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Title: The Golden Censer
The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future
Author: John McGovern
Release Date: February 17, 2006 [EBook #17781]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TIME.
"The mill will never grind with the water that has past."
CHICAGO, ILL. COLUMBUS, OHIO. KANSAS CITY, MO.
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
LEXINGTON, KY. BUFFALO, N.Y.
1884.
COPYRIGHTED BY
M.B. DOWNER & F.C. SMEDLEY,
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
1881-1882.
I take pleasure in laying before my readers a volume the aim of which is to lighten the cares of to-day and heighten the hopes of to-morrow. Every human aspiration which is not an ignis fatuus or fool's beacon is built on the realities of to-day. Every young person evincing talents in any direction hears predictions which are alone built on what he is doing at present. He takes this hope and redoubles his efforts. He usually succeeds—therefore, the inherited universality of hope.
Looking thus upon hope as a beautiful edifice rising above the foundations of our lives, I have striven to give my special attention to the duties of to-day, those stones whereon the structure is reared, that the first cruel tempest of adversity may not transport an unsubstantial fabric, like the palace of Aladdin, into the deserts of despair.
I have also tried to show that the lesson, so true in a proper view of this life, is also applicable to the far grander vista of eternity which, in the mind of philosopher as well as divine, lies so clearly before us.
In a Hard-Pan Series of ten chapters I have endeavored to point out, to the young men just starting in practical life, some things less general in their scope than the other thoughts spread forth in the book. The necessity of arming our youth with those qualities which lead to business success has made me confident that this attempt would be approved by the general reader.
Wherever a writer versed in the deep mysteries of the heart has left his thoughts on record, and they have fallen under my eye, I have eagerly chained them to my humble chariot, always, when possible, giving the authorship of the idea. The value of a thoroughly good admonition is frequently enhanced by the knowledge that it comes from the mouth of a thoroughly good man.
The Hopes of To-Morrow Must Have a Foundation in what We Are Doing To-Day—The same Thing True of Our Hopes of the Next Life—The Hard-Pan Series. Page 3.
The Golden Censer which Hangs in the Temple of Life—The Palace of the Soul—The Alarm-Bell Called Conscience—George Washington—The Soldier in Battle—Goldsmith's Pastor—Duty the Reason for Living—Duty the Stern Daughter of the Voice of God—Victor Hugo's Maxim—A Celebrated Piece of Verse.
We Are Old Before We Know It—We are Then Shocked and Regretful—Need of Impressing the Young with This Truth—A Golden Thought—How We Learned to Read—Lorena—Coal-Oil Johnny—Get Interest on Your Own Money Instead of Paying Interest on Other People's—You Thus Save Double Interest—You Wish to Succeed—Put out Your Ideas at Interest—"Lost!" an Advertisement—Haste and Waste—Get to Bed Early and Cheat Rheumatism and Neuralgia—Time the Corrector of Fools—The Mill Never Grinds with the Water that Has Gone Past.
Byron, Thomson, and Payne's Sweet Thoughts—A Grand Thought in a Grand Syllable—The Murderer in His Cell—The Letter from Home—The Thatch of Avarice—The Man Who Wrote "Home, Sweet Home," Had no Home—Dr. Johnson—The Halo that Surrounds the Word—The Long-Ago is Hidden in It—Rembrandt and His Sister—Dickens—The Cottage of a Godly Man—Kings Have no Homes—Democritus—The Old Home Was Happy Because We Were Shielded—We Must, in Our Turn, Shield the Little Ones—Suffer Little Children—Get a Home—See that Your Children Get Settled.
Thoughts Intended Especially for Their Ears—Children a Blessing—Through Our Children We Become Immortal on the Earth—Shakspeare—How Character is Built Up—Good Example—Father and Son—Starting the Boys and the Girls—The Daughter—Do not Blight Her Life—Happy Wives and Mothers—"Thanking Death"—Education of the Young—The Power and Beauty of the Bible—Bible, Shakspeare, and Geography More Necessary than Grammar, Botany, and Latin—Worship—A Suspicious Parent—The School-Master Experience—Try and Cut Down the Extent of His Services in the Education of Your Child.
The Noble Brother Will Have a Noble Sister—The Young Man of High Tone Will See to It that His Sister is Treated with Respect—He Sets the Example to All Others—Utter Selfishness of a Young Man Who Drags Down His Sister by Falling into Bad Society Himself—The Summer Vacation—Why a "Crooked Stick" Has Been Picked up By the Sister—Your Sister Your Other Half—Watch Her and Mend Your Weak Places—A Quick Temper—Scene in a Field Near Stone River Battle-field—The Sister's Influence on Your Fortunes—Brother and Sister as the Two Heads of One Home.
"Heaven Lies About Us in Our Infancy"—The Great History Written by Thiers, and Its Central Thought—The Impressibility of Youth—Much Can Be Accomplished in Youth—Alexander, Cæsar, Pompey, Hannibal, Scipio, Napoleon, Charles XII, Alexander Hamilton, Shelley, Keats, Bryant—Youth Our Italy and Greece, full of Gods and Temples—Edmund Burke—Rochefoucauld —Chesterfield—Lord Lytton's Love of Youth—Shortness of Youthful Griefs —Hannah More—Sir Walter Raleigh's Wise Remark—The Extraordinary Expectations of Youth—Dr. Watts—Story of the Alpena—Lord Bacon's Summing up of the Differences Between Youth and Age—Introduction to the Hard-Pan Series.
Need of Money—Difficulty of Getting It—Testimony of the Closest Mouthed Man Who Perhaps Ever Lived—"No Man Can Be Happy or Even Honest Without a Moderate Independence"—You Find Yourself Behind a Counter—The Little Boy's Shoes Wear Out at the Toe—They are Therefore Copper-plated—The Young Man's Common Sense Gives Way at the Tip of His Tongue—Difficulties in the Way of a Boy Who "Blabs"—A Man Who Is "Pumped" Like the Secretary of the Treasury Must Have Practiced Silence All His Life—Story of the Barber of King Midas—Beware of the First Error—How Things Leak out—Put a Copper-Toe on Your Tongue.
Courtesy Rests on a Deep Foundation—He Who is Naturally Polite is Naturally Moral—You Wish to Have Your Customers Brighten up—Brighten up Yourself—What is Good-Breeding?—Read Chesterfield—Study Your Customer—You are Young and Positive—Be Careful on That Account—Your Hands—Jewelry—Act Respectfully and You Will Be Full of Good Manners—An Example—How to Treat the Busybody—Zachariah Fox—Ralph Waldo Emerson—Milton's Allusion to the origin of the Word "Courtesy"—The Celebrated "Beaux" of History—Momentary Views of Our Souls—Your Clothes—They Should Occupy Little of Your Mind—Civility Costs Nothing and Buys Everything.
A Small Leak Will Sink a Great Ship—The Little Cloud Arising out of the Sea Waxes into the Storm that Lashes the Trembling Ocean—The People with Small Wages Can Often Save the Most Money—You Cannot Spend Your Money Without the Righteous Criticism of Others—How Young Men Spend Much of Their Extra Cash—Rural Saloons—A Gallon of Whiskey—What It is Actually Worth—What It is Sold For—Ordinary Profits of Legitimate Business—Tobacco—What Three Years' Savings Will Do for a Man in America—A Good Wagoner Can Turn in a Little Room—When You Buy a Horse Reckon on What He Will Eat Instead of What His Price Is—Save all You Can—Harness It up and Make It Pull in Interest.
Adversity's Lamp—Youth Has Great need of Courage—It should be Long-Suffering Rather than Intrepid—You Must Gain the Battle by Taking Sudden Advantages—You Must Hurl 10,000 Men Against 2,000 Before Your Enemy Can Be Reinforced—Story of a Young Man Who Broke Through the Enemy's Lines at Chicago—His Low Wages—His Bad Prospects—Reading the Bible and Plutarch—Studying French—The Attempt to Become an Actor—Dismal Failure—Difficulty of Conquering Wounded Pride—The Return to "Hard Work"—Progress—Triumph—Reason of the Victory—Hope a Quality Closely Akin to Courage—Courage, However, the Grand Motor that Moves the World—Courage Builds the Great Bridges and Hope Rides on a Free Pass over Them.
Hope is a Gold-Leaf Which Can Be Beaten with the Hammer of Adversity to Exceeding Thinness—The Medicine of the Miserable—Hope Should Deposit Probabilities with Experience, His Banker—Story of a Young Man Whose Hope Carried him Across a Bad Place in Life—Making Garden—Sandpapering Window-Frames in a Cellar—Selling "Milton Gold Jewelry"—Working in a "gang," on a Farm, after the English Fashion—A Situation Found on the Very Day of the Great Fire, Just Without the Bounds of the Conflagration—Map-Making—Success—Hope Is the Cork to the Net—We Will Part With Our Money, but we will Never Sell Our Hope at any Price—The Celebrated Shield—Hope Unjustly Defamed.
God's Exactitude—One at a Time is the Way Rats Get into a Granary—The First Rat Eats Out the Hole—Story of Sag Bridge—The Collision—The Horror—The Cause—Imitate the Detectives—Story of a Cashier Who Left Off a "Simple Cipher," which Stood for a Hundred Thousand Dollars in Cash to His Employers—How to Mail a Letter—"We Never Make Mistakes —The Way People Are Convinced That Care Is Necessary—How a Careless Clerk Can Drive Away Custom—The Lightning Calculator—He Is Simply a Hard Worker—Our Multiplication-Table Does Not Run High Enough—The Freaks of Figures—Correct Your Spelling—Learn to Avoid Foolish Exaggeration—Force of Habit—"A Man of Good Habits" Is a Man Who Would Be Positively Uncomfortable and Unhappy if He Attempted to Become Dissolute.
Hard-Pan Reason Why Nothing Succeeds So Well as Success—Your Good Fortune in Living on American Soil—Missing Battles and Allowing Others to Be Promoted Instead of Yourself—No City Ever Withstood a Good Siege—Get into the Strong Sunshine of active Life—The Safe Time to Become Discontented—What Praise Means—What Gloomy Predictions Mean When Your Employer Makes Them—Practice—Example in Proof-Reading—Captains are Made out of First Lieutenants—The Retail Business—Fools Rushing in Where Angels Fear to Tread—The Successful Grocery—No Wonder Success Sits on That Corner—The Painter Who Mixed His Colors With Brains—Story of The Man Who Could Imitate Birds—Do not Attempt Impossible Journeys—Stop at Each Inn.
Truth of the adage that a Man Is Known by the Company He Keeps—Tam O'Shanter's Habits—Building a House With a Party-Wall—Playing Billiards at Noon-Time—Smelling of the Smoke of the Kitchen—Bar-Room Manners—Judging a Man by His Clothes—A Piece of Impertinence which Cost the Keeping of Five Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars—"The Companion of Fools Shall Be Destroyed"—Learn to Admire Rightly—Charm which the Look of Certain Loafers Has for Many Young Men—Getting a Sitting in Church—Keep in Company Where You Will Be Under a Pleasant Restraint—Either Wise Bearing or Ignorant Carriage Is Caught, as Men Take Diseases One from Another.
Natural Depression—Certainty of Its Discontinuance—The Best Salesmen Have Been Very Soft-Hearted on Their Early Trips—Entering the Town—Riding One Block for Half a Dollar—A Poor Meal—Getting Your Wind—Planning the Charge—Canvassing Yourself—What Is the Almost Limitless Power of Persuasion?—Abraham Lincoln—The Whisky Which Made Generals Win Battles was the Kind of Whisky He Was in Search of—Your Dress—Your Entrance at Your Customer's Place—Your Speed in Getting Started—Your Ease after the Start Is Made—Never Stop the Customer—Your Perfect Accuracy as to Men and Places—Story of a Meteoric Salesman—Trouble of Putting a Stop to his Flight—Your Supper Tastes Good—The Men of Cold Exterior—Stay Out but Do not Stay Up—How to Get Vim and Sparkle—Extraordinary Value of a Man Who Can "Place Goods."
