who are wiser and more experienced than
ourselves.

The man made wise by experience endeavors to judge correctly of the
things which come under his observation and form the subject of his
daily life. What we call common sense is, for the most part, but the
result of common experience wisely improved. Nor is great ability
necessary to acquire it, so much as patience, accuracy, and
watchfulness.

The results of experience are, of course, only to be achieved by
living; and living is a question of time. The man of experience
learns to rely upon time as his helper. "Time and I against any
two," was a maxim of Cardinal Mazarin. Time has been described as a
beautifier and as a consoler; but it is also a teacher. It is the
food of experience, the soil of wisdom. It may be the friend or the
enemy of youth; and time will sit beside the old as a consoler or as
a tormentor, according as it has been used or misused, and the past
life has been well or ill spent.

"Time," says George Herbert, "is the rider that breaks youth." To the
young, how bright the new world looks!--how full of novelty, of
enjoyment, of pleasure! But as years pass, we find the world to be a
place of sorrow as well as of joy. As we proceed through life, many
dark vistas open upon us--of toil, suffering, difficulty, perhaps
misfortune and failure. Happy they who can pass through and amidst
such trials with a firm mind and pure heart, encountering trials
with cheerfulness, and standing erect beneath even the heaviest
burden!

Thomas A. Edison, the great inventor, in speaking of his success to
the writer, said:

"I had when I started out all the patience and perseverance that I
have now, but I lacked the experience. Seeing that I had only ten
weeks' regular schooling in all my life, I can say with truth that
experience has been my school and my only one.

"Many believe that my life has been a success from the start, and I
do not try to undeceive them, but as a matter of fact my failures
have exceeded my successes as one hundred to one; but even the
experience of these failures has been in itself an educator and has
enabled me not to repeat them."

The brave man will not be baffled, but tries and tries again until he
succeeds. The tree does not fall at the first stroke, but only by
repeated strokes and after great labor. We may see the visible
success at which a man has arrived, but forget the toil and
suffering and peril through which it has been achieved. For the same
reason, it is often of advantage for a man to be under the necessity
of having to struggle with poverty and conquer it. "He who has
battled," says Carlyle, "were it only with poverty and hard toil,
will be found stronger and more expert than he who could stay at
home from the battle, concealed among the provision wagons, or even
rest unwatchfully 'abiding by the stuff.'"

Scholars have found poverty tolerable compared with the privation of
intellectual food. Riches weigh much more heavily upon the mind. "I
cannot but choose say to Poverty," said Richter, "Be welcome! So
that thou come not too late in life." Poverty, Horace tells us,
drove him to poetry and poetry introduced him to Varus and Virgil
and Maecenas. "Obstacles," says Michelet, "are great incentives. I
lived for whole years upon a Virgil and found myself well off."

Many have to make up their minds to encounter failure again and again
before they succeed; but if they have pluck, the failure will only
serve to rouse their courage and stimulate them to renewed efforts.
Talma, the greatest of actors, was hissed off the stage when he
first appeared on it. Lacordaire, one of the greatest preachers of
modern times, only acquired celebrity after repeated failures.
Montalembert said of his first public appearance in the church of
St. Roch: He failed completely, and, on coming out, every one said,
"Though he may be a man of talent he will never be a preacher."
Again and again he tried, until he succeeded, and only two years
after his _debut_, Lacordaire was preaching in Notre Dame to
audiences such as few French orators have addressed since the time
of Bossuet and Massilon.

When Mr. Cobden first appeared as a speaker at a public meeting in
Manchester, he completely broke down and the chairman apologized for
his failure. Sir James Graham and Mr. Disraeli failed and were
derided at first, and only succeeded by dint of great labor and
application. At one time Sir James Graham had almost given up public
speaking in despair. He said to his friend Sir Francis Baring: "I
have tried it every way--extempore, from notes, and committing it
all to memory--and I can't do it. I don't know why it is, but I am
afraid I shall never succeed." Yet by dint of perseverance, Graham,
like Disraeli, lived to become one of the most effective and
impressive of parliamentary speakers.

In every field of effort success has only come after many trials.
Morse with his telegraph and Howe with his sewing machine lived in
poverty and met with many disappointments before the world came to
appreciate the value of their great inventions.

It can be said with truth that these great men could have avoided
much of their trouble if they had had the necessary experience. But
particularly in the two cases cited before, the inventions were new
to the world and it needed that the world should have the experience
of their utility as well as the inventors.

Science also has had its martyrs, who have fought their way to light
through difficulty, persecution and suffering. We need not refer to
the cases of Bruno, Galileo and others, persecuted because of the
supposed heterodoxy of their views. But there have been other
unfortunates among men of science, whose genius has been unable to
save them from the fury of their enemies. Thus Bailly, the
celebrated French astronomer (who had been mayor of Paris) and
Lavoisier, the great chemist, were both guillotined in the first
French Revolution. When the latter, after being sentenced to death
by the Commune, asked for a few days' respite to enable him to
ascertain the result of some experiments he had made during his
confinement, the tribunal refused his appeal, and ordered him for
immediate execution, one of the judges saying that "the Republic has
no need of philosophers." In England also, about the same time, Dr.
Priestley, the father of modern chemistry, had his house burned over
his head and his library destroyed, amidst the shouts of "No
philosophers!" and he fled from his native country to lay his bones
in a foreign land.

Courageous men have often turned enforced solitude to account in
executing works of great pith and moment. It is in solitude that the
passion for spiritual perfection best nurses itself. The soul
communes with itself in loneliness until its energy often becomes
intense. But whether a man profits by solitude or not will mainly
depend upon his own temperament, training and character. While, in a
large-natured man, solitude will make the pure heart purer, in the
small-natured man it will only serve to make the hard heart still
harder; for though solitude may be the nurse of great spirits, it is
the torment of small ones.

Not only have many of the world's greatest benefactors, men whose
lives history now records the most successful, had not only to
contend with poverty, but it was their misfortune to be
misunderstood and to be regarded as criminals. Many a great reformer
in religion, science, and government has paid for his opinions by
imprisonment. Speaking of these great men, a prominent English
writer says: Prisons may have held them, but their thoughts were not
to be confined by prison walls. They have burst through and defied
the power of their persecutors. It was Lovelace, a prisoner, who
wrote:

"Stone walls do not a prison make,
   Nor iron bars a cage;
 Minds innocent and quiet take
   That for a hermitage."

It was a saying of Milton that, "who best can suffer, best can do."
The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been
done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled
against the tide and reached the shore exhausted, only to grasp the
sand and expire. They have done their duty and been content to die.
But death hath no power over such men; their hallowed memories still
survive to soothe and purify and bless us. "Life," said Goethe, "to
us all is suffering. Who save God alone shall call us to our
reckoning? Let not reproaches fall on the departed. Not what they
have failed in, nor what they have suffered, but what they have
done, ought to occupy the survivors."

Thus, it is not ease and facility that try men and bring out the good
that is in them, so much as trial and difficulty. Adversity is the
touchstone of character. As some herbs need to be crushed to give
forth their sweetest odor, so some natures need to be tried by
suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Hence trials
often unmask virtues and bring to light hidden graces.

Suffering may be the appointed means by which the higher nature of
man is to be disciplined and developed. Assuming happiness to be the
end of being, sorrow may be the indispensable condition through
which it is to be reached. Hence St. Paul's noble paradox
descriptive of the Christian life--"As chastened, and not killed; as
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as
having nothing, and yet possessing all things."

Even pain is not all painful. On one side it is related to suffering,
and on the other to happiness. For pain is remedial as well as
sorrowful. Suffering is a misfortune as viewed from the one side,
and a discipline as viewed from the other. But for suffering, the
best part of many men's natures would sleep a deep sleep. Indeed, it
might almost be said that pain and sorrow were the indispensable
conditions of some men's success, and the necessary means to evoke
the highest development of their genius. Shelley has said of poets:

"Most wretched men are cradled into poetry
   by wrong,
 They learn in suffering what they teach in
   song."

But the young man meeting with disappointments, as he is sure to do
in the beginning of his career, particularly if he be dependent on
himself, should take comfort from the thought that others who have
risen to success have had to travel the same hard road; and such men
have confessed that these trials, these bitter experiences, were the
most valuable of their lives.

Life, all sunshine without shade, all happiness without sorrow, all
pleasure without pain, were not life at all--at least not human
life. Take the lot of the happiest--it is a tangled yarn. It is made
up of sorrows and joys; and the joys are all the sweeter because of
the sorrows; bereavements and blessings, one following another,
making us sad and blessed by turns. Even death itself makes life
more loving; it binds us more closely together while here. Dr.
Thomas Browne has argued that death is one of the necessary
conditions of human happiness, and he supports his argument with
great force and eloquence. But when death comes into a household, we
do not philosophize--we only feel. The eyes that are full of tears
do not see; though in course of time they come to see more clearly
and brightly than those that have never known sorrow.

There is much in life that, while in this state, we can never
comprehend. There is, indeed, a great deal of mystery in life--much
that we see "as in a glass darkly." But though we may not apprehend
the full meaning of the discipline of trial through which the best
have to pass, we must have faith in the completeness of the design
of which our little individual lives form a part.

We have each to do our duty in that sphere of life in which we have
been placed. Duty alone is true; there is no true action but in its
accomplishment. Duty is the end and aim of the highest life; the
truest pleasure of all is that derived from the consciousness of its
fulfillment. Of all others, it is the one that is most thoroughly
satisfying, and the least accompanied by regret and disappointment.
In the words of George Herbert, the consciousness of duty performed
"gives us music at midnight."

And when we have done our work on earth--of necessity, of labor, of
love, or of duty--like the silk-worm that spins its little cocoon
and dies, we too depart. But, short though our stay in life may be,
it is the appointed sphere in which each has to work out the great
aim and end of his being to the best of his power; and when that is
done, the accidents of the flesh will affect but little the
immortality we shall at last put on.



CHAPTER X

SELECTING A CALLING.

In reading the lives of great men, one is struck with a very
important fact: that their success has been won in callings for
which in early manhood they had no particular liking. Necessity or
chance has, in many cases, decided what their life-work should be.
But even where the employment was at first uncongenial, a strict
sense of duty and a strong determination to master the difficult and
to like the disagreeable, conquered in the end.

In these days of fierce competition, no matter how ardent the desire
for fame, he is a dreamer who loses sight of the monetary returns of
his life-efforts.

There have been a few men whose wants were simple, and these wants
guarded against by a certain official income, who could afford to
ignore gain and to work for the truths of science or the good of
humanity. The great English chemist Faraday was of this class. Once
asked by a friend why he did not use his great abilities and
advantages to accumulate a fortune, he said: "My dear fellow, I
haven't time to give to money making."

It is, perhaps, to be regretted that in nearly every case the efforts
of to-day, whether in commerce, trade, or science, have for their
purpose the making of fortunes. Nor should this spirit be condemned,
for fortune in the hands of the right men is a blessing to the world
and particularly to those who are more improvident.

Peter Cooper, Stephen Girard, George Peabody, and many other eminent
Americans who made their way to great wealth from comparative
poverty, used that wealth to enable young men, starting life as they
did, to achieve the same success without having to encounter the
same obstacles.

