Contents
1. Be Good To Yourself
2. Economy That Costs Too Much
3. Where Does Your Energy Go?
4. The Strain To Keep Up Appearances
5. Nature As A Joy-Builder
6. Eight Hundred Sixty-Nine Kinds Of Liars
7. The Quarreling Habit
8. The Right To Be Disagreeable
9. The Good-Will Habit
10. Love As A Tonic
11. Keeping A Level Head
12. Getting The Best Out Of Employees
13. Don’t Let Your Past Spoil Your Future
14. Almost A Success
15. The Born Leader
16. The Passion For Achievement
17. Fun In The Home
18. Neglect Your Business But Not Your Boy
19. Mother
20. The Home As A School Of Good Manners
21. Self-Improvement As An Investment
22. A Religious Slot Machine
1. Be Good To Yourself
It is a rare thing to find a person who is really masterful in their personality, masterful in what they undertake; who approaches their task with the assurance of a conqueror; who is able to grapple vigorously with their life problems; who always keeps themselves in condition to do their best, biggest thing easily, without strain; who seizes with the grip of a master the precious opportunities which come to them.
In order to keep oneself at the top of one’s condition, to obtain complete mastery of all one’s powers and possibilities, a person must be good to themselves mentally, they must think well of themselves.
Someone has said that the man who depreciates himself blasphemes God, who created him in His own image and pronounced him perfect. Very few people think well enough of themselves, have half enough esteem for their divine origin or respect for their ability, their character, or the sublimity of their possibilities; hence the weakness and ineffectiveness of their careers.
People who persist in seeing the weak, the diseased, the erring side of themselves; who believe they have inherited a taint from their ancestors; who think they do not amount to much and never will; who are always exaggerating their defects; who see only the small side of themselves, never grow into that bigness of manhood and grandeur of womanhood which God intended for them.
They hold in their minds this little, mean, contemptible, dried-up image of themselves until the dwarfed picture becomes a reality. Their appearance, their lives, outpicture their poor opinion of themselves, express their denial of the grandeur and sublimity of their possibilities. They actually think themselves into littleness, meanness, weakness.
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” His opinion of himself will be reproduced by the life processes within him and outpictured in his body. If you would make the most of yourself, never picture yourself as anything different from what you would actually be, the person you long to become. Whenever you think of yourself, form a mental image of a perfect, healthy, beautiful, noble being, not lacking in anything, but possessing every desirable quality.
Positively refuse to see anything about yourself which would detract from your personality. Insist upon seeing only the truth of your being, the person God had in mind when He made you, not the distorted thing, the burlesque person, which your ignorance and unfortunate environment, wrong thinking and vicious living have produced. The estimate you have of yourself, the image of yourself which you carry in your mind, will mean infinitely more to you than other people may think of you.
If we would make the most of our lives, if we would be and do all that it is possible for us to be and to do, we must not only think well of ourselves, but we must also be just to ourselves physically, be good to our bodies. In order to be the highest, the most efficient type of person, it is just as necessary to cultivate the body, to develop its greatest possible strength and beauty, as it is to cultivate the mind, to raise it to its highest power.
There are plenty of people who are good to others, but are not good to themselves. They do not take care of their own health, their own bodies, do not conserve their own energies, husband their own resources. They are slaves to others, tyrants to themselves.
Faithfulness to others is a most desirable trait, yet faithfulness to yourself is just as much of a requisite. It is as great a sin not to be good to yourself as not to be good to others. It is everyone’s sacred duty to keep themselves up to the highest possible standard, physically and mentally, otherwise they cannot deliver their divine message, in its entirety, to the world. It is everyone’s sacred duty to keep themselves in a condition to do the biggest thing possible to them.
It is a positive sin to keep oneself in a depleted, rundown, exhausted state, so that one cannot answer their life call or any big demand that an emergency may make upon them.
There are many people of a high order of ability who do very ordinary work in life, whose careers are most disappointing, simply because they do not keep themselves in a physical and mental condition to do their best.
In every place of business we find employees who are only about half awake, half alive; their bodies are full of dead cells, poisoned cells because of vicious living, vicious thinking, vicious habits. Is it any wonder that they get so little out of life when they put so little into it?
I know men in middle life who are just where they were when they left school or college. They have not advanced a particle; some have even retrograded, and they cannot understand why they do not get on, why they are not more successful. But everyone who knows them sees the great handicaps of indifference to their health, neglect of their physical needs, dissipation, irregular living, slipshod, slovenly habits, all sorts of things which are keeping them down, handicaps which even intellectual giants could not drag along with them and make any kind of progress.
Everywhere we see young men and women crippled in their careers, plodding along in mediocrity, capable of great things, but doing little things, because they have not vitality enough to push their way and overcome the obstacles in their path. They have not been good to their physical selves.
An author’s book is wishy-washy, does not get hold of the reader because he had no vigor, no surplus vitality, to put into it. The book does not arouse because the author was not aroused when he wrote it. It is lifeless because of the writer’s low state of vitality.
The clergyman does not get hold of his people because he lacks stamina, force and physical vitality. He is a weakling mentally because he is a weakling physically. The teacher does not arouse or inspire his pupil because he lacks life and enthusiasm himself. His brain and nerves are fagged, his energy exhausted, burned out, his strength depleted, because he has not been good to himself.
Everywhere we see these devitalized people, without spontaneity, buoyancy, or enthusiasm in their endeavor. They have no joy in their work. It is merely enforced drudgery, a dreary, monotonous routine.
The great problem in manufacturing is to get the latest possible results with the least possible expenditure, the least wear and tear of machinery. Men study the economy in their business of getting the maximum return with the minimum expenditure, and yet many of these men who are so shrewd and level-headed in their business pay very little attention to the economy of their personal power expenditure.
Most of us are at war with ourselves, are our own worst enemies. We expect a great deal of ourselves, yet we do not put ourselves in a condition to achieve great things. We are either too indulgent to our bodies, or we are not indulgent enough. We pamper them, or we neglect them, and it would be hard to tell which mode of treatment produces the worst results. Few people treat their bodies with the same wise care and consideration that they bestow upon a valuable piece of machinery or property of any kind from which they expect large returns.
Take the treatment of the digestive apparatus, for instance, which really supplies the motor power for the whole body, and we will find that most of us do not give it half a chance to do its work properly. The energy of the digestive organs of many people is exhausted in trying to take care of superfluous food for which there is absolutely no demand in the system. So much energy is used up trying to assimilate surplus, unnecessary food, improper food, that there is none left to assimilate and digest that which is actually needed.
Men are constantly violating the laws of health, eating all sorts of incompatible, indigestible foods, often when the stomach is exhausted and unable to take care of simple food. They fill it with a great variety of rich indigestible stuffs, retard the digestive processes with harmful drinks, then wonder why they are unfit for work, and resort to all sorts of stimulants and drugs to overcome the bad effects of their greediness and foolishness.
Many go to the other extreme and do not take enough food or get enough variety in what they do eat, so that some of their tissues are in a chronic condition of semi-starvation. The result is that while there is a great overplus of certain elements in some parts of the system, there is a famine of different kinds of elements in other parts of the system.
This inequality, disproportion, tends to unbalance and produce a lack of symmetry in the body, and induces abnormal appetites that often lead to drinking or other dissipation. Many people resort to dangerous drugs in their effort to satisfy the craving of the starved cells in the various tissues when what they really need is nourishing food.
There are only twelve different kinds of tissues in the body and their needs are very simple. For instance, almost every demand in the entire system can be satisfied by milk and eggs, though, of course, a more varied diet is desirable, and should always be adjusted to suit one’s vocation and activities. Yet, notwithstanding the simple demands of nature, how complicated our living has become!
If we would only study the needs of our bodies as we study the needs of the plants in our gardens, and give them the proper amount and variety of food, with plenty of water, fresh air, and sunshine, we would not be troubled with disordered stomachs, indigestion, biliousness, headache, or any other kind of pain or ache.
If we used common sense in our diet, lived a plain, sane, simple life, we would never need to take medicine. But the way many of us live is a crime against nature, against manhood, against our possibilities.
It is amazing that otherwise shrewd, sensible people can deceive themselves into practicing petty economies which are in reality ruinous extravagances.
No good mechanic would for a moment think of using tools that are out of order. Think of a barber trying to run a first-class shop with dull razors! Think of a carpenter or cabinet-maker attempting to turn out finished work with dull chisels, saws, planes, or other tools!
The man who wants to do a fine piece of work, whether it be the painting of a picture or the building of a house, must have everything with which he works in the best possible condition, otherwise the quality of his work will suffer.
The great thing in life is efficiency. If you amount to anything in the world, your time is valuable, your energy precious. They are your success capital and you cannot afford to heedlessly throw them away or trifle with them.
Whatever else you do, husband your strength, save your vitality, hang on to it with the determination with which a drowning man seizes and clings to a log or spar at sea. Store up every bit of your physical force, for it is your achievement material, your manhood or womanhood timber. Having this, the person who has no money is rich compared with the person of wealth who has squandered their vitality, thrown away their precious life energy. Gold is but dross compared with this, diamonds but rubbish; houses and lands are contemptible beside it.
Dissipaters of precious vitality are the wickedest kind of spendthrifts, they are worse than money spendthrifts; they are suicides, for they are killing their every chance in life.
Of what use is ability if you cannot use it, offerees that are demoralized, weakened by petty, false economies? What use is great brain power, even genius, if you are physically weak, if your vitality is so reduced either by vicious living or lack of proper care, that your energy becomes exhausted with the very least effort?
To be confronted by a great opportunity of which you are powerless to take advantage, because you have let your energy leak away in useless, vicious ways, or to feel that you can only take hold of your great chance tremblingly, weakly, with doubt instead of assurance and a consciousness of vigor, is one of the most disheartening experiences that can ever come to a human being.
If you would make the most of yourself, cut away all of your vitality sappers, get rid of everything which hampers you and holds you back, everything which wastes your energy, cuts down your working capital. Get freedom at any cost. Do not drag about with you a body that is half dead through vicious habits, which sap your vitality and drain off your life forces.
Do not do anything or touch anything which will lower your vitality or lessen your chances of advancement. Always ask yourself, “What is there in this thing I am going to do which will add to my life-work, increase my power, keep me in superb condition to do the best thing possible to me?”
Much precious energy is wasted in fretting, worrying, grumbling, fault-finding, in the little frictions and annoyances that accomplish nothing, but merely make you irritable, cripple and exhaust you. Just look back over yesterday and see where your energy went to. See how much of it leaked away in trifles and in vicious practices. You may have lost more brain and nerve force in a burst of passion, a fit of hot temper than in doing your normal work in an entire day.
Some people are very careful to keep the pianos in their homes in tune, but they never trouble themselves about the human instruments which are out of tune most of the time. They try to play the great life symphonies on a living instrument that is jangled and out of tune, and then wonder why they produce discord instead of harmony.
The great aim of your life should be to keep your powers up to the highest possible standard, to so conserve your energies, guard your health, that you can make every occasion a great occasion.
The trouble with most of us is that we do not half appreciate the marvelousness of the human mechanism, nor the divinity of the man that dwells in it.
“Man is an infinite little copy of God,” says Victor Hugo. “That is glory enough for man. Little as I am, I feel the God in me.”
Unfortunately most of us do not feel the God in us, we do not realize our powers and possibilities. We lose sight of our divinity. We live in our animal senses instead of rising into the God-like faculties. We crawl when we might fly.
2. Economy That Costs Too Much
A Paris bank clerk, who was carrying a bag of gold through the streets dropped a ten-franc piece, which rolled from the side-walk. He set his bag down to look for the lost piece, and, while he was trying to extricate it from the glitter, someone stole his bag and ran away with it.
I know a rich man who has become such a slave to the habit of economizing, when he was trying to get a start in the world, that he has not been able to break away from it, and will very often lose a dollar’s worth of valuable time trying to save a dime.
He goes through his home and turns the lights down so low that it is almost impossible to get around without stumbling over chairs. Several members of his family have received injuries from running against half-open doors, or stumbling over furniture in the dark; and once, while I was present, a member of the family spilt a bottle of ink upon a costly carpet in passing from one room to another in the darkness.
This man, although now wealthy, tears off the unused half-sheets of letters, cuts out the backs of envelopes for scribbling paper, and is constantly spending time trying to save little things which are utterly out of proportion to the value to him of the time thus consumed.
He carries the same-spirit of niggardly economy into his business. He makes his employees save strings from bundles as a matter of principle, even if it takes twice as much time as the string is worth, and practices all sorts of trifling economies equally foolish.
True economy is not stinginess or meanness. It often means very large outlay, for it always has the larger end in view. True economy means the wisest expenditure of what we have, everything considered, looking at it from the broadest standpoint. It is not a good thing to save a nickel at the expenditure of twenty-five cent’s worth of time.
Comparatively few people have a healthy view of what real saving, or economy, means. Many have been run over by street cars or other vehicles in New York while trying to recover a dropped package, a hat, an umbrella, or a cane.
I know a young man who has lost many opportunities for advancement, and a large amount of business, by false economy in dress, and smallness regarding expenditures. He believes that a suit of clothes and a neck-tie should be worn until they are threadbare.
He would never think of inviting a customer or a prospective customer to luncheon, or of offering to pay their car fare (if he happened to be traveling with them.) He has such a reputation for being stingy, even to meanness, that people do not like to do business with him. False economy has cost this man very dear.
Many people injure their health seriously by trying to save money. If you are ambitious to do your best work, beware of economies that cost too much.
No ambitious person can afford to feed their brain with poor diet or wrong fuel. To do so would be as foolhardy as for a great factory to burn shavings and refuse material because good coal was too expensive. Whatever you do, however poor you may be, don’t stint or try to economize in the food fuel, which is the very foundation and secret of your success in life. Economize in other things if you must, wear threadbare clothes if necessary, but never cheat your body or brain by the quality and quantity of your food. Poor, cheap food which produces low vitality and inferior brain force is the worst kind of economy.
There are lots of ambitious people with mistaken ideas of economy who rarely ever get the kind and quality of food which is capable of making the best blood and the best brain. Who that is anxious to make the most of their life can afford to stint and starve upon foods that are incapable of making them do the best thing possible to them?
The ambitious farmer selects the finest ears of corn and the finest grain, fruits, and vegetables for seed. He cannot afford to cumber his precious soil with bad seed. Can the person who is ambitious to make the most of themselves afford to eat cheap, stale foods, which have lost their great energizing principle?
Everywhere we see businessmen patronizing cheap restaurants, eating indigestible food, drinking cheap, diluted or doctored milk, saving a little money, but taking a great deal out of themselves.
The most precious investment a person can make is to be just as good to themselves as they possibly can, and never, under any circumstances, pinch or economize in things which can help them to do the greatest thing possible to them. There is no doubt that the efficiency of numerous people is kept down many percent by improper diet, inferior foods.
Many an individual who thinks they are economizing because they spend only fifteen or twenty cents for their lunch may lose dollars in possible efficiency because of this short-sighted economy.
You should take as little as possible out of yourself during your work or recreation. This does not mean that you should not enter whole-heartedly, fling yourself with great zest into your work and play, but that you should not needlessly waste your vitality.
When you are traveling long distances and can possibly afford it, take a chair car, a sleeper, and take your meals regularly, and thus save time and energy, and conserve your health.
Look at the people of means who are too stingy to take a chair or berth in a Pullman car, or to eat their meals in a dining car when they travel. They take many times more out of themselves by their cheap economy than the little money they save is worth. Their ideas are mean and stingy, their efforts lifeless and lacking in enthusiasm, buoyancy, because they have sacrificed their physical selves, have not taken food that can produce ideas, brain force.
Being good to themselves would have made all the difference between discomfort and irregularity and comfort and well-being, and the money spent would have brought them double returns, for when they got to their destination, instead of being jaded, depleted of their vitality, they would have been fresh, vigorous and in condition to do effective work or to enjoy themselves.
I used to travel with a businessman who was much better off financially than I was, yet he would never take a sleeper at night, nor go into a dining car for his meals; but he would take his luncheon with him, or live on sandwiches or what he could pick up at lunch counters on the route. The result was that, when he arrived in far Western cities, he would be so used up and tired, and his stomach
so out of order from irregular eating, that it would take him several days to get straightened out, and he lost a great deal of valuable time.
No man can afford to transact important business when he is not in prime condition, and it pays one in health and in comfort, as well as financially, to be very good to oneself, especially when health and a clear brain are our best capital.
Power is the goal of the highest ambition. Anything which will add to one’s personal force, which will increase one’s vigor, brain power, is worth its price, no matter how much it costs.
Spend generously for anything which will raise your achievement power, which will make you a broader, abler person.
Multitudes of people are handicapped for years because of constant nervous headaches, which are simply due to eye-strain. They oftentimes have some slight defect in the lens of the eye which causes a great deal of suffering, and which can be corrected and entirely removed by glasses, but because of mistaken ideas of economy they delay getting them.
I know a business man who lost a considerable amount of time periodically through neglect of his feet. Every step he took pained him, yet he could not bear the idea of paying money to a chiropodist and submitting to a simple operation, which finally, after years of suffering, was performed and gave him immediate relief.
Many people delay some needed trivial surgical or dental operation for months or even years, simply because they dread the expense, thus not only suffering a great deal of unnecessary pain all this time, but also incapacitating themselves from giving the best thing in them to their vocations.
The great thing is to make it a life principle never to delay the remedy of anything which is retarding our progress, keeping us down. We little realize what a fearful amount of energy and precious vitality is wasted in most lives through false ideas of economy.
Some people will waste a dollar’s worth of valuable time, and suffer much discomfort, in visiting numerous stores looking for bargains and trying to save a few cents on some small purchase they wish to make. They will buy wearing apparel of inferior material because the price is low, although they know the articles will not wear well.
Bargain hunters are often victims of false economy. They buy, because they are cheap, a great many things they do not actually need. Then they will tell you how much they have saved. If they would reckon up what they have expended in a year, they would generally find that they have spent more than if they had only bought what they actually wanted, when they needed it, and had paid the regular price for it.
Many people have a mania for attending auctions and buying all sorts of truck which does not match anything else they have. The result is that their homes are veritable nightmares as to taste and fitness of things. Then, they never get the first, best wear of anything. These second-hand things are often just on the point of giving out, and constantly need repairing.
Beds break down, legs come off bureaus, castors are always coming out, and something is going to pieces all the time. This foolish buying is the worst kind of extravagance. Quality, durability should be the first considerations in buying anything for constant use. Yet many people keep themselves poor by buying cheap articles which do not last.
“Thair iz sertin kinds of ekonomy that don’t pa,” says Josh Billings, “and one of them iz that thair iz a grate menny pepul in the world who try to ekonomize by stratenin pins.”
I have seen a lady spoil a pair of fine gloves trying to rescue a nickel which had fallen into the mud.
There are plenty of women who would not think of throwing away a nickel but who would not hesitate to throw fifty cents worth of good food into the garbage pail. It is a strange fact that people who are close and stingy with their money are often extremely liberal with what the money will buy, especially when put into foodstuffs. In their estimation, most of the value seems to evaporate in the cooking.
One should live between extravagance and meanness. Don’t save money by starving your mind. It is false economy never to take a holiday, or never to spend money for an evening’s amusement or for a useful book.
P. T. Barnum once said: “Economy is not meanness. True economy consists in always making the income exceed the outgo.”
Most people fail to do their greatest work because they do not put the emphasis on the right thing. They do not always keep the goal, their larger possibility in view. They handicap their prospects and kill their greater opportunities by keeping their eyes fixed on petty economies.
Many men become slaves to the habit of economizing, and, without realizing it, constantly strangle their business.
There is no greater delusion than that cheapness is economy. I have watched for some time a New York skyscraper erected years ago under contract. The owners dickered with a great many builders, finally letting the contract to the one who bid the lowest. The original estimate, made by a reliable builder, for a thoroughly substantial, first-class building, was cut down over a hundred thousand dollars by this cheap concern.
The result is that, in their grasping greed to save, the owners overreached themselves, and the building has been a source of anxiety to them ever since its erection. Everything about it is cheap, shoddy or rickety. There is scarcely a day that something is not out of order somewhere. The walls crack, the floors settle, the doors warp and the windows stick.
There is constant trouble with the cheap elevators, and with the steam and electric fittings, and the boilers and all the machinery are frequently out of order. In the winter the building is cold, the pipes leak because of cheap plumbing, and the furnishings are constantly being damaged. As a consequence the occupants get disgusted and move out.
Although the building is in a locality where rents are high, it is impossible to keep reliable tenants very long, because they become so exasperated. It attracts a class of people just like itself—cheap, shoddy, unreliable—and the loss in the rents and in constant repairs, in the rapid deterioration to say nothing of the wear and tear on the nervous system of the owners, will be greater than the amount saved by the cheap contract.
No greater delusion ever entered a businessman’s head than that cheap labor is economy. Trying to cut the pay-roll down to the lowest possible dollar has ruined many a concern. Businessmen who have been most successful have found that the best workmen, like the best materials, are the cheapest in the end. The breakage, the damage, the losses, the expensive blunders, the injury to merchandise, the loss of customers resulting from cheap labor are not compensated for by low wages.
Anyone who tries to get superior results from inferior methods, from cheapness in quality of material or service deludes himself. Cheap labor means cheap product and cheapened reputation. It means inferiority all along the line. The institution run by cheap help is cheapened and means a cheaper patronage.
Many a hotel has gone down because the proprietor tried to save a few thousand dollars a year by hiring cheap clerks, cooks and waiters, and by buying cheap food. Just that little difference between the cheap and the best help and the cheap and the best food has made the fortune of many a shrewd hotel-keeper.
Some people never get out of the world of pennies into the world of dollars. They work so hard to save the cents that they lose the dollars and the larger growth—the richer experience and the better opportunity.
Everywhere we see people wearing seedy, shabby clothes, stopping at cheap, noisy hotels or boarding houses, sleeping on uncomfortable beds, riding for days in cramped positions in day coaches in order to save the price of a parlour—car chair or a Pullman seat, sitting up all night to save the expense of a sleeper—practicing all sorts of economies which cost too much for those who can possibly afford better.
If an individual is going to do their best work, they must keep up their mental and physical standards. They must keep a clear brain and level head, and be able to think vigorously. They cannot think effectively without pure blood, and that requires good food, refreshing sleep, and cheerful recreation.
The men and women who accomplish the most, who do a prodigious amount of work, and who are able to stand great strains, are very good to themselves. They have the best they can get. They patronize the best hotels; they eat the most nourishing food they can get. They give themselves all the comforts possible, especially in traveling, and the result is that they are always in much better condition to do business.
It is pretty poor economy that will lessen one’s vitality and strength and lower the standard of one’s possible efficiency for the sake of saving a few pennies and putting a little money in one’s pocket-book.
Of course, we realize that those who haven’t the money cannot always do that which will contribute to their highest comfort and efficiency; but most people overestimate the value of a dollar in comparison with their physical well-being. Power is the goal of the highest ambition. Anything which will add to one’s power, therefore, no matter how much it costs, if it is within possible reach, is worth its price.
Generous expenditure in the thing which helps us along the line of our ambition, which will make a good impression, secure us quick recognition, and help our promotion, is often an infinitely better investment than putting money in the savings bank.
Those who are trying to get a start in life must emphasize the right thing, keeping the larger possibility in view instead of handicapping their prospects, killing their opportunities by keeping their eyes fixed on petty economies.
Great emphasis is today placed on appearances. Success is not wholly a question of merit. Appearances have a great deal to do with one’s prospects and chances especially in a large city, where it is so difficult to get acquainted. In a small town, where everybody will soon know you and can quickly judge of your ability and real worth, it is very different, although even there appearances count for a great deal.
There are thousands of young people in our large cities struggling along in mediocrity, many of them in poverty, who might be in good circumstances had they placed the right emphasis upon the value of good clothes and a decent living-place, where they would be associated with a good class of people.
If you want to get on, get in with the people in your line of business, or in your profession. Try to make yourself popular with them. If a business person, associate with the best men and women in your business; if a lawyer keep in with lawyers. Join the lawyers clubs or associations. The very reputation of standing well in your own craft or profession will be of great value to you.
Of course, it will not cost you quite as much to hold yourself aloof from those in the same specialty; but you cannot afford the greater loss that will result from your aloofness. The young person who wants to get on must remember that little things have quite as much to do with their achievement as great things.
No one can make the most of themselves who does not consider their personal needs. When we are best to ourselves, we radiate a healthy mental attitude of optimism, joy, gladness, and hope. It is a great thing to be a good animal, to maintain mental poise; then we radiate exuberance of life, enthusiasm, buoyancy.
Did you ever realize what splendid capital there is in good health, a strong, vigorous constitution, which is able to stand any amount of hard work, hard knocks? Did you ever think that the very physical ability to stand a long, persistent strain, great physical reserve, has carried many men and woman through hard times and discordant conditions, under which weaker people would have gone down completely?
He who would get the most out of life must be good to himself. Everywhere we see people who have been trying to pinch and save, paying for it in premonitory indications of discomfort. Does this pay? Does it pay to take so much out of oneself for the sake of putting a little more in the bank; to rob one’s life in order to add a little more to one’s savings? We must look at life from a higher plane, a longer range, and ask ourselves at the very outset, “What must I do, how conduct myself, how treat myself in order to make the largest success, the completest life possible?”
Do not take a little, narrow, pinched, cheese-paring view of life. It is unworthy of you, and belittling to your possibilities. It is insulting to your Creator, who made you for something large and grand.
Everywhere we see people with little starved experiences, because they are too small to spend money to enlarge themselves by seeing the world and getting a broader education and larger outlook. They have a little money in the bank, but their mental capital is very weak, so that others who took a larger view of life have completely overtopped them in their fuller manhood or womanhood and in greater wealth, too.
Nobody admires a narrow-souled, dried-up man and women who will not invest in books or travel, who will invest in the grosser material property but not in themselves, and whose highest ambition is to save so many dollars.
You can always pick out the man who is so over-anxious about small savings that he loses the larger gain. He radiates smallness, meanness, limitation. His thoughts are pinched, his ideas narrow. He is the small-calibered man who lacks that generosity and breadth which marks the liberal broad-gauged man.
Many men of this type remain at the head of a little two-penny business all their lives because they have never learned the effectiveness of liberality in business. They do not know that a liberal sowing means a liberal harvest. They know nothing of the secret of the larger success of modern business methods.
There is a vast difference between the economy which administers wisely and that niggardly economy which saves for the sake of saving and spends a dime’s worth of time to save a penny.
I have never known a man who over-estimated the importance of saving pennies to do things which belong to large minds.