The Tracks of Giants—Napoleonic Miracles—Webster and Astor—George Peabody—Giving Away Eight Millions of Dollars—Stewart—Andrew Johnson—Barnum and Stanford—Ulysses S. Grant—Commodore Vanderbilt—Elihu Burritt—Edgar Poe—Greeley, Chase, Garfield and William Tecumseh Sherman—Tennyson—Robert E. Lee—Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg—James Gordon Bennett—Carlyle and Victor Hugo—Garibaldi —Agassiz, Humboldt, Proctor, Seward, Farragut, Nelson, Abercrombie, Joseph E. Johnston, Longstreet, and Fifty Others—The Habit of Riding Over Obstacles—Herodotus, Seneca and Franklin on the Power of Example—Christ Never Wrote a Tract—The System of Redoubling the Effort and Coming out, after one Victory, Ahead after Reckoning all Losses.
Shakspeare's Eulogy, just as He Penned It—Emerson—A Columbus of the Skies—Carlyle's Panegyric—Whately—Man's Faults—Horace Man and Pascal—The Poet Cowley and Boileau—Fallacy of their Scoldings as Applied to all Humankind—What Is Man?—Plato's Answer—Addison's Answer—Burke's Answer—Adam Smith's Answer—Buffon's Failure to Make a Satisfactory Answer—Plutarch's Answer—"The Proper Study of Mankind is Man"—Henry Giles and John Ruskin—The Wonderful Instrument Called the Hand—The Violin Slave—Man's Opportunities—What God has Said of His Children—The Beautiful Language in Which It is Written—Nobility of Our Destiny—A Stinging Epigram.
The Hand That Made Woman Fair Made Her Good—Wordsworth's Beautiful lines to His Wife—"She Was a Phantom of Delight"—Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope"—A Pleasant Subject—The Difference Between Love in Man and Love in Woman—Jean Paul Richter's Encomium—Schiller's Tribute—Shelley—Shakspeare—Rousseau, Barrett and Balzac—The Duke of Halifax—Addison—Boyle—Sex in The Soul—Woman's Love of Ornament—Her Dress the Perfection of What Man Demands of Her—Dr. Johnson's Explanation—Testimony of John Ledyard to the Goodness of Woman—His History—Woman's Enormous Influence over Man—How Men Live Where There Are No Women—The History of Human Sickness a Monument of the Goodness of Woman.
Overshadowing Antiquity of the Word "Papa"—The Pope Is Simply Papa, in Italian—Duties of the Son Toward the Father—Honesty of His Love for You—Patriarchal Government the Beginning and Still the Prop of Society—Old Age the Childhood of Immortality—Honor Attaching to Greatness of years in the past—Age Still a Necessity in Many of the Learned Professions—Age Is Indulgent Because It sees no Fault it Has not Itself Committed—Time the Harper, Laying His Hand Gently on the Harp of Life—Love of Little Children—The Village Blacksmith, the Mighty Man—Respect for Venerable Years a Fitting Thing in the Most Dignified of Young Men—Two Pictures, One Dark and the Other Bright.
A Great Subject—Chords Struck by Coleridge and Tennyson—She Has Risked Her Life that Her Child Might Live—She Has Grown Spectre-Like that Her Child Might Wax Strong—She Has Forgotten the Debt Due to Her in Her Anxiety to Obtain an Acknowledgment of the Debt Due to God—Her Memory—Christmas—Her Sick Child—Man the Mighty at His Mother's Knee—The Best Friend—"An Ounce of Mother Worth a Pound of Clergy"—A Mother's Praise—The Dead—Unalterable Fidelity—Forgetting a Mother's Claims—The Mother Still in Middle Life—The Mother of Greater Years—The Mother of Mothers—She Gathered the Orphans Together and Poured Out Her Tenderness Upon Them.
A Great Passion, Therefore not one to Trifle and Be Familiar With—Its Tyranny—Feelings and Actions of a Young Man in Love—Utter Uselessness for Business of a Young Man During the Uncertain Period Between Desire and Possession—Love Rules The Universe—How The Sages Look upon Love—It Is But the Flash in the Broad Pan of True Happiness—Shakspeare, Tennyson, Overbury, Mrs. Sigourney, South, Dryden, Plautus, Goethe, Burton, Valerius Maximus, Rochefoucauld, Addison. Hazlitt and Emerson—"The Wooden God's Remorse"—"Love Me Little Love Me Long"—The Poet Petrarch's Strange Behavior—"If She Do not Care for Me, What Care I How Fair She Be!" —LaFontaine, Lyttleton, Schiller, Ruffini, Ducoeur, DeStael, Colton, Dudevant, Balzac, Moore, Beecher, Victor Hugo, Longfellow, Limayrac, Howe, Deluzy and Jane Porter—"Solomon was So Seduced, and He Had a Very Good Wit"—Alexander Smith—Great Space Given to Love in all the Books of the World—Some Things to Remember While Viewing the Passion in Others.
The Young Man Finds Himself in Love and "Begins to Think"—He Wonders That He Never Before Thought of Money—Difference Between a Wharf-Rat and a Man—Difference Between a Married Man and an Old Bachelor Who Has Always Been Afraid of the Expense—Everything Natural in Marriage—Be "Square" with Your Sweetheart—The Circus-Poster—The Quarry of Truth—Do not "Talk Big" and Love Little—Courtship and Marriage not a Matter of "Want to or Don't Want to," but a Strenuous Case of "Got to"—Marriage Like Life Insurance—Closing Hints.
Sample of a "Swell Wedding"—Undignified Aspects of a Swell Wedding Where It Takes Every Cent a Man Can Earn, Beg and Borrow—A Farce, and an Example to Shun—Let us Have Some Manhood and Womanhood at a Critical Point, the Start in Real Life—To Be a Man Is to Be Married—Nature's Artful Treatment of Human Beings—Folly of Men Who Throw Away Their Happiness—Be Inquisitive Before Marriage—Be Blind Thereafter—The Law Approves and Encourages the Married State—The Married Man Is of the Greater Importance in the Nation—A Thing to Be Kept in Mind—Married Men Healthier than Bachelors—Married Women Healthier than Maids—A Married Man Has a Greater Excess of Comforts than of Troubles as Compared with the Comforts and Troubles of the Bachelor.
A Practical Chapter on Life as It Is Actually Lived by a Man and Woman Who Have a Fair Chance in the World—A Home With a Young Wife in It no Place for Other Men, no Matter How Dear they May Be to the Husband—Give the Wife a Chance—Kindness—Do not Be Afraid of Honoring Your Wife any Too Much—The Wife's Proper Cares—A Reply to the Common Form of Attack on the Principle that Marriage Is Both Natural and Expedient—McFarland—A Man's Happy Experience as a Husband—Judgment, Vanity, Selfishness and Trepidation—Good for Evil—Astonishing Changes in a Man's Needs—The Fireside of a Man Who Is Trying to Do Right—His Profound Gratitude at the Accuracy of His Taste in Earlier Years—Death, or Worse than Death—Three Studies—Apology for a Somewhat Uncharitable Reply to a Selfish Argument.
A Chapter on Bachelors Apt to Diverge into a Dissertation on Solitude—Arguments which the Bachelor Applies to the Question of Marriage—Being the Soul of Selfishness He Is Unwilling to Believe Happiness In Marriage Possible until He Shall Himself Have Embarked in Matrimony—Manner in Which He Usually Proclaims That all Men Who Marry Are Fools—Single Life Unavoidable with Some Men—A Mere Spectator of Other Men's Fortunes—The One Grand Result of Single Life—Wearing Out One Set of Faculties by Forty—Losing Control of the Other Set by Disuse—The Way a Bachelor Judges a Young Girl—His Somewhat Sordid Ideas—Events Have Distorted His Nature—A Bachelor's Great opportunities for Getting Book-Knowledge—Good out of Evil—Mistaken Ideas about Bachelors, which the Ladies are Apt to Entertain—Foolish Diatribes against Women—The Lack of Knowledge which Those Diatribes Betray—The Front-Porch View of Girlhood Esteemed to be the whole of Woman's Nature!
Health, Even with Memory, cannot conceive the Feelings of Disease—The Invalid's Sad Weakness—The King cannot Hire a man to Have the Typhoid Fever for Him—The Strong man Felled to His Couch—Chances for Philosophy—The Chances Usually Thrown Away with the Medicine Bottles—The Bachelor Sick—His Body now as Full of the need of Woman's attention as It was of Brags that He would Have none of Her—Let Us do something, by not attempting Everything in the way of Reformation.
The Tallest mountains, although They Gather the Heaviest Clouds about Their Solemn Sides, Yet Look Through Cloudless Skies up Toward the Sun—Effect of Deep Sorrow on the Appearance of Beauties of Nature—We Deprecate Grief, and yet We Rail at Its Short Duration—The Stricken Wife—The Young man who Loves and Is Rejected—His Dilemma—His Erroneous and Immature Decision that He would Love But One, and Love Forever—A Peak which Hardly Rises to the Bottom of the Valleys in the Mountains Piled Down by Events in After-life—True Greatness is True Humility—Affliction Beautifies Human Nature—Blessedness of Employment—Efficacy of Religion—The Beautiful Poem of "The Lamb in the Shepherd's Arms."
A Topic That Hits Close to Every Man—In the Old World the Countries Are to Blame; In the New the Individual Is Generally at Fault—Case of Vanderbilt—Fears of Enormously Rich men that their Wealth will excite the Irresistible Cupidity of their Governments—Burdens of Immense Riches in an Active Land Like This—The Shocking Imbecility of False Poverty—"Appearances"—Popular Errors as to Servants—Big Houses—Story of the Happy Man.
Progress the Stride of God—The Field-Hand in 1350—One hundred and Twelve Hours' Labor for a Bushel of Wheat—The same Laborer in 1550, in 1675, and in 1795—Seventy Hours for a Bushel of Wheat—The Same Laborer To-day—Twenty Hours for the Bushel of Wheat—The Children of the Laborer who Came to America—Seven or Eight Hours for a Bushel of Wheat.
Lightning Is More Apt To hit a Scrag than a Tree Which has Never Been Riven—The Scrags in Society—The Loadstone of Failure at the Foot of the Scrag—The Lesson to be Derived from Hopeless Failure in Others—Sorrows March in Battalions, not as Single Spies.
The Man of Success—Eggs Trying to Dance with Stones—Trying to Draw the Prize in a Lottery Without any Ticket—Dray Horses' Honest Belief that the Earth Moves Backward under the Racer's Feet, He Being So Lucky—The Heavy End of the Lifting—How Fortune Tellers Make Their Money—Great Opportunities for All Who Were not Born Tired.
One Reason of the Prosperity of the Present Era—Obey Orders—How the Wonders have been Piled Up—Metaphor of the Organ and Its Pipes and Reeds—Sound Your Pipe only in Your Proper Turn, and You will hear Beautiful Music.
We Multiply Our Sensations by Books—Everyone Can have a Library—Books are the Best of Friends—Charm of a Well-Read Comrade—Bindings—A Book as Great a Thing as a Battle—Importance of Some Battles—Our Eyes—How to Judge a Book Rightly—Large Type—Need of Handy Volumes—Aid Others, as a Duty.
Reason of the Melancholy Tone which Pervades the Great Writings of the Ages on this Subject—Man Expects to Get More than He Gives—How a man Prepares the Nostrum called Friendship—Unsuccessful Substitution of Selfishness for a Mother's Love—What is Possible in the way of Ordinary Friendship—Spot Friendship—Let us not Rail against Friendship.
The Basest of all Traits—A Wolf's Den—The Tailless Fox—Envy is Largely Ignorance—Greatness attained only after Arduous Labors—The Tenor and The Stone-Front—Thiers' Long Life—A Critical View of Gladstone's Public Sorrows—Truly Distracting Dilemmas in which Circumstances of Empire Involve Great Men—An appeal to Envy.
Mrs. Lofty—First Surprise of the Newly-Rich—The Scotch Mist—The Angel Sent to Conduct an Empire and the One Sent to Sweep a Street—Our Principal Causes of Happiness Free to All—How Rich Men Secure Happiness—The Prisoner and His Three Pins—Happiness Inalienable in Health—A Pleasant View of Egotism as a necessary Ingredient in Our Make-up.
The Need of a "Balance of Power" in the Mind—As a General Thing Ambition a Quality to be Curbed—Assassination of Merit by Envy—The Man Qualified to Deal with Ambition—A Picture of His Unhappy Lot, as Illustrated in Napoleon's Life—Poem.