It is a well-known fact that boys who live near the sea have an
intense yearning to become sailors. Every healthy boy has a longing
to be a soldier, and he takes the greatest delight in toy military
weapons.

Our ideals for living, particularly when they are the creations of a
youthful imagination, are but seldom safe guides for our mature
years. The fairy stories that delighted our childhood and the
romances that fired our youth, are found but poor guides to success,
when the great life-battle is on us.

It is a mistake for parents and guardians to say that this boy or
that girl shall follow out this or that life-calling, without any
regard to the tastes, or any consideration of the natural capacity.
It is equally an error, because the boy or girl may like this or
that branch of study more than another, to infer that this indicates
a talent for that subject. Arithmetic is but seldom as popular with
young people as history, simply because the latter requires less
mental effort to master it. The world is full of professional
incompetents--creatures of circumstances very often, but more
frequently their life-failure is due to the whims of ambitious
parents.

While the child and even the young man are but seldom the best judges
of what a life-calling should be, yet the observant parent and
teacher can discover the natural inclination, and by encouragement,
develop this inclination.

As the wrecks on sandy beaches and by rock-bound shores, warn the
careful mariner from the same fate, so the countless wrecks which
the young man sees on every hand, increasing as he goes through
life, should warn him from the same dangers.

It is stated, on what seems good authority, that ninety-five percent
of the men who go into business for themselves, fail at some time.
It would be an error, however, to infer from this that the failures
were due to a mistaken life-calling. They have been due rather to
unforeseen circumstances, over-confidence, or the desire to succeed
too rapidly. Benefiting by these reverses, a large percent of the
failures have entered on the life-struggle again and won.

In the early days of the world's history, the callings or fields of
effort were necessarily limited to the chase, herding or
agriculture. In those times, the toiler had not only to work for the
support of himself and family, but he had also to be a warrior,
trained to the use of arms, and ready to defend the products of his
labor from the theft of robber neighbors.

In this later and broader day, civilization has opened up thousands
of avenues of effort that were unknown to our less fortunate
ancestors.

While the world is filled with human misfits, round pegs in square
holes and square pegs in round holes, the choice of callings has so
spread with the growth of civilization, that every young man who
reasons for himself and studies his own powers, can with more or
less certainty find out his calling, and pursue it with a success
entirely dependent on his own fitness and energy.

In a general way, the great fields of human effort, at this time, may
be divided into three classes. First, the so-called "learned
professions"--journalism, theology, medicine and law. Second, the
callings pertaining to public life, such as politics, military,
science, and education. Third, those vocations that pertain to
production, like agriculture, manufactures, and commerce.

But apart from the callings selected, it should be kept carefully in
mind that, no matter the business, success is dependent entirely on
the man.

Business is the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack
to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves
from putrefaction, and drives off all those blowing flies that would
corrupt it. Let a man be sure to drive his business rather than let
it drive him. When a man is but once brought to be driven, he
becomes a vassal to his affairs. Reason and right give the quickest
dispatch. All the entanglements that we meet with arise from the
irrationality of ourselves or others. With a wise and honest man a
business is soon ended, but with a fool and knave there is no
conclusion, and seldom even a beginning.

Having decided on a calling, bear ever in mind that faith and
trustfulness lie at the foundation of trade and commercial
intercourse, and business transactions of every kind. A community of
known swindlers and knaves would try in vain to avail themselves of
the advantages of traffic, or to gain access to those circles where
honor and honesty are indispensable passports. Hence the value which
is attached, by all right-minded men, to purity of purpose and
integrity of character. A man may be unfortunate, he may be poor and
penniless; but if he is known to possess unbending integrity, an
unwavering purpose to do what is honest and just, he will have
friends and patrons whatever may be the embarrassments and
exigencies into which he is thrown. The poor man may thus possess a
capital of which none of the misfortunes and calamities of life can
deprive him. We have known men who have been suddenly reduced from
affluence to penury by misfortunes, which they could neither foresee
nor prevent. A fire has swept away the accumulations of years;
misplaced confidence, a flood, or some of the thousand casualties to
which commercial men are exposed, have stripped them of their
possessions. To-day they have been prosperous, to-morrow every
prospect is blighted, and everything in its aspect is dark and
dismal. Their business is gone, their property is gone, and they
feel that all is gone; but they have a rich treasure which the fire
cannot consume, which the flood cannot carry away. They have
integrity of character, and this gives them influence, raises up
friends, and furnishes them with means to start afresh in the world
once more. Young men, especially, should be deeply impressed with
the vast importance of cherishing those principles, and of
cultivating those habits, which will secure for them the confidence
and esteem of the wise and good. Let it be borne in mind that no
brilliancy of genius, no tact or talent in business, and no amount
of success, will compensate for duplicity, shuffling, and trickery.
There may be apparent advantage in the art and practice of
dissimulation, and in violating those great principles which lie at
the foundation of truth and duty; but it will at length be seen
that a dollar was lost where a cent was gained; that present
successes are outweighed, a thousand-fold, by the pains and
penalties which result from loss of confidence and loss of
reputation. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the minds of
young men to abstain from every course, from every act, which shocks
their moral sensibilities, wounds their conscience, and has a
tendency to weaken their sense of honor and integrity.



CHAPTER XI

WE MUST HELP OURSELVES.

To the young man of the right kind, the inheritance of a fortune, or
the possession of influential friends, may be great advantages, but
more frequently they are hindrances. To win you must fight for
yourself, and the effort will give you strength.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the
individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the
true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is
often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably
invigorates. Whatever is done _for_ men or classes, to a certain
extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for
themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-
government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively
helpless.

The privileges of a superior education, like the inheritance of a
fortune, depends upon the man. It should encourage those who have
only themselves and God to look to for support, to remember that
self-education is the best education, and that some of the greatest
men have had few or no school advantages.

Daily experience shows that it is energetic individualism which
produces the most powerful effects upon the life and action of
others, and really constitutes the best practical education.
Schools, academies, and colleges give but the merest beginnings of
culture in comparison with it. Far more influential is the life-
education daily given in our homes, in the streets, behind counters,
in workshops, at the loom and the plough, in counting-houses and
manufactories, and in the busy haunts of men. This is that finishing
instruction as members of society, which Schiller designated "the
education of the human race," consisting in action, conduct, self-
culture, self-control--all that tends to discipline a man truly, and
fit him for the proper performance of the duties and business of
life--a kind of education not to be learned from books, or acquired
by any amount of mere literary training. With his usual weight of
words Bacon observes, that "Studies teach not their own use; but
that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation;"
a remark that holds true of actual life, as well as of the
cultivation of the intellect itself. For all experience serves to
illustrate and enforce the lesson, that a man perfects himself by
work more than by reading--that it is life rather than literature,
action rather than study, and character rather than biography, which
tend perpetually to renovate mankind.

No matter how humble your calling in life may be, take heart from the
fact that many of the world's greatest men have had no superior
advantages. Lincoln studied law lying on his face before a log-fire;
General Garfield drove a mule on a canal tow-path in his boyhood,
and George Peabody, owing to the poverty of his family, was an
errand boy in a grocery store at the age of eleven.

Great men of science, literature, and art--apostles of great thoughts
and lords of the great heart--have belonged to no exclusive class or
rank in life. They have come alike, from colleges, workshops, and
farm-houses--from the huts of poor men and the mansions of the rich.
Some of God's greatest apostles have come from "the ranks." The
poorest have sometimes taken the highest places, nor have
difficulties apparently the most insuperable proved obstacles in
their way. Those very difficulties, in many instances, would even
seem to have been their best helpers, by evoking their powers of
labor and endurance, and stimulating into life faculties which might
otherwise have lain dormant. The instances of obstacles thus
surmounted, and of triumphs thus achieved, are indeed so numerous as
almost to justify the proverb that "with will one can do anything."

If we took to England, the mother country, a land where the
advantages are not nearly so great as in this and the difficulties
greater, we shall find noble spirits rising to usefulness and
eminence in the face of difficulties equally great.

Shoemakers have given us Sir Cloudesley Shovel the great admiral,
Sturgeon the electrician, Samuel Drew the essayist, Gifford the
editor of the _Quarterly Review_, Bloomfield the poet, and William
Carey the missionary; whilst Morrison, another laborious missionary,
was a maker of shoe-lasts. Within the last few years, a profound
naturalist has been discovered in the person of a shoemaker at
Banff, named Thomas Edwards, who, while maintaining himself by his
trade, has devoted his leisure to the study of natural science in
all its brandies, his researches in connection with the smaller
crustaceae having been rewarded by the discovery of a new species,
to which the name of "Praniza Edwardsii" has been given by
naturalists.

Nor have tailors been undistinguished. John Stow, the historian,
worked at the trade during some part of his life. Jackson, the
painter, made clothes until he reached manhood. The brave Sir John
Hawkswood, who so greatly distinguished himself at Poictiers, and
was knighted by Edward III for his valor, was in early life
apprenticed to a London tailor. Admiral Hobson, who broke the boom
at Vigo in 1702, belonged to the same calling. He was working as
tailor's apprentice near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, when the
news flew through the village that a squadron of men-of-war was
sailing off the island. He sprang from the shopboard, and ran down
with his comrades to the beach, to gaze upon the glorious sight. The
boy was suddenly inflamed with the ambition to be a sailor; and
springing into a boat, he rowed off to the squadron, gained the
admiral's ship, and was accepted as a volunteer. Years after, he
returned to his native village full of honors, and dined off bacon
and eggs in the cottage where he had worked as an apprentice.

Oliver Goldsmith was regarded as a dunce in his school days, and
Daniel Webster was so dull as a school-boy as not to indicate in any
way the great abilities he was to display.

Humbert was a scapegrace when a youth; at sixteen he ran away from
home and was by turns servant to a tradesman at Nancy, a workman at
Lyons, and a hawker of rabbit-skins. In 1792, he enlisted as a
volunteer and in a year he was general of brigade. Kleber, Lefebvre,
Suchet, Victor, Lannes, Soult, Massena, St. Cyr, D'Erlon, Murat,
Augereau, Bessieres and Ney, all rose from the ranks. In some cases
promotion was rapid, in others it was slow. St. Cyr, the son of a
tanner of Toul, began life as an actor, after which he enlisted in
the chasseurs and was promoted to a captaincy within a year. Victor,
Due de Belluno, enlisted in the artillery in 1781: during the events
preceding the Revolution he was discharged; but immediately on the
outbreak of war he re-enlisted, and in the course of a few months
his intrepidity and ability secured his promotion as adjutant-major
and chief of battalion. Murat was the son of a village innkeeper in
Perigord, where he looked after the horses. He first enlisted in a
regiment of chasseurs, from which he was dismissed for
insubordination; but again, enlisting he shortly rose to the rank of
colonel. Ney enlisted at eighteen in a hussar regiment and gradually
advanced step by step; Kleber soon discovered his merits, surnaming
him "The Indefatigable," and promoted him to be adjutant-general
when only twenty-five.

General Christopher Carson, or "Kit" Carson as he is known to the
world, although strictly temperate in his life and as gentle as a
blue-eyed child in his manner, ran away from his home in Missouri to
the Western wilds, when he was a boy of fourteen. His father wanted
him to be a farmer, but Providence had greater if not nobler uses
for him. Out in the Rocky Mountains--then a wilderness--he learned
the Indian languages, and became as familiar with every trail and
pass as the red men.