Cheese-paring methods belong to the past. Skimping economies, and stinginess do not pay. The great things today are done on broad lines. It is the liberal-minded person, with a level head and a sound judgment, the person who can see things in their large relations, that succeeds. Large things today must be done in a large way. The liberal policy wins.
Economy, in its broadest sense, involves the highest kind of judgment and level-headedness and breadth of vision. The wisest economy often requires very lavish expenditure, because there may be thousands of dollars depending upon the spending of hundreds. It often means a very broad and generous administration and liberal spending.
Some of the best businessmen I know are generous almost to extravagance with their customers, or in their dealings with people. They think nothing of spending a thousand dollars if they can see two thousand or five thousand coming back from it. But the petty economizers are too narrow in their views, too limited in their outlook, too niggardly in their expenditures ever to measure up to large things. They hold the penny so close to their eyes that it shuts out the dollar. It is bad economy for the farmer to skimp on seed corn. “He that soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly.”
3. Where Does Your Energy Go?
Ninety-nine percent of the sun’s power or energy stored up in a ton of coal is lost on its way to the electric light bulb. Thus we get only a hundredth part of the possible light contained in a ton of coal. The other ninety-nine parts are dissipated in heat, and used up in friction in the engine or the electric apparatus, and never become light. To discover someway to prevent this fearful waste of energy is one of the great problems confronting scientists today.
Just as fearful a waste of energy goes on in man’s use of his own powers. Instead of one hundred percent of his energy appearing in results that are worthwhile, often not more than one percent of it gets into his real work, the rest being thrown away, dissipated in scores of ways.
A young man starts out in life with a large amount of force and vitality stored up in his brain, nerves, and muscles. He feels an almost limitless supply of energy welling up within him, a fullness and buoyancy which know no repression. He believes he will do wonders with this energy, and that he will transmute practically all of it into light, — achievement.
In the pride of his youth and strength, he seems to think that there is practically no end to his power to throw off energy, and so he often flings it out on every side with reckless prodigality. He burns it up here in a cigarette or a pipe, there in whisky or wine; here he drains it off in heavy suppers and late hours, there in vicious living, idleness, shiftlessness, and botched work, until he finally comes to himself with a shock and asks, “Where is the electric light I meant to produce with all my energy? Is this flickering candle flame all that I can generate?”
He is appalled to find that, with all his superabundant vitality, he has scarcely produced light enough to illumine his own way, and has nothing left for the world. He who had boasted of his strength and felt confident of shedding a light that would dazzle the world stumbles along himself in semi-darkness. The energy which should have been transmuted into achievement has been lost on the way.
It is not the vitality we utilize that dwarfs achievement and whittles away and shortens life: it is what we foolishly throw away. Millions of people have made miserable failures in life by letting this precious energy, which might have made them successful, slip away from them in foolish living and silly dissipation.
It is considered a terrible thing for a youth to spend a thousand dollars of his father’s money in a single night’s dissipation; but what about the strain upon his vitality, the life forces which he throws away, or the wasted energy which might have been put into physical and mental achievement? What is the loss of money compared with the demoralization wrought by such a debauch?
What are a thousand dollars in comparison with even a small fraction of precious life-power? Money lost may be regained, but vitality lost in dissipation not only cannot be regained, but it is also a thousand times worse than lost, because it has demoralized all that is left, deteriorated the character, and undermined the very foundation of all that is best in life.
But it is not always what is classed as wicked dissipation that robs us of energy. There is a wanton waste of vitality in various forms going on all about us, which might be converted into something that would count in life. Some time ago there was a six days bicycle race in Madison Square Garden, New York City, in which the contestants drained off more vitality than would have accomplished years of ordinary work.
It was really pitiable to watch the exhausted victims, who were determined not to give up though they should die in the struggle. The drawn lines about the mouth and eyes, and the haggard expression of those men in the last hours of their desperate ride, haunted everybody who saw them. Many of those naturally strong, rugged fellows had to be lifted from their wheels, while some of them fell prone upon the floor in their utter physical exhaustion and mental stupor. Others completely lost consciousness, owing to brain poisoning caused by the accumulation of worn-out muscle and nerve tissue in the blood.
Thus do we turn even our most healthful, recreative exercises and sports into fatal energy-wasters, degrading them into exhibitions of mere brutality, in which men lose manhood and strength instead of gaining them.
A foreigner traveling in this country says, “Americans waste as much energy as most other nations utilize.” It is true that there is a woeful lack of serenity, of poise, and of balance among us. We are always on the move, always twitching somewhere.
A noted physician says that most people expend ten times the energy really necessary in almost everything they do. Many grasp a pen as if it were a crowbar, keep the muscles of the arm tense when they write, and power out as much vital force in signing their names as an athlete would in throwing a heavy weight a great distance. Not one person in a hundred, he says, knows how to make proper use of their muscles or to relax perfectly when at rest. Yet it is chiefly through repose, or perfect rest, that we are enabled to store up energy, to stop the leaks, and to cut off all wastes.
A normal person, who has stopped all these energy leaks is not nervous or restless. He has control of his muscles, and is ever master of himself, self-centered, and poised. He gives you the impression of a mighty reserve poser, because he has not wasted his energy. He can sit or stand still, looking you squarely in the eye without flinching, because there is power back of the eye. He is always balanced, never flies off his center, and does not need artificial stimulants or bracers.
It is no wonder that so many of our nervous and over-active businessmen begin so early to die at the top; that they feel exhausted in the morning; that they are fagged and tired out most of the time; and that they resort to stimulants or smoking to keep up the intense, unnatural strain, and to give them artificial energy as a substitute for the real energy which is constantly leaking away in a score of ways.
The tired brains and fagged nerves of the spend thrifts of energy are responsible for a large proportion of the abnormal thinking, the wretched mistakes in business, the fatal blunders which cost human lives on land and sea, the suicides, the insanity, and the crime of the world. When the brain cells and nerve cells are well supplied with reserve force, a man is normal, strong, and vigorous. He is not haunted by all sorts of unhealthy appetites, or by a desire to do abnormal things, or live an unnatural life of excitement and self-indulgence.
Just look back over the day and see where your energy has gone. See how much of it has leaked away from you in trifles. Perhaps you have wasted it in fits of fretting, fuming, grumbling, faultfinding, or in the little frictions that have accomplished nothing, but merely rasped your nerves, made you irritable, crippled you, and left you exhausted. You may have drained off more nerve and brain force in a burst of bad temper than you have expended in doing your real work.
Perhaps you did not realize that, in going through your place of business like a mad bull through a china shop, you pulled out every spigot and turned on every faucet of your mental and physical reservoir, and left them open until all the energy you had stored up during the night had run off.
Look back and see whether your scolding, fault-finding, criticizing, nagging, and what you call ‘reading the riot act,’ to your employees, has helped you in any way or accomplished anything. No; you only lost your energy and self-control, your self-respect, and the respect and admiration of your employees.
Some women are always exhausted because they spend their vitality on trifles, frittering away energy in a score of ways without any results. When evening comes, they are unable to sit up. They do not know how to shut off the leaks, how to turn off the faucets of nerve force and energy, and night finds them like a city with every reservoir and water main empty, an easy prey to every draught of air or inciting cause of illness or ill-temper.
How pitiable it is to see such women shriveled and shrunken before they reach thirty-five, and looking old at forty, not because of their hard work or trials, but because of useless fretting and anxiety that have only brought discord into the home, and premature age to themselves.
Much of the worst kind of energy-dissipation is not what is commonly called “immoral.” It is often the result of ignorance, carelessness, or neglect; but it is dissipation, all the same. A great deal of energy is wasted in working without system, and in not getting hold of the right end of a thing at the start.
Many of us so completely exhaust our strength in useless worry and anxiety, in anticipating our tasks and in doing our work over and over again mentally before we begin, that we have no force left for the actual work when we come to it. We are like a fire engine letting off all its steam on its way to a fire, and arriving with no power left to throw water on the flames.
Some of us waste our energies and make our lives ineffective by trying to do too many things. Ability to do one thing superbly almost precludes the possibility of doing other things in a way to attract attention. If we focus powerfully upon one thing, energy is withdrawn from everything else. The mind is like a searchlight, — everything is in semi-darkness except the object upon which the light is thrown at the moment. It cannot illumine a very large area at one time. We cannot concentrate powerfully enough upon more than one thing to reach excellence.
People who are constantly making resolutions with great vigor and determination, but who never put them into execution, do not realize how much precious force they waste in dreaming and wishing. They live in dreamland while they work in mediocrity.
Their heads are in the clouds while their feet are on the earth. If these people would only spend the energy thus wasted in actually doing something, they would get somewhere.
Get rid of all vitality-sappers. If you have taken an unfortunate step, retrace it if you can; remedy it as far as it is in your power to do so; but, when you have done your best, let the thing drop forever. Do not drag its skeleton along with you. Never allow what is dead, and should be buried, to keep bobbing up and draining off your life-capital in worry or vain regrets. Do not do anything or touch anything which will lower your vitality.
Always ask yourself, “What is there in this thing I am going to do which will add to my life-work, which will increase my power, keep me in a more superb condition, and make me more efficient in the service of humanity?” If you would make your mark in the world, and do your part in advancing civilization, you must cut off everything which is an energy-waster or success-killer.
Everywhere we see young men and young women with great possibilities, crippled in their lifework because they have not vitality and energy enough to push their way and overcome the obstacles in the path to their goal. It is pitiable to see many of them at work, yawning and stretching all day, sleepy, ‘dopey’ and unenthusiastic, with nothing fresh or spontaneous about them. They have let their energy escape in a hundred foolish ways, and have none left to put into their work.
An author’s book does not take hold of the reader because the writer has no vigor to put into it. It is commonplace and wishy-washy; it does not arouse interest, because the author was not aroused when they wrote it. A low state of vitality accounts for the lifeless work in every line of their endeavor. Many a clergyman does not get hold of people, and cannot fill his church, because he has no reserve of energy. He lacks stamina and physical vitality, He is a weakling mentally because he is a weakling physically.
Many a teacher cannot arouse the enthusiasm of their pupils, because he or she has no enthusiasm themselves. Their brain and nerves are fagged; their energy reservoir is exhausted; there is no spontaneity in their work; it is enforced drudgery. Many artists, mechanics, and labourers— workers in all ranks—bring but one percent, of their energy to their work. The rest is gone in the smoke, heat, and friction of life.
What are you doing with your energy? Are you using it to produce light, or are you losing it in useless ways? Be honest with yourself and find out where it is going. You may be very honest in your dealings with others, but very dishonest in your dealings with yourself. You may be ignorantly or carelessly squandering your life-power.
The best tonic in the world is the exhilaration which comes from the consciousness of personal power, of being masterful in what we undertake, of being able to grapple vigorously with the great life-problems and to seize with the grip of a master precious opportunities when they come; to feel equal to any emergency, however great, and to be larger than any demand upon us. Whoever possesses this tonic will be sure to transmute into achievement not one percent, merely, but one hundred percent, of their energy.
4. The Strain To Keep Up Appearances
Disclosures in a recent divorce suit in New York again call attention to the insane rivalry among wealthy Americans to outdo one another in dress and luxurious living. The wife who was suing, in this instance, maintained that a woman in her position required from thirty-five to forty thousand dollars a year for dress alone; and that this was a comparatively small item in the cost of maintaining her household.
She stated, on the witness stand, that no society woman could afford to appear twice in the same dress in public or at the same hotel; that if she did, she would be “in very bad form.” She also stated that it was necessary to change her clothing, completely, three times a day, and that many women change, throughout, four times a day.
Another New York woman says that she spends from one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year on her wardrobe; that she has many dresses that cost a thousand dollars each, and that her shoes, the leather for which is imported and dyed to match the dresses with which they are worn, cost fifty dollars a pair.
Some of these society women exhaust so much of their time and energy in catering to their vanity that they have comparatively little left for the things really worthwhile. Mrs. Grundy has more abject slaves in America than in any other country on the globe. Multitudes of devotees neglect their children, their homes, and their mental improvement, and resort to all sorts of expedients and extravagances to cater to their vanity.
It is not so much the purpose of the author to condemn the rich for their wicked extravagance, as to point out the demoralizing influence of their vicious example upon those who cannot afford either luxurious dress or living. Not only much of the discontent and unhappiness, but also a large part of the immorality and crime in this country, is due to the influence of the ostentatious flaunting of wealth in the faces of those who are less favored. It is a powerful undermining force in our civilization.
The mere possession of money does not give one the right to debauch their fellows, or to set an example which will make them discontented, unhappy, and tempt them to strain to keep up an appearance of wealth, at the possible sacrifice of their integrity and virtue.
Some of these wealthy people attempt to justify their extravagance on the ground that it gives employment to a great many. No greater delusion ever crept into a human brain than that wanton extravagance is justified on the ground that it gives employment, for the demoralizing and debauching influence of it all, upon those uselessly employed, infinitely outweighs any possible good it may accomplish.
It is true that many poor women and girls are enabled to eke out a miserable existence by spending years of precious time and energy working upon a piece of lace, embroidery, or a thousand-dollar gown to be worn only once or twice by a rich woman.
But is there no better destiny for human beings made in God’s image than to wear their lives out and ruin their eyesight, as is done in numerous instances, in making that which appeals only to the vanity of women, many of whom, in all their lives, never earned the equivalent to the good which they consume in a single month?
The vulgar flaunting of wealth, which we see on every hand, is a constant suggestion, a perpetual temptation, to the poorer classes to strain every nerve to keep up appearances, “to keep up with the procession” at all hazards.
Women who pay from five hundred to a thousand dollars for a dress, and fifty dollars for a pair of shoes, do not realize that a multitude of young girls, some of whom work for two years for what one of these gowns cost, and some for only a few dollars a week, are influenced to do all sorts of questionable things in order to ape the style of their rich sisters.
There are young women in New York, receiving comparatively small salaries, who live in high-class apartments, wear expensive tailored gowns, extravagant millinery, and indulge in other luxuries which are out of all keeping with their rank and means. Many of them have accounts at livery stables, florists, and dry-goods stores; they even buy jewelry and many unnecessary things on credit.
Some of them think nothing of frequenting pawnshops and borrowing money on furs, clothing, anything which they do not happen to want for the moment.
Driven to extremes, they often grow so bold in their borrowing that they will “work” their friends, as they put it, without blushing. They brag of how much they can make a man spend on them when out for amusement.
Recently a young man on a small salary told me that it cost him from fifteen to twenty dollars an evening to take a girl to a theater, and to supper at an expensive restaurant afterwards. Is it any wonder that so many young men in moderate circumstances remain single, and that vicious results follow such abnormal living?
One of the curses of city life is the unwillingness of young men to marry and assume the responsibility or obligations of a family. The consequent absence of the refining, elevating influence of home and family upon the character of both men and women is most disastrous. They live unnatural and unhealthful lives and often become abnormally selfish because they are completely absorbed in getting the most they can for themselves, and consequently think very little about others.
The false ideas, expensive habits, and passion for show of many women are, in a great measure, responsible for this deplorable condition of things.
A New York young man, typical of a large class, told me, recently, that he had no idea of marrying, because, by remaining single, he could live at the best hotels—”live like a prince”, as he expressed it—that he could patronize good tailors and could take an occasional trip abroad, whereas if he married and had to divide his income with a family, he would be obliged to live in a poorer part of the city, in much cheaper quarters, and could not begin to keep up the appearance and make the display which he can now afford. He said that girls expect so much today that young men require a lot of courage to assume the responsibility of marriage.
Many girls seem to think that their chances of marrying men who can support them in luxury are much enhanced by extravagant dressing. This is a delusion. Girls who dress beyond their means, as a rule fail to attract, permanently, the wealthy men whom they would like to marry, and often frighten away the young men of small means who would be drawn to them by their good qualities of mind and heart, which their foolish clothing and hollow pretense serve only to conceal.
Young men who are determined to make something of themselves will think a great many times before they marry a young woman with extravagant notions, for they know that once a woman has contracted a taste for luxuries and formed the habit of living beyond her income, she is rarely content with what a man in moderate circumstances can afford to give her.
It is the young woman who resists the temptations of vanity and is content to dress as attractively as she can honestly afford, instead of turning into debt and resorting to all sorts of things to procure what she cannot afford, who scouts the idea of bedecking herself with cheap imitations, refuses to wear lies or act them—she is the sort of girl a manly young fellow will want to marry, or who will make a successful career for herself.
The examples of vicious living and reckless extravagance of the very rich are no less demoralizing to young men than to young women. It used to be considered a disgrace for young men to be in debt unless they were in business for themselves, or there was some other justification for it; but now it is the commonest thing to see young men with small salaries heavily in debt — for luxuries.
Never, in the history of mankind, was there such a perfect mania among certain classes to keep up appearances in all hazards, to make a big show in the world, as exists in America today. Everywhere we see people toiling to keep in the social swim, struggling to break into the stratum above them, straining every nerve to do things they cannot afford, mainly because others do them.
In Europe it is possible to classify people largely by their dress and appearance. They do not pretend to be what they are not, so much as in America; but here, where shop girls dress like millionaires’ daughters, and thousands of clerks dress better than their employers, where so many are trying to appear to be better off than they are, to make others think they amount to a little more than they do, it is impossible to judge correctly by appearances.
Not long ago a New York man who had passed as a multi-millionaire, and whose family lived in the most extravagant manner, died, and when his will was probated, it was found that his entire estate scarcely inventoried two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The fortunes of a great many people who are supposed to be enormously rich are bubbles just as empty as that of this man. There are people passing themselves off as millionaires who may be, in reality, worth less than nothing — hopelessly in debt. But, because they are believed to be wealthy, they have almost unlimited credit; everybody is anxious to sell to them; tradespeople do not like to ask them for money for fear of losing their patronage.
There are plenty of people, in all of our large cities, who do not allow themselves enough to eat, and practice all sorts of pinching economy at home, for the sake of keeping up appearances in society. What terrible inconvenience, hardship, and suffering we endure on account of other people’s eyes and opinions! What slaves, what fools we make of ourselves because of what other people think! How we scheme and contrive to make them think we are other than we really are!
It is other people’s eyes that are expensive. It is other people’s eyes that make us unhappy and discontented with our lot, that make us strain, and struggle, and slave, in order to keep up false appearances.
The suit, the hat must be discarded, not because they are badly worn, but because others will think it strange that we do not change them.
The effect of all this false living, this constant practice of deception in appearances, in our manner of living, our dress, is undermining the American character, ruining our genuineness, making us superficial, unreal, false.
No man can really respect himself, when he is conscious that he is sailing under false colors.
If you are wearing clothes and living in luxury which you cannot afford, these things label you all over with falsehood, and are perpetual witnesses against you. There is only one possible result upon the character of falsehood, whether acted or spoken, and that is perpetual deterioration. It does not matter whether you wear lies, tell lies, or act lies, the effect upon your character is precisely the same.
Trying to make people think that you are better off than you really are is a boomerang which strikes back with a fatal rebound. It is impossible for you very long to pretend, successfully, one thing and be another, for your reality is always asserting itself.
Do not deceive yourself into thinking that good clothes, or a palatial home, can made a man or a woman. All the wealth in the world could not raise manhood one degree in the scale of excellence.
It is spending upward, living upward, living in honesty, in simplicity; living the real life the life that is worthwhile, that will produce the finest character and give the greatest satisfaction.
Not long ago I was visited by a dear friend who has the courage to live the simple life, even in the midst of the pyrotechnical social life in New York. This man, who has not laid up a thousand dollars has a magnificent character, strong, vigorous, yet sweet, gentle, kind.
He envies no one; bows to no one; he has a superb independence; he walks like a conqueror. He has no anxiety about the future. He lives a full, complete life as he goes along. The moment one enters his atmosphere they are conscious that they are in the presence of a rich personality.
It does not require so much courage to live the life we can afford; to be genuine, true, indifferent to what our neighbors think or say. Even those who are wealthy will think more of us for this manly, this womanly independence.
Everyone owes it to themselves to live a real life, whether they are rich or poor; to be, and not to seem. They owe it to themselves at least to be genuine.
“Paint me as I am, warts and all, or I will not pay you for the picture.” exclaimed Oliver Cromwell to the painter who was smoothing his rude features in a portrait. This is the sort of rugged honesty that is sorely needed today.
5. Nature As A Joy-Builder
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
The woods were filled so full with song
There seemed no room for sense of wrong
—Wordsworth
Few young people who spend their summers in the country realize the splendid opportunities open to them for education as well as pleasure, at least to those of them who have learned to use their eyes.
“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world,” says Ruskin, “is to see something and tell what he saw in a plain way.”
Think how much it would add to life’s happiness to be able to see things as this great nature-lover saw them! To him beauty and harmony were everywhere, and all things were stamped with the autograph of the Almighty.
It is small wonder that an Agassiz, who would go into ecstasies over the structure of a leaf or a flower, over the scale of a fish or a grain of sand, was so rich in the cultivation of his observing faculties that he could not afford the time to lecture even for five hundred dollars a night. To study the wonders of Nature, to hear her music, and to interpret her language were riches enough for him.
“The more we see of beauty everywhere”, says James Freeman Clarke, — “in Nature, in life, in man and child, in work and rest, in the outward and in inward world, — the more we see of God.” If we love Nature and study her we cannot help seeing beauty everywhere; it will make us stronger and happier.
So much, indeed, of the real joy of life comes from keeping the soul,—all, one’s faculties and senses,—responsive to Nature, that it is nothing short of criminal to allow a child to grow up without learning to use their eyes and ears properly and to see and hear things as they are.
One of the first lessons that should be impressed on every child, whether they live in the city or in the country, is how to see things out of doors. If they learn this early in life, they will be not only a person of larger intelligence and culture, but also a happier and more successful one than they otherwise would.
At the cost of a few pennies the poorest boy or girl may be transported to the country, and there see beauties which might entrance an angel. Yet many persons travel across continents to see the works of the great masters, and give fortunes to possess themselves of a canvas or two, representing a landscape, such as a sunset, or some other bit of nature, while they remain dense and unappreciative in the picture gallery of the great Artist of the Universe.
Many of us have become so self-absorbed and have had our energies so long directed upon our material desires and problems,—our plans to amass money, to make business pay, to perfect some invention, to write a book, or to attain this or that ambition;—in short, all our faculties have been centered in ourselves so long that they cannot look outward except upon the things that concern our immediate interests. To learn to see things out of doors would be, to many of us, like learning a new occupation or profession in middle life.
How often do we see a weary or broken-down city man go to the country for rest and recuperation and return to his city home or office unrefreshed and unstimulated. He did not really see or enjoy any of the country’s wonder and beauty; he was not in sympathy with the voices of Nature, and could not hear them.
His soul had become so hardened and sordid in its absorption in wealth-getting that it no longer responded to her appeals. He had eyes, but saw not, and ears, but heard not; and so the real wealth and joy of life had passed him by. How different it would have been had he allied himself with Nature, so that he could have imbibed some at least of the spirit thus voiced by Emerson:
Who so inhabiteth the wood,
And chooseth light, wave, rock, and bird
Before the money-loving herd,
Into such forrester shall pass,
From his companions, power and grace
Pure shall he be without, within
From the old adhering sin;
He shall never be old,
Nor his fate shall be foretold
He shall watch the speeding year
Without wailing, without fear;
He shall be happy in his love,
Like to like shall joyful prove
Man uncovers his head and bows in reverence when he enters the sacred cathedrals of Europe, but how lifeless these cold stone piles are in comparison with the living, throbbing, creative processes which thrill us in the country! No matter how jaded or melancholy or discordant we may be when we go into God’s great cathedral—the country—our mood changes; we feel as though we were drinking in the nectar of the gods. Every breath is a tonic and every sight a rest for the weary mind.
There is a spirit in Nature which finds kin in us, to which we respond. The things which God’s thought expresses in flowers, in grasses, in plants, in trees, in meadows, in rivers, in mountains, in sunsets, in the song of birds, touches our very soul, puts us in tune with the Infinite, brings us into harmony with the great Spirit which pervades the universe. There is a magical restoring power in the Spirit which breathes through Nature, a healing balm for the wounded heart, a powerful refreshener for the jaded, weary soul.
Who has not felt the magic of that wonderful, refreshening, rejuvenating, recreating, process going on within them when walking about in the country? We can actually feel ourselves being made over, sense the renewing process going on within us when we are in the world of Nature.
Who has not gone into the country when the worries, frictions and discords of the strenuous life have well-nigh wrecked their nervous system and felt the magic, recuperative touch of the Nature Spirit? How insignificant the things which yesterday forced us well-nigh to distraction seem when we are drinking in Nature’s healing power at every pore!
After a day in God’s garden we feel as though we had taken a new lease of life, as though we had bathed in nectar and drunk the wine of life.
The man who comes back from a vacation spent amid the beauties of Nature is often a much better man than the one who went away. I have seen the most nervous, harassed businessmen so completely transformed by a few weeks in the country that they did not seem to be the same men that they had been before. They had an entirely different outlook on business, on life. The things that irritated and worried them before the vacation, they did not notice when they returned. They were new creatures, born again.
There is no doubt that this feeling of refreshment, this sense of rejuvenation, comes from the consciousness of the great creative Presence, the balm for all the hurts of the world. The swelling buds, the opening flowers, the throbbing life everywhere make us feel that we are standing in the very Holy of Holies, that we actually feel and witness the creative act.
Great minds have ever felt the peculiar healing power of Nature; the divine currents of life in the country have ever been a balm for their wounds, a panacea for all their ills.
6. Eight Hundred Sixty-Nine Kinds Of Liars
Mark Twain, in one of his stories, says of a character that whatever statement he chose to make was entitled to prompt and unquestioning acceptance as a lie. There are a great many kinds of liars and a great many ways of lying. Mrs. Opie once undertook to classify lies, as lies of vanity; lies of flattery; lies of convenience; lies of interest; lies of fear; lies of malignity; lies of malevolence, and lies of wantonness.
Mark Twain, in taking account of stock, counts eight hundred and sixty-nine varieties of lies. We all know the foolish liars who lie without motive from force of habit. We can understand a person’s lying when they have a strong motive for it, but to lie without any purpose whatever seems to the normal mind an unintelligible thing.
A very large class of liars are liars of carelessness, thoughtlessness; people who do not mean to lie, who are honest enough, but who are slipshod in their mental processes. Their observation is faulty; they do not see or hear things with exactitude; do not see or hear them as they are. This comes from not taking pains to get the exact facts about anything into their heads.