A Favorite Chapter—The Telegraph Outriding the Storms—The Farmers the Grand Conservative Forces of the Republic—Difference between Business and Farming—How the Farmers Will Settle the Communists and the Magnates—The Farmer's Sons—A Plea for Them—A Picture of the Opportunities which We are Daily Missing.
The Drunkard's Wife—A Drama of Horror—Why Society Looks So Calmly on Such Scenes—The Wisdom and Experience of Society—Effort of the Brother to Improve His Sister's Condition—The Result—What Society Is Doing—The Drift of Things—Views of the Future—A Better Time nearly at Hand.
The Highest Type of Reputation, a Silent but Powerful Influence—Two Instances of Good Reputation—Tall Masts Needed for Great Ships—The Difference between Greatness on the Inside of a Man, and Great Appearances on the Outside.
Paramount Importance of Family Services—The Iron Duke's Remark—Sayings of the Wisest and Best—Scenes in Burned Chicago—Newton and La Place—Their Testimony—Victor Hugo: "I believe in the Sublimity of Prayer"—Wordsworth's Apostrophe—Young's Prayer—A Sweet Supplication.
The Owlet Atheism—Hammer and Tongs used to work in Fire—False Headings on News—On The Plains of Chaldæa—The Voice of Duty ever in the way of the Atheist—A Creator Demanded by Reason—The Atheist Like Falstaff, Leading a very Scrubby File of Soldiers.
The Bible is Authentic, Old, Beautiful—It is the Only Hope We have—It Out-dates the Chinese Empire—Everything Good and Progressive is Founded on It—Practical Value of Studying It—Its Eloquence—Its Triumphs in an Infinitude of Tests.
Age the Outer Shore against which Dashes an Eternity—We are on a small Planet, but We Belong to a Larger Celestial Empire—The Undevout Astronomer Insane—Does the Beast Peer into the Stars?—Eternity is not a conceit of Man—Apostrophe to a Patriarch.
Cato's Soliloquy—Promises of God's Word clothed in Syllables of Unsurpassable Sweetness—He that holdeth the Pleiades in His Right Hand—Blissful Forecasts—Shall God weigh out Arcturus to Stop the Unreasoning Clamor of the Fool who Hath Said in His Heart there Is No God? Conclusion.
Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer,
Swung by seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. —Edgar Poe.
golden censer swings in the Temple of Life, making holy its halls and grateful its corridors. This fountain of our well-being is Duty. There is little true pleasure in the world which does not flow, either directly or remotely, from its depths.
It shall be the object of this volume to point out and name a few of the balms which burn in this Unseen Censer—a few of the lines of action which render our memories sweet and forever pleasant if they be wrapt in such perfume.
THE PALACE OF THE SOUL.
When the incense of a man's good actions spreads through the palace of the soul, "the powers that wait on noble deeds" light up the edifice with radiance brought from other worlds. In the eye of a good man—in the window of the palace of his soul—we behold an occupant who fears no duty. We are fascinated, and gather about, anxious to peer in upon the fortunate possessor. Therein lies the happiness and the force of good example.
But let the Censer burn low, and flicker in final sickliness; the great bell called Conscience, hanging in the dome, strikes an alarm that rocks the building. How oft the solemn tocsin sounds! It drives us to our duty! Let us be thankful its clangor is so harsh!
THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY,
the man whose heart was torn each time his soldiers' feet did bleed—the man who stood like a rock between the despot and the down-trodden—that man, at the end of the career which glorified him, and which, with reflected glory will light the annals of all coming centuries—that kind, good man, George Washington, could not discern the separating line between Duty and human happiness. "The consideration that human happiness and moral duty," he said, "are inseparately connected, will always continue to prompt me to promote the progress of the one by inculcating the practice of the other."
LET US KEEP THE GOLDEN CENSER BURNING
with the frankincense of our highest endeavors. "Let us," as Theodore Parker once said, "do our duty in our shop, or our kitchen, the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and we knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world."
THE SOLDIER GOES FORTH
with his loins girded, hoping to conquer in the hard battles of life. Let the incense of Duty cling to his garments and keep him clean from selfish contagion. How lovely the picture of that old man of Goldsmith's time, swinging the Golden Censer before the hearts that throbbed in unison with him:
He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt her new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.
Our duty was created with us. It is a pleasure to live. What then should be the pleasure to think there is a place for us—a duty beneficently made that gives us rights with our fellow-creatures? What though the duty may try your soul and stagger your capabilities? "Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests." Bear up with patient courage—"the bird that flutters least is longest on the wing." "Duty is the stern daughter of the voice of God."
Let us then, upon entering this stately Temple of Life, cast into the Golden Censer our courage, our hope, our energy, our love, our industry, and all those qualities which go to make the air around us redolent with the fragrance of the achievements of life. It cannot then well be that we shall lack in allegiance to our Maker, our country, or ourselves. "Duties are ours; events are God's."
"On parent knee, a naked, newborn child,
Weeping thou satst while all around thee smiled;
So live that, sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou mayst smile while all around thee weep."
Age steals
Upon us like a snowstorm in the night:
How drear life's landscape now!—Henry Guy Carleton.
Whose hand,
Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.—Shakspeare.
e are intrusted with a few short years, and yet with more than we deserve. It is our misfortune to value those fleeting moments only when our stock of them is in danger of utter exhaustion. When the bright, beautiful days have vanished, and we find that, like the base Judean's pearl, those days were richer than all our tribe—our Vanderbilts, our Stanfords, and our Goulds—then we turn, in human kindness, to our younger associates, and sound our warning in their ears. According as our earnestness impresses them, they listen or they hearken not. A golden thought which the young should learn by heart, would run thus: However highly I have valued this day, I have "sold it on a rising market," and too cheaply. It would grow in value as I looked back upon it, even if I were to live to my eightieth year. This may not seem true to you, who wish for Saturday night, that you may receive your salary,—or to you, who long for Sunday, that you may gaze into a pair of eyes that have deep beauties for you—but when your mother in your babyhood, said a certain letter was "A,"
YOU HAD TO ACCEPT THE STATEMENT
without reservation, or you would not now be able to exercise the grandest of human faculties—to read, to glean the thoughts of the ages, and to receive, without toiling through the rugged regions of experience, the impressions and the inspirations which have come to man through all his labors and his pains. Sir William Hamilton has well said that implicit belief is at the foundation of all human happiness—the knowledge of the mind, as well as the certainty of the future life.
The mind is rarely broad enough in youth to survey the field of life with an impartial view. "The years creep slowly by, Lorena," was written in the true youthful, spendthrift spirit.
"COAL-OIL JOHNNY"
was left, as he supposed, inexhaustible riches. He threw away his money as many of us throw away our lives, and his money lasted him two years. Had his life been equally at his disposal, he would have been in the hands of the pale Receiver, Death, when his oil-wells passed to other owners. Having so precious a pearl, therefore, as this life, let us make its setting a thing of beauty. Let us invest our moments as
THE WISE MAN,
who, instead of buying on time and paying eight per cent. interest, saves his earnings and puts them out at eight per cent. interest, thus reaping a difference of sixteen per cent., or nearly one-sixth of his yearly surplus. Every idea put into your head is invested at interest. Every expenditure of time which is a waste is a payment of interest, a corroding, double-acting agency of evil to your welfare.
YOU WANT TO SUCCEED IN THE WORLD,—
of course, you do! Look out, and do not let the thrifty men of brains lend you their ideas at that fatal eight per cent., which, in reality, means fully sixteen! Put into the deposit-vaults of your memory the diligent results of your study. Those you put in earliest will pay the most profit. When you are thirty years old there will be few with heavier coffers. You will have little need to complain of
FAVORITISM AND DISCRIMINATION
then. On the contrary, you will, strangely enough, hear many lay that very charge against those wise old men who have been observing you and peeping into your treasure-chests when you were not on the watch. To the man, fortunate in his youth in having been
ADVISED RIGHTLY,
who has not misspent a moment of his time, "the thought of the last bitter hour" will not "come like a blight," and there will be no "sad images of the stern agony." The wise and good man, who has the unmixed reverence of the great and the humble, whose "hoary head is a crown of glory," approaches his grave "like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me!" is the cry of a misspent life. If you have cast away a portion of your existence, I beg of you to transfix this public notice before your companions that they may profit by your experience:
"LOST!
"Yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes, the gift of a kind Father!"
HASTE AND WASTE.
The value of Time should never be so foolishly conceived as to urge a man or a woman to that hurry which shows a thing to be too big for him who undertakes it. God makes Time. Can you, then, add to it? "Stay a while to make an end the sooner." You do not gain an hour by robbing yourself of your sleep. You do not gain in force by enlarging the wheel that carries your belting. If your constitution require eight hours' sleep, then go to your bed at ten o'clock and rise like "the sun rejoicing in the east," fresh-nerved and forceful, apt to carry all before you. Do not encourage those tempters who come to you asking you to break into the storehouse of your vitality and rob yourself of two, three, and often four hours of your rest, leaving you, in the bankruptcy of after-life a trembling alarmist, subject to the replevins of rheumatic muscles and the reprisals of revengeful nerves. Remember that age comes upon us like a snowstorm in the night, and that the mill will never grind with the water that has passed. Time is the stern corrector of fools; "Wisdom walks before it, Opportunity with it, and Temperance behind it. He that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends."
'Tis sweet to hear the honest watchdog's bark
Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home;
'Tis sweet to know that there is an eye will mark
Our coming, and look brighter when we come.—Byron.
An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural, quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labor, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven.—Thomson.
'Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
—J.H. Payne, in the Opera of "Clari."
o word in the English language approaches in sweetness the sound of this group of letters. Out of this grand syllable rush memories and emotions always chaste, and always noble. The murderer in his cell, his heart black with crime, hears this word, and his crimes have not yet been committed; his heart is yet pure and free; in his mind he kneels at his mother's side and lisps his prayers to God that he, by a life of dignity and honor, may gladden that mother's heart; and then he weeps, and for a while is not a murderer. The Judge upon his bench deals out the dreaded justice to the scourged, and has no look of gentleness. But breathe this word into his ear, his thoughts fly to his fireside; his heart relents; he is no longer Justice, but weak and tender Mercy.
What makes that small, unopened missive so precious to that great rough man? Why, 'tis from Home—from Home, that spot to which his heart is tied with unseen cords and tendrils tighter than the muscles which hold it in his swelling chest. Perhaps he left his Home caring little for it at the time. Perhaps harsh necessity drove him from its tender roof to lie beneath
THE THATCH OF AVARICE.
It does not matter. As the great river broadens in the Spring, so do his feelings swell and overflow his nature now. Why does he tremble,—that rough, weather-beaten man? Because there is but one place on the great earth where "an eye will mark his coming and grow brighter." If that beacon still burns for him, he can continue his voyage. If it has gone out, if anything has happened to it, his way is dark; nothing but the abiding hand of the Great Father can steady his helm and hold him to his desolate course.
"Childhood is the bough where slumbered
Birds and blossoms many-numbered;
Age, that bough with snows encumbered."
The man who wandered "mid pleasures and palaces," had no Home, and when he died he died on the bleak shores of Northern Africa, and was buried where he died, at the city of Tunis, where he held the office of United States Consul. "To Adam," says Bishop Hare, "Paradise was Home. To the good among his descendants,
HOME IS PARADISE."
"Are you not surprised," writes Dr. James Hamilton, "to find how independent of money peace of conscience is, and how much happiness can be condensed in the humblest home? A cottage will not hold the bulky furniture and sumptuous accommodations of a mansion; but if love be there, a cottage will hold as much happiness as might stock a palace." "To be happy at home," writes Dr. Johnson in the Rambler, "is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution." In the mind of the good there gather about the old Home
HALO UPON HALO OF FOND THOUGHT,
of nearly idolatrous memory. Upon this very green, the joyous march of youth went on. Here the glad days whirled round like wheels. At morn the laugh was loud; at eve the laughter rang. To-day, perhaps the most joyous of the flock lies in the earth. Perhaps the chief spirit of the wildest gambols is bent with sharp affliction; the one that loved his mother best is in a foreign land; the one that doubled her small cares with dolls goes every week to gaze at little gravestones, and the one that would not stay in bed upon the sun's bright rise now sits in awful blindness. You cannot rob these hearts of their sweet memories. The mystic keyword unlocks the gates. The peaceful waters flow; the thirsty soul is satisfied.