It was the knowledge gained in those early days that enabled Kit
Carson to carry succor to Fremont's men perishing in the mountains.
Not only did Carson bring food to the dying men, but when they were
strong enough to move he guided them to a place of safety.

This truly great man averted many an Indian war, and did as much for
the settlement and civilization of the West as any man of his day--
more, indeed. In the days of secession he was a patriot, and though
he might have grown rich at the expense of the Government, he
preferred to die a poor and honored man.

Admiral Farragut, although born in East Tennessee, went into the
United States Navy at the early age of eleven. He was the youngest
midshipman in the service. "Before I had reached the age of
sixteen," he says, "I prided myself on my profanity, and could drink
with the strongest."

One morning on recovering from a debauch he reviewed the situation
and saw the shoals ahead. Then and there he fell on his knees and
asked God to help him. From that day on he gave up tobacco, liquor,
and profanity, devoted himself to the study of his profession, and
so became the greatest Admiral of modern times. "The canal boat
captains, when I was a boy," said General Garfield, "were a profane,
carousing, ignorant lot, and, as a boy, I was eager to imitate them.
But my eyes were opened before I contracted their habits, and I left
them."

John B. Gough is an example of such a change of life that should
encourage every young man who has made a mis-step.

Among like men of the same class may be ranked the late Richard
Cobden, whose start in life was equally humble. The son of a small
farmer at Midhurst in Sussex, he was sent at an early age to London
and employed as a boy in a warehouse in the City. He was diligent,
well-conducted, and eager for information. His master, a man of the
old school, warned him against too much reading; but the boy went on
in his own course, storing his mind with the wealth found in books.
He was promoted from one position of trust to another, became a
traveler for his house, secured a large connection, and eventually
started in business as a calico-printer at Manchester. Taking an
interest in public questions, more especially in popular education,
his attention was gradually drawn to the subject of the Corn Laws,
to the repeal of which he may be said to have contributed more than
all the rest of Parliament.

It would be a mistake, however, to judge from this that all the
world's greatest men, started life poor, or that some men of wealth
and prominent family have not contributed their share, and have not,
by reason of that wealth, sedulously followed a useful life-calling.

Riches are so great a temptation to ease and self-indulgence, to
which men are by nature prone, that the glory is all the greater of
those who, born to ample fortunes, nevertheless take an active part
in the work of their generation--who "scorn delights and live
laborious days."

It was a fine thing said of a subaltern officer in the Peninsular
campaigns, observed trudging along through mud and mire by the side
of his regiment, "There goes 15,000 pounds a year!" and in our own
day, the bleak slopes of Sebastopol and the burning soil of India
have borne witness to the like noble self-denial and devotion on the
part of the richer classes; many a gallant and noble fellow, of rank
and estate, having risked his life, or lost it, in one or other of
those fields of action, in the service of his country.

Nor have the wealthier classes been undistinguished in the more
peaceful pursuits of philosophy and science. Take, for instance, the
great names of Bacon, the father of modern philosophy, and of
Worcester, Boyle, Cavendish, Talbot and Rosse in science. The last
named may be regarded as the great mechanic of the peerage; a man
who, if he had not been born a peer, would probably have taken the
highest rank as an inventor. So thorough was his knowledge of smith-
work that he is said to have been pressed on one occasion to accept
the foremanship of a large workshop, by a manufacturer to whom his
rank was unknown. The great Rosse telescope, of his own fabrication,
is certainly the most extraordinary instrument of the kind that has
yet been constructed.

We are apt to think that the wealthy classes in America are addicted
to idleness, but, in proportion to their number, they are as
usefully industrious as those who are forced to work for a living.
The Adams family, of Massachusetts, for more than a century, has
been even more distinguished for statesmanship and intellect than
for great wealth. The Vanderbilts have all been hard workers and
able business men. George Gould seems to be quite as great a
financier as his remarkable father. The Astors are distinguished for
their literary ability; William Waldorf Astor and his cousin, John
Jacob, are authors of great merit. The Lees, of Virginia, have ever
been distinguished for energy, intellect, and a capacity for hard
work. And so we might cite a hundred examples to prove that even in
America, want is not the greatest incentive to effort.

The indefatigable industry of Lord Brougham has become almost
proverbial. His public labors extended over a period of upward of
sixty years, during which he ranged over many fields--of law,
literature, politics, and science--and achieved distinction in them
all. How he contrived it, has been to many a mystery. Once, when Sir
Samuel Romilly was requested to undertake some new work, he excused
himself by saying that he had no time; "but," he added, "go with it
to that fellow Brougham, he seems to have time for everything." The
secret of it was, that he never left a minute unemployed; withal he
possessed a constitution of iron. When arrived at an age at which
most men would have retired from the world to enjoy their hard-
earned leisure, perhaps to doze away their time in an easy chair,
Lord Brougham commenced and prosecuted a series of elaborate
investigations as to the laws of Light, and he submitted the results
to the most scientific audiences that Paris and London could muster.
About the same time, he was passing through the press his admirable
sketches of the "Men of Science and Literature of the Reign of
George III," and taking his full share of the law business and the
political discussions in the House of Lords. Sydney Smith once
recommended him to confine himself to only the transaction of so
much business as three strong men could get through. But such was
Brougham's love of work--long become a habit--that no amount of
application seems to have been too great for him; and such was his
love of excellence that it has been said of him that if his station
in life had been only that of a shoeblack, he would never have
rested satisfied until he had become the best shoeblack in England.



Chapter XII

SUCCESSFUL FARMING.

According to Holy Writ, man's first calling was agriculture, or,
perhaps, horticulture would better express it. Adam was placed in
the Garden to till and care for it; and even after he was driven
from that blissful abode and compelled to live by the sweat of his
brow, he had to go back to the earth from which his body was made to
sustain the life breathed into it by Jehovah. But the young men of
to-day, and it is much to be regretted, regard farming life with
more and more disfavor. To be sure, the greatest fortunes have not
been accumulated in farming, but this book will not have
accomplished its purpose if it has failed to pint out that lives can
be eminently successful without the accumulation of great wealth.

Before proceeding further, let us state a truth which will be
convincing to every reader who knows anything at all about the
careers of successful men. It is not a little remarkable that the
most successful preachers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and
mechanics have had their earliest training on the farm.

As we have before said, the successful life is the one that is
happiest and most useful in itself, and which produces happiness and
usefulness in others. And as the majority of workers in most
civilized lands are directly connected with agriculture, and as all
sustenance for our daily lives, and all wealth, save the limited
amount that comes from the sea, is directly traceable to the land,
it follows that agriculture is the most important of all callings--
and I would say the most honorable, were it not that every calling is
honorable that requires for its success energy, industry,
intelligence, and honesty.

The United States, above all countries in the world at this time,
indeed, above all countries of which history furnishes any record,
has been more dependent for its growth and success on agriculture
than on any other vocation. While our manufacturing enterprises rank
us next to England among the world's manufacturing producers, yet
more than nine-tenths of our export trade with foreign countries is
in agricultural products, such as: wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco, and
beef and pork, which, under the present system of farming, are as
much agricultural productions as the grain on which the ox and the
hog are fattened.

In agriculture, or farming, is included the bulk of the balance of
labor not covered by the building and mechanical trades, and the
employments growing out of and connected with them.

Good farming is dependent on good machinery, including tools, and on
good buildings. Doubtless, in its infancy, neither was used, even
the hoe and hut being unknown. Among the first records of producing
from the soil, to be found in any detail, is the raising of corn in
Chaldea and Egypt. Sowing seed in the valley of the Nile, and
turning on the swine to tread it into the soil, was one of the
methods in use, and every process of planting and harvesting was of
the simplest. As population grew more dense, and other climates and
soils were occupied, better processes were developed, and more
varied were the productions. Animal power and rude tools were
gradually brought into use, and about 1000 years before Christ "a
plow with a beam, share and handles" is mentioned. Then agriculture
is spoken of as being in a flourishing condition, and artificial
drainage was resorted to. Grecian farming in the days of its
prosperity attained, in some districts, a creditable advancement,
and the implements in use were, in principle, similar to many of
modern construction. Horses, cattle, swine, sheep, and poultry were
bred and continually improved by importations from other countries.
Manuring of the fields was practiced; ground was often plowed three
times before seeding; and sub-soiling and other mixings of soils
were in some cases employed. A great variety of fruit was
successfully cultivated, and good farming was a source of pride to
the people. The Romans considered it, as Washington did, the most
honorable and useful occupation. Each Roman citizen was allotted a
piece of land of from five to fifty acres by the government, and in
after times, when annexations were made, up to five hundred acres
were allotted. The land was generally closely and carefully
cultivated, and the most distinguished citizens considered it their
greatest compliment to be called good farmers. The Roman Senate had
twenty-eight books, written by a Carthaginian farmer, translated for
the use of the people. The general sentiment among the more
intelligent was to hold small farms and till them well; to protect
their fields from winds and storms, and to defer building or
incurring avoidable expense until fully able.

Thirteen centuries were required to improve upon the plowing of two-
thirds of an acre, which in Roman parlance was a _jugarum_,
necessitating the labor of two days. The eighteenth century made
great improvements in the modes of farming, especially in the matter
of tools, machinery, and farm literature; while this century has
made marked progress in the raising and harvesting of crops,
buildings for farm purposes, and a remarkable improvement in horses,
cattle, and other farm stock. Salt was found to be a fertilizer, and
vegetation proven to be more beneficial on land in summer than
leaving it bare and unoccupied, as had formerly been the theory.
Manures were found to be of increased value when mixed, and guanos
were introduced.

The Germans and French began improvement in farming before the
English, and have well sustained it.

Since the primitive years of the Untied States, her agriculture has
attained unparalleled growth, and remains her chief pride and
revenue. Those were the years that tried the farmers' souls. They
had everything to learn; forests to clear off; seeds and
conveniences to secure; roads to open; new grounds to cultivate;
buildings to erect, and hostile Indians to watch and fight. South
Carolina was the first State to organize an agricultural society,
which was accomplished in 1784. Now nearly all the counties of every
State have similar organizations, besides those of the States
themselves. That they are materially and socially beneficial is
unquestioned, barring the effect of horse-racing and its betting
accompaniment.

Among the more valuable auxiliaries of the farmer are the
agricultural journals of the country, for which hundreds of
thousands of dollars are annually expended. With few exceptions they
fill the measure of their publication, and the information they
furnish, if properly and judiciously used, can have none but a
healthy effect. While nine out of every ten farmers doubtless do not
do all, nor as well as they know, the benefit and incitement of
knowing more can but be beneficial. It is as a bill of fare at an
eating-house--while the consumption of every article named therein
would be death, the large selection at hand renders possible a
wholesome meal.