One of the most pernicious liars is the flatterer, the one who cannot bear to wound you on your weak point. Then there is the polite liar, who prevaricates and deceives in order to be courteous. They want you to think well of them and want to make you feel good. They would rather deceive you than tell you unwelcome truths. Vanity liars cannot bear to tell the truth when it reflects upon themselves or does not flatter their vanity. These liars may be believed in anything which does not reflect on themselves or put them in an unfavorable light.
The so-called benevolent liars often escape condemnation because their motives are good. A good-natured person, compelled to dismiss an employee, will sometimes give an undeserved recommendation, quite unconscious of the injury thus done a later employer.
Slander, the blackest of all the falsehood family, does not always require a lying tongue, there are a thousand ways of lying. A person may lie by their silence, by not telling the truth when it is their duty to speak. A person may lie by telling part of the truth. They may lie by their manner, by insinuations, by inference, by a shrug off the shoulders or a glance of the eye.
One of the most pitiable of all liars is the weak liar, who has not moral stamina enough to tell the truth when it is disagreeable. Liars of this brand do not want to argue or defend their position; they go along the line of least resistance, prevaricate and deceive, because there is not lime enough in the backbone to enable them to stand straight and look a person in the face and tell them unpleasant truths.
They would rather make them feel good at the time, and prefer that they find out the truth when they do not have to meet his or her gaze. I know people who mean to be absolutely honest who can never tell the exact truth when it requires a little moral courage, and cowards are always liars. They do not lie because they are bad, but because they are too weak to speak the truth.
It takes courage to tell the truth when you know that it may place you in an unfortunate light before the world, and that a little prevarication or a little innuendo may save you pain. It takes courage and character to tell the truth when to do so will be a temporary loss to you. It takes courage and manliness, womanliness, to tell the truth when it gives a decided advantage to a rival. It takes courage to stand up squarely, with an unflinching eye, to look the world in the face and tell the straight, unvarnished truth, regardless of consequences.
The reputation of being beyond price, of being unshaken by any selfish motive; the reputation of always, everywhere, under all circumstances telling the truth—not pretty nearly, but the exact truth—is worth a thousand times more to one than any temporary gain from deceit.
A very unfortunate phase of our modern journalism is the temptation to tamper with truth, to color, distort, misrepresent it, to make a great thing out of a little thing. The reputation of a newspaper is like that of an individual. The newspaper which constantly, knowingly deceives very soon gets the same kind of reputation as a consummate liar.
There are few newspapers in the world which refuse to color the truth, to tamper with facts in order to make a sensation, but these few are the solid pillars of journalism. They stand for infinitely more in their community than some other papers with a hundred times more circulation.
One of the most dangerous characters in the business world is the man who has no vigor of integrity, who is indifferently honest, who prefers to be on the side of the not tell quite the whole truth if his interests are jeopardized. He may not lie outright, but he may leave untold a truth which he should tell, and which a gentleman would tell; but in the end what such a man gains cannot be compared with what he loses.
He does not realize that although he may make a little more money, he is less of a man every time he misrepresents; that while he may be adding something to his pocket he is taking something away from his manhood.
How often, too, the crooked, lying man or institution finds that crooked methods do not pay, and that even as a working principle honesty is the best policy. Look at the history of business concerns in this country and see how very few of those which were doing a great business fifty years ago are even in existence today.
Many of them sprang up like mushrooms, made a good deal of noise in the business world, did lots of faking, deceptive advertising, and flourished for a while, attracting a great deal of attention, but they did not last long because there was no character back of them. They were not reliable, and, after successfully deceiving their customers for a time, they were found out. Then they began to shrink and shrivel, and ultimately went to the wall.
Still, a great many people believe in the expediency of the lie as a policy. They believe that it pays to deceive. Many business houses which are regarded as pretty honest cover up defects in goods and write misleading advertisements. There are many people who think that deception in business is just about as necessary as money capital. They believe that it is very difficult, practically impossible, for any person to succeed in a large way and always tell the exact truth about everything.
Not long ago a superintendent in a large dry-goods house said that he had been busy all the previous day cutting up whole bales of cloth for remnants. He said that people would willingly pay more for these ‘remnants’ when advertised as such, because of the deceptive suggestion that they were cheap, than they would to buy the material by the yard.
Now, how long will the public continue to patronize such a house after once discovering this deception? The same principle is true of the bargain sales. Merchants often sell inferior goods at more than their regular price during these sales, because they know the power of suggestion in advertising to deceive.
There is a great deal of the Indian in all of us. We do not forget favors, kindnesses, or injuries. On the ground of the weakness of all human nature, we may often forgive things which still sting, but when we have once been deceived by a business house, a traveling salesman, a solicitor, or a clerk, we do not forget it, and that house or clerk loses our confidence forever.
Most young men overestimate the value of mere shrewdness, cunning, long-headedness, smartness, keenness. They seem to think that if they are going to get ahead rapidly they must not be too scrupulous about the exact truth; that a little deception, a little cunning will help them along faster; that if they veer this way and that from the truth—just enough to avoid disagreeable experience— to make themselves popular, to make everybody feel good, they will be alright.
There could not be a greater mistake, for if there is anything weak and doomed to failure by the very laws of the universe, it is misrepresentation. It never yet has won in the long run, and real success is as impossible by it as is the reversal of the law of gravitation.
Misrepresentation in any form is the shortest sighted policy in the world. No man ever built up a permanent position or institution upon it, or ever will, for the man who gets a temporary advantage by misrepresentation makes everybody who finds it out his enemy ever after. It is human nature never fully to trust a person again who has once deceived us.
Is there any power in cunning, in shrewd, long-headed, deceptive methods that can for a moment compare with the truth, with absolute integrity?
There is no advertisement in the world, in the long run, that can compare with that which comes from the reputation of always and everywhere telling the exact truth, of being absolutely reliable. This reputation alone has made the names of some of the great business houses in this country worth millions of dollars.
Every time a person deceives they know that they have to cover their tracks. They are always on thorns for fear of discovery, for everything in their own nature is trying to betray them; but when they tell the truth, because they are built on the truth plan, they have all the universe sustaining, supporting, backing them. What a difference there is between the power of a person who is telling the truth and is conscious that he or she is backed by the eternal principle of right and justice, and the one who is lying and is conscious of it!
One can look the world in the face without wincing, because he or she feels that they are backed by eternal principle; there is victory in their eye, assurance in their very bearing, while there is something within the other person which says, “I am a liar; I am not a real person. I know I am not a real person, but a sneak, a make-believe.”
The moment we attempt to express that which is not true, we are crippled, for we are doing an unnatural thing and are not reinforced by the consent of all our faculties. The best thing in us, the divine thing, protests against the false.
No person can be really strong when in the wrong. Everything within rebukes them; everything tells them of their cowardice. Truth is man’s normal state, deception is a cultivated, abnormal thing. There is no substitute for the right. Cunning cannot take its place, nor can education. A person may have great ability and a college education, but if they do not ring true, if there is any evidence of counterfeit about them they never get our confidence, our order, our business, or our patronage.
There is always a question mark in our minds when we have dealings with a person who is not perfectly honest. We are not sure of them. On the other hand, a person may lack education, culture, even refinement; but if he or she has an honest heart, if they ring true every time, we believe in them; we trust them.
No individual can look honest and long give the impression of honesty when they are a habitual scoundrel. It is only a question of time when something will happen to tear off their mask and reveal the real person.
Just look at the person who has practiced deceit and lying all their life. There is not a line of truth in their face. Their very expression is false. They radiate dishonesty from every pore. They may attempt to deceive with their smooth, honeyed diplomacy, but we instinctively feel that they are a liar in every part of their being.
It does not matter how he or she tries to cover up their rottenness by appearances of respectability, their clothes, their money; they cannot long continue to cheat the heart. What they say about themselves contradicts what we feel.
A perfectly truthful person regards honor first; their interest comes later. Truth is everything to them. Justice must be done, no matter if it goes against their own interests.
Man is constructed along the lines of truth, and he cannot violate his nature without showing it by the loss of the best thing in him. The liar’s deception destroys his self-respect, and with it goes his confidence; and what can a man accomplish who cannot respect himself or believe in himself?
Why is it that a single man without wealth or position has so often exerted marvelous power in the world? Simply because he was supported by principle; because one man with the right is always a majority and can stand against the world, for principle is invincible. One man in the right has often been more than a match for tens of thousands in the wrong.
This was what made Lincoln such a giant; he always stood for truth and justice. He believed what he said, and he knew that the very structure of the universe was backing him.
He would never take a case unless he believed that his side was in the right. He knew that the advocate on the other side would always be placed at a disadvantage by trying to make others believe what they did not believe themselves; that they would be weak at best, no matter how great an orator they might be. Lincoln knew there was something backing him that was greater than oratory, mightier than words, and which multiplied his natural ability thousandfold.
Right speaks with the force of law. The world listens when truth speaks through a man like Lincoln, who was entrenched in principle backed by the right. Not all of the mighty force which made him a giant among his fellows was generated in his own grain. There was a power back of him loaned from justice, from right, which made him invincible; a power which all men forfeit the moment they forsake truth, principle.
When a man feels that he is buttressed by the right, entrenched in truth, he does not feel weak, although the whole world may be against him. He feels the everlasting arms about him, because he knows that nothing can stand against principle; nothing can be so mighty as the right.
One of the mysteries of the ages has been the marvel of men going to the stake smiling, without a tremor; standing calm and serene while the flames were licking the flesh from their bones. They were supported by a power back of the flesh, but not of it; by the conviction that they were in the right.
They did not feel alone or weak, for they were entrenched in eternal principle. They believed that they were protected by the Almighty, and nothing could shake their confidence or disturb their faith. Their exalted mental condition lifted them even above the pain of physical torture.
The person who goes through the world sailing under false colors, trying to make black appear white, will always have a hard time of it. Nobody will long believe them, no matter how smooth their tongue, how long-headed or cunning they may be. Things are so planned that if an individual is ever to get very far or to accomplish very much in this world they must be honest, for the whole structure of natural law is pledged to defeat the lie, the sham. Only the right, ultimately, can succeed.
What would you think of a man who tries to defeat the laws of mathematics? He is a bigger fool who tries to get ahead of right, tries to defeat justice by lying and deceit. No man ever yet got around God, good, justice, right. It is true a man may get something in the wrong, — so may a thief. But the wrong always defeats itself because it has no principle in it. A man in the wrong is out of place for the same reason that discord is out of place in the presence of harmony.
Not long ago nine students were suspended at Brown University for cribbing in their examinations. A great many well-intentioned students lie by cribbing in all sorts of ways in their recitations and examinations. They put formulae and figures and suggestions and all sorts of helps upon their cuffs and shirt bosoms, finger nails and paper rolls, to help them during their recitations or examinations, thus laying foundations for future forms of deceit and dishonesty on a large scale, which may ultimately ruin them.
Many prosperous businessmen who are very conscientious about telling verbal lies are consummate liars in the deceits they work into their manufactures, their commodities. I know a man who is always talking to his sons about telling the truth, yet he has for nearly half a century been selling lies in his store, boxes of lies, barrels of lies, lies in ‘foreign’ silks made in New Jersey, and all sorts of ‘imported’ articles.
American liars in high places have recently had the flashlight of public scrutiny turned upon them. Men who not long ago stood high in the American regard are worse than nobodies today, for they are despised by their fellow men.
Does it pay to sell one’s birthright for a little mess of pottage? Veracity to a man should be as priceless as virtue to a woman. When he has lost truthfulness and the reputation for it, he is a burned-out man, a mere shell, like one of our great skyscrapers gutted by fire. Does it pay to take chances with one’s reputation? Nothing can compensate the lily for a smirch upon its whiteness; nothing can compensate the rose for the loss of its perfume and beauty.
What is a man good for when the best thing in him is rotten, when all that makes him a man, all that marks him from the brute, is decayed? We might as well call a composition full of discordant notes, played on an instrument jangled out of tune, by the name of music, as to call him, who has violated the fundamental principles of his God-given nature, a man. Just in proportion as a man departs from the law on which he was made—truth—he approaches the brute and should be so classified by all decent people.
Is there a sadder sight in America today than that of so many young men gambling with their reputations, taking chances with their good names, for the sake of a few more dollars or a little notoriety, with as little thought as they would bet on a racehorse? What use is a fortune so gained that wherever the owner goes they will be pointed out as a man who has ‘sold out’—sold out his honor, his good name, his friends—everything that a manly man holds dear?
7. The Quarreling Habit
The habit of haggling, arguing, and quarreling over trifles, or splitting hairs, especially when people are tired, destroys health and character. I have known large families, after a hard day’s work, to spend a whole evening quarreling over some trivial matter which did not amount to anything.
Fagged and jaded after the day’s work, the mental irritation and discord set in motion in the tired brain completely exhausted them, and of course, their sleep was troubled and they rose the next morning haggard and worn, with no freshness or spontaneity for the new day’s work. They felt as though they had been out on a debauch.
When shall we learn that harmony is the only condition under which strength of body and beauty of life can be developed? One’s best work cannot be done under friction, nor in a black, heavy, thunder cloud atmosphere. There must be sunshine and good cheer and a happy environment to bring the best out of us. The faculties do not work normally when there is even a little bit of discord.
Perfect harmony gives strength of purpose, concentration of mind, and effectiveness of execution. There must be liberty—no sense of suffocation or restraint or repression—in an atmosphere which develops the best in an individual.
Many an invalid today owes his or her wretchedness and practical failure in life to quarreling, fault finding, and the bickering habit. Irritation, friction, or discord of any description, is a great enemy of strength, health, and happiness, while absolute harmony of character and environment is friendly to all worthy achievement.
In thousands of homes we see gnarled, crippled, starved, stingy lives, which have never developed into their greatest possibilities; lives which have never blossomed out or come to fruitage because of being in a vicious atmosphere, an atmosphere full of discord, criticism, scolding, and constant repression. No one can do good work when feeling a sense of suffocation or strangulation.
How many boys have been driven away from home or into bad company by nagging! How many girls have gone astray or rushed into unfortunate marriages because they were so nagged or criticized at home that any other place on earth seemed preferable! It was always, “Don’t do this,” or “Why don’t you do that?” until the high-spirited boy got so tired of “don’ts” that he preferred the saloon, the grocery store, or the street corner to home, and the sensitive girl was so goaded by the constant picking of a nagging tongue that at last her whole soul rose in rebellion, and she sought relief elsewhere.
Young people resent being lectured or corrected all the time. Nor do they thrive under constant repression. All healthy young souls crave encouragement and praise. They will do anything for a father, mother, or teacher who gives them wise words of appreciation and encouragement, or who urges them to do their best by other means than fault-finding.
Parents who indulge in the nagging habit often excuse themselves by saying that it is their love for the child that prompts their eternal strictures and criticisms, and that their “don’ts” are really for the loved one’s best interests. Love which displays itself in such a fashion is apt to remind one of the couplet, -“Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me downstairs?”
Nagging may be loving in disguise, but in a disguise so unlovely that most people will agree with the writer who said, “There is not a bit of love in the nag, however much the nagger may talk about affection. It is full of unrest and friction and selfishness.”
A fault-finding, criticizing habit is fatal to all excellence. Nothing will strangle growth quicker than a tendency to hunt for flaws, to rejoice in the unlovely, like a hog which always has his nose in the mud and rarely looks up. The direction in which we look indicates the life aim, and people who are always looking for something to criticize, for the crooked and the ugly, who are always suspicious, who invariably look at the worst side of others, are but giving the world a picture of themselves.
This disposition to see the worst instead of the best grows on one very rapidly, until it ultimately strangles all that is beautiful and crushes out all that is good in oneself. No matter how many times your confidence has been betrayed, do not allow yourself to sour, do not lose your faith in people. The bad are the exceptions; most people are honest and true, and mean to do what is right.
There are businessmen who get into the habit of finding fault with everything and growling at everybody that it becomes second nature with them. If they happen to see anything out of place, or if something is not done just as they wish it done, instead of quietly calling attention to it, they yield to the first hasty impulse to scold and growl and find fault, until they make everybody about them uneasy.
As far as remedying the defects of which its complaints are concerned, this constant growling is a complete failure, for every employee soon finds out that it is a habit, and after a while pays no attention to it, and is in no way affected by it, except that it embarrasses them when criticized or scolded before others. In the end it really tends to make them more careless and indifferent.
The effect of the growling habit on those who indulge in it is much more disastrous. It has ruined many a naturally good disposition and soured the whole life. It is a fatal leak in one’s mental reservoir by which a great deal of vitality is drained off. It never did and never will accomplish anything but harm.
It is as impossible for growling or scolding or perpetual fault-finding to do good as it is for harmony to come from discord. It does nothing but create discord, and no good can come from discord of any kind any more than it can come from hatred, revenge, or jealousy.
A growler does little else in the world except to fling dark shadows into someone’s sky, to cut off their sunlight, to thrust ugliness before their eyes, to mar their harmony, and to destroy their own peace of mind. He or she does not believe in saying kind things, or in praising or encouraging anyone. He or she thinks that when things go wrong the only way to set them right is to scold and criticize and find fault. It is as foolish to expect to set wrong right in this way as it would be for a fireman to expect to put out a fire by pumping kerosene oil upon it through his hose.
Most of the cruelty of the world is thoughtless cruelty. Very few people would intentionally add to another’s load or make their burden in life heavier or their path rougher. Most of the great heart-wounds are inflicted by thoughtless thrusts, flung out often in a moment of anger, when, perhaps, we were too proud to apologize or to try to heal the grievous wounds we had made.
Can anything be more cruel than to discourage a soul who is struggling to do the best they can, to throw stumbling-blocks in the path of one who is trying to get on in the world against great odds?
No life is just the same after you have once touched it; will you leave a ray of hope or one of despair, a flash of light or a somber cloud across some dark life each day? Will you by thoughtless cruelty deepen the shadow which hangs over the life, or will you by kindness dispel it altogether? No matter how you feel or what is disturbing your peace of mind, never allow yourself to send out a discouraging, a cruel, or an unkind word or thought.
The gloom caster, the shadow thrower, the faultfinder, the sarcastic person, the person who is always giving you a thrust somewhere, does a vast amount of harm in a community. People who throw gloomy shadows wherever they go, who depress everybody, who are always looking on the dark side of everything, who see little good or beauty in life, are bad neighbors, and, as a rule, are unsuccessful, unpopular, and little mourned when they die.
It is the inspirer, the person who cheers and gives you hope and encouragement, the sunshine bearer, the person who always has a kind word for you, who is ever ready to give you their hand and their help, that is loved during life and missed after death.
8. The Right To Be Disagreeable
If business men and women were to throw off self-control in their offices and places of business as many of them do in their homes, and say the same mean, contemptible, unguarded things to their customers that they say to the members of their own families, their business would soon go to pieces.
No good business person would risk their reputation, or the welfare of their business in such a way. They know better than that. They know that it would be fatal. When they are away from home they think too much of their reputation to risk it for the sake of gratifying their spleen, and they are always on their guard, for their pride is touched.
They think too much of themselves. Their egotism, or vanity, prevents them from making a fool of themselves, and so they practice self-restraint wherever their reputation is at stake; but at home they do not care. They know that their wife or husband and children will try to protect them, and they do not hesitate to show the brute in them.
There are thousands of men who are polite, tactful, and diplomatic toward their customers and in everything which bears upon their business, who seem to lock their good manners up in their offices at night; men who are known as Dr. Jekylls in all their business or professional relations; but who assume the character of Mr. Hyde as soon as they enter their own homes, where they feel at liberty to ride roughshod over everybody’s feelings.
They do not seem to think that the wife, or any other member of the family, gets tired, has nerves, or troubles of any kind. They exercise self-restraint all day, but the moment they get home they seem to vent their bad humor on everybody even on the dog or the cat.
Is it not a strange thing that so many people think that home is not a place for the exercise of self-control, but take it for granted that there they can abuse everybody without restraint?
Why should a man who is polite and politic in business and in his club, who can control himself elsewhere, use his home as a kicking post, a place to get rid of his bad blood, — a place which of all others, ought to be the most sacred, most peaceful, and the sweetest place in the world to him?
Many a thoughtless parent in the morning leaves a depressing influence upon some member of the family, the shadow of which hangs over the life all day. It does not matter that it is a thoughtless, heedless word flung out in impatience, its thrust is just as painful. Tongue thrusts are infinitely more painful than blows from the hand.
On his return, there is company at home, he is just as suave and tactful as in his place of business. He defers to his wife’s judgment, and is very kind to the servants and children, because his reputation is at stake. He cannot afford to take chances with that. Outside people might spread his hoggish qualities, gossip about his meanness, and injure or humiliate him, while the members of his household would feel under a certain obligation to take everything in silence, to protect his name.
As soon as the guests go, however, this type of man grunts and growls, snarls and nags and finds fault, until he works everyone within sound of his voice into a state of nervous irritability. Then he finds fault with them for not being more amiable.
The head of the house is not always the only offender in this respect. Wives and children often seem to think that the home is the place where they can indulge in fits of hot temper and say all manner of mean, disagreeable, and despicable things. They think that they have a right to spend a whole evening, or perhaps several days, pouting over some fancied injury or over some trifle.
I have been in homes where a domestic storm was raging furiously, but the moment the doorbell rang and a caller came the storm subsided instantly and there was a complete revolution in the manner and the conversation of the inmates.
It is strange that so many people act as if the members of their immediate family have no special rights which they are bound to respect. They cannot imagine why they should not converse or whistle, scold, find fault or make any kind of a noise, just because somebody else wants to read or think. Self-restraint is a rare virtue in many homes.
There are many households where all the laws of courtesy, and even of ordinary decency, are set at defiance; where the boys go downstairs in the morning and about the house half-dressed, without the slightest feeling of delicacy. The girls are often just as careless as their brothers. They go around the house in all sorts of costumes, soiled and untidy, and often to the table, especially in the morning, in a disgraceful condition. They think it is alright because only their brothers and parents are present.
In many homes the father and boys think nothing of sitting around the house in their shirt-sleeves, or of going to the table in the same manner, and often they indulge in profanity and use language they would be greatly ashamed of if anybody outside of their home should happened to hear. All safeguards, all self-respect and consideration for others are thrown down in many homes and everybody is thought to be at liberty to be just as slovenly, cross, crabbed, and disagreeable as they please.
There is no one thing more fatal to that dignity of bearing, that refinement, that personal grace which commands respect, than this habit of dropping all standards of ordinary good behavior and conduct in the home. It fosters a vulgarity which is very demoralizing to all the laws of character-building and right living. This easy-going, slipshod manner of living, as practiced in many homes, tends to the loss of self-respect and respect for one another.
How can you expect the respect of the members of your family, or of those who work for you, when you do not show any sort of respect or deference or kindness, or consideration for them, and when you act as though anything at all was good enough for them?
It often occurs that a man marries a beautiful, bright, cheerful girl who is always bubbling over with animal spirits, and in a short time everybody notices a complete change in her character, brought about by the perpetual suppression of her husband, who is severe in his criticisms and unreasonable in his demands.
The wife is surrounded with this atmosphere of sharp criticism or severity until she entirely loses her naturalness and spontaneity, and self-expression becomes impossible. The result is an artificial, flavorless character.
It is easy to say that a wife or employee should stand up for her rights, that she should resent harsh criticisms and perpetual nagging, fault-finding, and severity of judgment; but natural timidity, modesty, weakness of disposition, or dread of discord often makes this impossible. Then, the better-bred person is always placed at a disadvantage.
The coarse brute has the advantage. The finer the character, the more sensitive the nature. The sense of propriety which comes from high breeding and nobility of nature places the victim at a great disadvantage. There may be a sense of disgust, and a feeling of resentment, but these finer natures often cease after a while to resist or protest, and meekly submit to the injustice, however brutal, until the power to resist and stand up for one’s rights is almost obliterated.
One cannot be a lady or a gentleman some of the time and a bear the rest of the time without making unguarded slips. What we do habitually we tend to do all the time. Company manners are very dangerous things. Those who practice them are always betraying themselves.
They are like good clothes that are worn only occasionally, — the wearer never becomes sufficiently used to the seldom-worn garments to feel easy and comfortable in them, and is all the time betraying the fact. Like clothes, which must be worn often enough for the wearer to become unconscious of them, good manners must become so habitual that we shall practice them spontaneously and unconsciously
Many a man who is very deferential to society women treats the girls or poor women who happen to be dependent upon him for a living very shabbily. In society always on the alert to show the slightest service to the ladies, he is absolutely indifferent to the comfort and feelings of a stenographer or other woman in his employ.
Those who are bound to him by the necessity of earning their living, do not call out his nobler sentiments. He regards them as just help, nothing more, They may be infinitely finer-grained than himself, but he rides roughshod over their sensitive feelings, domineering, criticizing, mercilessly scolding, even using profane language.
Such a man would be terribly shocked if those to whom he is so deferential in society knew how he treated the women in his employ. They would not believe it possible—if they could be in his office, store, or factory for a day—that the man who displays these coarse brute qualities could ever be the polished gentleman they met the evening before.
Think of a woman, perhaps with a gentle, delicate training, a woman of culture and rare refinement, and who has seen better days, but whose changed circumstances compel her to earn a living for her little ones, enduring the ill-humor, submitting to the insulting remarks, the coarse and cruel treatment of such a man! How little he realizes that his own sister or his own wife may possibly be placed in a similar situation!
There is nothing more contemptible than taking advantage of a woman in one’s employ simply because she cannot help herself. To treat her like a dog or a nobody, simply because one happens to have a little more money than she, or because one happens to be a little more fortunate, is dastardly and contemptible.
People ought to be rated by their quality. Many a refined, cultured, sweet, beautiful girl, for a few dollars a week, works for a coarse, cruel man who pays not the slightest heed to her sensitive feelings, never hesitates to wound her, to say disagreeable and most contemptible things to her, and often uses the most abusive, profane language.
A girl who thinks of marrying a man who employs girls or women should find out how he treats them; what his bearing is, whether that of a gentleman or of a brute. If he is not kind and considerate to those who are defenseless, he certainly will make a brute of a husband. Just as truly as night brings out the stars, so, in the intimacy of married life, the wear and tear of business, the irritability, the vexations, the disappointments in business or professional life, bring out the real man.
He cannot long cover up his horns and hoofs if he possesses them. Before the young woman decides upon a husband, she should try to know the man as his employees, as those who are brought into close daily contact with him, know him. That is the way to choose a husband.
What right have you to abuse an employee, just because your dinner did not happen to agree with you, or because you dissipated the night before and feel cross and crabbed? Why should you humiliate, insult, or make innocent people suffer for your shortcomings?
You should remember that others have rights just as inalienable and just and sacred as yours, and you have no more right to lash an employee with your tongue, or to abuse them just because you happen to be in an unfortunate mood, than you have to strike them. The mere accident of your being an employer and they an employee does not give you any license to abuse or insult them.