THE LONG AGO.
A lady opens a short epistle from her brother. He is rich, successful, busy, in short driven, cannot visit her at a certain date, regrets, with love, etc., all in ten short lines. What does this dry notice tell? It tells of a buffalo-robe which, by much strategy, can be secured from father's study; it tells of a daring, rollicking boy who has got the strategy and will soon get the buffalo-robe. It tells of two boys and three girls, all gathered in the robe, with the rollicking one as fireman and engineer, making the famous trip down the stairs which shall tumble them all into the presence of a parent who will make a weak demonstration of severity, clearly official, and merely masking a very evident inclination to try a trip on the same train.
WHERE WAS THIS?
Why at the dear old Home, in the Long Ago. Who was the fireman and engineer? Why, this great, pompous man of business, whose short note his sister has just laid down—of course, he was the fireman and the engineer!
We see the sister of Rembrandt, the painter, traveling weary miles to the house of the brother whom in youth she shielded from the wrath of a drunken father, whose rude pictures she concealed from eyes that would have looked upon them in anger. Now he is the most celebrated painter of his time. He is rich beyond the imagination of his humble contemporaries. He never receives people into his stronghold.
TWO GREAT DOGS GUARD THE ENTRANCE.
Into a gloomy portal the aged sister enters, and soon the miser and the good angel of his past are together. There they sit in the dusk, and recall, after sixty years of separation, the scenes of the Home which existed eighty years before! We marvel at a word that comes along a cable under the ocean. Why should we not also wonder at a little word that can sound across the awful stretch of eighty years, through
AN OCEAN OF LIFE,
stormy with fearful disappointments, boisterous with seasons of success, and desolate with the drift, the slime, and the fungus of miserly greed!
Says Dickens: "If ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and proud to Home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal, and bear the stamp of heaven."
"If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man," writes Jeremy Taylor, "how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious."
It has happened within a hundred years that men of private station have become Kings. One of the severest trials of their exalted lot has been the disaster which came upon their homes.
KINGS HAVE NO HOMES.
I am told that the Presidents of the United States have complained very naturally that they are denied that privacy which is accorded to the lowliest citizen in the land. It should content the possessor of a Home that he has that which Kings cannot have, and which if it be bright and free from wrong, is more valuable than palaces and marble halls. Of this golden right of asylum in the Home, Abraham Cowley has written: "Democritus relates, as if he gloried in the good fortune of it, that when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus; after whose death, making, in one of his letters, a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of that most talked of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of; and yet, within a very few years afterward, there were
NO TWO NAMES OF MEN MORE KNOWN
or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to an ague of frigid impertinences which would make a wise man tremble to think of."
What makes the remembrance of the old Home so happy? Was it not because there the storms of life were turned away from us by those who bore the blasts to keep us in our innocence? And now that future which then was on our horizon has neared us and is our zenith, the centre of our heavens. About us are
PRATTLING LITTLE ONES
who in the far-off years will clothe this house about with that holy mantle which will give it the right to that same grand title, Home. Can we not, in thinking of the good old Home, stand a little nearer to the blast and warm some tiny heart a little more? Does the merry laugh sing out as it did in our own youth? Then this is indeed a Home, growing each day more sacred in the mind of those fledglings who will so soon fly from the nest to beat a fluttering and a weary way through the tempests that will encompass them. A Christmas-tree, a picnic, a May-day festival, make trouble for limbs already weary with labor, but
IT IS THE WEARINESS AND THE SELF-SACRIFICE
as well as the mirth and the innocence which have girt this great word round about with its bright girdle of true glory. "Suffer little children to come unto me," says the Lord Jesus, "and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." We may say likewise, following the beauteous expression of our Savior, "Suffer little children to come into our homes, and forbid them not their mirth and their joy, for their contentment is now the one lesson that will take deep hold on their lives, and their souls will grow rapidly in such surroundings." Says the poet Southey: "A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks."
"He is the happiest," says Goethe, "be he King or peasant, who finds peace in his Home." Especially should
THE YOUNG MAN
be taught the value of a Home. If his advisers lay before him the lesson of life in all its aspects, he will indeed be a prodigal if he have not a Home of his own almost immediately upon leaving the fatherly roof. There are no reasons, no exceptions, which relieve the healthy, able-bodied young man from an early advance on the enemies who threaten the welfare of the citizen. The strongest fortification which the human heart can throw up against temptation is the Home. Certain men are almost invincible against the onslaughts of the many base allurements which wreak such misery on all sides of us. Why are they so firm? It is because a glorious example has stood before their minds, a liberal and older knowledge of the world has aided their early endeavors, and a plentiful advice has fastened in their understandings the wisdom of virtue and industry. If your sons have Homes of their own, you can leave them, as a great General leaves his lieutenants to occupy a country, here a fortress held in safety, there a cantonment with natural defenses, and there a "city on a hill," while you advance into those other regions which are written on the map of your destiny, "sustained by the unfaltering trust" that you have kept the great obligation imposed on you, and handled your forces for the best advantage of the cause you served.
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot.—Thomson.
y the general voice of mankind, children are held to be a blessing to the good. Where the bonds of love do not tighten as the children grow, it is like those cases where the chords and muscles do not fasten together after a hurt—there has been malpractice. Let us not live like quacks. There are some general rules in life which will lead us toward a greater enjoyment of our children's lives. Through them and their issue we become immortal on this earth. Death cannot sweep us down entirely. We leave our lives set in a younger cast of flesh, to hold the fight against the enemy. While they thus serve us, to guard us from extinction, we also stand as their ambassadors in heaven, presently to go on our mission,—first to finish our own preparations, and then to begin those of our offspring, who will follow in our footsteps. Says Shakspeare: "The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants." Our experience teaches us that virtue and honesty are in themselves great rewards. Whether we be virtuous and honest matters little in our estimation of the value of those qualities. The thief, quaking before the Judge, cannot but compare his own lot with that of the good man who sits above him. The one has followed every bent of his inclination, which gradually became more and more capricious, more difficult to satisfy. The other put on a steadying curb in early life, denied himself nine times where he humored himself once, and
FINALLY HAD A CHARACTER
which made few demands upon him, and whose demands were decent and in order. Thus "some as corrupt in their morals as vice could make them, have yet been solicitous to have their children soberly, virtuously, and piously brought up." We therefore, on every ground, must teach our children religion, dignity, and probity. "Parents," says Jeremy Taylor, "must give good example and reverent deportment in the presence of their children. And all those instances of charity which usually endear each other—sweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonition—all significations of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, must be expressed toward children; that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide."
FATHER AND SON.
Says Sir R. Steele: "It is the most beautiful object the eyes of man can behold to see a man of worth and his son live in an entire, unreserved correspondence. The mutual kindness and affection between them give an inexpressible satisfaction to all who know them. It is a sublime pleasure which increases by the participation. It is as sacred as friendship, as pleasurable as love, and as joyful as religion. This state of mind does not only dissipate sorrow which would be extreme without it, but enlarges pleasures which would otherwise be contemptible. The most indifferent thing has its force and beauty when it is spoken by a kind father, and an insignificant trifle has its weight when offered by a dutiful child. I know not how to express it, but I think I may call it a transplanted self-love."
THE OCCUPATION.
"The time will be coming—is come, perhaps—when your young people must decide on the course and main occupation of their future lives. You will expect to have a voice in the matter. Quite right, if a voice of counsel, of remonstrance, of suggestion, of pointing out unsuspected difficulties, of encouragement by developing the means of success. Such a voice as that from an elder will always be listened to. But perhaps your have already settled in your own mind the calling to be followed, and you mean simply to call on the youngster to accept and register your decree on the opening pages of his autobiography. This is, indeed a questionable proceeding, unless you are perfectly assured of what the young man's unbiased choice will be."
THE DAUGHTER.
"Certain it is," said Addison, "that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as that of a father to a daughter. He beholds her both with and without regard to her sex. In love to our sons there is ambition, but in that to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express." "There is, however, an unkind measure by which a few persons strive to avoid living by themselves in their old age. They selfishly prevent their children (principally their daughters) from marrying, in order to retain them around them at home. Certainly matches are now and then projected which it is the duty of a parent to oppose; but there are two kinds of opposition, a conscientious and sorrowful opposition, and an egotistical and captious opposition, and men and women, in their self-deception, may sometimes mistake the one for the other. 'Marry your daughters lest they marry themselves, and run off with the ploughman or the groom' is an axiom of worldly wisdom. Marry your daughters, if you can do so satisfactorily, that they may become
HAPPY WIVES AND MOTHERS,
fulfilling the destiny allotted to them by their Great Creator. Marry them, if worthy suitors offer, lest they remain single and unprotected after your departure. Marry them, lest they say, in their bitter disappointment and loneliness, 'Our parents thought only of their own comfort and convenience. We now find that our welfare and settlement in life was disregarded!' But I am sure my hard-hearted comrade in years," continues this aged writer, "that you are more generous to your own dear girls than to dream of preventing the completion of their own little romance in order to keep them at home, pining as your waiting minds."
THANKING DEATH.
One of the most learned observations to parents has been made by Lord Burleigh. "Bring thy children up," said he, in "learning and obedience, yet without outward austerity. Give them good countenance and convenient maintenance, according to thy ability; otherwise thy life will seem their bondage, and what portion thou shalt leave them at thy death, they will thank death for it, and not thee!"
EDUCATION.
"I suppose it never occurs to parents," says John Foster, in his Journal, "that to throw vilely-educated young people on the world is, independently of the injury to the young people themselves, a positive crime, and of very great magnitude; as great, for instance, as burning their neighbor's house, or poisoning the water in his well. In pointing out to them what is wrong, even if they acknowledge the justness of the statement, one cannot make them feel a sense of guilt, as in other proved charges. That they love their children extenuates to their consciences every parental folly that may at last produce in the children every desperate vice." As to this matter of education,
OUR GREAT SCHOOLS
have taken it largely out of the parents' hands to guide the course of instruction, and where this would be done logically, I cannot but feel it is to the disadvantage of the child; but the system is built for public, not for individual benefit, and will probably do the greatest good to the greatest number. If we could have a little less Latin and a little better spelling, a little less long Latin and a little more good short Saxon I believe our youth would make their mark easier. Our young people dislike interest tables and are delighted with long words. Under the present system and popular taste, our children despise
THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIBLE
until they are thirty years old, whereafter they gradually learn that the very essence of artful language is contained in its pages. There is not much need of a long word when a short one sounds better. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters." How like the ripple of a brook the syllables drop from the tongue! The fall of the voice, and the fall of the idea, make the passage a lovely instance of the highest art in poetical expression. If our youth could be taught respect, attention, multiplication and division, spelling, short words, short sentences, Bible, Shakspeare, and geography, and could spend less time conjugating foreign verbs, there would be a really higher grade of intelligence in the end, perhaps, and there would, above all, be more of that glorious independence of mind which makes a thing worthy of commendation because it is appreciated, not because somebody else has said it is good.
WORSHIP.
The Catholics say that if they may have the spiritual culture of the child till he is ten years of age, they will willingly surrender him into the hands of the teachers of any other faith, resting secure in the permanency of early teachings. The great value of early religious instruction has always been conceded by the most learned. "The first thing, therefore," says Dr. Priestly, "that a Christian will naturally inculcate upon his child, as soon as he is capable of receiving such impressions, is the knowledge of his Maker, and a steady principle of obedience to Him; the idea of his living under a constant inspection and government of an invisible being, who will raise him from the dead to an immortal life, and who will reward and punish him hereafter according to his character and actions here.
ON THESE PLAIN PRINCIPLES
I hesitate not to assert as a Christian, that religion is the first rational object of education. Whatever be the fate of my children in this transitory world, about which I hope I am as solicitous as I ought to be, I would, if possible, secure a happy meeting with them in a future and everlasting life."