Mr. Joshua Hill in his work entitled "Thought and Thrift"--which, by
the way, would be more valuable if less partisan--has this to say in
connection with the business and courage required in agriculture:

"Neglect of aid that may be had in procuring the best results of
labor, and inattention in applying it, are faults possessed by many.
Every man is by nature possessed of abilities of some sort; and if
he has found the right way to use them, he alone is to blame if he
does not properly apply them with a view to their highest and best
results. There is no use for a rule if there be no measures to take;
thee is no use for a reason if men do not heed it. Human experiences
are full of wise counsel for those who desire to learn and do so;
but for those who close their eyes and wait for results without
effort, the records containing them would just as well never have
been written. There is an absolutely fixed law of nature that denies
to man anything that he does not receive from some kind of labor,
except to such as live by favor and robbery, and not by work. There
are many examples of those who are said to 'live by their wits,' but
the problem as to how it is done may never be solved. Nor does it
need to be solved, as no man should justly expect to enjoy anything
which has not been procured by his own labor. Those who most
appreciated the comforts of life are those who create them for
themselves. In knowing how what we have is obtained, lies its chief
value to us. Men naturally take pride in the possession of a
treasure in proportion to the trouble involved in securing it.
Whoever would thrive in his farming must bend his whole will and
purpose to it. Nothing which can be done to-day should be put off
till to-morrow. To-morrow may never come, and should it come, may
not changed conditions and difficulties render set tasks impossible?
Under some circumstances men trust to fortune, without serious
errors, in postponing the execution of appointed tasks. The maxim
that 'procrastination is the thief of time' points a moral implied
in itself, and is unquestionably true in a majority of instances.
Men of business are often careful in some matters, to the neglect of
others more important. Different men have different methods of
business, which, considering differences of constitution and manner
of application, is only natural; not dangerous, but rather
beneficial. No two men go to work in the same way, notwithstanding
they may have both learned of the same teacher, or been instructed
upon the same principle. The greater trouble lies in improper
application and inattention to details. Trifles make up the sum of
life, as cents make dollars. An overanxious man, he who makes great
haste to be rich, seldom prospers long in any undertaking.
Possibilities, not probabilities, should be the guide. A sanguine
disposition may or may not be useful in business. Disappointment
often follows sanguine hopes. A good business man calculates
closely; does not allow anticipation to run away with his judgment,
nor imagine that any good result can follow a false move.

"For these reasons, the farmer needs to think and to reason more; to
attend more strictly to business rules and methods, and to exercise
a greater courage and persistency in applying them. 'Work while it
is day,' says the Scriptures, 'for the night cometh when no man can
work.' Command the present moment that shakes gold from its wings.
That the future may bring bread for his family, the farmer sows seed
in confidence, and awaits the harvest in hope. But if he fails to do
what is necessary to a proper yield from his crop, he has made a
failure of the talents committed to him. Men must acknowledge the
responsibility that rest upon them, and meet it with that true
courage which directs them aright. The lack of knowledge does not
imply lack of ability to think and to reason. All men, unless of
idiotic, impaired, or diseased minds, are possessed of the faculty
of reason, and should use it for the purpose for which it was given--
to supply needed helps to our temporal existence. From thought comes
ability, and from ability system, courage, attention, application,
the most valuable aids to every man of business.

"But in farming as in every other calling the first great requisite
is self-reliance. The man who depends upon his neighbors, as Aesop
illustrates in one of his fables, never has his work done. But when
he says that he will do it himself on a certain day, then it is
prudent for the bird that has been nesting in his grainfield to
change her habitation."



CHAPTER XIII

AS TO PUBLIC LIFE.

The relations of the citizen to the state, and of the state to the
citizen, are reciprocal. Every man who becomes a member of an
established government, whether it be voluntary, as where an oath of
allegiance is taken to obey the laws, or involuntary, as by birth,
which is the case of a majority of all citizens, he surrenders
certain natural rights in consideration of the protection which the
government throws about him.

In a state of nature, man is free to do as he pleases, without any
recognition of the rights of others; and his power to have his own
way is entirely dependent on the physical strength and courage which
he has to enforce it. This is why, in a savage state, war is the
almost constant business of the men, and the strongest and the
bravest of the lawless mob, tribe, or clan usually becomes leader.

When through either of these agencies a man finds himself a member of
an established government, he owes to that government implicit
obedience to its laws, in consideration of the protection to life
and property which that government throws about him.

In consideration of the protection which the banded many, known as
the state, gives to the individual, the individual pledges implicit
obedience to the laws of the state.

Horace says : _Dulci et decorum est pro patria mori_--meaning that it
is brave and right to die for one's country. Old Dr. Sam Johnson,
like his successor, Carlyle, was apt to sneer at the grander
impulses of humanity. He said on one occasion: "Patriotism is the
last resort of a scoundrel." And yet we know that the noblest
characters of all history have been the men who felt, with Horace,
that it was noble to die for one's country.

Americans, perhaps more than any other people in the world at this
time, have an intense appreciation of this spirit of patriotism.
From the days of the Revolution to the present time, our most
prominent and most respected characters have been the men who, in
the forum or in the field, have devoted their lives to the
preservation and elevation of the Republic.

Public life has its rewards, but they rarely come to the honest man
in the form of dollars. Franklin, Jackson, Taylor, Jolinson, Grant,
Garfield, and Lincoln were all the sons of poor men, and they died
poor themselves; but who can say that their lives were not grandly
successful.

An interest in politics should be the duty of everyone, but the young
man who enters public life for the sake of the money he may
accumulate from office, starts out as a traitor to his country and
an ingrate to his fellows.

Public life should be an unselfish life. The service of the public
requires the strongest bodies, the clearest brains, and the purest
hearts, and the man who devotes his life to this great purpose must
find his reward in a duty well performed, rather than in the
financial emoluments of office.

Duty is the spirit of patriotism, and while this spirit should run
through every act in every calling, it must particularly distinguish
the man who has entered the public service as a soldier or civil
official. It is duty that leads the soldier to face hardships and
death without flinching, and the same high impulse should stimulate
the conduct where there is no physical danger.

Samuel Smiles, to whom we are indebted for much that is valuable in
this work, has the following to say in this connection about duty:

"Duty is a thing that is due, and must be paid by every man who would
avoid present discredit and eventual moral insolvency. It is an
obligation--a debt--which can only be discharged by voluntary effort
and resolute action in the affairs of life.

"Duty embraces man's whole existence. It begins in the home, where
there is the duty which children owe to their parents on the one-
hand, and the duty which parents owe to their children on the other.
There are, in like manner, the respective duties of husbands and
wives, of masters and servants; while outside the home there are the
duties which men and women owe to each other as friends and
neighbors, as employers and employed, as governors and governed.

"'Render, therefore,' says St. Paul, 'to all their dues: tribute to
whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor
to whom honor. Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he
that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.'

"Thus duty rounds the whole of life, from our entrance into it until
our exit from it--duty to superiors, duty to inferiors, and duty to
equals--duty to man, and duty to God. Wherever there is power to use
or to direct, there is duty. For we are but as stewards, appointed
to employ the means entrusted to us for our own and for others'
good.

"The abiding sense of duty is the very crown of character. It is the
upholding law of man in his highest attitudes. Without it, the
individual totters and falls before the first puff of adversity or
temptation; whereas, inspired by it, the weakest becomes strong and
full of courage. 'Duty,' says Mrs. Jameson, 'is the cement which
binds the whole moral edifice together; without which, all power,
goodness, intellect, truth, happiness, love itself, can have no
permanence; but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under
us, and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of a ruin, astonished
at our own desolation.'

"Duty is based upon a sense of justice--justice inspired by love,
which is the most perfect form of goodness. Duty is not a sentiment,
but a principle pervading the life: and it exhibits itself in
conduct and in acts, which are mainly determined by man's conscience
and free will."

Sir John Packington, one of England's most famous men, said in
speaking of his public life:

"I am indebted for whatever measure of success I have attained in my
public life, to a combination of moderate abilities with honesty of
intention, firmness of purpose, and steadiness of conduct. If I were
to offer advice to any young man anxious to make himself useful in
public life, I would sum up the results of my experience in three
short rules--rules so simple that any man may act upon them. My
first rule will be, leave it to others to judge of what duties you
are capable, and for what position you are fitted; but never refuse
to give your services in whatever capacity it my be the opinion of
others who are competent to judge that you may benefit your
neighbors and your country. My second rule is, when you agree to
undertake public duties, concentrate every energy and faculty in
your possession with the determination to discharge those duties to
the best of your ability. Lastly, I would counsel you that, in
deciding on the line which you will take in public affairs, you
should be guided in your decision by that which, after mature
deliberation, you believe to be right, and not by that which, in the
passing hour, may happen to be fashionable or popular."

Another author equally eminent writes in the same vein:

"The first great duty of every citizen is that of an abiding love for
his country. This is one of the native instincts of the noble heart.
History tells of many a devoted hero, reared under an oppressive
despotism, and groaning under unjust exactions, with little in the
character of his ruler to excite anything like generous enthusiasm,
who yet has shed his blood and given up his treasures in willing
sacrifice for his country's good. In a country such as this we live
in, it is the duty of every man to be a patriot, and to love and
serve it with an affection that is commensurate both with the
priceless cost of her liberties, and the greatness of her civil and
religious privileges. Indeed, however it may be in other lands, in
this one the youth may be said to draw in the love of country with
his native air; and it is justly taken for granted that all will
seek and maintain her interests, as that the child shall love its
mother, on whose bosom it has been cradled, and of whose life it is
a part.

"In no other country more than this is it important that all should
rightly understand and faithfully fulfill the duties of citizenship.
While ignorance is the natural stronghold of tyranny, knowledge is
the very throne of civil liberty. It is the interest of despotism to
foster a blind, unreasoning obedience to arbitrary law; but where,
as with us, almost the humblest has a voice in the administration of
public affairs, more depends upon the enlightened sentiments of the
masses than upon even the skill of temporary rulers, or the
character of existing laws."

A generation ago, when the integrity of the Union was threatened, the
rich and the poor, the young and the old, particularly in what were
known as the Free States, gave up all for the defense of the
Republic. It should be said, in justice to those who fought on the
opposite side, that no matter how much mistaken, they were in their
own hearts as honest, and by their heroic sacrifices proved
themselves to be as brave and unselfish, as the gallant men who won
in the appeal to arms.

If to-day the honor or the integrity of the Republic were assailed,
every man capable of bearing arms, irrespective of the past
differences of themselves or their fathers, would answer the
country's call in teeming millions, and prove the truth of the Latin
poet's adage, that it is right and noble to die for ones country.

A manly people should cultivate a manly spirit, and be prepared, if
need be, to defend their rights by force, but in the better day,
whose light is coming, we believe that nobler and more equitable
means of adjusting internal and international differences can be
found than by an appeal to arms.

Believing then that every young man who is worthy his American
citizenship would willingly risk his life in defense of his nation's
flag--which, after all, is simply the emblem of what his nation
stands for--he should be willing, if duty requires it, to serve his
country with equal fidelity in times of peace.

It is to be regretted that men of the stamp of those who gave their
lives or risked them and have poured out their wealth with unstinted
hand when the life of the Republic was in danger, should, in days of
peace, regard "politics"--which means an interest in public affairs--
with something like contempt.

It may be argued that politics has fallen into the hands of a rough
and unprincipled class, who make it a profession for the sake of the
gain it offers. To a certain extent this is true; but the men who
are responsible for this state of affairs are not the professional
politicians, but the good citizens, who are in the majority, and who
could control, if they would, but who unpatriotically neglect their
duty to the public, or ignore it in the presence of their individual
interests.