They have just as much right on this earth as you and more, if they behave better. Many an employer who struts around in fine clothes and makes a great noise in the world, and who abuses their employees, is infinitely inferior to many of those who work for them.
9. The Good-Will Habit
The story is told of a great king who had one little son whom he worshiped. The boy had everything he desired, all that wealth and love could give; no wish was ungratified, but he was not happy. His face was always disfigured by a scowl of discontent. One day a great magician came to the palace of the king, and told him that he could make his son happy and turn his scowls into smiles.
“If you can do this,” said the king, “I will give you whatever you ask.” The magician took the boy in to a private chamber and wrote something with a white substance on a piece of paper. He gave the paper to the boy and told him to go into a darkened room and hold a lighted candle under it and see what would happen.
Then the magician went away. The young prince did as he was instructed, and the white letters, illuminated by the light from beneath, turned into a beautiful blue, and formed the words: “Do a kindness to someone every day.” The prince followed the magician’s advice and soon became the happiest boy in his father’s kingdom.
No life is really happy until it is helpful, is really successful until it is radiant with joy and gladness, the gladness of good cheer, of goodwill toward everybody, of the spirit of brotherhood toward all men. Only by giving ourselves can we hold what we have, can we grow.
Like that wonderful substance radium, which flings off millions of particles of itself every second, yet never seems to lose anything or to grow smaller, no matter how much we give of ourselves, how much we fling off helpfulness, off good cheer and encouragement, there is not only no diminution of our supply, but on the contrary, the more we give, the more we have; the more we fling out of life, the more helpfulness, inspiration, encouragement, and hope come back to us.
Yet there is a strange weakness of human nature which blinds many of us to the good in others and which delights in making us say unkind things about them, hurting them instead of helping them.
We have all met the habitual belittler, who never sees any good in anything which does not immediately concern them, advance their interests; the person who is always flinging out sarcasms, sticking a knife into other people’s backs, making light of others’ motives, finding faults and defects in their characters, and implying that they are not what they ought to be or pretend to be.
It is positively painful to the small soul to hear a competitor complimented or spoken well of. He always tries to minimize the virtue and quality of the praise of another by a malicious if or but, or endeavors in some way to throw doubt upon the character of the person praised.
The habit of belittling is a confession of weakness, of inferiority, of a small, jealous, envious nature; a confession that one’s life is not well poised, well balanced. The large, magnanimous soul has no room for jealousy, for the belittling spirit. It magnifies the good and minimizes the bad.
A spirit of generosity and kindness is an indication of greatness of soul. Jealousy, envy, a disposition to keep from others the credit which belongs to them, are marks of a small nature, a pinched mentality. A kindly spirit always accompanies largeness of nature, breadth of character. The individual who belittles a competitor, who maintains a mean silence when he or she should praise, only exhibits to the world their own narrowness and stinginess of soul. A person with a really large nature is generous and charitable even to their worst enemy.
The belittler does not realize that in disparaging others, in discounting the achievements of competitors, he or she is posing the limitations of their own soul, the smallness of their nature, and not only that, but is all the time making the person they are talking to think less of them. We little imagine that when we draw a picture of others we draw one of ourselves. A small, mean soul sees only small, mean things in another. A really great nature sees only the good qualities of others.
Unfortunately, men and women of great ability who have been distinguished for brilliant intellectual gifts, often unusual courage and tenacity of purpose, people who have really done big things, have frequently been insanely jealous and envious of others, especially those in the same profession or business as themselves.
Many singers and actors, and, I am sorry to say, some clergymen, suffer from professional jealousy. They are pained by hearing others in their profession praised. This jealousy is perhaps more characteristic of professional people generally than of business people.
I know a clergyman who would be very popular and successful if he were only large enough to see the good in his brother clergymen, but he is not. He is always emphasizing their faults and weaknesses, especially those of men who are gaining in popularity. If anyone praises another clergyman, “Yes,” he will say, “he is a pretty good man, but he is not always absolutely accurate, reliable, in his statements;” or, “He is very free in his use of other preachers’ sermons; he is a great borrower of ideas;” or he will make some other nasty, belittling remark.
One reason why we get such stingy results from our life-work is because we are not more generous givers of ourselves, our sympathy and encouragement. We must give more in order to get more. He who is stingy of his sympathy, of his helpfulness, of his praise and appreciation, pinches, starves, and strangles his own nature.
It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest. Many people are so stingy of their sympathies, their praise and appreciation, are so afraid of giving away something, they are so shut in—the shutters of their lives so tightly closed—that their natures are stunted and starved for the lack of sunshine and air.
It is astonishing how rapidly a person will develop when he or she opens up their nature and flings out their life with all their might in the service of others. There is nothing which will do so much for the life as the early forming of the goodwill habit, the kindly habit, the habit of saying pleasant things about others.
A philosopher once asked his pupils, “What is the most desirable thing in the world?” After many answers had been given, one finally said, “A good heart.” “True”, said the philosopher, “thou has comprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hath a good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, and will easily see what is fit to be done by him.”
A good heart, a kindly disposition, a frank, cordial, open, generous nature are riches beside which the fortune of a multi-millionaire shrinks into insignificance. The person who has these, though they have not a cent to give away, may do as much good as any multi-millionaire, be they ever so generous with their money.
“My office is in the Exchange; come in and see me”, said Jesse Goodrich to John B. Gough, the great temperance lecturer, the morning after the latter had signed the pledge. “I shall be happy to make your acquaintance,” he added, cordially, “I thought I would just call in and tell you to keep up a brave heart. Good-bye; God bless you; don’t forget to call.”
“It would be impossible to describe how this little act of kindness cheered me,” Gough used to say. “Yes, now I can fight” I said to myself; and I did fight, six days and nights, encouraged and helped by a few words of sympathy. And, so encouraged, I fought on, with not one hour of healthful sleep, not one particle of food passing my lips for six days and nights.”
A few words of kindly sympathy, of loving encouragement, helped him to recover his manhood and become a great power for good in the world.
The habit of saying kind things to others and about them, of always looking for the good in them, savors of Heaven.
We cannot help admiring and loving those who hold such a mental attitude toward us. Whole communities are often lighted up and cheered by one of these happiness radiators. Oh, what riches live in a sweet, sunny soul; what a blessed heritage is a sunny face, a sweet disposition; what joy to be able to fling out sunshine wherever one goes to scatter shadows and lighten sorrow-laden hearts!
The trouble with us is that we misunderstand, misjudge one another. We judge people too much by their mean traits, their mistakes, their short-comings, their peculiarities. How quickly the millennium would come if we could only realize the truth that there is a God in the meanest of men, a philanthropist in the stingiest miser, a hero in the biggest coward, which an emergency great enough would call out.
During an epidemic of yellow fever at Memphis it was almost impossible to get enough nurses to attend the stricken. One day a man with coarse features, closely cropped hair, and shuffling gait, went to one of the attending physicians, and said, “I want to nurse.” The doctor, looking him over critically, said, curtly, “You are not needed.” “But I wish to nurse,” persisted the man. “Try me for a week. If you don’t like me then, dismiss me; if you do, pay me my wages.” “Very well,” said the doctor, “I’ll take you,” adding, mentally, “I’ll keep my eye on you.”
The uncouth volunteer became one of the most valuable nurses on the staff. He was tireless and self-denying. Wherever the pestilence raged most fiercely he was, also, and worked the hardest. The sufferers adored him. To them his rough face was as the face of an angel. Not only did he nurse them with the care and devotion that a mother gives to her children, but it was found afterward he also put every cent of his earnings into a relief box for the benefit of the plaque-stricken.
When, “John the nurse,” the name he was known by, later sickened and died of the fever, those who prepared him for burial found on his body a vivid mark — the brand of a convicted felon!
Many of us are so blinded by the blighting greed of gain, by the marbleizing usages and cold laws of trade which encrust our hearts with selfishness, that we do not see the good in people. When we learn to look for the good in them instead of the bad, we shall bring out the good instead of the bad, for our estimate of others helps to form their estimate of themselves; and no one can bring out the best when they believe and see only the worst in a person. If we held charitable, helpful views of one another our attitude would revolutionize civilization.
A Cleveland paper tells of a tramp who came to the back door of a residence and begged for shoes. The mistress of the house gave him a good pair, and said to him, “There, put these on, and if you want to show your gratitude, just happen around here some morning after a snow-storm and clean off our sidewalk.”
Sometime after, the lady was awakened early one morning by someone scraping the sidewalk in front of the house. Looking out she found that there had been quite a heavy fall of snow, and there she beheld the tramp to whom she had given the shoes, clearing away the snow from the sidewalk with an old broken shovel. When he caught sight of his benefactress at the window, he raised his tattered hat to her, and, his self-imposed task finished, went away without saying a word or even asking for anything to eat. Three times, the same thing happened during the winter, but the man never asked for compensation or food.
A New York woman once invited a ragged, dirty beggar into her house, and after he had a comfortable meal and some clean clothing, she sent him away with words of encouragement; telling him that he was made for something better than tramping; that it was a shame for a man of his apparent intelligence and good health to be getting a living in such a disgraceful away.
A year afterward, when she had forgotten all about the tramp she had befriended, this lady became embarrassed financially and was in sore need of money. She asked a friend if he knew where she could borrow five hundred dollars, but he could not accommodate her, nor did he know of anyone who could. Next day, to her great astonishment, a man, a total stranger, as she thought, called at her house and told her that he had heard she was pressed for money, and that he had come to lend her the amount she needed.
With growing surprise she asked how it was that a complete stranger, whom she had never seen, was willing to trust her. The man then explained that he was the tramp whom, a year before, she had taken to her home and treated like a brother, that her kindness on that occasion had been the turning point in his career, had made a man of him again; that he had prospered beyond his deserts, and that ever since then he had been wishing for an opportunity to show his appreciation of what she had done for him.
“No man has come to true greatness,” says Phillips Brooks, “who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him, He gives him for mankind.”
Yet one would think by the way in which many of us push, drive, elbow and trample one another in our mad rush for the dollar, that there were no ties of humanity binding us together, that we were natural enemies instead of brothers.
A kind hearted man noticed a stranger that looked dejected, and thought he might be in need. To his offer of assistance, however, the foreigner replied that he didn’t need money, but that he was lonely, and “just hungry for a handshake.”
We all like the person who flings the door of their heart wide open and bids us welcome with a warm grasp of the hand and a cordial good fellowship; who sees a brother or sister in every person they meet, instead of a rival, a competitor, or a possible enemy.
The whole-souled, large hearted, open-minded, kindly-disposed person has an infinite advantage over the narrow, pinched, clam-like nature that repels instead of attracting. Cultivate an open nature. Do not be afraid to speak to strangers, to let yourself out, to give your best to everybody you meet. Do not draw within yourself and shut up like a clam whenever you approach anyone to whom you have not been introduced.
The cultivation of a helpful spirit of cordiality, of large-mindedness, a broad generous way of looking at things, is of inestimable advantage not only to growth of character, but also to progress in the world. So much of one’s success depends on the personal equation, so much upon the possession of attractive qualities, upon the personality, that the importance of those things cannot be overestimated.
There is nothing else, for instance, which creates a good first impression so quickly, and calls out such a feeling of goodwill, as a frank, cordial manner — a manner that is perfectly transparent, that conceals no guile, covets no malice; while there is nothing else that will freeze a person so quickly as an icy, formal suspicious manner.
I have sat down at table in a hotel or restaurant with a cold, repellent personality, when it has been positively depressing to sit there, even without speaking to the person; for their whole manner forbade one to look at them. On the other hand, I have sat at table with foreigners who could not speak a word of our language, and yet their cordial, gracious salute as I sat down warmed me for the rest of the day. Their manner spoke a language all nationalities understood. It was the language of brotherhood, of goodwill.
While traveling through New Mexico and Arizona, sometime ago, in hot weather, there was a young Southerner on the train who seemed to get acquainted with his fellow travelers without effort, and who made the hot, dry, dusty and otherwise dreary trip a real pleasure because of his sunshine. His face was so radiant and he was so full of animal spirits and simple, kindly good nature that it did one good to look at him. He seemed eager to give himself out, to help everyone, and to tell he knew about the country through which we were passing.
That young man’s cheerfulness and cordial manner will win him a welcome wherever he goes.
In some sections of the country, especially where the climate is severe, the soil poor, and the conditions hard, the people seem to partake of the nature of their environment. They act as if they were afraid that they might cast their pearls before swine. They are not quite sure that they want to make friends with the people they meet; there is a cold reserve, a hesitancy in giving the hand, in opening the heart.
They feel that they must take every step with the greatest caution; that they must investigate one’s character, one’s standing, before they dare give themselves out without reserve; that they must not be too generous with their cordiality, or it may cost them dear later.
Contrast this stinginess of generosity, this lack of brotherly feeling, with the cordial, whole-hearted manner of those from more genial, hospitable environments. A typical Southerner or Westerner will grasp your hand upon first introduction as warmly as though he had known you for years. He gives you his heart, his confidence, with his hand.
There is no stingy, suspicious reserve, no narrow critical scrutiny of your person lest he made a mistake, or say something, make some friendly advance which he will regret later. He just gives himself to you generously, magnanimously, gives you his best wishes, and makes you feel at home, as if you had met a brother.
Some people have a faculty for touching the wrong keys; from the finest instrument they extract only discord. All their songs are in a minor key. They sound the note of pessimism everywhere. The shadows predominate in all their pictures. Their outlook is always gloomy; times are always hard and money tight. Everything in them seems to be contracting; nothing expanding or growing in their lives.
With others it is just the reverse. They cast no shadows. They radiate sunshine. Every bud they touch opens its petals and flings out its fragrance and beauty. They never approach you but to cheer; they never speak to you but to inspire, they scatter flowers wherever they go. They have that happy alchemy which turns prose to poetry, ugliness to beauty, discord to melody. They see the best in people and say pleasant and helpful things about them.
Let us open up our natures, throw wide the doors of our hearts and let in the sunshine of goodwill and kindness; let us be at least as generous in judging others as we are in judging ourselves, as tolerant of their weaknesses as of our own. Let us throw away all animosities, and try to be large enough and grand enough to see the God in the meanest man.
The habit of holding the goodwill, kindly attitude of mind toward everybody has a powerful influence upon the character. It lifts the mind above petty jealousies and meannesses; it enriches and enlarges the whole life. Wherever we meet people, no matter if they are strangers, we feel a certain kinship with and friendliness for them, greater interest in them, if we have formed the goodwill habit. We feel that if we only had the opportunity of knowing them, we should like them.
In other words, the kindly habit, the goodwill habit makes us feel more sympathy for everybody. And if we radiate this helpful, friendly feeling, others will reflect it back to us.
On the other hand, if we go through life with a cold, selfish mental attitude, caring only for our own, always looking for the main chance, only thinking of what will further our own interests, our own comforts, totally indifferent to others, this attitude will, after a while, harden the feelings and marbleize the affections, and we shall become dry, pessimistic, and uninteresting.
Try to hold the kindly, goodwill attitude toward everybody. If your nature is hard you will be surprised to see how it will soften under the new influence. You will become more sympathetic, more charitable toward others weaknesses and failings, and you will grow more magnanimous and whole-souled. The goodwill attitude will make us more lovable, interesting, and helpful. Others will look upon us in the same way in which we regard them. The cold, crabbed, unsocial, selfish person finds the same qualities reflected from others.
How much better it is to go through life with a warm heart, with kindly feelings toward everybody, radiating goodwill and good cheer wherever we go! Life is short at most and what a satisfaction it is to feel that we have scattered flowers instead of thorns, that we have tried to be helpful and kind instead of selfish and churlish.
The world builds its monuments to the unselfish, the helpful, and if these monuments are not in marble or bronze, they are in the hearts of those whom their inspirers have cheered, encouraged, and helped.
All of us, no matter how poor we may be, whether we have succeeded or failed in our vocations, can be great successes in helpfulness, in radiating goodwill, good cheer, and encouragement.
Everybody can be a success in the goodwill business, and it is infinitely better to fail in our vocation and to succeed in this, than to accumulate great wealth and be a failure in helpfulness, in a kindly, sympathetic attitude toward others. The habit of wishing everybody well, of feeling like giving everybody a Godspeed, ennobles and beautifies the character wonderfully, magnifies our ability, and multiplies our mental power.
We were planned on lines of nobility; we were intended to be something grand; not mean and stingy, but large and generous; we were made in God’s image that we might be Godlike.
Selfishness and greed dwarf our natures and make us mere apologies of the men and women God intended us to be. The way to get back to our own, to regain our lost birthright, is to form a habit of holding the kindly, helpful, sympathetic, goodwill attitude toward everybody.
10. Love As A Tonic
All through the Bible are passages which show that love is a health-tonic, and actually lengthens life.
“With long life will I satisfy him,” says the Psalmist, “because he hath set his love upon me.” Love is harmony, and harmony prolongs life, as fear, jealousy, envy, friction, and discord shorten it.
Who has not seen the magic power of love in transforming rough, uncouth men into refined and devoted husbands!
There is no doubt that those who are filled with the spirit of love, which is the Christ spirit—whose sympathies and tenderness are not confined to their immediate relatives and friends, but reach out to every member of the human family,—live longer and are more exempt from the ills of mankind than the selfish and pessimistic, who centered in themselves, lose their better part of life, the joy and the strength that come from giving themselves to others.
The power of love is often illustrated in a delicate mother who walks the floor, night after night, whose days pass without recreation or change, week in and week out, and who feels more than compensated if she can only procure relief for her suffering little one.
In no other way than through the marvelous power of love can we account for the wonderful miracles of endurance presented by many mothers in bringing up large families. Think of a mother carrying about, perhaps for the greater part of a day and the night following, the same weight, in merchandise or other matter, as that of a sick child!
She could not stand the strain, she would be ill in a short time. But love lightens her load and makes self-sacrifice a pleasure. She can bear any burden, even poverty, disappointment, or suffering, for the sake of the loved one. This sublimely unselfish mother-love is a prototype of the most exalted creative love that enraptures the universe, that invites us to be partakers and dispensers of this world-tonic, this great panacea for all of the ills of mankind.
“The situation that has not its duty, its ideal,” says Carlyle, “was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy ideal; work it out therefrom, and, working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the ideal is in thyself.”
Not on some far-off height, in some distant scene, or fabled land, where longing without endeavor is magically satisfied, will we carve out the ideal that haunts our souls, but near at hand.
In the humble valley, on the boundless prairie, on the farm, on sea or on land, in workshop, store, or office, wherever there is honest work for the hand and brain of man to do, — within the circumscribed limits of our daily duties is the field wherein our ideal must be wrought.
Wrapped up in every human being there are energies which, if unfolded, concentrated, and given proper direction, will develop the ideal.
Our very longings are creative principles, indicative of potencies equal to the task of actual achievement. These latent potencies are not given to mock us. There are no sealed orders wrapped within the brain without the accompanying ability to execute them.
If the emancipation proclamation is written in your blood, if it is indicated in the very texture of your being, you will have within you—undeveloped, it may be, but always there,—strength to break the fetters that bind you, power to triumph over the environment which hampers you.
No external means alone, however, will accomplish this. You must lay hold of eternal principles, of the everlasting verities, or you never can accomplish what you were sent into the world to do. You never can reach the goal of your highest possibilities until you believe in your God-given power to do so, until you are convinced that you are master of your will, and that the Creator has endowed you with strength to bend circumstances to aid you in the realization of your vision.
Our energies must not be allowed to run to waste in longing without action. Our latent strength must be developed steadily and persistently. All our reserves must be utilized, all our powers concentrated and wisely directed toward the accomplishment of the work we have marked out for ourselves.
With eyes ever fixed on the ideal, we must work with heart and hand and brain; with a faith that never grows dim, with a resolution that never wavers, with a patience that is akin to genius, we must persevere unto the end; for, as we advance, our ideal as steadily moves upward.
Everywhere we see people starving for love, famishing for affection, for someone to appreciate them. On every hand we see men and women possessing material comfort, luxury, all that can contribute to their physical well-being—who are able to gratify almost any wish—and yet they are hungry for love. They seem to have plenty of everything but affection. They have lands and houses, automobiles, yachts, horses, money — everything but love.
Much of what goes by the name of love is only selfishness. Until love extends beyond the narrow circle of relatives and friends; until its stretches beyond the shores of one’s own land, it is not real love. The Christ-love is not that which nourishes and cares with greatest solicitude for one’s own child, and yet turns a deaf ear to the cry of the hungry and forsaken one in the street. Pure love is in the act, and does not take note of the object.
When Elizabeth Fry visited Newgate Prison, in London, where the women were packed in one room like cattle, without the slightest attention to sanitation, she was much interested in a girl who had committed a terrible crime. One of the London ladies engaged in philanthropic work asked her what crime this girl had committed. “I do not know,” she replied. “I never asked her.”
All she wanted to know was that this poor unfortunate had made a mistake, and that she needed love to heal the wound and help her to reform. It was not the wind or tempest the girl wanted, but the warm, gentle sunlight.
I do not believe there is any human being, in prison or out, so depraved, so low, so bad, but that there is somebody in the world who could control them perfectly by love, by kindness, by patience.
I have known women who had such charm of manner, such great loving, helpful hearts, that the worst men, the most hardened characters, would do anything in the world for them — would give up their lives, even, to protect them. But they could never be reformed, could never be touched by hatred or unkindness or compulsion. Love is the only power that could reach them.
There is a man in New York City who has served, at different times, twenty-five years in State prison. He was one of the most hardened of criminals. No sooner would he get out of prison than he would begin to plan some burglary which would send him back again. The police all knew him.
A great many people tried to help him, and many a time he got a position, only to lose it, because someone who knew him circulated the report that he was an ex-convict.
He happened to fall under the influence of one of these sweet and noble women, who did not ask him what he was sent to prison for or to describe the crimes he had committed. She did not want to have anything to do with the bad part of him. She wanted to forget all that, and wanted him to forget it, too.
She told him that he was not made for such business, that the Creator had given him that marvelously strong, keen brain of his for a great and noble purpose; that he was a success and happiness machine, so fearfully and wonderfully wrought that it had taken the Creator a quarter of a century to bring it to its perfection; that success and happiness were his birthright; that all he had to do was to claim them; that he had no right to look upon himself as a debased creature, but that he should hold perpetually in mind the thought of his divinity; that he was made by a perfect Being and hence his better self must be perfect.
She told him not to go about the streets trying to sneak and to slink out of sight, nor to regard himself as a criminal, haunted and hunted by the police and detectives, but to say to himself, “I am a man, a strong, magnificent man, made in the image of perfection. I must be perfect. There is an indestructible, inviolable something within me which must ultimately dominate my life and bring me into harmony.”
The man faithfully followed the advice of his benefactress, and after a while he became so completely transformed that the hardened criminal lines, the sneaking fear lines in his face were replaced by signs of nobility. The uplifting suggestion constantly held in his mind outpictured themselves in his face and changed his expression to one of manhood.
All this was the result of appealing to the best in the man, calling out the qualities which had been buried all those years, which had no chance to grow, which had been smothered by the over development of the brute faculties.
This pure, sweet woman culled out of this man qualities which completely changed his life, and which a hundred years of punishment and cruelty and threatening and torture could never have developed.
Forget yourself. You will never do anything great until you do. Self-consciousness is a disease with many. No matter what they do, they can never get away from themselves. They become warped upon the subject of self-analysis, wondering how they look, how they appear, what others will think of them, how they can enhance their own interests. In other words, every thought and every effort seems to focus upon self; nothing radiates from them.
No one can grow while their thoughts are self-centered. The sympathies of the individual who thinks only of themselves are soon dried up. Self-consciousness acts as a paralysis to all expansion, strangles enlargement, kills aspiration, cripples executive ability. The mind which accomplishes things worthwhile looks out, not in; it is focused upon its object not upon itself.
The immortal acts have been unconsciously performed. The greatest prayers have been the silent longings, the secret yearnings of the heart, not those which have been delivered facing a critical audience. The daily desire is the perpetual prayer, the prayer that is heard and answered.
The real test of a man’s success is his daily life. Does he really live? Is he alive in every part of the being, or have his best qualities shriveled and atrophied from disuse?
What matters is how much money one has if there is only a small part of the real man alive, if his sympathies have dried up from the lack of use or cultivation, if his appreciation of the beautiful and his love of the good have become paralyzed?
Is a man whose brain has developed one huge money gland for secreting dollars, while all his other faculties have died from disuse or neglect, a success? Have growth and the unfoldment of all the powers nothing to do with real success? Is living in a business rut for a quarter or a half century, grasping, elbowing one’s way, trampling upon other’s rights and opportunities, scheming to get something away from others, with indifference to their welfare, cherishing only one great, grasping motive—getting, getting, absorbing—is this real living? Is this character building?
Is a huge tree trunk with all but one of the branches lopped off, and that one developed into an enormous monstrosity because of its having absorbed all of the sap intended for the other branches, a tree? Have symmetry, balance, and beauty nothing to do with a perfect tree? Most of us are at best monstrosities, with one faculty enormously over-developed at the expense of all the others. How rare it is to find a fully poised man, one with perfectly balanced development of faculty, and function!
The best legacy a man can leave his children is the memory and influence of a large, broad, finely developed mentality, a well-disciplined, highly cultured mind, a sweet, beautiful character which has enriched everybody who came in contact with it, a refined personality, a magnanimous spirit.
To leave a clean record, an untarnished name, a name which commanded respect for honesty and integrity which were above suspicion; this is a legacy worthwhile, a wealth beyond the reach of fire or flood, disaster or accident on land or sea. This is a legacy allied to divinity.
To bring your children up to respect themselves, to love the right and hate the wrong, to be self-reliant, strong, vigorous and independent, to do their own thinking so they may become leaders instead of trailers — that is to leave them something worthwhile. They will have power in themselves to help themselves, not imitate or copy, but live their own lives and form their own creeds. They will not need to apologize or sneak or fawn, but stand erect, look the world in the face without wincing, and feel themselves equal to any environment and masters of the situation by virtue of their own power. Such a legacy will enrich them more than all the millions you could amass.
How many people in this country today are really ashamed of the father whose money they are spending! They are glad enough to get the money, but they do not like to say much about their father’s character or how they acquired wealth.
Is it not unaccountable how men will struggle and strive in order to pile up money, to accumulate a vast fortune for their children, and to coin their own lives, their very life-blood, into dollars which they leave to their children, often with nothing else—no name, no memory which can be revered? Is it not strange that fathers will contend and crowd so hard for that which is cheap and shallow and unsatisfying, and neglect the development of the more permanent, more desirable, more beautiful and lasting qualities?