"A suspicious parent makes an artful child," says Haliburton. A tender parent makes a wayward son. A cruel parent makes a timid son. Be harsh when harshness is necessary, but be kind when kindness is needful, for as the grass of the fields needs the light of the sun, so does the human heart yearn for sympathy and kindness, in all the years of its wonderful growth. Parents may in a great measure do much of the teaching which that
NOTORIOUSLY HARSH SCHOOLMASTER, EXPERIENCE,
deals out, who beats our boys and girls so brutally. I cannot, in closing this chapter, do better than to quote the words of wise old Roger Ascham: "He hazardeth sore that maketh wise by experience. An unhappy sailor he is that is made wise by many shipwrecks, a miserable merchant that is neither rich nor wise but after some bankrouts. It is a marvelous pain to find a short way by long wandering. He needs must be a swift runner that runneth fast out of his way. And look well upon the former life of those few who have gathered, by long experience, a little wisdom and some happiness; and when you do consider what mischief they have committed, what dangers they have escaped (and yet twenty for one do perish in the adventure) then think well with yourself whether you would that your own son should come to wisdom and happiness by such experience or no."
The noble sister of Publicola,
The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,
That's curdled by the frost from purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple.
But good my brother,
Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.—Shakspeare.
here has always been a charm for me in the speech of the haughty Coriolanus concerning Valeria, the sister of Publicola. There is such a noble alliance of the brother and the sister. The one is a man in high regard; therefore his sister likewise takes on those correlative qualities which make her the moon of Rome, the Goddess Diana, as it were. The young man of good quality will begin his life with an exalted appreciation of his sister. He will give her that tender regard and assistance which is her gentle due, and she, in turn, will form her ideas of young men by the character of her brother, and, in choosing a man upon whom to settle her womanly affections, will be largely guided by her estimate of her brother's manhood. The young man can not over-estimate the importance of his influence in this connection. Depend upon it, if he be high-minded, courteous, attentive, self-sacrificing at the proper times,
HIS SISTER WILL DEMAND,
in the man who aspires to be her companion in life, the qualities of a high mind, a courteous demeanor, an attentive inclination, and a willingness to put aside self at the time that duty and manhood demand. The brother's acquaintances and associates are often the first young men introduced to the sister on terms of intimacy. If the brother lower the standard of his life, the colors of his house are also trailed. His family pride should be, and usually is, one of the strongest supports in holding him to a course of action that will retain the entire respect of his community. When a son with a sister grown plunges into ways of disrepute, there is no more sorrowful example of the utter selfishness of a depraved human heart.
HOW MUCH LESS GRASPING IS THE BURGLAR
who is not willing to let the hard-working citizen keep his earnings, but steals upon him in the night and robs him into poverty—how much less selfish, I say, is he than the brother who steals upon the fair young life of a pure, good maiden, brands her as the sister of a disreputable loafer, and leaves her to choose loafers for a husband, or marry a stranger who may afterward taunt her with her low connection! I can conceive of no keener spur to the young man of pride and purpose than to keep this view of things before him, that he may be worthy of the company of young men who, in turn, will be worthy of the company of his sister.
MANY OF THE NOBLEST YOUNG MEN
of the present day, when they go for a summer vacation, take their sisters with them. The act gives them their first true knowledge of the responsibilities attaching to the care of a woman—to the gravity of married life. It being cheaper, as a rule, for man and wife to travel together than for brother and sister, the brother has an idea of future expense awaiting him (after he shall have married) which is on the right side of an estimate—that is, the surplus side. The sister's mind is broadened by this kindness and self-sacrifice of the brother. She has a higher opinion of manhood, and her choice will fall all the higher up. What makes our finest girls often go through the forest of maidenhood rejecting the most promising staffs of support, and, finally, nearing the plains of spinsterhood, pick up in a panic
THE CROOKEDEST STICK OF THE LOT?
It is mainly the brother's fault. He has not shown her how much of a man he himself can be, and she has not noticed the manly qualities of many of the admirers whom she has passed by in disdain. A wise young woman should be on the lookout for gentleness and courage in man. If she finds those qualities—if she can only become aware they are there, her heart will relent in spite of her, and there will be no hesitancy in her final choice, nor regret in her final retrospect.
IN YOUR SISTER
you behold the exact complement of yourself. Yourself and herself, brother and sister, are the links which your parents have left to hold their minds, their qualities, their aggregated development and progression, to the earth. All that your parents were, yourself and your sister will perpetuate, adding the acquirements of your own lives. You have in your sister an opportunity for self-study without its like or equal. Where your sister is weak, there are you weak (naturally) also. Your vanity may conceal the fact in your own nature, but her character will express it to you.
STRENGTHEN UP THESE POINTS.
As the calker goes through the hold of the ship, peering intently for light, or listening for the trickling of water, so should you, in observing your sister's character and family peculiarities, find and calk up all the treacherous leaks in your own nature. Her carelessness is your forgetfulness. Mend it. Her heedlessness is undoubtedly your recklessness. Send out scouts. Her impatience is possibly your high temper. Hit yourself when you are in rage, and thus learn its folly. I know of a man who once came within an inch of braining his fellow-soldier. They were lying on the grass, when the fellow struck my friend a smart blow with the iron ramrod of a Springfield musket, all in fun, you know. My friend was like Cowper, who wrote:
The man who hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves, by thumping on your back
His sense of your great merit,
Is such a friend as one had need
Be very much his friend, indeed,
To pardon or to bear it.
Well, he felt the smart of the iron ramrod, and his fury rose in a whirlwind; and he got up, took the musket by the barrel, raised it back for an awful blow, and was just about to crush the head of the joker when a white face and the simple word "Jim!" brought him to his senses. He dropped the musket and sank upon the grass in a paroxysm of excitement, but was saved from murder just by a hair's breadth. He had never curbed his temper before. Here he had been forced to overcome the fury of a building all in flames. The lesson sank deep into his heart. To-day nobody knows he has any temper at all.
THE SISTER'S INFLUENCE.
Again, as you are influential in the matter of the future prospects of your sister, and can probably elevate her lot by your aid in forming her character, so, too is she often, though to a smaller degree, potent in turning the tides of your life. She has dear friends of her own sex. They are at your house. They may come to see you by coming to see her. You meet these girls at your home, and, perhaps, some day you wake up in love. Now, if your sister, who admits these maidens into your home, has that true womanhood which is so admirable, you are certain to have fallen in love with one of the finest young women in town, and it is
A LUCKY DAY FOR YOU,
for young women usually keep away from young men for whose character they have no regard. Do not, however, get into the opinion that you are irresistible, or anywise attractive. It will give you many wounds. Young women detect masculine vanity of this order with a quickness that is appalling to the young man. They may have had no thought of you at all! They will then, all the readier, become influenced by your good points, and, above all, by your habitual good treatment of your sister. Be, therefore, on your guard, even in self-interest, which is a low guide of action, nevertheless—but
EVEN FOR THIS IGNOBLE REASON.
Watch over your sister, to protect her from any association whatever with bad young men, to minister to her wants, to help your parents minister to her health, and to love her with a sincere affection, for as long as you live, you will find her devotion unchangeable, through good and evil report. This same sister may be your companion all through your life. Where single life becomes the destiny of both brother and sister this often happens. In almost every neighborhood there are two persons thus domiciled, honorably fullfilling their duties to society, and often doing greater public service than any other two people of the community. Look therefore upon your sister as perhaps the best friend you will have
AFTER THE DEATH OF YOUR MOTHER.
Consider her as the person whose interests may be more closely allied with your own than those of any other soul on earth. It certainly cannot lessen your respect for the high relation she sustains toward your life and your happiness. Counsel her in exceeding kindness, for you will find her inclined to retort, as did Ophelia to her brother Laertes, at the head of this chapter, bidding you be sure you "reck your own rede" which was an ancient form of admonishing one to heed his own advice.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that riseth with us, our life's Star,
Hath elsewhere had its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter darkness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.—Wordsworth.
ike virgin parchment," says Montaigne, "youth is capable of any inscription." Let us have only those inscriptions which will do us honor in the long years that the parchment will unroll before us. "Unless a tree has borne its blossoms in the spring," writes Bishop Hare, "you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn." All through the great history of Thiers, wherein he recites the scenes of the French revolution, the Consulate, the Empire, and the rock of St. Helena, there runs one consistent observation that youth is noble and magnanimous. The thousands of characters who "strut their brief hour" upon the stage in the terrible drama which this historian depicts are young and generous, lofty and incorruptible. Then they ripen into manhood, glory waits upon their comings and their goings, and they are soon between two masters, their interests and their consciences. A circumstance threatens their early resolutions, an event overturns their consciences, and a selfish, jealous, ambitious mind thenceforth guides the fortunes of a life.
HOW FORTUNATE FOR THE RACE OF MAN
that when the mind is least prejudiced with set beliefs and when the heart is kindliest, it lies in the power of those who have the young near them to bear them frequent counsel, and to strengthen the natural nobility of their natures!
A great deal can be accomplished in the early years of life. Many men have made all their fame in the morning, and enjoyed it through the rest of their lives. Alexander, Pompey, Hannibal, Scipio, Napoleon, Charles XII., Alexander Hamilton, Shelley, Keats, Bryant—hundreds of examples readily come to the recollection, showing how thoroughly the mind can be trusted even in its immaturity. Youth is beautiful. It is "the gay and pleasant spring of life, when joy is stirring in the dancing blood, and nature calls us with a thousand songs to share her general feast." "Keep true to the dreams of thy youth," sings Schiller. We love the young. "The girls we love for what they are," says Goethe, "young men, for what they promise to be." "The lovely time of youth," says Jean Paul Richter, "is
OUR ITALY AND GREECE,
full of gods and temples." Let not the Vandals and Goths of after-life swoop down upon this sunny region in our lives; yet if they do, may we not look upon our noble ruins, our Coliseum and our Parthenon, in a kind of classic love that shall endear and sanctify the rights of the young about us and lengthen out their "golden age." Youth should be young. Says Shakspeare: "Youth no less becomes
THE LIGHT AND CARELESS LIVERY THAT IT WEARS,
than settled age its sables and its weeds, importing health and graveness." Youth is like Adam's early walk in the Garden of Paradise. "The senses," says Edmund Burke, "are unworn and tender, and the whole frame is awake in every part." The dew lies upon the grass. No smoke of busy life has darkened or stained the morning of our day. The pure light shines about us. "If any little mist happen to rise," says Willmott, "the sunbeam of hope catches and glorifies it."
"Youth is our Italy and Greece, full of Gods and Temples."
Youth is rash. It "skips like the hare over the meshes of good counsel," says Shakspeare. "Then let our nets and snares of benevolence be laid with the more cunning. Youth is a continual intoxication," says Rochefoucauld; "it is the fever of reason." We must cool this fever, spread around it cheering flowers of truth, bathe it in the water-brooks of gentleness and self-sacrifice. "Young men," according to Chesterfield, "are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough," yet joined with this self-esteem, we find that "youth is ever confiding; and we can almost forgive its disinclination to follow the counsels of age, for the sake of the generous disdain with which it rejects suspicion." "How charming the young would be," writes Arthur Helps, "with their freshness, fearlessness, and truthfulness, if only—to take a metaphor from painting—they would make more use of grays and other neutral tints, instead of dabbing on so recklessly the strongest positives in color." Why should their colors not be rich? Are not the hues upon their cheeks as rich as the sunset?
DOES NOT THE CHERRY
"dab on" the scarlet and the carmine direct from the gorgeous sun himself? Age marvels at the happiness of youth. The sombre lessons of the world have left their marks on the mind of the one; the other has everything to learn. It would seem as though its residence had been (as the poet has written so beautifully at the head of the chapter) in some Paradise, whence, it issued to this earth, "trailing clouds of glory" as it came. Age has suffered from the heats and dust of the previous day, and sees in the blood-red "copper sun," only the indication of another march of weariness and thirst.
YOUTH BREATHES THE DEWY AIR,
and beholds only the roseate tints of the sunrise. Why should not its heart rejoice? Says Lord Lytton: "Let youth cherish the happiest of earthly boons while yet it is at its command; for there cometh a day to all 'when neither the voice of the lute nor the birds' shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fall on their young eyes as unbidden as the dews." "Youth holds no society with grief," says old Euripides. Perhaps, rather, it makes those "formal calls" which have no feeling in them.
THE LITTLE GIRL'S KITTEN DIES,
and the little human heart is inconsolable for half an hour. In half a day, when asked to tell her greatest grief, she will relate an accident to her doll, forgetting the poor kitten yet waiting for burial! How could those lips and cheeks retain their delicate tints if the wet seasons of grief set in with tropical intensity? Lord Lytton, often, in his highly colored writings, cries out "O youth! O youth!" and there is a world of regret in the exclamation. "O the joy of young ideas," sighs Hannah Moore, "painted on the mind, in the warm, glowing colors which fancy spreads on objects not yet known, when all is new and all is lovely!"