One of the best signs of the times is the fact that civil service has
come into our politics to stay. Through this service, the young
aspirant for office, irrespective of his politics, stands an
examination before impartial commissioners, and is rated according
to his qualifications. Once he enters the public service, he cannot
be discharged except for incapacity, and this must be proven before
a proper tribunal.

The rewards of public office, excepting in a few cases where the
positions depend upon the votes of the people, are never great. And,
unfortunately, under our system the aspirant for an elective office
usually spends as much as the office will pay him during his term,
if he depends upon its honest emoluments.

But to the young man who is not ambitious and who will live
contentedly a life of routine with a limited compensation, a public
life has many advantages. The salary continues, irrespective of the
weather or seasons, and there is connected with the place a certain
respect. No matter how humble the position of a man in the public
service, a certain dignity must always attach to him who is at once
a servant and a representative of the people.



CHAPTER XIV

THE NEED OF CONSTANT EFFORT.

It matters not what talent or genius a man may possess, no natural
gift can compensate for hard, persistent toil. The Romans had a
maxim as true to-day as it was when first uttered: "_Labor omnia
vincit_," Toil conquers all things. The earliest Christians lived in
communities and had all things in common. One of their precepts--
a precept up to which all lived--was: "_Laborare est orare_," To work
is to pray.

Someone has said that the difference between the genius and the
ordinary man is that the genius has a tireless capacity for patient,
hard work, while the other regards effort as a painful exaction, and
is ever looking forward to the time when he can rest.

It is encouraging to know that the world's hardest workers have lived
the longest lives. In this alone, labor is its own reward; but
enduring success never came to a poor man without an unflagging
patience and an unceasing toil.

Honorable industry, says one, travels the same road with duty; and
Providence has closely linked both with happiness. The gods, says
the poet, have placed labor and toil on the way leading to the
Elysian fields. Certain it is that no bread eaten by man is so sweet
as that earned by his own labor, whether bodily or mental. By labor
the earth has been subdued, and man redeemed from barbarism; nor has
a single step in civilization been made without it. Labor is not
only a necessity and a duty, but a blessing; only the idler feels it
to be a curse. The duty of work is written on the thews and muscles
of the limbs, the mechanism of the hand, the nerves and lobes of the
brain--the sum of whose healthy action is satisfaction and
enjoyment. In the school of labor is taught the best practical
wisdom; nor is a life of manual employment, as we shall hereafter
find, incompatible with high mental culture.

Hugh Miller, than whom none knew better the strength and the weakness
belonging to the lot of labor, stated the result of his experience
to be, that work, even the hardest, is full of pleasure and
materials for self-improvement. He held honest labor to be the best
of teachers, and that the school of toil is the nobles of schools--
save only the Christian one; that it is a school in which the ability
of being useful is imparted, the spirit of independence learned, and
the habit of persevering effort acquired. He was even of opinion that
the training of the mechanic--by exercise which it gives to his
observant faculties, from his daily dealing with things actual and
practical, and the close experience of life which he acquires--better
fits a man for picking his way along the journey of life, and is more
favorable to his growth as a man, emphatically speaking, than the
training afforded by any other condition.

Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, was one of the most
industrious of men; and the story of his life proves, what all
experience confirms, that it is not the man of the greatest natural
vigor and capacity who achieves the highest results, but he who
employs his powers with the greatest industry and the most carefully
disciplined skill--the skill that comes by labor, application, and
experience. Many men in his time knew far more than Watt, but none
labored so assiduously as he did to turn all that he did know to
useful practical purposes. He was, above all things, most persevering
in the pursuit of facts. He cultivated carefully that habit of active
attention on which all the higher working qualities of the mind
mainly depend. Indeed, Mr. Edgeworth entertained the opinion that the
difference of intellect in men depends more upon the early
cultivation of this _habit of attention_, than upon any great
disparity between the powers of one individual and another.

Arkwright, one of the world's greatest mechanics, and the inventor of
the spinning jenny, was famed for his unceasing industry.

Like most of our great mechanicians, he sprang from the ranks. He was
born in Preston in 1732. His parents were very poor, and he was the
youngest of thirteen children. He was never at school; the only
education he received he gave to himself; and to the last he was only
able to write with difficulty. When a boy, he was apprenticed to a
barber, and after learning the business, he set up for himself in
Bolton, where he occupied an underground cellar, over which he put up
the sign, "come to the subterraneous barber--he shaves for a penny."
The other barbers found their customers leaving them, and reduced
their prices to his standard, when Arkwright, determined to push his
trade, announced his determination to give "A clean shave for a half-
penny."

At the close of his life, John Jacob Astor was the wealthiest man in
the United States, and the immense fortune he left has been largely
increased through his wise investments and the habits of business
which he seems to have transmitted with his fortune to his
descendants.

His life is a most interesting one, particularly to the young man who
stands facing the world without friends or fortune to aid him. But
young Astor had one quality to start with, a quality which success
never lessened, and that was the capacity for unceasing industry.

He was born of peasant parents in the village of Waldorf, near the
great university town of Heidelberg in Germany. When sixteen years of
age he was crowded out of the hive by increasing brothers and
sisters, and without education or experience, he started out to make
his way in the world.

In the days of his great prosperity, he used to tell, with delight
mingled with sadness, of the day when he left father, and mother, and
home, which he was never to see together again. He used to say: "I
had only two dollars in my pocket, and all my clothes were tied up in
a handkerchief fastened at the end of a stick. When I had climbed the
high hill above the village, I sat down to rest my heart rather than
my feet, and to look back at the loved scenes of my childhood. Before
leaving home it was decided that I should make my way to London--then
the city of promise to many young Germans. While I sat there, I made
three resolutions, which during my life I have never broken. I had
never gambled, but I had known others to do so, and my first resolve
was not to follow their example. The second resolution was to be
strictly honest in all my dealings, and this I have tried to adhere
to. The third resolution was quite as important as the other two
together; it was that so long as God gave me health and strength I
should be unceasingly industrious."

John Jacob Astor, as a man, faithfully carried out the resolutions he
made as a boy, and the world knows the consequences.

When the impartial historian comes to write the life of Horace
Greeley, no matter how much he may object to his policies and
politics, he will give him credit for honesty, courage, perseverance,
and an industry that knew no fatigue.

While barely in his teens, young Greeley, whose father was making a
desperate effort to support a large family on a poor farm in New
Hampshire, started in to work for himself. His early education
consisted of a few winter terms in a common school. Before he was
seventeen he had learned the printer's trade, and then resolved not
only to support himself, but to help his parents. Realizing his want
of education, he devoted every minute he could spare from work or
sleep to study.

Speaking of these early days, Mr. Greeley said:

"There was many a heavy load placed on my shoulders, but I staggered
on and bore it as best I could. Many an uncongenial task was forced
upon me, but I can honestly say I never shirked it. If I have
succeeded in my chosen profession, it has not been due to my early
advantages, for I had none, but to my strong belief that patient
industry would triumph in the end."

When Horace Greeley was twenty years of age he was working in a
printing office in Erie, Pennsylvania, and determined to better his
fortunes by coming to New York. He had saved up one hundred and
twenty dollars, and of this he sent one hundred to his father, and
with the rest he turned his face to the great city, about six hundred
miles away. He traveled the entire distance on foot, and reached New
York with fifteen dollars, the whole trip having cost him but five.

Poorly clad, tall, gawky, and green-looking, he entered the city
where he had neither friend nor acquaintance. For weeks he tramped
the streets, looking vainly for work, his cash gradually growing
less, but his spirits never failing. At length he found employment at
his trade, where his integrity and unceasing industry soon made him
conspicuous. Step by step, he worked his way up, never forgetting the
poor family in Vermont, till at length he was able to establish the
_New York Tribune_, which survives as a monument of his perseverance
and industry. Although his early training was so defective, he gave
every spare minute to study, and with such success that he became not
only a great leader, but one of the most perfect masters of the
English language. His name will long live after many writers and
statesmen of greater pretensions are forgotten.

As an example of what perseverance, fortitude and energy will do,
Horace Greeley's story of his own life should be studied by every
ambitious young man.

Horace Greelev never laid claim to physical courage, but he had that
higher courage and industry without which enduring success is
impossible. In speaking of this admirable quality, a famous author
says:

"The greater part of the courage that is needed in the world is not
of an heroic kind. Courage may be displayed in everyday life as well
as on historic fields of action. There needs, for example, the common
courage to be honest--the courage to resist temptation--the courage
to speak the truth--the courage to be what we really are, and not to
pretend to be what we are not--the courage to live honestly within
our own means, and not dishonestly upon the means of others.

"A great deal of the unhappiness, and much of the vice, of the world
is owing to weakness and indecision of purpose--in other words, to
lack of courage and want of industry. Men may know what is right, and
yet fail to exercise the courage to do it; they may understand the
duty they have to do, but will not summon up the requisite resolution
to perform it. The weak and undisciplined man is at the mercy of
every temptation; he cannot say no,' but falls before it. And if his
companionship be bad, he will be all the easier led away by bad
example into wrong-doing.

"Nothing can be more certain than that the character can only be
sustained and strengthened by its own energetic action. The will,
which is the central force of character, must be trained to habits of
decision--otherwise it will neither be able to resist evil nor to
follow good. Decision gives the power of standing firmly, when to
yield, however slightly, might be only the first step in a downhill
course to ruin.

"Calling upon others for help in forming a decision is worse than
useless. A man must so train his habits as to rely upon his own
powers and depend upon his own courage in moments of emergency.
Plutarch tells of a king of Macedon who, in the midst of an action,
withdrew into the adjoining town under pretence of sacrificing to
Hercules; whilst his opponent Emilius, at the same time that he
implored the Divine aid, sought for victory sword in hand, and won
the battle. And so it ever is in the actions of daily life.

"Many are the valiant purposes formed, that end merely in words;
deeds intended, that are never done; designs projected, that are
never begun; and all for want of a little courageous decision. Better
far the silent tongue but the eloquent deed. For in life, and in
business, dispatch is better than discourse; and the shortest of all
is _Doing_. 'In matters of great concern, and which must be done,'
says Tillotson, 'there is no surer argument of a weak mind than
irresolution--to be undetermined when the case is so plain and the
necessity so urgent. To be always intending to live a new life, but
never to find time to set about it--this is as if a man should put
off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to another, until
he is starved and destroyed.'"



CHAPTER XV

SOME OF LABOR'S COMPENSATIONS.

Although it is better for every young man, if possible, to adhere to
one thing, yet, as we shall see when we come to treat of the life of
that remarkable man Peter Cooper, change does not necessarily mean
vacillation. For the mere sake of consistency a man would be foolish
who neglected a good chance to succeed in another field. Edison
started life as a newsboy, but it would be folly to say that he
should have stuck to that very respectable, but not usually lucrative
occupation. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was an artist till
middle life. Alexander T. Stewart and James Gordon Bennett, the one a
most successful journalist, and the other the greatest merchant of
his day, began life as school-teachers. And so we might continue the
list; but even these examples do not warrant the belief that a change
of calling is necessary to success, but rather that the change may
increase the chances. As a rule, however, the changes have been
forced by unforeseen circumstances, of which these strong men were
quick to see the advantages.