These shrewd, long-headed men know very well that the chances are small that a son will develop the power of self-help and self-reliance when everybody is telling him that he is a fool to work, that his father is rich, that he should just pitch in and have a good time. These men know how small are the chances of developing that fibre which makes men, that stamina which makes character in the boy who has a fortune left him; yet many of them go blindly on, not seemingly caring anything about the development of their boys’ characters—or their own, intent on amassing fortunes which so often prove the ruin of the children who inherit them.
If a man is too large to be measured by the dollar-mark, or to be enclosed in his estate; if the wealth of his personality has overflowed until all his neighbors feel richer for his life and example; if every foot of land in his community is worth more because he lives there, then the loss of his property cannot materially shrink his inventory.
If you have learnt to be rich without money; if you have, by the cultivation of your mental powers, gathered to yourself a treasure of indestructible wealth; if, like the bee, you have learnt the secret of extracting honey from the thistle as well as from the rose, you will look upon your losses as mere incidents, not so very important to the larger and fuller life.
It gives a sense of immense satisfaction to think that there is something within us greater than the wealth we acquire or our material pursuits; that there is something about us better than our career, better than living-getting, money-getting, fame-getting; that there is something which will survive the fire, the flood, or the tornado which sweeps away our property, which will survive detraction, persecution, calumny; something that will outlast even the dissolution of the body itself. That is, nobility of character, the sweetness and light which have helped people, which have made the world a little better place to live in.
There is something within us which protests against having our most precious possessions at the mercy of accident or uncertainty. We have an innate assurance that, no matter what happens, nothing can possibly injure our real selves or destroy our greatest riches, our grandest possessions. There is a still voice within us which tells us that the true life is beyond the reach of anything that can harm it or rob it of one iota of its substance.
The feeling of serenity, the assurance of stability and of possessing that which no power can shake, gives a satisfaction beyond all words to express, imparting to life its true dignity and grandeur.
Do you not know that the whole creation thunders the Ten Commandments? The very atoms seem to have been dipped in a moral solution. There is a moral tendency in the very nature of things. It looks out of the flowers, it shines from the stars. It grows in the forest, it waves in the grass, it laughs in the harvest. Each form of existence brings from the unseen its own lesson of wisdom, goodness, power, design, and points to something higher than itself, the great Author of its magnificence.
In spite of all the discord, and the sin and the suffering about us, we have an instinctive faith that somehow, somewhere, Nature will rid herself of the last crime, and restore the lost Paradise of Eden.
11. Keeping A Level Head
“Give us a man who is not easily thrown off his guard, or off his balance,” is the cry when danger threatens. The man who can think clearly and act wisely when others get excited is the man who is everywhere sought to save the day in a crisis; he is always wanted for important positions, because, in emergencies, which are always likely to arise, everybody feels safer in his hands.
It is the man who knows what to do when others are disconcerted, who is cool when others are excited, that is wanted; the man who is not easily flustered when pressure is brought to bear upon him or when he is obliged to assume great responsibility.
People who easily lose their heads, and who go all to pieces in an accident, or when any great strain is brought to bear upon them or anything very unusual occurs, are weaklings, and are not to be depended upon in an emergency.
There is something superb, something we cannot help revering and admiring in a person who can stand perfectly calm, unmoved, and serene when others become excited, lose their heads, and have no control over their acts.
To keep a level head in all circumstances and under all conditions, to keep it when others lose it, to maintain an even judgment, good “horse sense,” when others around one are foolish, is a difficult thing. It shows a great reserve power, that which characterizes the poised, self-controlled man and woman.
What a magnificent example of serenity and poise under all conditions we have in the iceberg at sea! No matter how hard the tempest rages, or how hard the mountainous billows dash against its sides, it does not tremble or quiver, or give any signs of having been touched, because seven-eights of its enormous bulk is below the surface of the water. Its immensity is securely balanced down in the calm of the ocean depths, beneath the agitation of wave or tempest. It is this tremendous reserve below the surface, this powerful momentum, which makes the exposed part of the iceberg bid defiance to the elements.
One of the most difficult things for a young man to do is to keep a level head. It is so easy to lose one’s balance, to get a “swelled head” over a little prosperity, to lose one’s ambition for forging ahead by a raise in salary. A little ease and comfort are great tempters, great destroyers of ambition. It is a difficult thing to keep a level head when the storms of temptation and financial difficulties are raging about one; but it is easier than in prosperity.
There is something in human nature which braces up against adversity, which stiffens up when the world goes hard and makes one tug the harder; but somehow ease, comfort, and the thought of prosperity take the spring out of the ambition. The motive to push ahead, to struggle, to strive, is usually weakened by the feeling of satisfaction that one has achieved something worthwhile, that one has gained what they started out to get.
The test of a large, well-balanced person is that he or she does not change materially with changed conditions. Financial losses, failure in their undertaking, sorrow, do not throw them off their balance, because they are centered in principle. Nor are they puffed up by a little prosperity.
There is one thing a person ought to be always able to do, no matter in what circumstances they may be placed, and that is, to keep on their feet, and, if they fall, to fall on their feet, and under no circumstances lose their balance. If a person can keep calm and act deliberately when others are confused and excited, they have a leading part to play in life.
It gives them a tremendous power in their community, because it is the level-headed person who keeps an even keel in any storm, that is sought for in great emergencies, looked for in the crisis. The shaky individual, the waverer, the person who is never certain of themselves, who topples over when the crisis comes, who loses their backbone in a panic, is only a fair-weather person, and, like a timid girl, could sail a ship only on a smooth sea.
A balanced person has good judgment, and this implies symmetry of development of the various faculties. And strength of character and of mind come from the harmony of evenly-developed faculties.
In a perfectly-balanced mind no one faculty is developed out of proportion to the others.
In a perfectly-adjusted machine every part is made with reference to every other part. The movement of every wheel in a perfect timepiece must be exquisitely adjusted to the entire watch, and each must be suited to every other wheel in the watch. You would not boast of your watch because it had a very powerful mainspring while all the other parts were very delicately constructed and were not intended for so much power. We value a watch in proportion as it keeps perfect time, for this is its purpose.
How rare it is to find among city youth a really good business head, well-balanced, normal, without any great weakness which cuts the average down to mediocrity. A superb, well-balanced head, with faculties keen, judgment clear and sound, a mind that is not made one-sided by prejudice, not weakened by superstition, is a rare thing.
Many youths are one-sided from lack of good, sensible, all round training. Someone faculty, which happens to be predominant, is forced in its education, and the weaker ones, which ought to have exercise in order to keep the balance of all the faculties, atrophy from disuse. The training and education of the great majority of youths are not calculated to develop symmetry of faculty, balance of mental power. There is a great discrepancy between the physical and the mental training; or someone faculty is forced out of all proportion until the balance is lost.
The great object of early training should be to maintain the balance, to get equipoise of faculty, symmetry of evolution, because only in this way can good judgment be developed, a sound mind produced. For those who have not reached maturity, one-sided development, forced special training, is one of the greatest curses of modern life. No wonder our insane asylums are over-run. The one-faculty-development is responsible for a large part of the lost balance, the lack of symmetry, the poor, weak judgment of many of our people.
Mental poise indicates power, because poise is the result of mental harmony. One-sided minds, no matter how brilliant in some particular faculty, are never balanced minds, any more than a tree is harmonious which has sent practically all of its sap, its nourishment, into the development of one huge branch, so that other parts of the tree have suffered from starvation.
The poised physician or surgeon in a critical case where a life hangs in the balance always has the advantage of the excitable one who is full of fear and loses their head. Mental poise gives strength to the lawyer. The poise of mind suggests great reserve power. It is the lawyer who maintains their equanimity and perfect mental equipoise in a great trial, while the little attorneys rant and fume, who carries weight with the jury.
It was Webster’s great mental equanimity that made him the colossal figure he was in the Senate and at the Bar. His consciousness of great mental power gave him tremendous advantage over weaker men who doubted their ability to cope with him.
Mental poise gives us a glimpse of the possibilities of the coming man, of man when all of his faculties shall be symmetrically developed, so that his life will express harmony instead of discord.
The greatest forces in the universe are noiseless, are perfectly poised. Scientists tell us that there is force enough in a few acres of growing grass to run all the machinery of the world, and yet, like all the other forces of nature, it is absolutely noiseless. The most delicate ear cannot detect any friction, the slightest lack of harmony, in the works of Nature.
The strongest characters are never noisy. They are balanced, poised, serene. The water in a little mountain brook dashing down over the rocks will make more noise than the mighty Mississippi River. Weak characters, like an empty wagon, are noisy. They fuss and fume and accomplish but little. The effectiveness of our work depends upon all our faculties working in harmony. We often see a man without any apparent talent or brilliant faculties get ahead much faster and succeed much better in life than others of apparently greater power, because his faculties are in harmony. One does not fight against another, neutralize another, or counteract its achievement.
To produce an ideal man capable of bringing to bear the greatest amount of personal power is the great aim of race development. This man will be proportionate, symmetrical, balanced. Wholeness will be characteristic of him. The ultimate aim is not to produce the greatest artist, lawyer, merchant, or statesman, but the greatest man—symmetrically developed, strong because of the harmony of all his faculties. It is much better to have mental balance than brilliancy. It is better to have comparatively small ability well-balanced, than to be a one-sided genius.
All our faculties are so tied together, so interrelated that whatever affects one, affects all the others. The improvement, therefore, of any one quality of the mind, like the improvement of the judgment, strengthens all the other good qualities, whereas the weakening of one tends to weaken all the others and to lower the standard of the whole.
A boy does not realize that if he forms the habit of not sawing the wood straight or of not driving the nail true, or of leaving the sled or the toy half finished, this defect will not only drag itself all through his career, but will also demoralize all of his other faculties, weaken his judgment, affect his industry and his ambition, and lower his general standard of life, because of this law of interrelationship of faculties.
The boy brought up on the farm has a great advantage over the city-bred youth, in that he has been compelled to develop common sense by exercising his own ingenuity in a thousand ways to extricate himself from dilemmas in the woods or on the farm because there was no possibility of getting help. He has been forced to make the sled or the toy which he could not afford to buy, and has learned to use tools with skill in making and repairing things about the farm or the house. All these things have tended to develop his horse sense.
All around, level-headed men are scarce. They are always at a premium. We find many splendid men, who are wonderfully competent in many faculties, but who are always doing strange, un-businesslike things. Their poor judgment is always tripping them up, so that their character is like the course of a crooked river which often runs back on itself in its course through an uneven country. The reputation of being erratic or a little bit off in your judgment, of doing foolish things, so that people cannot rely upon you, is fatal to advancement.
If you are one-sided, unbalanced, no matter how able you may be in some special line, sound business men and women will not care to have anything to do with you, for they know you might do very foolish things and make serious mistakes under pressure and in an emergency, just the time when a cool head is needed.
The country is full of broken, disappointed lives, lives that are all tattered and torn, in which victories have been swallowed up in defeat, effective strokes marred by unfortunate slips, lives in which there is no well-put-together work, but a great ambition coupled with a total lack of system and ability to save the result of great efforts.
There are plenty of these careers that are as checkered as a crazy quilt, just because of a lack of mental balance and good sense to insure continuity.
Employees are often surprised at the advancement to a responsible position of one of their number who is less brilliant than many others. The employer, however, is not looking for brilliancy; but for good sense, soundness of judgment, level-headedness.
The employer in their search for a level-headed, practical man, a man who can do things, and not merely dream about them, often passes by the college graduate, the fine scholar, the genius. He knows that the stability of his business, the bulwark of his establishment, depends upon employees with good judgment, good horse sense. Common sense in practical life has the right of way. It ranks far ahead of brilliancy or education.
The man who worries, who fusses and fumes and who goes to pieces over trifles, exposes his weakness, his lack of self-control. It is an indication that he has not discovered himself, has not come to himself, does not know his God-given power, that he has not claimed his birthright of harmony, of power, that he has not discovered that he was designed to be prosperous and happy, to dominate. It shows that he has conquered only a little corner of himself.
We take it for granted that the person who cannot control themselves cannot control others, that they are not suitable for leadership.
The well-balanced person must have a profound respect for themselves, for if they do not, they will do things that are absolutely inconsistent with poise of character. The person who does not think well of themselves will express in their manner uncertainty, doubt, anxiety, more or less mental confusion.
Confidence, a sense of assurance under all circumstances, are among the chief considerations with great business men and women. We have heard bankers and the men at the head of great concerns ask about an applicant for an important position, “Is he a man you can tie to? Has he reserve? Has he courage, stamina, staying qualities? Can you depend on him in an emergency? Has he the grit that never yields? Has he good, sound principles?”
Most young people do not realize how much their success depends upon their general reputation. It will make all the difference in the world to you, my young friend, what people think of you, how they estimate your ability, what your reputation is for honesty, and “square dealing,” and a good, sound judgment.
Your level-headedness and honesty locate you in actual life. Every employer is looking for men and women to fill important positions. Capital is timid, and is afraid to risk money or merchandise with a person who is merely brilliant. But men and women who have credit and are in a position to help you to capital, are always looking for hard business sense. If you lack that, no matter how smart you may be, how cunning or shrewd in securing business, or how good an advertiser you may be; no matter how good a person you may be or how well you may stand in your community or your church, the capitalist will distrust you.
One reason why the majority of people have such poor judgment, especially employees, is because they do not depend upon it. Unused faculties never develop any more than do unused muscles. The habit of using good judgment in everything no matter how trifling, will multiply efficiency a thousandfold.
You can get along without a college education, if you must—without a great many things, if necessary,—but you cannot get on in the world without good judgment.
Multitudes of students are turned out of colleges every year with a large amount of theoretical knowledge, but they have not had a particle of training along the line of good judgment.
We often hear people say that they cannot understand why Mr. so and so has had such a mediocre career, or has been a failure, when he had such a brilliant mind. But, it does not matter how brilliant a man may be, if he lacks sound judgment, he is all the time slowing or preventing his own advancement.
It is the rarest thing in the world for a man with good judgment to fail, even if he is not brilliant, for though he may make occasional mistakes, he will get on his feet again. But the man who makes brilliant strokes now and then, and is all the time slipping up because of poor judgment, will not get on nearly as rapidly as the one much less brilliant, but with sound judgment.
No matter how brilliant, men and women with poor judgment are always slipping back and by their foolishness losing a large part of what they gained by their brilliancy or their good qualities.
If you want to get the reputation of being a level-headed person, you must act like one. Most people are constantly doing things —especially little things —which do not meet with their approval, which they do not consider the best things to be done, under the circumstances, but they do them. In acting thus they lessen the probability of doing the level-headed things the next time.
When we feel strongly impressed to do a certain thing, or to do something in a certain way, and we do not do it, or else do it in some other way than that in which we are impressed to do it, we are lessening the probabilities of our doing the wisest thing in the future.
In other words, if we form a habit of always doing the thing we ought to do, doing it in the way we honestly believe to be the best way, and never allow ourselves to shirk responsibility or to fail to do the best thing because it interferes with our comfort or leisure, we shall, after a while, get into the habit of doing the wisest thing.
We constantly hear people make remarks like this: “I know that I ought to do this thing today, but I do not believe I will, or “I do not feel like it.” And they, perhaps, procrastinate, or let the thing slide along, and do just the opposite to what they know they ought to do.
Everyone who expects to make the most of themselves, to make their life a success, must take themselves in hand just as they would a pupil or a child, and, no matter how disagreeable or hard it may be, discipline themselves to do the right thing always, the wisest thing, and not let themselves off with the easy thing or allow themselves to do a thing the wrong way.
A very successful man, who found that he was getting into a habit of letting things slide along, doing the easiest and putting off the hard, difficult things, suddenly realized that if the habit became fixed it would seriously handicap his career.
He turned completely around, forced himself to begin his work early in the morning, and always to do what he felt that he ought to do and in the way which appealed to his best judgment, regardless of whether or not it interfered with his leisure or comfort. The result is that within a very short time he has made himself a strong, vigorous character, and now finds it comparatively easy to do what he ought to.
But he says that unless he had taken himself in hand, and trained himself as a teacher would a pupil, forcing himself to do the right thing, the wisest thing, regardless of whether it was the easiest or not, he would practically have wrecked his career, because he was naturally inclined to indolence, and to take things easy, to postpone the disagreeable, the difficult task, and to do the agreeable, easy thing first.
Great characters have ever felt the necessity of this stern self-discipline.
If you always force yourself to do what you know you ought to do, instead of listening to your inclination, or consulting your comfort or convenience, you will very materially strengthen your character and your judgment, and you will also increase your reputation for level-headedness.
The trouble is that most of us use second or third best judgment, instead of our first, because it often fits our comfort and convenience to do so.
Deplore it as we will, we are most of us lazy, and we like to get out of disagreeable tasks. We do not like to do things which interfere with our comfort, things which tax and perplex us.
Because we have taken the easy road so often, most of us have fallen into the habit of avoiding the difficult, of shunning the disagreeable, and of procrastinating, putting off the uncomfortable.
Now, the way to avoid the sting of a nettle is to grasp it vigorously, quickly. The way to take the sting out of a disagreeable task is to do it quickly, vigorously; not to dilly-dally with it, not to play with it and torture ourselves, but to get right after it, to attack it, wrestle with it, with determination to accomplish it.
Courage is an indispensable quality in our success; but if it is not balanced and regulated by prudence, cautiousness, it will run away with us and lead us into all sorts of foolhardy things. Boldness is a great quality when it is held in check by proper cautiousness and guided by good judgment.
I know a man whose courage is very much over developed and his faculty of caution is very deficient. He does not know what fear means, and he plunges into all sorts of foolish operations which do not turn out well, and he is always trying to get out of things which he has gone into hastily. If his prudence had been equally developed with his courage, with his boldness, he would have made a very strong man.
Even the highest moral faculties, like benevolence, may ruin a man if he does not have good sense. It might lead him to give away everything he has, and not even provide for his family; and in that way great development, even of the highest faculties, may defeat their beneficent ends. I know another man who is the perfection of kindness, who would do anything to help anyone in trouble; but he entirely lacks the restraining, regulating quality of prudence, good judgment, and he gives away everything he has, and even robs his family of the comforts of life. He does not mean to, but he is not well-balanced.
Whatever you believe or do not believe, do not get morbid or cranky upon any subject, for it is inevitably fatal to advancement.
Some of the ablest young men and young women I know have been fearfully handicapped in their efforts to get on because they have developed morbid tendencies.
People who are carried away with fads and fancies, who become morbid and cranky, are usually very susceptible to suggestion. If there is any new fad that is epidemic in the neighborhood, they always catch it. It has its regular run with them like the measles, and they are all carried away with it until something else takes its place.
Now, all of these mental peculiarities, cranky notions, do not belong with a level head. They indicate one-sided development. They do not accompany good judgment or soundness of mind, and this is why their victims are always placed at such a disadvantage.
Morbid people are narrow. They lack breadth, sympathy, generosity. The magnanimous, charitable soul does not think that they are right and everybody else is wrong. He gives everybody a fair chance. He is charitable and broad and generous towards those who differ with him, knowing that he is just as liable to be mistaken as they are.
I know a handsome, splendidly educated young lady so morbid on religious subjects that she has become a nuisance by always harping on religious matters. She is almost ostracized from society, and has lost about all her friends. She does not realize that people do not understand her, and has grown so morose and melancholy that her family are very much alarmed about her. She has a great deal of ability and is extremely attractive. She is also a fine teacher, and loves to teach, but she cannot get a school because of these morbid tendencies.
And the worst of it all is that she has settled down to the conviction that she is peculiar, and that she cannot get rid of these peculiarities. If she would only stoutly plan to be normal, and persist in being like other people, and not allow herself to dwell upon things which have been such a serious injury to her, she would soon regain her reputation and largely overcome her morbid tendencies.
But she insists upon carrying religious tracts in her pocket wherever she goes and handing them out to strangers, and especially to those she sees under the influence of drink or who bear the marks of dissipation, till everybody who knows her avoids her, because they do not like to enter into unpleasant discussions on religious subjects.
Many people persist in always airing their peculiar beliefs, their fads and fancies, at every opportunity. Many regard this as a sacred duty. They feel that it would be cowardly not to declare themselves, or to hide their beliefs and theories.
We are only considering the results of morbid tendencies upon one’s chances in life.
The fact is that people are afraid of those who are morbid, because it indicates a lack of balance, indicates weaknesses. They are prejudiced against all peculiarities, because they have in mind the normal standard.
Employers are always afraid of people with morbid minds. They are afraid of personal peculiarities that indicate departures from the normal.
I have in mind a man of estimable qualities, who has gone daft on the subject of foods. He is one of the most intelligent men I know, but you cannot talk with him five minutes without his trying to draw you into a philosophical discussion of food values, and to convince you that the real reason you are fat or lean, have dyspepsia, poor sight, or rheumatism, is because of too little or too much of certain constituents in your foods and drinks.
He will proceed to go into the chemistry and the physiology of foods until you will get disgusted and leave him, and endeavor to keep out of his way in the future.
Another acquaintance, a man of great ability, has become morbid upon the question of medicine. Every time you see him he will have some new remedy which he believes will revolutionize the physical condition of the race, if people would only persist in trying it. Yet he came near ruining his own health in his experiments, and, although a man of great general ability, he carries little weight in his community, because everybody points to him as a crank.
A wealthy man refused to pay for a yacht built for him not long ago by a boat-builder with a great name, because it had too much sail for the ballast. The skipper of the boat testified at the trial that he did not dare put out all the sail, except in moderate weather, because of the danger of capsizing.
The boat was alright in pleasant weather, but dangerous in bad weather.
There are plenty of people like this boat. They have too much sail, too little ballast for bad weather. They make a big show, lots of pretense, but they have no reserve. They are not reliable in an emergency. They lack stability.
The great problem of the racing yacht builder is to secure the greatest speed consistent with safety. The lines of the boat must not only be constructed so as to cause only the least possible resistance to the water, but the builder must also provide against the possibility of sudden squalls or a heavy sea.
Every man and woman should have good sense, good judgment, to steady their conduct in any emergency, so that they will not lose their head and topple over under provocation, but keep cool and carry a steady hand, no matter what happens.
The compass of one’s judgment must point as true in a storm as in the sunshine.
12. Getting The Best Out Of Employees
There are certain plants and trees which kill the chances of every other growing thing in their neighborhood. They so poison the soil and the air that everything about them is stunted, starved, blighted.
Some employers so poison their environment that even the most capable employees cannot prosper under them. Their atmosphere is so suffocating, so depressing, that those about them feel restrained, repressed, suppressed. They cannot act naturally in their presence or do themselves justice. They feel nervous and ill at ease. I have known of employees who worked years in such an atmosphere without getting ahead.
They thought it was lack of ability that kept them down, but when they changed their positions and got into a congenial environment, they advanced rapidly. They expanded like tropical plants which had been stunted for a time in an arctic climate, but which flourished when taken back to their native soil.
Many employers seem to have a perfect genius for dampening the enthusiasm and spontaneity of their employees, who shrivel and shrink every time they come near them. It is impossible to be at one’s best in their presence. They destroy individuality, hope, and courage. They make it very hard for their employees to take an interest in their welfare, because they belittle them, scold them, and take the heart out of them, all the time.
Many employers do not praise, upon principle. They think it is very bad for the employee; that criticism is much better than appreciation. Nothing is falser than this idea. Some people are so constituted that they live upon appreciation and praise. They cannot do good work without it. They require it as a stimulus. There is nothing that the average employee will work harder for than commendation or an expression of appreciation. The fact is, there is nothing else which will so tie him or her to their employer as a feeling that they are appreciated. Nothing will so enhearten them as a word of praise when they try to do their best.
Do not be afraid to praise heartily. Do not give a little pinched, stinted appreciation, as though you are afraid you will spoil your employee. Be whole-hearted and generous in your praise. You will be surprised to see how they will respond. Many a successful man and woman have found the turning-points of the careers in a little praise, a little hopeful encouragement!
How many people date their first inspiration, their first step upward, from an encouraging letter, appreciation of something they did, or a word of praise which kindled hope or aroused ambition and determination to be somebody in the world!
Clara Morris says that when she was trying to establish her reputation in New York, Mr. Augustin Daly, her manager, used to watch her from the audience in order to criticize her. One evening, after she had had a great many discouragements, he came up to her and said, “Good girl! You never did better than tonight!” This kindness at a discouraging moment, she says, meant more to her than anything else she had ever experienced.
The knowledge that our ability is recognized makes us think more of ourselves. It gives us hope that, after all, there may be something for us in the future as well as for others who have succeeded.
The efficiency of employees depends almost wholly upon their courage, because, without courage, enthusiasm and zest are impossible. No one can be original, creative, and prolific in their work under fear and suppression. Spontaneity is absolutely necessary to the best results. If employees are hemmed in, watched, suspected, criticized, their work must be restricted and of an inferior quality.
Courage and hope are great elements in production. They are powerful assets in employees, which many proprietors entirely cut off. Things which create antagonism and put the employee constantly on the defensive suppress individuality, and make them a mere machine. There must be freedom or a loss in the ideal service.
Fault-finding is the shortest-sighted policy in the world. It does no good. It is not good. It is energy wasted. There is an infinitely better way. When a person makes a mistake or does wrong, speak to them kindly. It will act like magic. And never lose an opportunity for showing your appreciation of a good piece of work.
If your employees feel that you do not care anything for them, except for what you can get out of them, they will feel the same way toward you and only care for their salaries and for an easy time.
Their respect and admiration are worth everything to you. They hold your success or failure largely in their hands. They can often turn the tide and make all the difference between good fortune and bad. It pays to keep employees contented and happy; it increases the quality of their service very materially.
13. Don’t Let Your Past Spoil Your Future
There is nothing more depressing than dwelling upon lost opportunities or a mis-spent life. Whatever your past has been, forget it. If it throws a shadow upon the present, or causes melancholy or despondency, there is nothing in it which helps you, there is not a single reason why you should retain it in your memory and there are a thousand reasons why you should bury it so deeply that it can never be resurrected.
Nothing is more foolish, nothing more wicked than to drag the skeletons of the past, the hideous images, the foolish deeds, the unfortunate experiences of yesterday into today’s work to mar and spoil it. There are plenty of people who have been failures up to the present moment who could do wonders in the future if they only could forget the past, if they only had the ability to cut it off, to close the door on it forever and start anew.