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
has justly claimed the respect and admiration of the world for many high qualities of mind. One of the most admirable of his remarks is an admonition to youth, which runs as follows: "Use thy youth so that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof. Use it as the spring-time which soon departeth, and wherein thou oughtest to plant and sow all provisions for a long and happy life." But this is difficult to do. The march of youth is through a mountainous country. The scenery is changing, but the progress is not encouraging. "Self-flattered, unexperienced, high in hope when young," says the poet Young, "with sanguine cheer and streamers gay, we cut our cable, launch into the world, and fondly dream each wind and star our friend." How many youths have believed they would, by merit alone, rise to the Presidency of the United States—
THE FIRST MAN IN FIFTY MILLIONS!
Youth keeps a diary, into which it pours a volume of "thought" that seems a very mine of gems. Take up that chronicle at middle age and see its weak and driveling character. Observe the almost total lack of one idea that will aid you to some honorable end! And yet there is something touching even in the great trust and confidence of childhood. How sweet and true are the beautiful lines of Thomas Hood called "I remember, I remember:
I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm further off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.
Dr. Watts lays down to youth that it should have a decent and agreeable behavior among men, "a modest freedom of speech, a soft and elegant manner of address, a graceful and lovely deportment, a cheerful gravity and good humor, with a mind appearing ever serene under the ruffling accidents of life." This programme of action is far beyond the reach of a well-balanced adult, much further the inexperienced and untried mind of younger life. But the character which should attain to such angelic proportions would truly have a reverent place among men's memories.
THE ALPENA.
Youth has no knowledge of God's power. The confidence that early years implant in the mind supplies an unsubstantial substitute. I have pictured to myself an illustration: A bright young man is present at a grand concert. It is between the parts. He bends suavely over the back of a lady's chair and talks sweet music to her ear. He says: "Could you not follow every thought of the composer in that symphony?" (which they have just heard). "And was not the effect sublime when the storm reached the heights of the mountains, and all the elements of Nature struggled so stubbornly?" And the young woman demurely gives him an assuring look which conserves all her interests; whereupon he backs off in triumph, and feels that the concert is worth his week's wages after all!
AGAIN,
this young man at Grand Haven, on the western border of Lake Michigan, boards the structure of pine wood and ten-penny nails called the Alpena. The Alpena floats out into her last night—into the valley of the shadow of death. Presently the young man feels his vessel and his life trembling like a captive wild bird in a remorseless grasp. Anon this trembling grows into the awful, final, fatal paroxysms. Then suddenly the mind of the young man breaks from the shackles of vanity and self-sufficiency, and he views, for the first time, the visible forms of angered Nature. He recalls his white gloves, his former complete idea of a storm, his triumphant, au revoir retreat from the opera-box, and, as the discords of the Everlasting gradually resolve toward the diapason, the full chant, of His solemn eternity, the young man cries out, in a spirit of revelation, "What a worm am I!" and adds his own piteous tragedy to the unheard murmurs of bubbling death and muddy burial!
"REMEMBER NOW THY CREATOR,
in the days of thy youth," says Solomon. "Train up a child in the way he should go," says the proverb, "and when he is old he will not depart from it." Be not afraid of the sneers of the ungodly. "As the cracking of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool." "The fairest flower in the garden of creation," says Sir James E. Smith, "is a young mind, offering and unfolding itself to the influence of Divine Wisdom, as the heliotrope turns its sweet blossoms to the sun."
Lord Bacon, in his forty-third essay, thus sums up the qualities of youth: "Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business;
BUT THE ERRORS OF AGED MEN
amount to but this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end without consideration of the means and degrees, pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them—like an unready horse, they will neither stop nor turn."
THE HARD-PAN SERIES.
Now with this wise parallel of youth and age before me, with the importance which I attach to this period of life as the precise moment at which the final cast of the clay of life is set, and with the belief in Goethe's statement that the destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on the opinions of its young men under twenty-five years of age, I beg to call the especial attention of the young to a Hard-Pan Series of ten chapters which follow, devoted largely to just this forming-period of life, when the mould is ready and the governing characteristics are fast pouring in. I beg parents and preceptors, if they approve my efforts, to lend their aid in attracting toward these admonitions such consideration as their merit shall warrant, and I have so endeavored to dispose the bitterness of practical advice as to both somewhat cover its presence and gratify a youthful and adventurous literary taste.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar;
Do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new hatched unfledged comrade
Give every man thine ear but few thy voice;
Take each man's counsel but reserve thy judgment.
—Shakspeare.
ou live. To live is costly. Who will pay for it? Your soul cries out "I." But how will you get the money? "Oh! I'll get it!"—that is the confident cry of youth. The confidence oozes out as life lengthens—and yet there are certain lines of action which, if followed, in this bright land of liberty, are sure to result in the accumulation of something for our old age.
THE MYSTERIOUS JUNIUS
one of the great exemplars in the matter of keeping a secret wrote to his publisher: "Let all your views in life, therefore, be directed to a solid, however moderate independence. Without it no man can be happy, nor even honest." This celebrated sentence was written by a man who was refusing a proffer of money for his writings (then in print) and it should not be read as inspiring one to avarice. The vice of avarice is more honest than envy, but is not the less unpleasant and reprehensible. Let us suppose you are fortunate enough to have some grit and spunk about you. At the earliest point practicable you get something to do. Perhaps at a Fourth of July celebration your Sunday school teacher trusts you in a booth to deal out lemonade and handle money. It is a good beginning. Perhaps you are
ESTABLISHED BEHIND A COUNTER
in a general store and intrusted with the great secret of a cost-mark, fully as important a secret, let me assure you, as you can buy in the most secret of places! What spot in your character will "wear down" the quickest? When you were little it was your toes. They were copper-plated. Now the wear falls where copper will not protect you. Nothing but experience will now serve as the copper did then. The first place that "rubs" will be
YOUR TONGUE.
When you have conquered the natural inclination to be what is familiarly known as a "smarty," there is still a greater wisdom to acquire. Avoid hearing, where it is not absolutely necessary, anything that you will have to keep secret. The less secrets you have the less discretion will be necessary to protect them. After you have heard a thing from your employer, keep it to yourself. The youth who talks about his employer's business must have other marvelous faculties to succeed in life. He is a Blind Tom. He plays the piano, but the wonder is how he does it. It must be that it would hurt your feelings if you heard another merchant say of your employer that he keeps a pretty good boy, except that
HE "BLABS A GOOD DEAL."
If you can shut up your mouth now, you can keep it shut when you get to be Secretary of the Treasury and a whole syndicate of bankers are trying to pump out of you whether you mean to pay off $100,000,000 of 5 per cent bonds the next week, or merely reduce the interest 1-1/2 per cent. If they could tell, they could make a million dollars, and unless you have been all your life a discreet man, be assured they will tell. If your employer's rivals in business find out through you where your people get a certain line of goods, how much is paid for it, or
THE TIME ON WHICH IT IS BOUGHT,
be assured you will never succeed either as a man in business for yourself, or as a worker under the direction of others. Your employer may be embarrassed and the fatal knowledge may have come into your unlucky ears. You will hear it whispered all around you. Why? Because no one knows "for sure." Everybody wants to see if you know anything about it. Can you not see how much luckier you would have been had you really known nothing of the state of things? A word, a look, from you, may turn from your employer just the helping hand that would have carried him across a tight place. How many battles have been won by the arrival, just in time, of a reinforcement! Make it a point that, if you are inclined
TO "BLOW YOUR AFFAIRS,"
you were not cut out for "business." You had better become a lecturer, a farmer, or something else, and occupy a field where industry alone will save all your interests. Remember the miserable barber of King Midas in mythology. The King had been cursed by the offended god Apollo with asses' ears. To hide his deformity he had his barber dress the hair over the ears, and the barber was then sworn with an awful oath of secrecy. But the "tonsorial artist" (as they call him in the city!) was one of those people who could not stand the pressure. He went out in the field and dug a little hole, and
INTO THIS HOLE HE BREATHED THE SECRET
that His Majesty had been smitten by Apollo. What was the astonishment of the world at hearing the reeds that grew hard by whispering among themselves, whenever the wind blew them confidentially together, "King Midas hath asses' ears!"
Be in mortal fear of the first error in this regard. When a boy has made a record for bad, it seems to hang to him. The fact that he has told something which he ought to have kept to himself is quoted against him until it becomes a positive habit to speak about it every time his name is mentioned.
"Jimmie, where's your outside man? I heard he was in town. His cousin asked me to inquire."
"Oh! no! he's not in town. He went out on the road last night. He will be in Eagertown to-morrow, Brightside Wednesday, and Upearly Saturday."
That is exactly what was wanted out of you, and you must excuse your questioner if he hurries on, so as not to be seen pumping you any longer than is necessary.
Now this style of gaining information is low and contemptible, but of two boys who talked, one of whom said a good deal that did not amount to much, learning a good deal that did, and the other letting out a great deal and learning nothing, there can be little doubt of the business success of the first as compared to that of the second.
Put a copper-toe on your tongue. Remember that Gen. Grant made a great part of his fame by letting other folks do his talking.
When my friends are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile.
—Joubert.
here is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation. If you are always courteous without difficulty, you are endowed with a nature naturally moral. You are naturally a gentleman. Anyhow, you are behind the counter, and you desire to sell goods. You wish to have customers brighten up when they see you. Very well, brighten up yourself. You ought to be glad to see them. If they are not glad, they, perhaps, have less reason for joy. They are about to part with their money in order to get something they cannot part with so easily. You went to work in the morning hoping a good many people would come in. Now here they are. You can smile on the young lady, but can you smile on the old woman? You can if you are a man. It is nothing but good-breeding to do it. What is this boasted word "good-breeding?" It is "the result of much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them." Chesterfield, a man who was as prominent in England as Daniel Webster in America, expressed his astonishment that anybody who had good sense and good nature could essentially fail in good-breeding.
STUDY YOUR CUSTOMER.
If he or she be brusque, be yourself pliable, respectful, and by all means quick. Do not stand in front of him or her with your head down ready to hook or to butt. You are glad the customer has come in. That should solve the whole problem. In the city you are required to "put up with" the bad mannered fashion that people have of treating a clerk as if he were a piece of furniture, but in the town this is all changed. A majority of the citizens know you, and all regard you with better breeding than would the city customer. You are young and positive, because you know very little about life. Curb yourself. Let the customer make all the statements he has to make. He will run out of them presently. In case he want any of yours, he will then ask for them, and literally be at your mercy. As to
YOUR HANDS,
have them very clean. It will be a positive advantage to you to wear no rings. In case the people like jewelry, it distracts their attention from the great idea (a sale); in case they do not like gew-gaws, it will put you in opposition. Make your great effort in the direction you think the customer's mind is taking. Sell him what he thinks he wants first. So much, sure. Then, if he changes his mind, it will be to your profit, generally. When the customer speaks to you, it gives you your programme. If he be cheery, imitate him. He is your friend and is giving you an example. If he look hard at you,
LOOK RESPECTFULLY
at him. Serve him with alacrity, say nothing not necessary, and the joy in your heart will thaw him out before long. Express to your customers your desire that they should come again,—never by words, because that is too difficult, except in a barber-shop, where it is a custom—but by opening the door for them at their departure, even if you have to keep another customer waiting, and by thanking them on receipt of the money, or upon delivery of the goods if it be on account. There are very few people who will remain cold toward you after they find out you are really glad to see them. The general store of the rural town makes
THE FINEST-MANNERED MEN IN THE COUNTRY,
respectful, dignified, alert, and unruffled. I saw a clerk at the postal money-order office in St Paul. The Swedes and Poles go there often to send away money. That young man had such a charming way of showing an old Swedish woman just how to make out an order before she had learned to write, and he had such an awe-stricken way of receiving the instructions of other money-senders who knew all about it, that I felt he was a credit to America, and I mention the reminiscence only with diminished pleasure from the fact that I have forgotten the young man's name. Courteous treatment of a customer is necessary under every conceivable circumstance. It may be a busybody has come in to worry you, who never bought a cent's worth of you or anybody else whom you know; nevertheless her tongue is an advertisement. If you can gain her good will, even comparatively, as weighed by her estimate of other clerks, it is better than a column advertisement in the local papers. When Zachariah Fox, a great merchant of Liverpool, was asked by what means he contrived to amass so large a fortune as he possessed, his reply was: "Friend, by one article alone, and in which thou mayest deal too, if thou pleasest,—it is civility." "Hail! ye small sweet courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in."