In beginning the life journey, as in starting out on a day's journey,
it is of great importance to have a destination in view. In every
effort there should be kept in mind the end to be attained--an ideal
to achieve which every faculty must be enlisted.

Men whose lives have been eminently successful tell us that their
greatest reward was not found in the accomplishment of their life
purpose, but in the slow, but certain advance made from day to day.

The joy of travel does not lie in reaching the destination, but in
the companions met with on the journey, the changing scenery through
which the traveler passes, and even the inconveniences that break up
the monotony of the ordinary routine life. It is so with our life-
work. The cradle and the grave mark the beginning and the end of the
journey, but the joy of living lies in the varied incident and effort
to be met with between the two.

It is well for us that this is so; well for us that we do not have to
wait for the reward till the end comes.

We may, as in the cases named, change our means of travel, but so
long as success is our purpose, it matters not so much what variation
we may make in the route, when we seek to attain it.

The old-fashioned country school debating societies had one subject
that never lost its popularity, and on which the rural orators
exhausted their eloquence and ingenuity: "Resolved, that there is
more happiness in participation than in anticipation." We doubt if
any debating society ever settled the question, in a way that would
be acceptable to all. As a rule the younger people decided,
irrespective of the argument, that participation was the most
desirable; but the older people wisely shook their heads and took the
other side of the case.

Often when the end has been gained, it has been discovered that the
reward was not worth the effort, and that the full compensation was
gained in the peace, the regular habits, the health, and the sense of
duty well-performed which kept up the hope and the strength during
the long years of toil.

There is a temperance in eating, as well as in drinking; even honest
labor when carried to an excess that impairs the powers of mind and
body, may be classed with intemperance; indeed, it should be a part
of every young man's course of self-study to learn his own physical
and mental limitations.

There is everything in knowing how to work, and in learning when to
rest. One of the rewards of judicious labor, and by no means the
least of them is--health. Health is not only essential to the
happiness of ourselves and of those with whom we come into contact,
but no permanent success can be won without it.

Benjamin Franklin, himself a model of industry and of good health,
even in old age, says:

"I have always worked hard, but I have regarded as sinful the haste
and toil that sap the health. There is reason why disease should
seize on the idler, but the industrious man, whose toil is well-
regulated, should have no occasion for a physician, unless in case of
accident. Labor, like virtue, is its own reward."

In looking over the callings of people who have retained all their
powers to an age so long beyond the allotted time as to seem
phenomenal, there is not one case that we can recall where the life
has not been distinguished for temperance, orderliness, and
persistent but temperate industry.

The health that waits upon labor is among its best results, as it
must continue to be among its greatest blessings. More particularly
is health to be derived from out-door employment, as life on the farm
and an active participation in its many and varied labors. Physical
exercise is essential to health, under any and all circumstances,
whether it be in the nature of labor or recreation. It must be borne
in mind, however, that in labor are to be found the surest
correctives of many abuses of health, as bringing into play
influences of the more satisfactory sort upon the mind as considered
in contrast to idleness. Idleness is the parent of many vices, some
one says, and it is true. The freedom from the annoying reflection
that one is making no use of physical or mental abilities to secure
protection from want and suffering, sweetens labor and gives it a
value which all true men must appreciate and carefully consider. How
often have the wearied journalist and accountant, tired out in body
and mind at the desk of unremitting application, found, in the life
and labor of the farm and shop, relief and a return to the blessings
of health. There are other occupations and employments just as
necessary, but many of them are pursued under considerations not
leading to, but rather away from, health. Any one, however, may take
from business enough time for rest and healthful exercise. It is in
purifying and driving away from man the tendencies to evil that, in
idleness, prey too continually and strongly upon him, and which he
cannot long successfully resist, that labor possesses its greatest
benefit. The atmosphere of diligent labor usefully directed is always
of a healthy nature. Into it cannot enter the many foes that assail
the idle, who have not the shield of protection that labor gives to
all who enter its hallowed gateway. Labor dignifies and ennobles when
in moderation; it permits the enjoyment of comforts and luxuries, and
gives to home its sacred charm; it dashes away the bitter cup of
poverty, and gives instead the nourishing and acceptable food of
contentment; it dispels dread conceits of coming evil, and dries the
tears of the afflicted. Labor is man's heaven-born heritage in
exchange for the curse of disobedience, and yet men are ungrateful
and disposed to quarrel with their truest friends. What truer and
better friend can anyone possess than useful labor, the key that
unlocks the casket of wisdom and exposes to our startled gaze the
treasures that lie within? For every honest and determined end of
labor there is sure reward. "There is no reward without toil" is a
proverb as old as history and as true to-day as when it first found
lodgment in the minds and hearts of men. The faithful servant of
labor hears in every blow he strikes the sure sound of the power
committed to him and which will bring him the fine gold of merited
approval.

The health in labor, considered in all of the relations attaching to
it, further brings a comfort and satisfaction which cannot be too
highly estimated. The surest remedy that can be applied, when men are
suffering from defeat in business and the attendant consequences, is
renewed and persistent labor. Who can measure the value of labor? It
is a possession that cannot be stolen, and only ceases to serve when
men, from exhausted energies or enfeebled age, can no longer command
it. From the beginning to the end of life it waits upon us, and
whoever will use it will not be deprived of its wonderful and
magnificent bounties.

As labor is man's greatest blessing, so is indolence his greatest
curse. As labor is health, so indolence is disease. Man in a
condition of idleness is about as useless a thing as is to be found
in nature. He prefers to live by some one else's labor. The world
owes him a living and he manages somehow to get it. But he is an
industrious collector, although he would walk a mile to get around
work. He attaches himself, like the mistletoe, to whoever will
support him. He is a true parasite. His tongue has but little end to
it. It wags from morning to night; invents seemingly plausible
theories of work, but never attempts them. He is full of advice to
all who will listen. Can such a man be healthy? He _cannot_ enjoy
good health because he is too lazy to do so. No way has as yet been
found to make him healthy and put him to work. He cannot be got rid
of. People who labor and who are compelled to help this poor creature
do not make much effort to turn him in the direction of labor. They
are too busy to take any account of him; so he is left to his misery
and poverty. He has not a grain of independence in his whole
composition. He pines and dies at last, and the world is better for
his being out of it. But like mushrooms, these people spring up. Many
infest our large cities, and these are dignified by the city
directories as "floating population." The term is very nearly
correct; they float for a time upon the current, until borne away to
another port where there is better and safer anchorage. Where free
lunches are abundant there the idler may be found. For this privilege
he is sometimes obliged to do a little work. But how it grieves him!
His whole aim is to get drink, a little food, and less clothing. He
of course, uses tobacco; but this he must obtain in some way that
does not call for money, for of that he has none and never can have,
unless he go to work--and this is highly improbable. He has got to
that point that he cannot work. He is too unhealthy and his influence
is corrupting. Nobody will give him employment, so he must keep on to
the end of the chapter. An even more disgusting specimen is the idler
who develops into a sneakthief and the more genteel sort of gentry--
gamblers and workers of chances. These are, perhaps, to be included
in the list of those who live by their wits and not by any kind of
labor.

If there is any worse disease than idleness, it has not yet been
discovered. Good and true men, who value the rewards of labor, look
upon idleness with a dread that equals that of yellow fever; for it
is more general in its effects and more to be detested. While there
may sometimes be luck in leisure, indolence never pays.

But the effects of persistent, systematic effort are not confined to
ourselves; the example is contagious and acts as a guide and a
stimulus to others in the life battle. The good done and the help
given to friends in this way are incalculable, and are not the least
of the rewards labor bestows before the end is attained.

Dr. Miller in his able work "The Building of Character," says very
aptly in this connection:

"We all need human friendship. We need it especially in our times of
darkness. He does not well, he lives not wisely, who in the days of
prosperity neglects to gather about his life a few loving friends,
who will be a strength to him in the days of stress and need."

There is a time to show sympathy, when it is golden; when this time
has passed, and we have only slept meanwhile, we may as well sleep
on. You did not go near your friend when he was fighting his battle
alone. You might have helped him then. What use is there in your
coming to him now, when he has conquered without your aid? You paid
no attention to your neighbor when he was bending under life's loads,
and struggling with difficulties, obstacles, and adversities. You let
him alone then. You never told him that you sympathized with him. You
never said a brave, strong word of cheer to him in those days. You
never even scattered a handful of flowers on his hard path. Now that
he is dead and lying in his coffin, what is the use in your standing
beside his still form, and telling the people how nobly he battled,
how heroically he lived; and speaking words of commendation? No, no;
having let him go on, unhelped, uncheered, unencouraged, through the
days when he needed so sorely your warm sympathy, and craved so
hungrily your cheer, you may as well sleep on and take your rest,
letting him alone unto the end. Nothing can be done now. Too laggard
are the feet that come with comfort when the time for comfort is
past.

"Ah! woe for the word that is never said
  Till the ear is deaf to hear;
And woe for the lack to the fainting head
  Of the ringing shout of cheer;
Ah! woe for the laggard feet that tread
  In the mournful wake of the bier.
A pitiful thing the gift to-day
  That is dross and nothing worth,
Though if it had come but yesterday,
  It had brimmed with sweet the earth;
A fading rose in a death-cold hand,
  That perished in want and dearth."

Shall we not take our lesson from the legend of the robin that
plucked a thorn from the Savior's brow, and thus sought to lessen his
pain, rather than from the story of the disciples, who slept and
failed to give the help which the Lord sought from their love? Thus
can we strengthen those whose burdens are heavy, and whose struggles
and sorrows are sore.

All noble effort, as Sarah K. Bolton beautifully expresses it, is its
own reward:

"I like the man who faces what he must
With step triumphant and a heart of cheer;
Who fights the daily battle without fear;
Sees his hopes fail, yet keeps unfaltering trust
That God is God; that, somehow, true and just,
His plans work out for mortals; not a tear
Is shed when fortune, which the world holds dear,
Falls from his grasp. Better, with love, a crust,
Than living in dishonor; envies not
Nor loses faith in man; but does his best,
Nor ever murmurs at his humbler lot;
But with a smile and words of hope, gives zest
To every toiler. He alone is great
Who, by a life heroic, conquers fate."

"After I have completed an invention," says Thomas A. Edison, "I seem
to lose interest in it. One might think that the money value of an
invention constituted its reward to the man who loves his work. But,
speaking for myself, I can honestly say this is not so. Life was
never so full of joy to me, as when a poor boy I began to think out
improvements in telegraphy, and to experiment with the cheapest and
crudest appliances. But, now that I have all the appliances I need,
and am my own master, I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so
my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success."

Mr. Gladstone, the great English statesman, and though nearing four
score and ten, still one of the most industrious of men, says:

"I have found my greatest happiness in labor. I early formed the
habit of industry, and it has been its own reward. The young are apt
to think that rest means a cessation from all effort, but I have
found the most perfect rest in changing effort. If brain-weary over
books and study, go out into the blessed sunlight and the pure air,
and give heartfelt exercise to the body. The brain will soon become
calm and rested. The efforts of nature are ceaseless. Even in our
sleep, the heart throbs on. If these great forces ceased for an
instant death would follow. I try to live close to nature, and to
imitate her in my labors. The compensation is sound sleep, a
wholesome digestion, and powers that are kept at their best; and this
I take it is the chief reward of industry."