I know a number of people who complain of their fate, and hard luck, and what they call their ‘iron’ environment, who are, themselves, their worst enemies. Unconsciously they poison and devitalize the atmosphere of their surroundings by the pictures of failure which they are constantly creating in their minds. Their pessimism, exhaling from every pore, envelops them in a dense but invisible atmosphere, through which no ray of light or hope can enter, and yet they wonder why they do not succeed. They expect bright pictures to come from dark ones, hope from despair, cheer from gloom.
These same people would think a farmer ridiculous who should sow nettle seeds and expect them to produce wheat or corn; or one who should plant the deadly nightshade in their garden and hope to see the rose or the lily flourish on its stem. They do not seem to appreciate the fact that, everywhere in the universe, like produces like; that, whatever thought we sow, we must reap in kind; that the sour, gloomy, pessimistic seed sown in the garden of the mind must produce its own peculiar fruit. Grapes will not grow on thorns, or figs on thistles.
The person who uses up vitality in complaining, finding fault with circumstances, kicking against fate, who is always protesting that there is no justice in the world, that merit is not rewarded, that the times are out of joint, and that everything is wrong, is put down, and rightly, as a weakling, with a small, narrow mind. Large-minded men and women do not spend their energies whining. If they meet an obstacle they go through it and pass on about their business.
They know that all their time and strength must be concentrated on the work of making a life. The whiner not only wastes their time and strength, but they prejudice people against them. No one feels inclined to help a person who is always complaining of conditions and blaming ‘hard luck.’ Somehow, we have a feeling that they do not deserve help, but a good scolding instead.
The practical business person has no sympathy with the person who claims that they ‘cannot get a job.’ A great many employers object to having people around who complain that ‘luck has always been against them.’ They fear, and perhaps not without reason, that they will create evil conditions.
I recently heard of a successful English politician and businessman who advertised for a man, — a combination of valet and companion. He had reduced the number of applicants for the position to one, and was about to complete arrangements when the man began to tell of his career, his ambitions and misfortunes. It was a genuine hard-luck story. The politician listened for a while and then astonished his would-be employee by saying, “I find I do not want you.” When urged to give his reasons for the sudden change in his decision, he replied, “I never hire ‘hard luck’ people, especially the kind who talk about it.”
The successful man’s conduct toward the unsuccessful one seems cruel and unjust. The later may not have been responsible for his hard luck, and might have made a valuable servant. But, putting aside the justice or injustice of the prosperous man’s conduct, the story points to the fact that the complaining person, the whiner, by their own conduct places themselves at a fearful disadvantage. Nobody wants the person who poses as a victim of hard luck, who says that they “cannot get a job.”
Man is so constituted that he does his best work when happiest. He is constructed on the happiness plan, so that when he is most harmonious, he is most efficient. Discord is always an enemy to his achievement, as well as to his comfort and happiness. It is the greatest whittler away of vitality and energy we have.
When the mind is full of discords, worry, and anxiety, when brain and body are out of tune, it is impossible even for a genius to express the perfect music of a full, free life.
People do not realize how rapidly vitality is wasted in friction, in worry and anxiety, in harsh, discordant notes which destroy the harmony of life.
How many completely exhaust themselves in needless worrying and bickering over things which are not worthwhile! How many burn up their life-force in giving way to a hot temper, in quibbling over trifles, in bargain hunting, in systemless work, in a hundred ways, when a little thought and attention to the delicate human instrument on which they are playing would prevent all this attrition and keep the instrument in splendid tune!
If a young man should draw out of the bank a little at a time, the money which he had been saving for years for the purpose of going into business for himself, and throw it away in dissipation, we should regard him as very foolish, and predict his failure. But many of us throw away success and happiness capital just as foolishly, for every bit of friction that comes into our lives subtracts so much from our success. We cannot do two things with our energy at the same time. If we use it up in friction, we cannot expend it in effective work.
“He could not keep himself in tune,” would be a good explanation of thousands of failures. Many of these failures could have accomplished great things if they could only have kept themselves in harmony, if they could only have cut out of their lives the friction, the worry and the anxiety which whittled away their energy and wasted their life forces.
The keynote of life’s harmony is cheerfulness. Every muscle and every nerve must be tuned until it responds to that vibration. As the piano tuner eliminates the least discord in sound, so the coming man will tune out the discordant notes of passion, of hatred, of jealousy and of worry, so that there shall be no inharmony in the instrument. He will no more think of starting out in the morning to play on the most delicately constructed instrument ever made when it is out of tune, than a great master musician would think of playing in public on an instrument that was out of tune.
Gloom, despondency, worry about the future, and all discordant passion must be tuned out of this life instrument before it will express the exquisite melodies, the ravishing harmonies which the Creator intended it to express.
14. Almost A Success
Many give up just this side of success. They start out in life with great enthusiasm, but it generally oozes out before they reach their goal. All along life’s course we see people who have fallen out of the running at different stages. Men and women may be industrious, honest, enthusiastic, well educated, and have had good opportunities, but lack persistency and courage, and withdraw from the race when the unseen goal is only a little ahead.
How surprised they would be if the veil were lifted! But the failure to take the last few steps has made all the difference to them between failure, or mediocrity, and the longed-for success.
An army which no human being could number lies encamped around the great city of Success, close to its walls, near to its very gates, but it has never entered the city and it never will enter it. Thousands of people in this great army of the defeated would tell you, if questioned, that they never had a fair chance, that their education was neglected, and they never had anyone to favor them.
Yet many of them were born and reared under the shadow of the night schools and splendid public libraries, and had all their evenings and a great deal of day time at their command, while the Abe Lincolns and thousands of other poor boys got their education by the light of pine knots before the fire in log cabins, or amid other lowly environments, and marched past them with triumphant step on their way to victory.
Nearly every successful person has felt, during years of struggle and endeavor, that they were accomplishing very little, and that life might still be a failure. But those who have achieved good results kept on trying, no matter how dark the night, or how great the obstacles.
There is no genius like that of holding on, and making continuous effort under difficulties.
There are a thousand people who have talent to one who has grit. Brilliancy gives up, and talent gets disheartened before difficulty and lets go.
There are some very brilliant men and women in public life who almost do great things, men and women who raise great expectations in some particular line, but who never win out. They remain perpetual prospectuses of works which are never published.
I believe that more people fail from the lack of staying power than from almost anything else.
Many are willing to pay any price to attain their ambition, except that of plain, down-right hard work. They are willing to expend any amount of energy in scheming, in cunning devices or shortcuts and abridged methods; but the thought of many years of tedious, laborious endeavor, the sacrificing of a thousand and one little comforts and pleasures, seems to be too much for them.
Hosts of people spend may precious years trying to find success bargains, marked downs; trying to devise a quicker method than hard work.
Some men and women have the peculiar faculty of putting things through, of getting things done, and this is always a sign of strength, of creative ability; an indication of leadership.
Almost anybody can start a thing, but it is a rare person who can carry everything they undertake to a finish, and it is the finish which counts.
15. The Born Leader
A stranger, unfamiliar with American methods, on going into one of our big establishments might get the impression that the hundreds of employees who are hurrying and scurrying about, doing a great deal of talking and bustling, are responsible for the enormous volume of business being done.
But if they should go into a certain private office in the establishment, they would probably find sitting there at his desk, a quiet, serene, level-headed man; a man probably of very few words, who dominates and controls all the activities of the hundreds or thousands of employees. He is the head and center, the moving force behind all the hurry, bustle, and show.
The person who aspires to leadership must be an organizer. They must not only read people like an open book, but also judge accurately what to do with them; how to weigh, measure and place them.
It seems as natural and as easy for some people to lead, to command, and to control others, as to breathe. There is something in their very personalities that dominates others. They are born leaders. They do not need to exercise great willpower. They conquer by the very force of their presence— their character—as Hercules conquered those who looked upon his gigantic, powerful figure. No matter what situation they are in, they dominate.
Put a lot of strange cattle together and they will very quickly decide which is to lead the herd. They will lock horns for a while and test their strength, but when the leader has once asserted itself, by common consent of the rest, who do not question it after the first test, it is master.
On every board of directors or trustees, in every organization, there is always one who easily overtops the others; there is always one individual who by tacit consent of all the rest is recognized as spokesperson, as leader.
The leader is always characterized by positive qualities. He or she rules by their vigorous affirmatives. There is nothing negative or minus about them. The positive person, the natural leader, is always assertive, while the negative one shrinks, effaces themselves, waits for someone else to take the initiative. A natural leader does not need to urge those under them. They will follow wherever he or she goes.
A good chess player must be able to see a dozen moves ahead. They must keep constantly in mind the unexpected, so that they may meet every move of their opponent.
Looking ahead is characteristic of the leader. It is the person who can see far into the future that is wanted everywhere. The person who can provide for the unexpected, for the emergency, is the safe person. On the other hand, there is such a thing as knowing so much and seeing so much that it makes one timid about undertaking the lead.
Someone says: “It is generally the person who does not know any better who does the things that cannot be done. You see, the blamed fool does not know that it cannot be done, so they go ahead and do it.”
Scholarship often kills initiative. Scholars are proverbially timid when it comes to great undertakings. The person who knows little outside of the particular thing they undertake frequently has courage because he or she does not see the risks, the possible dangers of failure, of disaster, as clearly as a more intelligent, better educated person sees them. His or her range of vision is narrow; they just see the step they are taking, and so plunge in with all their energy and enthusiasm.
Everywhere there are people who murder the English language every time they open their mouths; men and women who know almost nothing of books or schools, who are doing things that the college-bred person shrinks from attempting.
Whether the leader be educated or uneducated, they are always able to draw the line between theoretical knowledge and practical ability. They know that ability that cannot be practically applied is useless so far as their work is concerned. There were many men under General Grant who were better educated, more cultivated, more widely read than he, but who could not transmute their knowledge into power. On the other hand, what Grant knew he could turn to practical use.
You cannot be a general and a private at the same time. You must either lead or follow; you must either make the program or help carry it out. You cannot do both if you expect to do anything big.
The success of the great general depends largely upon his ability to surround himself with a staff of officers who can carry out his orders, execute his plans. Grant had many officers who could work harder than he, but he could out-general them all.
A leader must be a person of prompt decision. If he or she vacillates, if he or she never quite knows how to take the next step without consulting someone else, their followers, their employees will soon lose respect for them.
“You cannot do the biggest things in this world unless you can handle people, and you cannot handle people if you are not in sympathy with them.”
The greatest leaders are those who combine executive ability with kindness and consideration. Employees will not only follow such a leader, but will also follow them enthusiastically, work for them nights and holidays— do anything to help them along. But if they see mud at the bottom of his or her eyes, if he or she lacks the qualities of leadership, if they see nothing in him or her to admire and respect, they will follow, if they follow at all, as the slave follows his master.
There is no system, there are no rules of business by which a person can force people to be loyal to them and enthusiastic for their welfare. There must be qualities in him or her which will call out the voluntary confidence and respect of others. They must see that he or she is businesslike, that they have executive ability, that they have the qualities of leadership. Then they will follow with zeal and loyalty.
If you are a leader, and employer in any line, it is idle to expect that you can call out of your employees’ qualities which are vastly superior to those you possess yourself. The very idea of leadership is superiority, force of character, executive push, the ability to plan and put an undertaking through to a finish.
If you are afraid of making enemies, do not try to lead, for the moment you step out of the crowd and show originality, individuality, you will be criticized, condemned, caricatured. It is human nature to throw stones at the head lifted above the crowd.
No great leader ever yet escaped the jealousy and envy of those who could not keep up with him or do what he did. A leader must be positive, aggressive; must have an iron will, an inflexible purpose, and boldness bordering on audacity; they must be able to defy criticism without being insensible or indifferent to it.
Some of our great leaders have been extremely sensitive in this respect. Criticism was very painful to them, yet they had the qualities of leadership which urged them on in spite of the pain caused by harsh and unjust criticisms. Many worthy young men have retired from the race for leadership because of the sting inflicted by the malice and envy of their fellows. They did not think the honey worth the sting.
Large leadership today calls for great breadth of view, for the same qualities which made the leader in the past, but much enlarged and developed to meet the needs of our time. The vast combinations, the enormous interests involved in our large concerns today require colossal leadership.
“Organization is the one over-towering necessity of the times. It comes logically of the vast interests put into one business through incorporated capital.” There never was such a demand for leaders, men and women who can do things, as there is today.
One great flaw in the education of the young is its failure to develop individuality. Boys and girls with the most diverse tastes and talents are put through the same curriculum. The dull boy and the bright boy, the dreamy book lover and the matter-of-fact realist, the active, inventive spirit, and the one whose soul is attuned to hidden music, the youth with the brain of a financier, and the one who delights in mimic warfare and strategic games—all are put into the same mold and subjected to the same processes.
The result is inevitable. Nine-tenths of the children educated in this machine-like fashion are copies of one another and reproductions of the same pattern. Our system of education tends to destroy individuality.
Except in cases where special talents and characteristics are so marked that they cannot be dulled or blunted by any amount of conventional training, the collective method of education destroys individuality, nips originality in the bud, and tends to make the child a weakling, or an imitator, instead of an original, forceful, distinct entity.
A great many people remain trailers all their lives, followers of others, echoes instead of realities, because their distinctive qualities, their original powers, were not developed, called out, or encouraged in youth.
What a sorry sight is a person with great possibilities of leadership following somebody else all their life, seeking the advice of others when they are amply able to give it, and never daring to venture on their own judgment, because they have always leaned upon others, or depended upon someone else to lead the way! His or her common sense and power of independent decision, their strongest inherent qualities, lie dormant within them. They are doing the work of a pygmy when they have the undeveloped capabilities of a giant, all because of a lack of proper individual training.
True education, the education for which the world is ripe, is unfoldment, calling out the germs of possibilities, developing original force, fostering self-reliance, encouraging and stimulating initiative power and executive ability, cultivating all the faculties, and exercising, strengthening and buttressing them.
We want leaders and originators more than we want followers or imitators. We have enough, and to spare, of those who are willing to lean on others. We want our young people to depend on themselves. We want them to be so educated that their qualities of leadership, their originality, and their individuality will be emphasized and strengthened instead of obliterated.
Self-assertion, the spirit of independence, the courage, the manhood, the womanhood which respects its own powers and is determined to rely upon them, and belief in oneself, the qualities which characterize a leader, can be cultivated by every human being. But if these qualities are not drawn out in youth they may forever lie dormant in the soul.
Scores of college graduates, who have won their diplomas legitimately and honorably, fail hopelessly when they attempt to grapple with the practical side of life. They have not qualifies of leadership, no independence of thought, and no self-reliance. They are stuffed with facts and theories, but their executive faculties, their powers of combination and assimilation, the qualities which grasp and hold and manipulate, all lie dormant within them.
They were not trained when young to depend upon their own judgment, hence it is weak, hesitating, and uncertain. Their common sense has never been put to the test. They do not know how to be aggressive, or how to marshal their facts and theories and reduce them to working proportions.
Whatever you learn in school or college, remember that it is the executive talent, the ability to do things, the power of achievement that counts. It is not the great scholar, who is brimful of facts and theories, but the practical person, who knows what they ought to do and who will do it, who deals with conditions, not theories, and who can bring about results, that is in demand everywhere.
Education is not a stuffing of the memory with facts and theories until it becomes like an unwieldy encyclopedia or dictionary that cannot be handled with ease. A really educated person is not loaded down with text-book information that they cannot put into practice. They know how to utilize every bit of their knowledge. Their education gives them executive power, and makes them master of themselves, with ability to manipulate perfectly all the powers that God has planted in their soul.
The person who is rightly educated will never be a leaner, imitator or follower. He or she may not, necessarily, be a great leader, but they will not seek their opinions from others; they will trust their own judgment, will pilot their own barge, no matter how rough or troubled the waters, will be themselves, and will live their own life, wherever their lot may be cast.
16. The Passion For Achievement
“What are the motives which keep men slaving after they have acquired a competence?” “Is ambition a selfish attribute?” These and similar questions are very frequently asked.
The passion for conquest, for power, the love of achievement, is one of the most dominant and persistent characteristics of human nature. With most people the bread and butter and housing problem, the question of getting a living, a competence, is only one, and often one of the least, of the motives for an active career.
We have an instinctive feeling that we have been set in motion by a Higher Power; that there is an invisible spring within us—the imperious must—which impels us to weave the pattern given us in the Mount of Transfiguration of our highest moment, to make our life-vision real. A divine impulse constantly urges us to reach our highest ideal. There is something back of our supreme ambition deeper than a mere personal gratification. There is a vital connection between it and the great plan of creation, the progress, the final goal, of the race.
Even if dimly, we are conscious that we owe something to the world, and that it is our duty to pay the debt. There is something within which protests against our living idle, purposeless lives; which tells us that our debt to the race is a personal one. It tells us that our message to humanity is not transferable; that we must deliver it ourselves. No matter how much money we may have, we don’t feel quite right unless we are doing our part of the world’s work.
We feel that it is mean, contemptible, to be drones in the great human hive; to eat, drink, wear, and use what others earn by hard labor. We have a sneaking feeling that we are criminals; that it is unworthy of us to shirk a manly or womanly part in life; it violates our sense of justice, of fairness.
These promptings of humanity and the yearning of every normal man and woman for a fuller, completer life; the craving for expansion, for growth; the desire to objectify our life-visions, to give birth to the children of our brain, to exercise our inventiveness, our ingenuity, to express our artistic temperament, our talents, whatever they may be; the inherent, instinctive longing to become that which we were intended to be; to weave the life-pattern given us at birth — these are the impelling motives for a creative career.
One person expresses themselves, or delivers their message to humanity, through their inventive ability to give their fellow man that which will emancipate them from drudgery; another delivers their message through their artistic ability; another through science; another through oratory, through business, or their pen, and so on through all the modes of human expression, each delivers themselves according to their talent. In every case the highest motive is beyond the question of mere living-getting.
The great artist does not paint simply for a living, but because they must express that divine thing in them that is struggling for expression. They have an unconquerable desire to put upon canvas the picture that haunts their brain. We all long to bring out the ideal, whatever it may be, that lives within us. We want to see it; we want the world to see it.
It is not so much what people get out of their struggles, as the inherent passion in every normal man and woman for self-expression—to do the biggest thing possible to them—that urges them on. This is what keeps people going, always struggling to achieve.
Some savage tribes believe that the spirit of every conquered enemy enters into the conqueror and makes him so much stronger. It is certain that every business or professional conquest, or financial victory, every triumph over obstacles, makes the achiever so much larger, so much stronger a person.
The exercise of the creative faculties, the stretching of the mind over greater and greater problems, and the solving of them, constitute a powerful mental tonic and give a satisfaction which nothing else gives. Think of the lameness, the insipidity, the weakness, the mental flabbiness of the life of the inactive and purposeless individual who has nothing special to do, no great life-motive, pushing them on, in comparison with one who feels all the forces within them heaving and tugging away to accomplish a mighty purpose!
The idle, aimless person does not know the meaning of personal power or the satisfaction which comes to the doer, the achiever.
Those who wonder why men and women who already have a competence continue to struggle, to play the game with as much zeal and ardor as ever, when they might retire from the field, little realize the tremendous fascination of the great life-game, especially for those who have artistic talent and those who have the ability to do things; people who have great executive powers, qualities of leadership.
With as much reason might we wonder why great singers, artists, actors, authors, do not retire from active life, give up their work when they are at the zenith of their power, when they are just in a position to do the greatest thing possible to them, as to wonder why great business and professional men and women do not retire in the most fruitful period of their lives merely because they have attained a competence.
The unborn creatures of the imagination of the artist, the author, the actor, the singer, struggling for expression, haunt them until they are made real. So the ambitions and ideals of the business person, the professional person, clamor for expression so long as they are able to continue in the game.
Those who have never won big battles in business do not realize what a deep hold this passion for conquest, this insatiable thirst for victory, gets upon the achiever; how it grips them, encourages them, nerves them for greater triumphs. A great businessman develops the lust of power, the passion for conquest, as did Napoleon or other great warriors. The desire to achieve, to dominate, grows stronger and more vigorous with every new victory.
The ambition for greater achievements is fed by every fresh triumph, and the passion for conquest, which years of winning and the habit of conquering have strengthened, becomes colossal, often abnormal, so that men who have grown accustomed to wielding enormous power shudder at the very thought of laying down the scepter.
Think of the great business potentates of our country, whose power governs vast fields of activity — think of these people as retiring, giving up active life, because they have acquired a competence! Some of our captains of industry, railroad men, bankers and financiers, wield more real power today, exercise a greater influence upon civilization than many European rulers.
We hear a great deal of criticism of the greed of rich men, which keeps them pushing ahead after they have more money than they can ever use to advantage, but the fact is, many of these men find their reward in the exercise of their powers, not in amassing money, and greed plays a comparatively small part in their struggle for conquest. Yet this is not true of all rich men.
Many of them are playing the game, and keep on playing it, for the love of accumulating. Their selfishness and greed have been indulged so long that they amount to a passion, and the accumulators oftentimes become money-mad.
But the higher type of man plays the game, from start to finish, for the love of achievement; because it satisfies his sense of duty, of justice; plays it because it will make him a larger, completer man; because it satisfies his passion for expansion, for growth. He plays the game for the training it gives, for the opportunity of self-expression. He feels that he has a message to deliver to mankind, and that he must deliver it like a man.
The tyranny of habit is also a powerful factor in keeping people going. The daily routine, the business or professional system, becomes a part of our very nature. When we have been going to our office or business at just such a time every morning, doing about the same things every day for a quarter or half a century, any radical change—a sudden cessation of all these activities, a switching from the daily use of our strongest faculties to comparatively unused ones—is not a pleasant thing to contemplate, nor an easy thing to endure.
Every normal man and woman has a dread of the shrinking and shriveling which inevitably follow the change from an active to an inactive life. He or she dreads this because it is a sort of slow suicide, a gradual atrophy of a talent or power which had perhaps been the pride of their life.
There are many reasons why a person should not retire when they have a competence. A whole life’s momentum, the grip of habit, which increases facility and desire at every repetition; strong ties of business or professional friendship; and, above all, the passion for conquest, for achievement, the love of the game, tend to keep them in it.
It is the love of forging ahead, of pushing out into new fields, which has grown to giant proportions in the grand struggle for supremacy, the ambition to push on a little further, not greed or selfishness, that keeps the majority of men and women in harness.
The artist, the business or the professional person is much like the hunter, who will endure all sorts of hardships and privations in the pursuit of game but loses all interest in it the moment he bags it.
The love of achievement is satisfied in the very act of creation, in the realization of the ideal which had haunted the brain. Ease, leisure, comfort are nothing compared with the exhilaration which comes from achievement.
Who can describe the sense of triumph that fills the inventor, the joy that thrills them when they see for the first time the perfect mechanism or device—the work of their brain and hand—that will ameliorate the hard conditions of mankind and help to emancipate man from drudgery?
Who can imagine the satisfaction, the happiness of the scientist who, after years of battling with poverty, criticism, and denunciation, and the tortures of being misunderstood by those dearest to them, succeeds at last in wresting some great secret from nature, in making some marvelous discovery that will push civilization forward?
The struggle for supremacy—the conquest of obstacles, the mastery of nature, the triumph of ideals—has been the developer of man, the builder of what we call progress. It has brought out and broadened and strengthened the finest and noblest traits in human nature.
The idea that a man, whatever his work in the world, should retire just because he has made enough money to live upon for the rest of his life is unworthy of a real man, who was made to create, to achieve, to go on conquering.
Every normal human being is born with a great sacred obligation resting upon them—to use their highest faculties as long as they can, and to give their best to the world; and the laws of their nature and of the universe are such that the more one gives to the world, the more one gets for themselves—the larger, the completer person they become. But the moment one tries to sell themselves to selfishness, to greed, to self-indulgence, the smaller, meaner one becomes.
It is no wonder that the person who retires merely for selfish gratification is uneasy, unhappy, and is sometimes driven to suicide. They know in their heart that it is wrong to withdraw their great productive, creative ability from a world which needs it so much. They know that it is a sin against their own development, their own future possibilities, to cease the exercise of their Godlike powers.
It is the wrestling with obstacles and the overcoming of difficulties that have made man a giant of achievement.
If we could analyze a strong, vigorous character, we should find it made up largely of the conquering habit, the habit of overcoming. On the other hand, if we should analyze a weak character we should find just the reverse—the habit of failure, the habit of letting things slide, of yielding instead of conquering—the lack of courage, of persistency, of grit.
There is the same difference between a self-made man, who has fought his way up to his own loaf, and the pampered youth who has never been confronted by great responsibilities that would exercise his powers and call out his reserves, that there is between the stalwart oak which has struggled for its existence with a thousand storms, with all the extremities of the elements, and the hot house plant which has never been allowed to feel a breath of frost or a rough wind.
Every bit of the oak’s fibre has registered a victory, so that when its timber is called upon to wrestle with storms and the fury of the sea, it says, “I am no stranger to storms; I have met them many a time before. I feel within me stamina and fibre to resist the fury of any sea, because I have fought and overcome its equal a thousand times.”
The hot house plant succumbs to the first adverse wind.
Responsibility is a powerful developing factor of which the idle, aimless person never gets the advantage. Great responsibilities bring out great reserves to match them.
The consciousness of having a message for mankind has held multitudes of people to their ideals, amidst suffering, hardship, and overwhelming difficulties.
Every normal human being is happiest as well as strongest when active, especially when doing that which they were intended to do, that which they are best fitted to do; when they are trying to make real the vision of their highest moment. They are weakest and most miserable when idle, or doing that which they are least fitted for by nature.
The divine discontent which all aspiring souls feel is a longing for growth, for a realization of possibilities. It is the call of the potencies within us to do, to be; the longing for that expansion and power which can only come from healthful, vigorous activity in pursuit of a worthy aim.
There is no mental tonic, no physical stimulus like that which comes from the consciousness of growing larger, fuller, completer each day in the pursuit of one’s chosen work.
The passion for conquest, the conquering faculty which we all have—that something within us which aspires—becomes strong and powerful just in proportion as it has legitimate exercise and encouragement, so that every feeling out and stretching of the mind, every exercise of the faculties today makes a larger tomorrow possible.
17. Fun In The Home
“What makes you Americans hurry so?” asked a distinguished foreigner, on visiting this country. “This is not living, it is merely existing.”
The American people as a rule take life too seriously. They do not have half enough fun. Europeans look on our care-worn, solemn-faced people as on pieces of machinery run at forced speed and which squeak for lack of oil.
Life has become so strenuous in this country that even Edward Everett Hale, late chaplain of the United States Senate, was allowed only one minute for prayer, excepting on extraordinary occasions.
With us the hurry habit has become almost a disease. We get so accustomed to the American pace that we cannot slow down, even when we are not in a hurry. Our movements, habits, and manners give us the appearance of always being in a rush, and we hurry even when on a vacation.