"We must be as courteous," says
RALPH WALDO EMERSON,
"to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light." There is more natural courtesy in the country than in the city, just as there are more privileges where three clerks are at work than where there are a hundred. And then, again, civility seems to be lacking in the city as well naturally as out of necessity. Milton has put this forcibly by saying "courtesy oft is sooner found in lowly sheds, with smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls and courts of princes, where it first was named." The small courtesies sweeten life. The great ones ennoble it. The extent to which a man can make himself agreeable, as seen in the lives of Swift, Thomas Moore, Chesterfield, Coleridge, Sydney Smith, Aaron Burr, Edgar Poe, and those odd creatures called
"BEAUX," SUCH AS BRUMMEL, NASH, ETC.,
goes to show the immense importance of the art, and its influence in determining the success of any man in business. Good-breeding shows itself the most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. Says Chesterfield: "How often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, and even rejected; while flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired." You have seen beautiful swords of auroral flame dart into the zenith; you have seen marvelous flights of meteors, which were gone ere your admiration had given rise to a cry of pleasure. So it is with manners. They irradiate our presence, giving to our associates
MOMENTARY VIEWS
of those qualities which are universally loved and respected—gentleness, unselfishness, gladness and peace. Your clothes, while under twenty-five years of age, should be very neat. Your shirt should be clean. This does not imply that you are to break extra backs to keep fresh shirts ready for you, but that you are to make extra efforts to keep the one you have on unsoiled for a decent length of time. If your clothes are dark, get in the habit of wearing a black silk or satin neck-tie and wear it some one way all your life. It helps people to "place" you. Generally a sack coat makes a very tall man look shorter, and a frock-coat looks all the better for a change. The clothes should be loose, so that they will
OCCUPY AS LITTLE OF THE MIND AS POSSIBLE.
The young man who purposely keeps his mind on his fine clothes is lost. He is a coxcomb. He has no greater influence with the young ladies for all his fine feathers. Let me leave you selling a large bill, remembering that civility costs nothing and buys everything, and feeling that the very perfection of good manners is not to think of yourself.
Behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand.
—I Kings, XVIII, 44.
ranklin says that, if you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. Cicero, many hundreds of years before Ben Franklin said: "Economy is of itself a great revenue," and another Roman writer put it still better when he said: "There is no gain so certain as that which arises from sparing what you have." "Beware of small expenses," again writes Franklin; "a small leak will sink a great ship." In our large cities there are thousands of servant girls earning from two and a half to three dollars a week. The men who employ them often get from twenty-five to one hundred dollars per week, yet it is a notorious fact that the prudent servant girl usually has more money at her command, clear of all debts, than her employer, whose expenses scrape very closely against his income. Now you are on a salary in a store. Perhaps that salary is yours, to spend as you see fit. If so, remember that, like the highest officer in the land, you have certain duties. If you were President you could not appoint your old schoolmate Secretary of State unless he had made as much progress in politics as yourself. So, too,
IN YOUR MONEY MATTERS,
you cannot make yourself so valuable to your employer that he will not, before he advances you, inquire into your personal expenses, and find out what you do with your money. If you have spent it, year after year, as fast as you could get it, he will have great misgivings about letting you into a position where your desire to distribute currency can possibly lead you to practice on his funds. Among the easy ways to spend money in a small town is the habit of hiring livery-rigs. The business is just as useful as a drug-store, but no poor boy should hire equipages for mere pleasure. To attend a funeral, or to take a sick mother or sister out in the sunshine, is commendable. The youth who does that rarely needs the other suggestion, however, for those who spend the most money at a livery stable are usually seen with their mothers and sisters the least. No young man who thinks well of himself will enter a saloon at all. Often the worst classes in the whole country frequent
RURAL SALOONS,
men who dare not walk through the streets of any of the large cities. Perhaps at the card-table in the groggery across the street is a man who has come to your town to break into your employer's store! Anyway, there is no "business" in the world which returns so little for the money accepted as the saloon. Take
A GALLON OF WHISKY,
for instance. It is worth a dollar to a dollar and a half. It has been taxed ninety cents by the Government, leaving it worth that much less. Well, now, a man is expected to go into a saloon, and, for about three tablespoonsful of this stuff, he pays ten cents in the town and fifteen cents in the city. Your news dealer pays eight cents for an illustrated paper, and twenty-eight cents for a popular magazine. He sells the one for ten cents and the other for thirty-five cents, taking all the risk of not getting a sale. If you could afford to travel with such people as are found in saloons, in the first place, and to put such truly abominable stuff in your mouth in the second place, you could not, even then, in the third place, afford to give fifteen cents for what is in fact worth less than a mill. You are in reality giving away your money to the Government and the saloon keeper.
LET VANDERBILT SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT,
and those who have made their fortunes and their bad habits the saloon-keeper. I have dwelt on this, because these are few young men who are not tempted. All the above applies to tobacco. It is an utterly obnoxious habit to use tobacco. It is the cause, together with the dough falsely called pastry, of all the dyspepsia in our climate. It ruins the eyes, it costs money in vast quantities, returning almost nothing in goods, and has but one redeeming feature that I know of—it is
JUST AS BAD ON MOTHS AS IT IS ON MEN,
and it makes a musty room smell a little better. If you can keep out of saloons and shooting galleries, you will not play billiards or cards—both very expensive—you will not use tobacco, and you will be less apt to go to dances and hire livery teams. Should you preserve yourself against these vices of our young men, you will have money without denying yourself clothes as handsome as a poor young man looks well in. Three short years' savings will put you in possession of a sum of money sufficient to set you to thinking about business for yourself, either with your employer or alone, for
LIFE IN AMERICA IS SHORT.
A man is a failure almost before he thinks he ought to have been considered as started. If you have been receiving small remuneration, be assured that a capital all the smaller is needed in your town. The market value of labor is the largest element in the problem of business. If you worked cheap, then others will, and if they will, it is because living is cheap. The high-priced man in the city has to be paid highly because of his expenses, not because he has taken a vow to save a large amount of money. "He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father's wisdom than he that has a great deal left to him does to his father's care," says William Penn. "He is a good wagoner who can turn in a little room," says Bishop Hall. How many a man, in getting a costly home, has found that old Franklin was right when he said it was easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. Therefore, when you get anything,
BEWARE IT ENTAILS LITTLE EXPENSE OF KEEPING.
A horse will eat you poor; a gun will cost you a hundred guns. Think of it when you buy them, and you will thereafter have no regrets, besides being less apt to make such purchases. "Gain may be temporary and uncertain," says Franklin, "but expense is constant and certain." "Not to be covetous is money; not to be a purchaser is income," says Cicero. "A fool and his money are soon parted," says the adage. "Live by hope, and you will die by despair," says the Italian proverb. Save all you can honorably. Harness it up and make it pull also by bringing in to you a little interest. Here will be your first real business move—one of grave importance. The little cloud that ariseth out of the sea, like a man's hand, will soon cover your financial sky, and bring an abundant shower of the good things of this life.
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.—Shakspeare.
ourage is adversity's lamp. Perhaps the young man's courage is more sorely tried than that of the man of middle age, for age dreads the whip of events, while youth champs their bit. Youth cannot endure the thought of a long siege. The ladders must be put against the walls, the breach must be clambered through, and if the citadel be strong, the rash onset will be repulsed with heavy loss. But Hope dotes on youth. The young are her flock, her fold, her children. Into the hands of her children she puts the scimitar of courage, and bids them go forth again. Let us suppose you have been cast down your ladder, and have little but your courage. It may be necessary to leave your pleasant little town and seek employment where men are used as machines—in the great cities. Such a fate is, indeed, a sad reverse. The safety of home, the magazines of moral ammunition stored all about you, the bomb-proofs against the shells of soul-destruction aimed at every soldier in life, will all be torn from you, and you will be as a Knight of the Cross, alone on the desert. Perhaps
YOU HAVE REACHED THE GREAT CITY.
Now buckle on your armor. You do not need an intrepid courage, now; intrepid courage may have brought you here; intrepid courage is but a holiday kind of a virtue, to be seldom exercised, as experience will teach you. You need firmness to resist all kinds of attacks. You need good-nature, and yet you must repel temptation with a look as black as Erebus. You need affability, yet you must speak almost by rote, and the opportunities to keep from speaking outnumber the exigencies in which you must speak by ten to one. You must be tender, and yet you must be cruel as a surgeon. Without these opposites well balanced in your character, you will not fight the battle successfully.
NAPOLEON
won his battles by hurling ten thousand men upon two thousand. Simple, was it not? Now you are one young soldier. You will have to find a place in the enemy's lines which is even weaker than you before you can throw yourself against it with success. You, therefore, cannot be too circumspect. If the General pushes two thousand men against one thousand, on ground that is otherwise even, he is a wise leader, but if he finds four thousand enemies there, and if his principal attack is hazarded in the action, he is always accounted a daring fool. Let me recall
THE ATTACK OF A YOUNG MAN
who broke through the enemy's lines, in the City of Chicago. He got eight dollars a week in a city on the Mississippi River, and was led to believe that, if he went to Chicago, he could get ten dollars. He was employed as a clerk in a Commercial Agency, a business which aims to ascertain the standing and degree of success or lack of fortune of the retail dealers of the region it covers. He felt that eight dollars a week were all that he could ever get where he was. Upon his arrival in the City of Chicago he was put at work for seven dollars, the representations made to him having proven unreliable. There were about fifty young men and women in the same room. Seated at his desk when eight o'clock came, he found that his chances to rise were seemingly restricted to the hours of noon and six o'clock. In this way he worked for six months. He was fortunate enough to obtain board at five dollars a week, leaving him, after his washing, perhaps a dollar and a quarter clear. To a man of twenty-five years who could see the real difficulties of his future, the need of a high quality of moral courage was urgent. And he had it. He got acquainted with a humble friend, considerably better off, who therefore, could talk to him very bravely of the dignity of labor, and the honor of paying one's way, even if it took only five dollars and seventy-five cents to do it. This young friend did thus encourage and inspire the young clerk, and he was able to set about improving his mind.
HE READ THE BIBLE THROUGH
during this six months, and thus acquired a style of simple expression which would be of value to him in his reports when he should travel. He read Plutarch's Lives. He studied French, and read "The Man Who Laughs" and "Paul and Virginia," two remarkably different works. You see he was a man of persistence. But such a mind finds the humiliation of a dollar and a quarter a week all the more bitter. A man conversing with Plutarch about the relative merits of Pompey and Lucullus, or of Marius and Sylla, dislikes to be
DOCKED THREE HOURS
for being ten minutes late, and dislikes to return to his landlady at the end of the week and give her five-sevenths of the whole spoil of Bythnia and the Propontis! One day the second assistant manager spoke to him, and this ray of hope lit his way to a seat on a high stool to write out "tickets" for merchants who send in to see about Blow & Co., of Bugleville. This gave him eight dollars a week, and enabled him to go to a theatre once in a while and hear
SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.
One night he approached his friend and announced that the die was cast, and that he should become an actor. Nothing could be worse than he was doing. Absolutely no business paid less than eight dollars per week, unless it were his own itself which had paid him seven dollars. It was a summer month. A theatre was empty. A dramatic agent had agreed to get up a company and run the place a week. It would require only twenty-five dollars from the young man. He would then be a sharer in the profits, would be given a minor part in the cast of characters, and would thereafter be secured
AN ENGAGEMENT WITH JOHN M'CULLOUGH
or John Raymond at about fifteen dollars a week. The dramatic agent was to have ten dollars from the first week's salary of the regular engagement. As he was working at absolutely bottom figures (board usually costing at least six dollars a week) and as he was skillful at his business, and could command work at all times if he were willing to work for his board, the young man thought he was not very rash in making an attempt, and yet it seemed to the friend of the young man like the memorable jump of the fish out of the frying-pan. The difficulty of going back to work after a failure was entirely overlooked. The young man paid his twenty-five dollars, absolutely the frugal hoard of six months of toil, got a leave of absence for three weeks, and studied all one week, meanwhile eating five dollars' worth of very poor board.