"If I ever get time from work," said Horace Greeley one day, "I'll go
a-fishing, for I was fond of it when a boy." But he never went
a-fishing, never indulged in a healthful change of exercise, and the
result was a mind thrown out of balance, and death in the prime of
life. We all need a restful change at times.



CHAPTER XVI

PATIENCE AND PERSEVERANCE.

If great success were possible only to men of great talents, then
there would be but little success in the world.

It has been said that talent is quite as much the ability to stick to
a thing, as the aptitude to do it better than another. "I will fight
it out on this line, if it takes all summer." This statement of
General Grant does not indicate the man of genius, but it does show
the man of indomitable perseverance, a perseverance to which he owed
all his success, for it is well known that he was a very modest, and
by no means a brilliant man. The key to his character was
pertinacity: the secret of his success was perseverance.

"I will to-day thrash the Mexicans, or die a-trying!" was what Sam
Houston said to an aide, the morning of the battle of San Jacinto.
And he won.

The soldier who begins the battle in doubt is half beaten in advance.

The man who loses heart after one failure is a fool to make a
beginning.

There is a great deal in good preparation, but there is a great deal
more in heroic perseverance. The man who declines to make a beginning
till everything he thinks he may need is ready for his hand, is very
apt to make a failure. The greatest things have been achieved by the
simplest means. It is the ceaseless chopping that wears away the
stone. The plodder may be laughed at, and the brilliant man who
accomplishes great things at a leap admired; but we all remember the
fable of the tortoise and the hare; the latter, confident of her
powers, stopped to rest; the former, aware of his limitations,
persevered and toiled laboriously on--and he won the race.

We do not wish to be understood as underestimating genius. We believe
in it; but one of its strongest characteristics is perseverance, and
the next is its capacity to accomplish great results with the
simplest means.

"Easy come, easy go." Those things that are acquired without much
effort, are usually appreciated according to the effort expended.
Determination has a strong _will_; stubbornness has a strong _won't_.
The one is characterized by perseverance, and it builds up; the
other, having no purpose but blind self, ends in destruction.

It is a fact at once remarkable and encouraging that no man of great
genius who has left his mark on his times, ever believed that his
success was due to gifts that lifted him above his fellows. The means
by which he rose were within the reach of all, and perseverance was a
prime requisite.

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means,
and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life of everyday,
with its cares, necessities, and duties, affords ample opportunity
for acquiring experience of the best kind; and its most beaten paths
provide the true worker with abundant scope for effort and room for
self-improvement. The road of human welfare lies along the old
highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most
persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most
successful.

Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not
so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find
that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds
and waves are on the side of the best navigators. In the pursuit of
even the highest branches of human inquiry, the commoner qualities
are found the most useful--such as common sense, attention,
application, and perseverance. Genius may not be necessary, though
even genius of the highest sort does not disdain the use of these
ordinary qualities. The very greatest men have been among the least
believers in the power of genius, and as worldly wise and persevering
as successful men of the commoner sort. Some have even defined genius
to be only common sense intensified. A distinguished teacher and
president of a college spoke of it as the power of making efforts.
John Foster held it to be the power of lighting one's own fire.
Buffon said of genius, "It is patience."

Newton's was unquestionably a mind of the very highest order, and
yet, when asked by what means he had worked out his extraordinary
discoveries, he modestly answered, "By always thinking unto them." At
another time he thus expressed his method of study: "I keep the
subject continually before me, and wait till the first dawnings open
slowly by little and little into a full and clear light." It was in
Newton's case as in every other, only by diligent application and
perseverance that his great reputation was achieved. Even his
recreation consisted in change of study, laying down one subject to
take up another. To Dr. Bentley he said: "If I have done the public
any service, it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought."
So Kepler, another great philosopher, speaking of his studies and his
progress, said: "As in Virgil, 'Fama mobilitate viget, vires acquirit
eundo,' so it was with me, that the diligent thought on these things
was the occasion of still further thinking; until at last I brooded
with the whole energy of my mind upon the subject."

The extraordinary results effected by dint of sheer industry and
perseverance, have led many distinguished men to doubt whether the
gift of genius be so exceptional an endowment as it is usually
supposed to be. Thus Voltaire held that it is only a very slight line
of separation that divides the man of genius from the man of ordinary
mould. Beccaria was even of opinion that all men might be poets and
orators, and Reynolds that they might be painters and sculptors. If
this were really so, that stolid Englishman might not have been so
very far wrong after all, who, on Canova's death, inquired of his
brother whether it was "his intention to carry on the business!"
Locke, Helvetuis, and Diderot believed that all men have an equal
aptitude for genius, and that what some are able to effect, under the
laws which regulate the operations of the intellect, must also be
within the reach of others who, under like circumstances, apply
themselves to like pursuits. But while admitting to the fullest
extent the wonderful achievements of labor, and recognizing the fact
that men of the most distinguished genius have invariably been found
the most indefatigable workers, it must nevertheless be sufficiently
obvious that, without the original endowment of heart and brain, no
amount of labor, however well applied, could have produced a
Shakespeare, a Newton, a Beethoven, or a Michael Angelo.

Dalton, the chemist, repudiated the notion of his being a "genius"
attributing everything which he had accomplished to simple industry
and perseverance. John Hunter said of himself, "My mind is like a
beehive; but full as it is of buzz and apparent confusion, it is yet
full of order and regularity, and food collected with incessant
industry from the choicest stores of nature." We have, indeed, but to
glance at the biographies of great men to find that the most
distinguished inventors, artists, thinkers, and workers of all kinds,
owe their success, in a great measure, to their indefatigable
industry and application. They were men who turned all things to
good--even time itself. Disraeli, the elder, held that the secret of
success consisted in being master of your subject, such mastery being
attainable only through continuous application and study. Hence it
happens that the men who have most moved the world have not been so
much men of genius, strictly so called, as men of intent mediocre
abilities and untiring perseverance; not so often the gifted, of
naturally bright and shining qualities, as those who have applied
themselves diligently to their work, in whatsoever line that might
lie. "Alas!" said a widow, speaking of her brilliant but careless
son, "he has not the gift of continuance." Wanting in perseverance,
such volatile natures are outstripped in the race of life by the
diligent and even the dull.

Hence, a great point to be aimed at is to get the working quality
well trained. When that is done, the race will be found comparatively
easy. We must repeat and again repeat: facility will come with labor.
Not even the simplest art can be accomplished without it; and what
difficulties it is found capable of achieving! It was by early
discipline and repetition that the late Sir Robert Peel cultivated
those remarkable, though still mediocre, powers, which rendered him
so illustrious an ornament of the British senate. When a boy at
Drayton Manor, his father was accustomed to set him up at table to
practice speaking extempore; and he early accustomed him to repeat as
much of the Sunday's sermon as he could remember. Little progress was
made at first, but by steady perseverance that habit of attention
became powerful, and the sermon was at length repeated almost
verbatim. When afterward replying in succession to the arguments of
his parliamentary opponents--an art in which he was perhaps
unrivaled--it was little surmised that the extraordinary power of
accurate remembrance which he displayed on such occasions had been
originally trained under the discipline of his father in the parish
church of Drayton.

It is indeed marvelous what continuous application will effect in the
commonest of things. It may seem a simple affair to play upon a
violin; yet what a long and laborious practice it requires! Giardini
said to a youth who asked him how long it would take to learn it,
"Twelve hours a day for twenty years together."

Progress, however, of the best kind is comparatively slow. Great
results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to
advance in life as we walk, step by step. De Maistre says that "To
know _how to wait_ is the great secret of success." We must sow
before we can reap, and often have to wait long, content meanwhile to
look patiently forward in hope: the fruit best worth waiting for
often ripening the slowest. But "time and patience," says the Eastern
proverb, "change the mulberry leaf to satin."

To wait patently, however, men must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is
an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the
character. As a bishop has said, "Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity;" so are cheerfulness and diligence nine-tenths of
practical wisdom. They are the life and soul of success, as well as
of happiness; perhaps the very highest pleasure in life consisting in
clear, brisk, conscious working; energy, confidence, and every other
good quality mainly depending upon it. Sydney Smith, when laboring as
a parish priest at Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire--though he did not
feel himself to be in his proper element--went cheerfully to work in
the firm determination to do his best. "I am resolved," he said, "to
like it, and reconcile myself to it, which is more manly than to
feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post of being
thrown away, and being desolate, and such like trash." So Dr. Hook,
when leaving Leeds for a new sphere of labor, said, "Wherever I many
be, I shall, by God's blessing, do with my might what my hand findeth
to do; and if I do not fined work, I shall make it."

Laborers for the public good especially have to work long and
patiently, often uncheered by the prospect of immediate recompense or
result. The seeds they sow sometimes lie hidden under the winter's
snow, and before the spring comes the husbandman may have gone to his
rest. It is not every public worker who, like Rowland Hill, sees his
great idea bring forth fruit in his lifetime. Adam Smith sowed the
seeds of a great social amelioration in that dingy old University of
Glasgow, where he so long labored, and laid the foundations of his
"Wealth of Nations;" but seventy years passed before his work bore
substantial fruits, nor indeed are they all gathered in yet.

Nothing can compensate for the loss of hope in a man: it entirely
changes the character. "How can I work--how can I be happy," said a
great but miserable thinker, "when I have lost all hope?" One of the
most cheerful and courageous, because one of the most hopeful of
workers, was Carey, the missionary. When in India, it was no uncommon
thing for him to weary out three pundits, who officiated as his
clerks in one day, he himself taking rest only in change of
employment. Carey, the son of a shoemaker, was supported in his
labors by Ward, the son of a carpenter, and Marsham, the son of a
weaver. By their labors a magnificent college was erected at
Serampore; sixteen flourishing stations were established; the Bible
was translated into sixteen languages, and the seeds were sown of a
beneficent moral revolution in British India. Carey was never ashamed
of the humbleness of his origin. On one occasion, when at the
Governor-General's table, he overheard an officer opposite him asking
another, loud enough to be heard, whether Carey had not once been a
shoemaker: "No, sir," exclaimed Carey immediately; "only a cobbler."
An eminently characteristic anecdote has been told of his
perseverance as a boy. When climbing a tree one day, his foot slipped
and he fell to the ground, breaking his leg by the fall. He was
confined to his bed for weeks, but when he recovered and was able to
walk without support, the very first thing he did was to go and climb
that tree. Carey had need of this sort of dauntless courage for the
great missionary work of his life, and nobly and resolutely he did
it.

It was a maxim of Dr. Young, the philosopher, that "Any man can do
what any other man has done;" and it is unquestionable that he
himself never recoiled from any trials to which he determined to
subject himself. It is related of him, that the first time he mounted
a horse he was in company with the grandson of Mr. Barclay, of Ury,
the well-known sportsman. When the horseman who preceded them leaped
a high fence, Young wished to imitate him, but fell off his horse in
the attempt. Without saying a word, he remounted, made a second
effort, and was again unsuccessful, but this time he was not thrown
farther than on to the horse's neck, to which he clung. At the third
trial he succeeded, and cleared the fence.