Many people do not seem to know how to let themselves out unreservedly in their play. The ghost of worry or anxiety is nearly always present to mar their enjoyment, or they fear that it would not be dignified for a man to act like a boy. This keeps many men from getting the best out of their recreation. When in the country, they could derive a good lesson in healthful abandon from the young cattle or colts when they first leave the barn in the spring and are turned out to pasture. How they kick up their heels, as though they delighted in mere existence!
Notwithstanding the fact that the country has so many natural advantages of pure air, stimulating scenery, fresher and more healthful food, and freedom from the racking noises of the city, city dwellers, as a rule, do not age so rapidly and are much more cheerful than farm dwellers.
The reason for this is found in the fact that there are so many more facilities for amusement in the city than in the country. People who live in congested districts feel the need of amusement; they are hungry for fun; they live under strong pressure and they take every opportunity for easing the strenuousness of their lives.
This is why humorous plays, comic operas, and vaudeville performances generally, no matter how foolish, silly, or superficial are always well patronized. City people laugh a great deal more than country people, and everybody knows that laughter is a refresher, a rejuvenator, a success factor. They must unbend, and this fun-seeking has a great deal to do with keeping city people young and fresh after youth has passed.
What is needed is more play every day, play mixed with work. Don’t take your vocation so seriously. Do not let a spurious culture keep you from laughing out loud, or from giving yourself up with abandon to the fun-loving instinct. A cheerful disposition that scorns every rebuff of fortune and laughs in the face of disaster is a divine gift. “Fate itself has to concede a great many things to the cheerful man.” To be able to laugh away trouble is greater fortune than to possess the mines of King Solomon. It is a fortune, too, that is within the reach of all who have the courage and nobility of soul to keep their faces turned to the light.
As a rule, lovers of humor, great story-tellers and jokers have a wonderful power of self-refreshment and of retarding old age. People who seldom laugh, people who cannot appreciate a joke, age much faster.
An aged person ought to be serene and calm and balanced. All of the agitations and perturbations of youth ought to have ceased. A sweet dignity, a quiet repose, a calm expression should characterize people who are supposed to have had all that is richest and best out of the age in which they lived; but quite the contrary is true. In a restaurant, recently, I saw an old man who was so nervous that he could scarcely eat.
He was constantly drumming on the table with his fingers, taking hold of things and dropping them, twitching his elbows and his knees and moving his feet. Yet he was drinking the strongest coffee in order to quiet his nerves. It was really pitiable to see an old man who ought to be the very embodiment of wisdom, of dignity, and of repose, fidgeting as though he had Saint Vitus’s dance, with no serenity, no balance, no physical poise.
In ancient Germany there was a law against joking. “It makes my men forget war,” said the king. Sad, serious faces are seen everywhere in Christendom, “lest they forget,” business, dollar-chasing.
When Denys, the light-hearted soldier of fortune in Charles Reade’s “The Cloister and the Hearth,” saw a friend with the blues or discouraged, he used to say: “Courage, comrade, the devil is dead!”
This is a good motto to adopt. Always take it for granted that the devil, personifying everything that is bad, disagreeable and injurious, is dead.
To ignorant, superstitious people the devil is very much alive. He has the whisk of his tail in all their amusements. But to people who have their eyes open, who think, the devil is dead.
Whatever your lot in life, keep joy with you. It is a great healer. Sorrow, worry, jealousy, envy, bad temper, create friction and grind away the delicate human machinery so that the brain loses its cunning.
Half the misery in the world would be avoided if people would make a business of having plenty of fun at home, instead of running everywhere else in search of it.
“Now for Rest and Fun” “No Business Troubles Allowed Here.” These are good home-building mottoes.
When you have had a perplexing day, when things have gone wrong with you and you go home at night exhausted, discouraged, blue, instead of making your home miserable by going over your troubles and trials, just bury them; instead of dragging them home and making yourself and your family unhappy with them and spoiling the whole evening, just lock everything that is disagreeable in your office.
I know a man who casts such a gloom over his whole family, and so spoils the peace of his home by insisting upon talking over all his business troubles that his wife and children fairly dread to see him come home, because, when they see the thunder-cloud on his face, they know that their fun for the evening will be spoiled.
Just resolve that your home shall be a place for bright pictures, pleasant memories, and kindly feelings toward everybody generally. If you do this, you will be surprised to see how your vocation or business wrinkles will be ironed out in the morning and how the crooked things will be straightened. Make a business of trying to establish a model home, where every member of your family will be happy, bright, and cheerful. Fill it with bright, cheerful music.
Physicians are employing music more and more because of its wonderful healing properties. If there are no musicians in your family, get a gramophone, a piano player, or some other kind of automatic musical instrument. There is nothing like music to cheer up and enliven the home and to drive dull care, the blues and melancholy away.
Music tends to restore and preserve the mental harmony. Nervous diseases are wonderfully helped by good music. It keeps one’s mind off its troubles, and gives nature a chance to heal all sorts of mental discords.
You will find that a little fun in the evening, romping and playing with the children, will make you sleep better. It will clear the physical cobwebs and brain-ash from your mind. You will be fresher and brighter for it the next day. You will be surprised to see how much more work you can do, and how much more readily you can do it if you try to have all the innocent fun you can.
We have all felt the wonderful balm, the great uplift, the refreshment, the rejuvenation which have come from a jolly good time at home or with friends, when we have come home after a hard, exacting day’s work, when our bodies were jaded and we were brain-weary and exhausted. What magic a single hour’s fun will often work in a tired soul! We feel as though we have had a refreshing nap. How a little fun releases us from weariness, and sends a thrill of joy and uplift through the whole being!
Laughter is as natural a form of expression as music, art, or work of any kind. We cannot be really healthy without a lot of fun.
There is something abnormal, something wrong in the parent who is annoyed by the romping, the playing, the laughter of children. The probabilities are that his or her own child-life was suppressed. The man who would not grow old must keep in touch with young life.
Do not be afraid of playing in the home. Get down on the floor and romp with the children. Never mind the clothes, the carpets, or the furniture. Just determine that you will put a good lot of fun into your life every day, let come what will.
Have all the fun you can at the table. It is a place for laughter and joking. It is a place for bright repartee. Swallow a lot of fun with your meals. The practice is splendid. It is the best thing in the world for your health. It is better than swallowing dyspepsia with every mouthful of food. The meal time ought to be looked forward to by every member of the family as an occasion for a good time, for hearty laughter, and for bright, entertaining conversation. The children should be trained to bring their best moods and say their brightest and best things at the table. If this practice were put in force it would revolutionize American homes and drive the doctors to despair.
I know a family in which joking and funny story telling at meals has become such and established feature that it is a real joy to dine with them. The dinner hour is sure to afford a jolly good time. There is a rivalry among the members of the family to see who can say the brightest, wittiest thing, or tell the best story. There is no dyspepsia, no nagging in this family.
A few hours of sunshine will do for plants what months of cloudy weather could never do. It is the sunshine that gives the delicate, inimitable tint of beauty to fruit and flower. We all require mental sunshine.
I have been in homes that were so somber and sad and gloomy that they made me feel depressed the moment I entered them. Nobody dared to say their soul was their own, and to laugh out loud was regarded almost as a misdemeanor. If the children made any noise they were told to stop, sit down, hush up, or be quiet. Everybody who attempted to have a little fun was promptly squelched.
One felt, even though it was not seen, that this sign was everywhere about the house: “No joking allowed here. Laughter forbidden. No romping or playing here. Life is too short and too serious a matter for such frivolity. Besides, the furniture might be scratched, bric-a-brac might be broken, or the children’s clothes soiled or rumpled.”
A little while ago I was a guest in the home of a large family where the mother was a nervous, fretful, trouble-borrowing kind of women, who neither enjoys herself nor will let others enjoy themselves. There was scarcely five minutes during my stay that she was not correcting, repressing, scolding, or nagging one of the children. It did not seem to make any difference what they were doing, she would tell them not to do it. If a child stood in an open doorway or near an open window, she was sure he would “get his death of cold.” He must not eat this, he must not make a noise, he must not play; he must not do this, and he must not do that.
She kept on repressing her children in this manner throughout the evening, until they were very nervous and fretful. The result of this constant repression is that there is not a really normal child in the family. There is a sort of hungry, unsatisfied look in the faces of every one of them. They give one the impression that they long to get away from their mother and to let themselves out in laughter and play to their heart’s content.
It is worse than cruel, it is a crime to crush the childhood out of any life, to suppress the fun-loving instinct, which is as natural as breathing, for no wealth or luxuries in later life can compensate for the loss of one’s childhood.
We have all seen children who have had no childhood. The fun-loving element has been crushed out of them. They have been repressed and forbidden to do this and that so long that they have lost the faculty of having a good time. We see these little old men and women everywhere.
Children should be kept children just as long as possible. What has responsibility, seriousness, or sadness to do with childhood? We always feel indignant, as well as sad, when we see evidences of maturity, over-seriousness, care or anxiety in a child’s face, for we know someone has sinned somewhere.
The little ones should be kept strangers to anxious care, reflective thoughts, and subjective moods.
Their lives should be kept light, bright, buoyant, cheerful, full of sunshine, joy, and gladness. They should be encouraged to laugh and to play and to romp to their heart’s content. The serious side of life will come only too quickly, do what we may to prolong childhood.
One of the most unfortunate things I know of is the home that is not illuminated by at least one cheerful, bright, sunny young face, that does not ring with the persistent laughter and merry voice of a child.
No person is perfectly normal who is distressed or vexed by the playing of children. There was something wrong in your upbringing if it annoys you to see children romping, playing, and having a good time.
If there is a pitiable sight in the world, it is that of parents always suppressing their children, telling them not to laugh, or not to do this or that, until the little things actually lose the power of natural expression. Joy will go out of the life when continually suppressed.
The first duty we owe a child is to teach it to express itself, to fling out its inborn gladness and joy with as much freedom as the bobolink when it makes the whole meadow glad with its song. Laughter, absolute abandon, freedom, and happiness are essential to its health and success. These are a part of its nature. It cannot be normal without them.
Suppression of the fun-loving nature of a child means the suppression of its mental faculties. The mind will not develop normally under abnormal conditions. There is every evidence in a child’s nature that play is as necessary to its normal, complete development as food, and if the fun-loving faculties are suppressed, the whole nature will be strangled. Play is as necessary to the perfect development of a child as sunshine is to the perfect development of a plant.
The childhood that has no budding and flowering, or only a partial unfolding of its petals, will have nothing but gnarled and pinched fruitage. The necessity for play in the very beginning of a child’s development is shown by the fact that the instinct to play is so strong in all young life, including the entire animal kingdom.
Most homes are far too serious. Why not let the children dance and play to their heart’s content? They will get rubs enough, knocks enough in the world; they will get enough of the hard side of life later. Resolve that they shall at least be just as happy as you can make them while at home, so that if they should have unfortunate experiences later, they can look back upon their home as a sweet, beautiful, charming oasis in their life; the happiest spot on earth.
Let them give vent to all that is joyous and happy in their natures, and they will blossom out into helpful men and women instead of sedate, suppressed, sad, melancholy natures. Spontaneity, buoyancy, the bubbling over of animal spirits are worth everything in one’s education. Children who are encouraged in self-expression of their play instinct will make better business men and women, better professional people, better men and better women in any walk of life. They will succeed better and have a better influence in the world than those who are repressed.
Only the happiest children can make the happiest and most useful citizens. You cannot give children too much heart sunshine, too much love. They thrive on fun. It is their normal food and the home is the place above all others where they should get an abundance of it. Someone has said that if you want to ruin your children let them think that all mirth and enjoyment must be left on the threshold when they come home at night. When once the home is regarded only as a place in which to eat, drink, and sleep, the work is begun which often ends in degradation.
Children who have no childhood often develop hard, cold, unsocial dispositions which are a great handicap to their success later in life.
A happy childhood is an imperative preparation for a happy maturity. The disposition, the cast of mind, the whole life tendencies are fixed in childhood. An early habit of cheerfulness—the fun-loving habit—has a powerful influence over the mature man and woman and their career.
A happy childhood is the best possible protection against ill-health, unhappiness and failure; the best possible protection against development of handicapping peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, and even insanity. A large percentage of the people in the insane asylums did not have a happy childhood.
It is of immense importance to teach children to avoid unpleasant, disagreeable, soul-harrowing books. Keep them from reading morbid stories, morbid descriptions of crime and misery in the newspapers. Do not let these black pictures etch their hideous forms into their tender, sensitive minds.
Children should be taught the art of getting enjoyment out of the common things of life. This will prevent the development of a restless tendency, a disposition always to think that they would be happier if they were only somewhere else, under other conditions.
If you want your children to be well, strong, and happy, try to cultivate the sense of humor, the fun instinct, in them just as much as possible. Teach children to laugh at their misfortunes and to see the ludicrous side of unpleasant things which cannot be avoided or ignored.
“Mirth is God’s medicine; give the children a lot of it.” Blessed indeed are the Joy Makers.
I once knew a little girl who was so happy that she asked her mother if she could say Good-morning to God. She used to say Good-morning to the sun, and she naturally thought, and rightly, that she ought to say Good-morning to her Creator.
All the members of the mental family, all our faculties, are dependent upon their harmony for their helpfulness and efficiency. If they are unhappy their efficiency is seriously impaired. Discouragement, worry, anxiety, fear, anything which makes them abnormal, practically ruins their efficiency.
On the other hand, whatever tends to encouragement, to cheerfulness and good humor, whatever brightens hope and brings good cheer, multiplies their efficiency.
There is no other one thing which so buoys up the faculties and refreshes the whole being of man as good, innocent fun. The enormous success of the theatrical business is based largely upon the instinctive demand in human nature for amusement.
When this demand in us is gratified, the whole man is improved, enlarged; is more healthy, more efficient, more normal; but when it is denied, as it was among many of the Puritans in our early history, there is a famine in the nature, the faculties shrivel, and the whole character deteriorates.
It is a great thing to encourage fun in the home. There is nothing like a fun-loving home. It keeps children off the street, it discourages vice and all that is morbid. The fun-loving faculties in many children are never half developed; hence the melancholy traits, the tendency to sadness, moroseness, morbidness, which we see in men and women everywhere. These are not normal. They are indications of stifled, suppressed, dwarfed natures.
Many parents have a great idea of being stern, not realizing that suppression means strangling growth, stifling aspiration, dwarfing ideals. There can be no real growth, enlargement of faculties, where there is no freedom of expression.
The child that has been trained to be happy, that has been allowed free expression to their fun-loving nature, will not have a sad or gloomy disposition. Much of the morbid mentality which we see everywhere is due to stifled childhood.
Soul sunshine keeps everything within us sweet, pure, like the material sun which destroys the miasma. It antidotes the poisons caused from worry, jealousy, and the explosive passions. It preserves us from becoming soured on life.
A pessimistic, crotchety disposition, a fault-finding, finical disagreeable mind sours everything in life. Pessimism is darkness. Things do not thrive or ripen, become sweet or beautiful, in the dark. It requires the sun of optimism to bring out soul-beauty and to ripen and sweeten the juices of life. The tendency of pessimism is to sour, to distort one’s way of looking at things.
What makes us happiest makes us most efficient? Happiness is the great lubricator of life which keeps the wheels from creaking, which prevents the grinding, wearing effect caused by discord.
How much stronger, clearer brained, and more efficient we feel after we have had a real jolly good time! How it refreshes, renews, and restores our flagging energies!
If you carry about a gloomy face, you advertise the fact that hope has died out of you; that life has been a disappointment to you.
The habit of frequent and hearty laughter will not only save you many a doctor’s bill, but will also save you years of life.
Laughter is a foe to pain and disease, a sure cure for the blues and melancholy. Be cheerful and you will make everybody around you happier and healthier.
Laughter and good cheer make love of life, and love of life is half of health.
Laughter keeps the heart and face young and enhances physical beauty.
18. Neglect Your Business But Not Your Boy
Every boy is going to have a confidant, someone to whom he can tell his secrets and whisper his hopes and ambitions which he would not breathe to others. We take it for granted that his mother will stand nearer to him than any other person, but every boy will have some male friend who will stand in a peculiar relation to him. This friend, this confidant, should be his father.
You cannot afford to have your boy feel that you are too busy or too indifferent to tell him how to fly his kite or bait his hook or make a toy, or to play games with him.
If you begin early enough, it is comparatively easy for you to gain your boy’s confidence. From infancy, he should grow up to feel that no one else can take your place; that you stand in a peculiar relation to him, which no one else can fill. Any businessman would be horrified at the suggestion that he would ruin his boy by neglect, that his absorption in business would result in the undoing of his own son. But, it is the easiest thing in the world to forfeit a boy’s confidence. It will take only a little snubbing, a little scolding, a little indifference, a little unkind criticism, a little nagging and unreasonableness to shut off forever any intimacy between you and your boy.
One of the bitterest things in many a businessman’s life has been the discovery, after he has made his money, that he has lost his hold upon his boy, and he would give a large part of his fortune to recover his loss.
I have been in homes where the relationship between father and sons was so strained and formal that the latter would no more think of making a confidant of their father than they would of a perfect stranger. They have been so rebuffed, snubbed, and scolded, so unkindly treated, that they would never think of going to him for advice, or with any confidential matters.
It is a most unfortunate thing for a boy to look upon his father as a task-master instead of a companion, to dread meeting him because he always expects criticism or scolding from him.
Some fathers constantly nag, find fault, and never think of praising their sons or expressing any appreciation of their work, even when they do it well. Yet there is nothing so encouraging to a boy, especially if he finds it hard to do what is right, as real appreciation of his effort. This is a tonic to youth. Boys thrive on praise. This is why most of them think more of their mothers than their fathers—because their mothers are more considerate, more appreciative, more affectionate, and do not hesitate to praise them when they do well. They are naturally more generous with them; less exacting than their fathers.
I know a man who takes a great deal of pains to keep the confidence of his pet dog. He would not think of whipping or scolding him because he would not risk losing his affection, but he is always scolding his boy, finding fault with everything he does, criticizing his conduct, his associates, and telling him that he will never amount to anything.
Now, what chance has a boy to grow, to develop the best thing in him, in such an atmosphere?
You should regard the confidential relation between yourself and your son as one of the most precious things in your life, and should never take chances of forfeiting it. It costs something to keep it, but, it is worth everything to you and to the boy. I never knew a boy to go very far wrong who regarded his father and mother as his best friends, and kept no secrets from them.
19. Mother
“All that I am or hope to be,” said Lincoln , after, he had become President, “I owe to my angel mother.”
“My mother was the making of me,” said Thomas Edison, recently. “She was so true so sure of me; and I felt that I had someone to live for; someone I must not disappoint.”
“All that I have ever accomplished in life”, declared Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist, “I owe to my mother.”
“To the man who has had a good mother, all women are sacred for her sake,” said Jean Paul Richer.
The testimony of great men in acknowledgment of the boundless debt they owe to their mothers would make a record stretching from the dawn of history to today. Few men, indeed, become great who do not owe their greatness to a mother’s love and inspiration.
How often we hear people in every walk of life say, “I never could have done this thing but for my mother. She believed in me, encouraged me, when others saw nothing in me.
“A kiss from my mother made me a painter,” said Benjamin West.
A distinguished man of today says: “I never could have reached my present position had I not known that my mother expected me to reach it. From a child she made me feel that this was the position she expected me to fill; and her faith spurred me on and gave me the power to attain it.”
Many a man is enjoying a fame which is really due to a self-effacing, sacrificing mother. People hurrah for the governor, or mayor, or congressmen, but the real secret of his success is often tucked away in that little, unknown, unappreciated, unheralded mother. His education and his chance to rise may have been due to her sacrifices.
It is a strange fact that our mothers, the molders of this world, should get so little credit and should be so seldom mentioned among the world’s achievers. The world sees only the successful son; the mother is but a round in the ladder upon which he had climbed. Her name or face is never seen in the papers; only her son is lauded and held up to our admiration. Yet it was that sweet, pathetic figure in the background that made his success possible.
The very atmosphere that radiates from and surrounds the mother is the inspiration and constitutes the holy of holies of family life.
“In my mother’s presence.” said a prominent man, “I become for the time transformed into another person”.
How many of us have felt the truth of this statement! How ashamed we feel when we meet her eyes, that we have ever harbored an unholy thought, or dishonorable suggestion! It seems impossible to do wrong while under that magic influence. What revengeful plans, what thoughts of hatred and jealousy, have been scattered to the four winds while in the mother’s presence! Her children go out from communion with her resolve to be better men, nobler women, truer citizens.
The greatest heroine in the world is the mother. No one else makes such sacrifices, or endures anything like the suffering that she uncomplainingly endures for her children.
I know a mother who brought up a large family of children under conditions which, I believe, no man living could possibly have survived. She had a lazy, worthless husband with no ambition, no force of character; a man extremely selfish and exacting, who not only did practically nothing to help his wife carry her terrible burden, but also insisted upon her waiting upon him hand and foot.
They were too poor to afford a servant, and the good-for-nothing husband would not lift a finger to help his wife if he could avoid it; yet he was cross, crabbed, and abusive if meals were not on time, and if they were lacking in any respect, or if the children annoyed him or interfered with his comfort.
Although the mother worked like a slave to keep her little family together and to make a living for them, her husband would never even look after the children while she was working, if he could sneak out of it. When the children were sick, he would retire without the slightest concern, and leave the jaded mother, who had worked all day like a galley salve, to nurse them.
This man never seemed to think that his wife needed much sleep or rest, a vacation, holiday, or any change; he seldom took her anywhere, and was never known to bring her home a flower or a nickel’s worth of anything. He thought that anything was good enough for his wife.
She wore her clothes over and over again, until they were worn out, but he always had to have a natty suit, which his wife must keep pressed, he insisted upon having his tobacco and toddy, and would always take the best of everything for himself, no matter who else went without.
Yet, in spite of the never-ending drudgery, the lack of comforts and conveniences in her home, and the fact that her health was never good; no matter how much her rest was broken by attendance upon the sick children, or how ill she might be, this woman never complained. She was always cheerful, always ready to give a helping hand and an encouraging word, even to her ungrateful husband. Calm, patient, and reassuring, she never failed to furnish the balm for the hurts of all her family.
This woman saw her beauty fade, and the ugly lines of care anxiety, and suffering come into her face. She saw no prospects of relief from care for herself in the future; nothing but increasing poverty, homelessness, and not a cent in the savings-bank. Yet she never complained. No one heard her denounce her shiftless husband, the real cause of all her sufferings. She literally gave up her life to her family, until there was nothing left but the ashes of a burned-out existence, nothing but the shell of a once enchantingly beautiful and noble woman.
Ah, this is heroism — to see all the dreams of girlhood fade away, nearly everything of value go out of the life, and yet to bear up under it all with sublime courage, heavenly patience, superb dignity, a wonderful mental poise and optimism. If this is not heroism, there is none on this earth. What is the giving of one’s life in battle or in a wreck at sea to save another, in comparison with the perpetual sacrifice of a living death lasting for half a century or more? How the world’s heroes dwindle in comparison with the mother heroine!
Who but a mother would make such sacrifices drain her very life-blood, all her energy, everything, for her children, and yet never ask for or expect compensation?
There is no one in the average family, the value of whose services begins to compare with those of the mother, and yet there is no one who is more generally neglected or taken advantage of. She must always remain at home evenings and look after the children when the others are out having a good time.
Her cares never cease. She is responsible for the housework, for the preparation of meals; she has the children’s clothes to make or mend, there is company to be entertained, darning to be done, and a score of little duties which must often be attended to at odd moments, snatched from her busy days, and she is often up working long after everyone else in the house is asleep.
Not matter how loving or thoughtful the father may be, the heavier burdens, the greater anxieties, the weightier responsibilities of the home, of the children, always fall on the mother. Indeed, the very virtues of the good mother are a constant temptation to the other members of the family, especially the selfish ones, to take advantage of her.
If she were not so kind, so affectionate and tender, so considerate, so generous and ever-ready to make all sorts of sacrifices for others; if she were not so willing to efface herself; if she were more self-assertive; if she stood up for and demanded her rights, she would have a much easier time.
But the members of the average family seem to take it for granted that they can put all their burdens on the patient, uncomplaining mother; that she will always do anything to help out, and to enable the children to have a good time; and in many homes, sad to say, the mother, just because of her goodness, is shamefully imposed upon and neglected. “Oh, mother won’t mind, mother will stay at home.” How often we hear remarks like this from thoughtless children!
It is always the poor mother on whom the burden falls; and the pathetic thing is that she rarely gets much credit or praise.
Many mothers in the poor and working classes practically sacrifice all that most people hold dearest in life for their children. They deliberately impair their health, wear themselves out, make all sorts of sacrifices, to send a worthless boy to college. They take in washing, go out housecleaning, do the hardest and most menial work, in order to give their boys and girls an education and the benefit of priceless opportunities that they never had; yet, how often they are rewarded only with total indifference and neglect!
Some time ago I heard of a young girl, beautiful, gay full of spirit and vigor, who married and had four children. Her husband died penniless, and the mother made the most heroic efforts to educate the children. By dint of unremitting toil and unheard of sacrifices and privations she succeeded in sending the boys to college and the girls to a boarding-school. “When they came home, pretty, refined girls and strong young men, abreast with all the new ideas and tastes of their times, she was a worn-out commonplace old woman.
They had their own pursuits and companions. She lingered among them for two or three years, and then died, of some sudden failure of the brain. The shock woke them to consciousness of the truth. They hung over her, as she lay unconscious, in an agony of grief. The oldest son, as he held her in his arms, cried; “You have been a good mother to us!” Her face colored again, her eyes kindled into a smile and she whispered: “You never said so before, John.” Then the light died out, and she was gone.
Who can ever depict the tragedies that have been enacted in the hearts of American mothers, who have suffered untold tortures from neglect, indifference, and lack of appreciation?
What a pathetic story of neglect many a mother’s letters from her grown-up children could tell! A few scraggy lines, a few sentences now and then, hurriedly written and mailed—often to ease a troubled conscience—mere apologies for letters, which chill the mother heart.
There are plenty of wealthy men in this country who owe everything to the mothers who made all sorts of sacrifices for their rearing and education. When they became prosperous, these men neglected their disabled mothers, but came to their sense at their funerals. Then they spent more money on expensive caskets, flowers, and emblems of mourning than they had spent on their poor, loving, self-sacrificing mothers for many years while alive.
Men who, perhaps never thought of carrying flowers to their mothers in life, pile them high on their coffins. There is nothing which pains a mother so much as ingratitude from the children for whom she has risked her life, and to whose care and training she has given her best years.
I know men who owe their success in life to their mother; who have become prosperous and influential, because of the splendid training of the self-sacrificing mother, and whose education was secured at an inestimable cost to her, and yet they seldom think of taking her flowers, confectionery, little delicacies, or taking her to a place of amusement, or of giving her a vacation, or bestowing upon her any of the little attentions and favors so dear to a woman’s heart. They seem to think she is past the age for these things, that she no longer cares for them, that about all she expects is enough to eat and drink, and the simplest kind of raiment.
These men do not know the feminine heart which never changes in these respects, except to grow more appreciative of the little attentions the little considerations, and thoughtful acts which meant so much to them in their younger days.
Not long ago I heard a mother, whose sufferings and sacrifices for her children during a long and terrible struggle with poverty should have given her a monument, say, that she guessed she’d better go to the old ladies’ home and end her days there. What a picture that was! An old lady with white hair and a sweet, beautiful face; with a wonderful light in her eye; calm, serene, and patient, yet dignified, whose children, all of whom are married and successful, made her feel as if she were a burden. She had no home of her own, not a single piece of furniture, or any of the things which are so dear to the feminine heart.
Think of this old woman, who, in order to bring up and educate and fit for successful careers half a dozen ungrateful, selfish children, had made sacrifices that were simply heart-rending, receiving, in her old age, only a stingy monthly allowance from her prosperous sons! They live in luxurious homes, but have never offered to provide a home for the poor, old rheumatic, broken-down mother, who for so many years slaved for them.
They put their own homes, stocks, and other property in their wives, names, and while they pay the rent of their mother’s meagerly furnished rooms and provide for her actual needs, they apparently never think what joy it would give her to own her own home, and to possess some pretty furnishings, and a few pictures.
I know a mother whose children are in easy circumstances who is obliged to ask them for everything she has in the way of clothing. She is so sensitive, and feels so humiliated because of her dependence, that she waits just as long as she can before she asks for anything; waits until her own sense of decency and self-respect forces her practically to beg from her children.
In many cases men through thoughtlessness do not provide generously for their mothers even when well able to. They seem to think that a mother can live most anywhere, and most anyway; that if she has enough to supply her necessities she is satisfied. Just think, you prosperous businessmen, how you would feel if the conditions were reversed; if you were obliged to take the dependent, humiliating position of your mother!
Whatever else you are obliged to neglect, take no chances of giving your mother pain by neglecting her, and of thus making yourself miserable in the future.
The time may come when you will stand by her beside, in her last sickness, or by her coffin, and wish that you had exchanged a little of your money for more visits and more attentions and more little presents to your mother; when you will wish that you had cultivated her more, even at the cost of making a little less money.
There is no one else in this world who can take your mother’s place in your life. And there is no remorse like that which comes from the remembrance of ill-treating, abusing, or being unkind to one’s mother. These things stand out with awful vividness and terrible clearness when the mother is gone forever from sight, and you have time to contrast your treatment with her long suffering, tenderness, and love and her years of sacrifice for you.
One of the most painful things I have ever witnessed was the anguish of a son who had become wealthy and in his prosperity neglected the mother, whose sacrifices alone had made his success possible. He did not take the time to write to her more than twice a year, and then only a brief letter. He was too busy to send a good long letter to the poor old lonely mother back in the country, who had risked her life and toiled and sacrificed for years for him!
Finally, when he was summoned to her bedside in the country, in her last sickness, and realized that his mother had been for years without the ordinary comforts of life, while he had been living in luxury, he broke down completely. And while he did everything possible to alleviate her suffering, in the few last days that remained to her on earth, and gave her an imposing burial, what torture he must have suffered at this pitiful picture of his mother who had sacrificed everything for him!
No man worthy of the name ever neglects or forgets his mother.
I have an acquaintance, of very poor parentage, who had a hard struggle to get a start in the world; but when he became prosperous and built his beautiful home, he finished a suite of rooms in it especially for his mother, furnished them with all conveniences and comforts possible and insisted upon keeping a maid especially for her. Although she lives with her son’s family she is made to feel that this part of the great home is her own, and that she is as independent as though she lived in her own house. Every son should be ambitious to see his mother as well provided for as his wife.
Really great men have always reverenced and cared tenderly for their mothers. President McKinely provided in his will that, first of all, his mother should be made comfortable for life.
The first act of Garfield, after he was inaugurated president, was to kiss his aged mother, who sat near him, and who said this was the proudest and happiest moment of her life.
Ex-president Loubét of France, even after his elevation to the presidency, took great pride in visiting his mother, who was a humble market gardener in a little French village. A writer on one occasion, describing a meeting between this mother and her son, says: “Her noted son awaited her in the market-place, as she drove up in her little cart loaded with vegetables. Assisting his mother, the French president gave her his arm and escorted her to her accustomed seat. Then holding over her a large umbrella, to shield her from the threatening weather, he seated himself at her side, and mother and son enjoyed a long talk together.”
I once saw a splendid young college graduate introduce his poor, plainly dressed old mother to his classmates with as much pride and dignity as though she was a queen. Her form was bent, her hands were calloused, she was prematurely old, and much of this deterioration was caused by all sorts of drudgery to help her boy to pay his college expenses.
I have seen other college men whose mothers had made similar sacrifices, and who were ashamed to have them attend their graduating exercises, ashamed to introduce them to their classmates.
I know of one peculiarly ungrateful son whose mother slaved for him for years, taking in washing, and going out to work by the day in order to send him to college, and who looked forward as a reward for all her labors to seeing him graduated. When the time came, just before commencement she told her son how she longed to hear his commencement address, but he said that that would be impossible, because she did not have proper clothes to wear; that everybody at that fashionable college commencement would be elegantly dressed.
In other words, he tried to discourage her from going because he was ashamed of her and did not want to introduce her to his classmates and teachers. But she was determined to go, and, keeping carefully out of her son’s sight, she gained entrance to the rear of the hall. The young man’s address was a good one; and so proud of her son was the poor old woman and so overjoyed at his success that when he finished speaking, in the very midst of the applause, she rushed up to the platform and tried to throw her arms around his neck. He repulsed her, and afterwards told her that he was ashamed that at his graduation she should have made such a scene!
That was all the mother got for years of sacrifice and effort to help her ungrateful son and she went home alone and broken-hearted.
I have never known a man who was ashamed of his mother to make a real man. Such men are invariably selfish and mean.
Think of the humiliation and suffering of the slave mother; who has given all the best of her life to a large family, battling with poverty in her efforts to dignity her little home, and to give her
children an education, when she realizes that she is losing ground intellectually, yet has not time or strength for reading, or self-culture, no opportunity for broadening her mental outlook by traveling or mingling with the world! But this is nothing compared to the anguish she endures, when, after the flower of her youth is gone and there is nothing left of her but the ashes of a burned out existence, the shreds of a former superb womanhood, she awakes to the consciousness that her children are ashamed of her ignorance and desire to keep her in the background.
But no matter how callous or ungrateful a son may be, no matter how low he may sink in vice or crime, he is always sure of his mother’s love, always sure of one who will follow him even to his grave, if she is alive and can get there; of one who will cling to him when all others have fled.
One of the saddest sights I have ever seen was that of a poor, old broken-down mother, whose life had been poured into her children, making a long journey to the penitentiary to visit her boy, who had been abandoned by everybody but herself. Poor old mother! It did not matter that he was a criminal, that he had disgraced his family, that everybody else had forsaken him, that he had been unkind to her— the mother’s heart went out to him just the same. She did not see the hideous human wreck that crime had made. She saw only her darling boy, the child that God had given her, pure and innocent as in his childhood.
Oh, there is no other human love like this, which follows the child from the cradle to the grave, never once abandons, never once forsakes it, not matter how unfortunate or degenerate it may become.
“So your best girl is dead.” sneeringly said a New York magistrate to a young man who was arrested for attempting suicide. “Who was she?” Without raising his eyes, the unfortunate victim burst into tears and replied, “She was my mother!” The smile vanished from the magistrate’s face and, with tears in his eyes, he said, “Young man go and try to be a good man for your mother’s sake.” How little we realize what tragedy may be going on in the hearts of those whom we sneeringly condemn!
What movement set on foot in recent years, deserved heartier support than that for the establishment of a national Mothers’ Day?
The day set apart as Mothers’ Day by those who have inaugurated this movement is the second Sunday in May. Let us unite in doing all we can to make it a real Mothers’ Day, by especially honoring our mothers, in the flesh, those of us who are so fortunate as to have our mothers with us, in the spirit, those who are not so fortunate.
If away from her, write a good, loving letter, or telephone or telegraph to the best mother who ever lived — your mother. Send her some flowers, and appropriate present; go and spend the day with her, or in some other way make her heart glad. Show her that you appreciate her, and that you give her credit for a large part of your success.
Let us do all we can to make up for past neglect of the little-known, half appreciated, unheralded mothers who have had so little credit in the past and are so seldom mentioned among the world’s achievers, by openly, and especially in our hearts, paying our own mothers every tribute of honor, respect, devotion, and gratitude that love and a sense of duty can suggest. Let us acknowledge to the world the great debt we owe them by wearing, every one of us, boy and girl, man and woman, on Mother s Day, a white carnation — the flower chosen as the symbol and emblem of motherhood.
Happily chosen emblem! What could more fittingly represent motherhood, with its whiteness symbolizing purity; its lasting qualities faithfulness; its fragrance, love; its wide field of growth, charity its form, beauty!
What an impressive and beautiful tribute to motherhood it would be for a whole nation to unite one day in wearing its chosen emblem, and in song and speech, and other appropriate exercises, to honor its mothers!
20. The Home As A School Of Good Manners
Not long ago I visited a home where such exceptionally good breeding prevailed and such fine manners were practiced by all the members of the family, that it made a great impression upon me.
This home is the most remarkable school of good manners, refinement, and culture generally, I have ever been in. The parents are bringing up their children to praxes their best manners on all occasions. They do not know what company manners mean.
The boys have been taught to treat their sisters with as much deference as though they were stranger guests. The politeness, courtesy, and consideration which the members of this family show toward one another are most refreshing and beautiful. Coarseness, gruffness, lack of delicacy find no place there.
Both boys and girls have been trained from infancy to make themselves interesting, and to entertain and try to make others happy.
The entire family make it a rule to dress before dinner in the evening, just as they would if special company were expected.
Their table manners are specially marked. At table everyone is supposed to be at their best, not to bring any grouse, or a long or sad face to it, but to contribute their best thought, their wittiest sayings, to the conversation. Every member of the family is expected to do their best to make the meal a really happy occasion. There is a sort of rivalry to see who can be the most entertaining, or contribute the spiciest bits of conversation.
There is no indication of dyspepsia in this family, because everyone is trained to laugh and be happy generally and laughter is a fatal enemy of indigestion. The etiquette of the table is also strictly observed. Every member of the family tries to do just the proper thing and always to be mindful of others’ rights. Kindness seems to be practiced for the joy of it, not for the sake of creating a good impression on friends or acquaintances.
There is in this home an air of peculiar refinement which is very charming. The children are early taught to greet callers and guests cordially, heartily, in real Southern, hospitable fashion, and to make them feel that they are very welcome. They are taught to make everyone feel comfortable and at home, so that there will be no sense of restraint.
As a result of this training the children have formed a habit of good behavior and are considered an acquisition to any gathering. They are not embarrassed by the awkward slips and breaks which are so mortifying to those who only wear their company manners on special occasions.
A stranger would almost think this home was a school of good breeding, and it is a real treat to visit these people. It is true the parents in this family have the advantage of generations of fine breeding and Southern hospitality back of them, which gives the children a great natural advantage. There is an atmosphere of chivalry and cordiality in this household which is really refreshing.
Many parents seem to expect that their children will pick up their good manners outside of the home, in school, or while visiting. This is a fatal mistake. Every home should be a school of good manners and good breeding. The children should be taught that there is nothing more important than the development of an interesting personality, an attractive presence, and an ability to entertain with grace and ease. They should be taught that the great object of life is to develop a superb personality, a noble manhood and womanhood.
There is no art like that of a beautiful behavior, a fine manner, no wealth greater than that of a pleasing personality.
21. Self-Improvement As An Investment
It is not by leaps or bounds, but by steady, persistent growth that strong characters are made.
The trouble with most of us is that we are too ambitious to do great things at once. It is the persistent crying to make ourselves a little larger, a little broader, the continual effort to push the horizon of ignorance a little further away by good reading or study, that counts.
We cannot help believing in the youth who is always trying to improve themselves, who takes advantage of every opportunity to make themselves a little better informed, who always has some good reading on hand for his or her leisure moments, and who is always asking questions, observing, and trying to get an education.
Such eagerness to improve oneself is an indication of a mark of superiority, the genius that wins. Ambitionless, lazy, indifferent youth prefer a good time to acquiring knowledge. They are not willing to give up their pleasure, ease and comfort for the sake of improving themselves. Our opportunities for self-improvement, for mind training and heart training in everyday life are not well appreciated. No matter what our occupation may be, we can always be in the best kind of a school. It is a question of holding the mind alert. Those who form the habit of gaining the best from books, the best from conversation, the best from every experience in life, know the secret of perpetual growth.
There is nothing else that will give you greater satisfaction in after years than the forming of such systematic habits of self-culture early in life as to make your self-improvement processes automatic. In this way it becomes just as natural for you to seize every bit of leisure for the reading of something helpful or useful, or for storing up valuable knowledge from your observation, as it is for you to breathe.
I am acquainted with a young man who travels a great deal by rail and water, who always carries with him wherever he goes some good reading matter in as condensed a form as possible — miniature classics or the lesson papers of a correspondence school. He is always doing something to improve himself in the odds and ends of time which most people throw away.
The result is, he is well informed upon a great variety of subjects, he is very widely read in history, in English literature, in the sciences, and in other important branches of knowledge. What this man has accomplished in the odds and ends of time is a constant rebuke to those who waste all their time in doing nothing, or in doing that which is infinitely worse than nothing.
You perhaps do not half realize the inestimable value of time spent in good reading or some other form of self-improvement. You perhaps do not half realize, if you only had opportunities like some others, you could have done much better than you are now doing.
But did you ever think that scores of people have given themselves the equivalent of a college education in their spare moments, and long winter evenings?
A person might as well say that there is no use in trying to save anything from their small salary or
income, because the amount would never make them rich, so they might as well spend it as they go along, as to say they never can get a liberal education by studying during their spare time.
The more one saves, the nearer one comes to being rich. The more you know, the better educated you are. Every bit of knowledge you store up enriches your life by so much. All these little self-investments make you so much better off, — make you so much larger, fuller, so much better able to cope with life.
You can never make a better investment than by forming the good reading habit. It will multiply your efficiency, give you so much more power to break away from your iron environment, to throw off the yoke of dependence which galls you. It will make you more independent and self-reliant. The increased knowledge will increase your confidence in yourself. And, in addition to all this, if your knowledge is practical and you use it wisely, it will make you think more of yourself, make you more of a person.
There never was a time in the history of the world when education was worth so much as today, when added knowledge adds so much power.
Competition has become so terrific, and life so strenuous that you need to be armed with every particle of mental culture possible. The greatest work you can do in the world is that of raising your own value. There is no gift which you can ever make to the world like that of a superb manhood, or a beautiful womanhood. You can do nothing higher than this.
What a golden opportunity confronts you for coining your bits of leisure into knowledge that will mean growth of character, promotion, advancement, power, riches that no accident can take from you, no disaster annihilate. Will you throw away the opportunity, as so many others are thoughtlessly doing?
Within the last ten years our great railroads have spent many millions of dollars straightening curves on their lines, to save a few minutes’ time. The late Mr. Harriman spent vast sums for this purpose. In early railroad days the great object was to avoid expense. The railroads often took a serpentine direction, winding around mountains, hills, and long distances to avoid heavy cuts, fillings, or bridges. Time was not so valuable then as now, but, as life became more strenuous, competition keener, and men’s time of more worth, the roads were shortened and better bends, heavier cars, and heavier rails came.
Modern businessmen consider it great economy to take short routes and fast trains because of the rapidly increasing value of time. Speed, safety, and economy are the great mottoes of today.
Everything possible is now done to save time, ensure speed, safety, and economy of energy. Any railroad today which could cut the traveling time between New York and Chicago half an hour would very quickly put the present railroad company out of business, unless it also could increase speed. This is an age of bee-line short cuts and quick methods in everything.
Businessmen will pay more for any device or facility which will save time than for almost anything else. No expense or ingenuity is spared, especially by the great railroads which run competing lines, to accomplish shortened routes, to quicken service.
In the pioneer stage days of our history, before competition had become so fierce, a liberal education and special training were not so necessary as they are today. Now the youth must be a specialist, must spend years in training for his specialty. He must lay a larger and firmer foundation for preparation than formerly if he expects to get anywhere near the top of his vocation, he must remove all possible obstructions, must have a better training, better equipment, and more scientific outfit in every way, or he cannot hope to succeed.
As the railroad today which will persist in winding about hills and meandering long distances to avoid a river crossing or tunneling hills or mountains has no chance in competition with up-to-date roads, so the young man who expects to get on cannot afford any handicap which will retard his progress or reduce his chances of success.
The trouble with most youths is that they do not pay enough attention to straightening their tracks and reducing grades. They try to speed on crooked, ill-made roads and dangerous grades, with light rails, poor equipment, and the result is thousands of wrecks.
Every man should lay out a clean, straight, level track to his goal. All obstructions should be removed, all dangers and risks reduced to a minimum, making his road straight, firm, solid and safe.
When great railroads make test trails in competing for the transcontinental mails, they not only see that the tracks, the cars, and the engines are in perfect condition; they even pick out the finest pieces of coal, those containing the greatest possible amount of energy, and which leave the smallest amount of clinkers or ashes. The utmost care is exercised in lubricating bearings. Tracks are kept clear, and everything possible is done to secure speed and safety.
Yet everywhere we see people making their great life race in poor, broken down cars, on crooked tracks, light loose rails, over heavy grades. They are always losing time by reason of hot boxes and accidents of all kinds, yet they wonder why they cannot complete with those who are better equipped. They took little or no precaution to insure success when they started out on their trip; little regard was paid to the condition of their roads or cars, to the fuel as to its energy and bulk, or to any of the essential things on which success depends. Yet they wonder why they do no twin in the race.
Education is power. No matter how small your salary may be, every bit of valuable information you pick up, every bit of good reading or thinking you do, in fact everything you do to make yourself a larger and completer person, will also help you to advance. I have known boys who were working very hard for very little money to do more for their advancement in their spare time, their half-holidays, by improving their minds, than by the actual work they did. Their salaries were insignificant in comparison with their growth of mind.
I know a young man who jumped in one bound from a salary of five thousand to ten thousand dollars, largely because of his insatiable effort at self-improvement. His great passion seemed to be to make the largest and completest man possible. This young man is a good example of the possibility of reputation to help one on in the world. Everybody who knew him, knew that he was determined to make something of himself. It did not make any difference if his fellow employees wanted to throw their time away, he didn’t.
They soon found that it was of no use to try to cast him away from his reading or studying, for he had set his mind toward the future. He had no idea of being a little, small, picayune man. He had a passion for enlargement, for growth. Those who worked with him were very much surprised at his rapid advancement; but there was a good reason for every bit of it. While they were spending their evenings and money trying to have a good time, he was trying to educate himself by a rigid course of self-improvement.
Everywhere we see young men and young women tied to very ordinary positions all their lives simply because, though they had good brains, they were never cultivated, never developed. They have never tried to improve themselves by reading good literature.
Their salaries on a Saturday night, and a good time, are about all they see; and the result is the narrow the contracted, the pinched career. Men and women who have utilized only a very small percentage of their ability, not made it available by discipline and education, — always work at a great disadvantage. A man capable, by nature, of being an employer is often compelled to be a very ordinary employee because his mind is totally untrained.
One of the greatest questions that confronts this age is that of adult education. The commercial prizes and the opportunities are so great in this country that the youth early catch the moneymaking contagion, and they are impatient to get jobs and to get a start in life.
Many of them cannot see the use of so many years of drudgery in school and college. And their judgment is not sufficiently developed. They have neither had the experience, nor have they the judgment to realize the infinite value of a well-stored mind.
They are not old enough to realize the tremendous handicap of ignorance in their later careers when they come to wrestle with men and women who have had a superb mental training.
The result is that unless the youths are fortunate enough to have parents who appreciate the situation, and who can hold them to their task until they are fitted to enter the battle of the strong, or, unless they have advisors who can control them, they quit school and start out in life half prepared, only to see their terrible mistake when they get right into the fight with commercial giants who are superbly trained.
Later they see their mistake, and continue to regret it, without making any special effort to compensate for their loss.
Unfortunately most adults have the impression that if they have once passed the youthful, impressionable period, they can never make up for it, can never get an education, can never compensate for their loss.
Now, there certainly has be devised a perfectly practical educational system by which adults can, even while carrying on their vocations, get a very fair equivalent for a good education, even a college course.
The misconception rests largely upon the fact that it is not so easy to commit to memory later in life, hence not so easy to learn the rudimentary rules of grammar, of mathematics, and other elementary branches.
On the other hand, most of the other faculties are just as susceptible, and some of them very much stronger, in a much better condition to take advantage of an education.
The young person does not realize what an education will really mean to them. Their judgment is not mature, they have not had the experience, while the adult realizes his or her loss and is more eager to make up for it. An adult can work harder, is generally willing to make sacrifices if they are only sure that they can still compensate for their loss.
An adult will know better what will be of great value and what of little value to them. They will be very much more practical in gaining their knowledge. They will be more eager to learn, especially after they get far enough to see the great advantage of what they are getting.
There never was a time in the world’s history when leaders in adult education were so much needed as today. There are millions of people waiting for it, eager for it, hungry for it; but they do not know how to begin.
The inventor of a fair substitute for a literary education for the adult,—an education that will be practical and comparatively easy to obtain, especially one that can be obtained in spare time, in odd minutes, in long winter evenings, without being too hard or too exacting or too disagreeable, will render a greater service to the world than has almost any inventor.
Most adults, even when they realize their great loss of an early education, and are eager to compensate for it, do not know how to go to work to do it.
They do not realize how much of this can be done by systematic reading, even a little at a time.
Most of these people are incapable of self-direction or systematic study. They need leaders who will direct them and encourage them, and hold them to their task until they have acquired the absorption habit, the reading habit, the study habit, the thinking habit.
I am constantly coming in contact with people who tell me that it is the regret of their lives that they left school so early, or that they did not go to college, but who say that the time has gone by now, that it is too late to make up for their loss and they must do the best they can.
Getting an education is like getting a fortune. Most people do not think that little savings amount to much. They spend all their loose change because saving it would not amount to much towards making up a fortune. And so they keep spending and do not get the fortune.
Multitudes of adults who feel the need of making up for their early educational losses, do not think that a few minutes of reading during their spare time, or a little study during the evenings or half-holidays, would go very far towards acquiring an education. And yet thousands of people have gotten a splendid substitute for a college course just in this way.
I know some very able men who have obtained most of their education by reading alone. They went to school but very little, but, by the persistent reading habit, they have become well-educated in history, in politics and literature, in philosophy, and well-posted in all sorts of things. And they have achieved all of this during their evenings and odd moments, which most people either throw away or spend in hunting for pleasure.
The pursuit of education by a soul hungry for knowledge, yearning for mental enlargement, is the highest kind of pleasure, because it gives infinite satisfaction and infinite advantage.
One of the grandest sights in the world is that of an adult seizing every opportunity to make up for the loss of early educational advantages, pouring their very soul into their spare moments and evenings, trying to make themselves a larger, fuller, completer person.
22. A Religious Slot Machine
Some people expect tremendous things of their Creator. They expect God to be liberal, and pray for abundance of health, and ask Him to pour material blessings and all good without stint. Yet they are very mean and stingy in everything that relates to their religion, contemptible in their charities, in their assistance of others, in their help of the church.
Did you ever think that your attitude towards your fellow man, towards the poor, the unfortunate, your treatment of the Creator’s institutions here on earth, your treatment of His children, constitute your treatment of Him? “In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
Many people seem to think that the Creator is some power entirely separate from human beings, and that their dealings must be directly with Him.
I knew of a man who said he thanked God that there was one good thing in the world that was cheap.—that he did not believe his religion cost him over twenty-five cents a year. He got just about twenty-five cents worth out of his religion annually. Our religions are slot machines, and if we put in a quarter, we get out only a quarter’s worth.
We get out of a thing what we put into it. If we are stingy with God, he will necessarily be stingy with us, because it is our acts that open or close the gates of our minds,—the gates of appreciation and of happiness.
The farmer who is stingy with his seed corn gets a stingy harvest. The Creator does not crowd our lives with rich things when we are mean with Him. We limit our receptive capacity by what we give out.
We get a stingy education, if we are stingy in study. We must give liberally before we get, in every department of life. I have never known a person who is mean in giving time, sympathy, and money to the church, who ever got much out of it.
The Creator will not flood your life with good things, with fat things, when you are so mean that you will not give up a cent if you can possible avoid it, or give time and helpfulness.
We limit out receipts. The Creator cannot give us more than we will allow Him. What we get must come through our mental avenues, and, if these are closed by ourselves, even the Almighty cannot reach us with abundance.
Have you not known people too contemptible to get very much out of life, anyway? It pains them to give up anything. They think every dollar they get is theirs. They do not look upon themselves as trustees for the general benefit of their fellow man.
It is the large-hearted, generous, magnanimous man and woman that gets the blessings. He who gives out gets back; our own acts determine our harvest. If we are liberal and open-handed, our harvest will be rich and abundant.
Small souls cut off their own supply. They limit what they get by their narrowness, pinchiness.
The Good Book gives us the recipe for getting. “Give and it shall be given unto thee.” “To him that hath shall be given.”
It ought to make you feel mean to slip a nickel, or less, into the contribution box of your church, which you pretend means so much to you.
Others may not see, or know of your stingy gift. But you know that such a thing would be considered mean and contemptible between businessmen. And what shall we say of such a transaction between yourself and your God?
I have seen people who were well fixed in life put coppers into the contribution box, just because they thought others would not know how much they gave.
What stories of lying, of deception, the church contribution box could tell! How mortified, humiliated, disgraced many men and women would be if these boxes could tell the truth to the congregation!
Some people who would be liberal on a subscription paper, because other people would know what they gave, would cheat their God when the contribution box was passed.
If you cannot be conscientious in your giving to your Maker, can there be any conscientiousness in your character? If you are not true to your God, will you be true to your fellow man or true to yourself?
The End