The story of Timour, the Tartar, learning a lesson of perseverance
under adversity from the spider is well know. Not less interesting is
the anecdote of Audubon, the American ornithologist, as related by
himself: "An accident," he says, "which happened to two hundred of my
original drawings, nearly put a stop to my researches in ornithology.
I shall relate it, merely to show how far enthusiasm--for by no other
name can I call my perseverance--may enable the preserver of nature
to surmount the most disheartening difficulties. I left the village
of Henderson, in Kentucky, situated on the banks of the Ohio, where I
resided for several years, to proceed to Philadelphia on business. I
looked to my drawings before my departure, placed them carefully in a
wooden box, and gave them in charge of a relative, with injunctions
to see that no injury should happen to them. My absence was of
several months; and when I returned, after having enjoyed the
pleasures of home for a few days, I inquired after my box, and what I
was pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced and opened;
but, reader, feel for me--a pair of Norway rats had taken possession
of the whole, and reared a young family among the gnawed bits of
paper, which, but a month previous, represented nearly a thousand
inhabitants of air! The burning heat which instantly rushed through
my brain was too great to be endured without affecting my whole
nervous system. I slept for several nights, and the days passed like
days of oblivion--until the animal powers being recalled into action
through the strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my
notebook and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gayly as if
nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make better
drawings than before; and ere a period not exceeding three years had
elapsed, my portfolio was again filled."

The accidental destruction of Sir Isaac Newton's papers, by his
little dog "Diamond" upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by
which the elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment
destroyed, is a well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it is
said that the loss caused the philosopher such profound grief that it
seriously injured his health, and impaired his understanding. An
accident of a somewhat similar kind happened to the manuscript of Mr.
Carlyle's first volume of his "French Revolution." He had lent the
manuscript to a literary neighbor to peruse. By some mischance, it
had been left lying on the parlor floor, and become forgotten. Weeks
ran on, and the historian sent for his work, the printers being loud
for "copy." Inquiries were made, and it was found that the maid-of-
all-work, finding what she conceived to be a bundle of waste paper
on the floor, had used it to light the kitchen and parlor fires with!
Such was the answer returned to Mr. Carlyle; and his feelings can be
imagined. There was, however, no help for him but to set resolutely
to work to rewrite the book; and he turned to it and did it. He had
no draft and was compelled to rake up from his memory, facts, ideas,
and expressions which had been long since dismissed. The composition
of the book in the first instance had been a work of pleasure; the
rewriting of it a second time was one of pain and anguish almost
beyond belief. That he persevered and finished the volume under such
circumstances, affords an instance of determination of purpose which
has seldom been surpassed.

There is no walk in life, in which success has been won, that has not
its brilliant examples of the achievements of perseverance. The
literary life, in which all who read are interested, has many
illustrations of this. No great career affords stronger proof of this
than that of the great Sir Walter Scott, who, delighting his own
generation, must be honored by all the generations that follow.

His admirable working qualities were trained in a lawyer's office,
where he pursued for many years a sort of drudgery scarcely above
that of a copying clerk. His daily dull routine made his evenings,
which were his own, all the ore sweet; and he generally devoted them
to reading and study. He himself attributed to his prosaic office
discipline that habit of steady, sober diligence, in which mere
literary men are so often found wanting. As a copying clerk he was
allowed 3_d._ for every page containing a certain number of words; and
he sometimes, by extra work, was able to copy as many as 120 pages in
twenty-four hours, thus earning some 30_s._; out of which he would
occasionally purchase an odd volume, otherwise beyond his means.

During his after-life Scott was wont to pride himself upon being a
man of business, and he averred, in contradiction to what he called
the cant of sonneteers, that there was no necessary connection
between genius and an aversion or contempt for the common duties of
life. On the contrary, he was of opinion that to spend some fair
portion of every day in any matter-of-fact occupation was good for
the higher faculties themselves in the upshot. While afterward acting
as clerk to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he performed his
literary work chiefly before breakfast, attending the court during
the day, where he authenticated registered deeds and writings of
various kinds. "On the whole," says Lockhart, "it forms one of the
most remarkable features in his history, that throughout the most
active period of his literary career, he must have devoted a large
proportion of his hours, during half at least of every year, to the
conscientious discharge of professional duties." It was a principle
of action which he laid down for himself, that he must earn his
living by business, and not by literature. On one occasion he said,
"I determined that literature should be my staff, not my crutch, and
that the profits of my literary labor, however convenient otherwise,
should not, if I could help it, become necessary to my ordinary
expenses."

His punctuality was one of the most carefully cultivated of his
habits, otherwise it had not been possible for him to get through so
enormous an amount of literary labor. He mad it a rule to answer
every letter received by him on the same day, except where inquiry
and deliberation were requisite. Nothing else could have enabled him
to keep abreast with the flood of communications that poured in upon
him and sometimes put his good-nature to the severest test. It was
his practice to rise by five o'clock and light his own fire. He
shaved and dressed with deliberation, and was seated at his desk by
six o'clock, with his papers arranged before him in the most accurate
order, his works of reference marshaled round him on the floor, while
at least one favorite dog lay watching his eye, outside the line of
books. Thus by the time the family assembled for breakfast, between
nine and ten, he had done enough--to use his own words--to break the
neck of a day's work. But with all his diligent and indefatigable
industry, and his immense knowledge, the result of may years' patient
labor, Scott always spoke with the greatest diffidence of his own
powers. On one occasion he said, "Throughout every part of my career
I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance."

But perseverance and effort do not always mean successful work.
Freeman Hunt distinguishes admirably between activity and energy in
the following statement, which it would be well to remember:

"There are some men whose failure to succeed in life is a problem to
others, as well as to themselves. They are industrious, prudent, and
economical; yet, after a long life of striving, old age finds them
still poor. They complain of ill-luck; they say fate is against them.
But the real truth is that their projects miscarry because they
mistake mere activity for energy. Confounding two things essentially
different, they suppose that if they are always busy, they must of a
necessity be advancing their fortune; forgetting that labor
misdirected is but a waste of activity."

"The person who would succeed in life is like a marksman firing at a
target--if his shot misses the mark, it is but a waste of powder; to
be of any service at all, it must tell in the bull's eye or near it.
So, in the great game of life, what a man does must be made to count,
or it had almost as well be left undone.

"The idle warrior, cut from a block of wood, who fights the air on
the top of a weather-cock, instead of being made to turn some machine
commensurate with his strength, is not more worthless than the merely
active man who, though busy from sunrise to sunset, dissipates his
labor on trifles, when he ought skillfully to concentrate it on some
great end.

"Every person knows some one in his circle of acquaintance who,
though always active, has this want of energy. The distemper, if we
may call it such, exhibits itself in various ways. In some cases, the
man has merely an executive faculty when he should have a directing
one; in other words, he makes a capital clerk for himself, when he
ought to do the thinking work for the establishment. In other cases,
what is done is either not done at the right time, or not in the
right way. Sometimes there is no distinction made between objects of
different magnitudes, and as much labor is bestowed on a trivial
affair as on a matter of great moment.

"Energy, correctly understood, is activity proportioned to the end.
The first Napoleon would often, when in a campaign, remain for days
without undressing himself, now galloping from point to point, now
dictating dispatches, now studying maps and directing operations. But
his periods of repose, when the crisis was over, were generally as
protracted as his previous exertions had been. He has been known to
sleep for eighteen hours without waking. Second-rate men, slaves of
tape and routine, while they would fall short of the superhuman
exertions of the great emperor, would have considered themselves lost
beyond hope if they imitated what they call his indolence. They are
capital illustrations of activity, keeping up their monotonous jog-
trot for ever; while Napoleon, with his gigantic industry,
alternating with such apparent idleness, is an example of energy.

"We do not mean to imply that chronic indolence, if relieved
occasionally by spasmodic fits of industry, is to be recommended. Men
who have this character run into the opposite extreme of that which
we have been stigmatizing, and fail as invariably of securing success
in life. To call their occasional periods of application energy,
would be a sad misnomer. Such persons, indeed, are but civilized
savages, so to speak; vagabonds at heart in their secret hatred of
work, and only resorting to labor occasionally, like the wild Indian
who, after lying for weeks about his hut, is roused by sheer hunger
to start on a hunting excursion. Real energy is persevering, steady,
disciplined. It never either loses sight of the object to be
accomplished, or intermits its exertions while there is a possibility
of success. Napoleon on the plains of Champagne, sometimes fighting
two battles in one day, first defeating the Russians and then turning
on the Austrians, is an illustration of this energy. The Duke of
Brunswick, idling away precious time when he invaded France at the
outbreak of the first Revolution, is an example of the contrary.
Activity beats about a cover like an untrained dog, never lighting on
the covey. Energy goes straight to the bird at once and captures it."



CHAPTER XVII

SUCCESS BUT SELDOM ACCIDENTAL.

A man may leap into sudden fortune at a bound, and without effort or
foresight, but it is doubtful if any great permanent success ever was
the outcome of blind chance.

The old adage, "Trust to luck," like many other adages that time has
kept in unmerited circulation, is a bad one. The man who trusts to
luck for his clothing is apt to wear rags, and he who depends on it
for food is sure to go hungry.

We hear a great deal about the wonderful things that have been done
by chance, but we seldom take the time to examine them. We read that
sir Isaac Newton, sitting in his garden one day, "Chanced to see an
apple fall to the ground," and this set him to thinking, and he
discovered the laws of gravitation. New, ever since the first apple
fell from the first tree in Eden, men have been watching that very
commonplace occurrence. We might extend the field so as to embrace
oranges, coconuts and all the fruits and nuts which, in every land
and through all the long centuries of man's existence, have been
falling to the ground--not by chance, however, yet they set no men to
thinking, simply because not one of the millions of men who "chanced"
to see the incident, "chanced" to have the reasoning powers of the
great English scientist. If the apple, instead of falling to the
ground, had shot up, without visible cause, to the sky, then the
dullest observer would have wondered, even if he did not attempt to
find an explanation. The falling of the apple in Newton's garden was
not a chance, but an ordinary incident, which was made much of in the
mind of an extraordinary man.

Watt "chanced" to see the lid of the kettle in his mother's kitchen
lifted by the steam within, and this incident we are asked to believe
was the origin of the engine invented by that great man. If no one
else had ever witnessed a like phenomenon, then we might give some
consideration to the element of chance. It was in the brain of Watt,
and not in the lifting of the kettle lid, that the steam engine was
born. There are no accidents in the progress of science.

In the same way, we are asked to believe that Galileo discovered the
telescope, Whitney the cotton gin, and Howe the sewing machine.

But there have been some curious cases of chance fortune. A man out
hunting in California made a mis-step and was plunged into a deep
gulch in the Sierra Nevada. His gun was broken and he was sorely
bruised, but he was more that repaid for the accident by the
discovery of a rich gold mine at the bottom.

What would you think of the man, who, because of this, should
shoulder a gun and go into the mountains, hoping to be precipitated
into a gulch full of gold. If he started out for this purpose, of
course, the element of chance would be eliminated, and yet that man
would show just as much good sense as do the thousands who go through
life--t

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