HE "ACTED" THROUGH THE WEEK
up to Thursday, when the company failed to pay in advance for the gas, and it was shut off. He spent the next two or three days preparing himself for a part in "The Gilded Age." On the second night the "heavy man," Raymond, became enraged at the manner in which this part was borne, and demanded that the character be given into the hands of another person. This was the finishing stroke. The young man stayed at "home" for three days, and on Friday night went to see his more fortunate associate. To his friend, who perhaps saw things in a prejudiced light, it seemed like a conspiracy to make good the dramatic agent's word of promise—to keep it to the ear and break it to the hope.
THE YOUNG MAN'S MONEY WAS GONE,
he was in debt for three weeks' board, and he had been ruthlessly and ignominiously branded with failure. He reverted to Brutus at Philippi, to Cato, and he was nearly on the verge of suicide. It may be that the cheering words of his friend brought out his true but latent courage. What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary to cheat a poor landlady!
JEREMY COLLIER
has said that "true courage is the result of reasoning. Resolution lies more in the head than in the veins, and a just sense of honor and of infamy, of duty and religion, will carry us farther than all the force of mechanism." The young man had the courage to go back. His friend was gratified. As the months passed the bitterness departed. Christmas Day the young man was sent to the Stock Yards to do a week's-reporting. That Christmas-week was one of the coldest ever seen in this climate. The young man's unweathered ears and nose were badly frost-bitten. But notwithstanding this great obstacle of a cold snap he made a success of his expedition. His reports demonstrated that the Bible and Plutarch had not been sown on stony places, and that good English could be used in reporting the standing and prospects of a retail firm as well as in a memorial to Congress. When he got back
THE MANAGER OF THE HOUSE HIMSELF
spoke to him, and the second assistant assured him that one of the "outside men" would soon be put aside to give him a chance on the road. When a young man goes on the road his board is paid, so that it is that much of an advance of salary. Six long months, however, ran along at eight dollars a week, and the unsatisfactory man on the road proved more influential than the second assistant. When our young man saw this, he went to the manager, demanded nine dollars a week, and got it after a loud protest from that broad-hearted functionary. The next week—this was in the summer—he went on the road in place of a sick man, traveled through nearly all the towns in Illinois and Iowa, and made a fine record, both as to the character of his work, his speed, and his expenses. Upon his return a rival firm, hearing of his work, made him a proposition at a thousand dollars a year and expenses, with two months' holiday each year, and he signed a contract. His first year's tramp took him through nearly all the towns of Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. He returned in August, with nine hundred dollars in cash credited to his account in the bank and demanded and received fifteen hundred dollars and expenses for going over the same route the next year, and to-day he stands with his head as high among his fellows as any young man in America. Now a retrospect of the young man's short career shows that
HE HAD GENUINE COURAGE.
He never failed when he had any chance to succeed. He never will. For such a man the world is not a world of chance. It is almost a certainty. The opportunities are more frequent than the men with courage.
DURING THE HARDEST WINTER
since 1842 the young man passed through experiences on the road, brought about by deep snows and blundering Postmasters that would sicken anybody's heart, experiences that without excellent brain-work would simply have stalled anybody, but his coolness, his use of the telegraph with unerring judgment in following the movements of his superior (who was traveling in like difficulties—it was like Kepler making a path for Mars while himself riding on the earth),—extricated him, and made his journeys little more costly, all told, than those of the preceding year. In the city all depends on courage. This young man espied a few weak places in the enemy's lines. He attacked with vigor. In the charge on the theatre he met the enemy in force and was thrown back with heavy loss, but in all the other onsets the enemy had no force to withstand him. One quality which the young man had in a large measure was the fear of failure. "The brave man is not he who feels no fear, for that were stupid and irrational; but he whose noble soul its fear subdues, and bravely dares the danger Nature shrinks from." There is a quality much akin to moral courage, which, however, is not present very noticeably in the strongest natures, but which is
THE ANCHOR TO MANY LIVES.
I will present it in the following pages. But let me assure you that if you have the truest courage—the kind that this young man had—you will not need the quality which I will next take up. Hope rides in a palace-car, along the railroad, and over the tremendous bridges which Courage has constructed.
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers the way:
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.—Goldsmith.
ope is the best part of our riches. For it alone reaches further than any other—off into the world which is to come. But I am speaking to you of the practical advantages of hope. Bacon says: "Hope is leaf-joy, which may be beaten out to a great extension, like gold." It has been most beautifully said by Hillard that the shadow of human life is traced upon a golden ground of immortal hope. Shakspeare says the miserable have no other medicine. "Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker, but his drafts are seldom honored, since there is often a heavy balance against him." Now to make his account good in the First National Bank of Experience, what should Hope do? He plainly should begin the deposit of probabilities to draw against. Walter Scott says: "Hope is brightest when it dawns from fears," and I should think his drafts would be honored just so far as they were drawn with circumspection. "Folly ends" writes Cowper "where genuine hope begins." But where there is no hope there can be no endeavor, so whether it exist in superabundance or not let us cultivate it as one of the loveliest of the flowers of life, as absolutely the sweetest perfume that ever burns in the Golden Censer. Let me tell you how
HOPE ALONE SAVED THE LIFE
of one of the finest young men in the land. He was the son of a wealthy wine merchant who had failed in business near Bath-Easton, England. Like many other lads, he felt the sting of circumstances which promised to alter, and without good advice got ready to come to America. He was well trained in the wine trade, and supposed that employment would at once open to him. He brought over two guns, two revolvers, a field glass, a sword, much valuable jewelry, about twelve suits of clothes and not a very large amount of money—possibly three hundred dollars. After seeing Boston and New York, he "left for the plains," and
ARRIVED IN CHICAGO ON CHRISTMAS,
the year before the great conflagration. Here he was met by other English friends, and the New Year's calls customary in the city were made "in fine style," for he was an engaging young man. In just a casual way he inquired for work, but found his trade did not exist in the New World. He was thus in the worst business position conceivable. He had had no drill in anything that would do him any good. Upon spending the last of his money one night—I think it was for a game of billiards—he made up his mind that he would go out after work the next day. This he did. He tramped the snowy streets early in the morning. He waded in the slush at noon. He clambered over the frozen mud at night. But everywhere it was dull. The employers were keeping their men simply to have them when the busy season began. All would say:
"CALL IN NEXT MAY!"
His campaign in Chicago was methodic. He took a certain street each day. He canvassed one side in the forenoon. He returned in the afternoon, often carrying his lunch. He never lost hope. But oh! it was discouraging to those who saw it. Another young man came from St. Louis to the boarding-house and got a situation in a great dry-goods house, as entry clerk, for he was a skilled man. This was unfortunate for our friend, for the companionship of the St. Louis accession was a positive injury. He resembled the pictures of Byron and was of a viciously despondent turn of mind. He hated life and life's duties. Our friend fell into the toils. Together they bemoaned the hardness of the world, and presently,
LIKE THE COMMUNISTS IN AMERICA,
they overturned kingdoms and systems of society as they blew the foam from their beer. This folly led to a fight at the boarding-house which lowered our friend from an English gentleman to a fellow who was destitute and drunken, but it opened his eyes. St. Louis left for warmer climes, but our friend redoubled his energy, and finished the actual canvass of every decent-looking place of business and factory in Chicago! This is, as I believe, from actual evidences I had at the time, an actual fact.
A FINE-LOOKING HEALTHY YOUNG MAN
asked every probable employer in Chicago whose attention he could secure if there were any work, and the answer was "No, sir!" This took him till about the first of May. He had no influence. He had no friend who had influence, nor any chance to get one. His watch, rings, and scarf-pin gradually went to the landlady. His shot-gun, field-glass and clothes were carried to the pawnbrokers. For his musket he got a dollar, and
FOR HIS SWORD
half as much—upon a solemn promise to redeem it, as even the pawnbroker doubted the wisdom of such an investment at his own figures. That week the young man encountered a gentleman who, in England, had known him well. The disparity in their positions was great, as the gentleman was now able to give and recently had given his church ten thousand dollars, but that disparity had been greater in England, where it had been in favor of the young man. However, this did not prevent the gentleman offering the young man a job of gardening at a dollar a day, as that was a good bargain, and that did not prevent the young man eagerly accepting the offer. That week he earned his board. The next week he was adrift again, quite well used up from heavy work, but very active. His hope was the one striking point in his character.
HIS CHEERY VOICE
could always be heard. People liked to have him around, but they never seemed to pay him anything in return. Early in June he got a job sandpapering window-frames in a city cellar. This tried his mettle for it broke his hands to pieces, but he worked through the job at eight dollars a week. It ruined about twenty-five dollars' worth of clothes unavoidably. Coming out of the cellar the last day of the job, he looked into a store which was just opening. Did they want clerks? Oh, yes. "Lots" of them. How much did they pay? Five per cent. What were they to sell? "Milton gold jewelry." All right.
"MILTON GOLD JEWELRY"
was made a sensation. It was all in the name. Had they called it brass the people would have stood off. Make a chain that looks like gold, call it Milton or Shakspeare or Byron gold, and the people want it—or, at least they did, the year of the fire. The sales of our friend footed up more than those of any of thirty clerks, and netted him about a dollar and a quarter a day. But this charming industry could not last. The people had bought a chain which they supposed to be worth sixty dollars for a dollar and a half. In two weeks the chain would fade. It was a necessity of the business to keep moving. Our friend could have gone to some other city with the lover of Milton, if he had paid his own fare, but he was heartily disgusted with the business, the scheme being essentially American. He next was taken to Morris, Ill., by some kind of a gang-worker. The English system of working from farm to farm with a large force was to be tried. There he was treated a good deal worse than hogs should be used. Finding his way back to Chicago, he again began
HIS TRAMP FOR WORK.
He called on an advertiser who wanted him to travel at a figure so low that the question arose as to how he would pay his board, when the advertiser told him he supposed his applicant understood that he "would have to beat the hotels!" In September came the news of the death of his sister and mother. And still he tramped. He was now in what his casual acquaintances considered "a hard hole." His landlady was "carrying" him—that is, she was wanting his room worse than his company, but, being a kind-hearted Irish woman, she could not believe another week would pass without better success. No one with a trade—no one with the slightest influence—knows what difficulties are before a stranger in a strange land.
AS GOD WOULD HAVE IT,
on Saturday the seventh of October, 1871, he started out, again full of hope. About a mile and a half to the west of the city he entered a hotel at which he had often applied before. The proprietor had broken his leg the day before. He wanted "a likely young man," Here was one. The proprietor was himself an Englishman. Here was a youth whose rosy cheeks proclaimed the shores of Albion. On Sunday he made ready. That night and the following two days there came a calamity that horrified the civilized world—perhaps the barbarians as well. The employers who had refused him shelter and food ran like droves of wolves before a prairie-fire, and filled their famished bodies off a charity that has been likened to that of the Savior of the world, so freely was it given. His hotel was not burned. In the arduous labors of housing three where one had before been quartered he showed an ability which attracted the attention of a dealer in real estate who soon took him into his office. Here he learned a trade. His employer soon found that he had a man who could make a map worth fifty dollars as well as the map-makers, and this gave the young man practice. Hope, kindled into such a flame, led the young man in a march of improvement that even continued in his dreams, for he often dreamed out some combination of colors, some freak of lettering, that elicited everybody's admiration. All this improvement
DID NOT COME IN A WEEK OR A YEAR,
but it led to his permanent engagement in a substantial enterprise of the kind, where work, elegant and original, will always await him, and where his usefulness is ever apparent to the most unwilling investigator. From being the victim of the most cruel circumstances which a man in health ever encountered under my observation, he has become the valued companion of the leaders of thought, of art, and of music, and I feel confident that the whole of his ultimate success at one time in his career depended on the fact that he had more hope than any other man I ever saw.
HOPE IS LIKE THE CORK TO THE NET,
which keeps the soul from sinking in despair. Hope is the sun, which as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us. Dr. Johnson has well and truly said that the flights of the human mind are not from enjoyment to enjoyment, but from hope to hope. It is a strange frailty of human nature that we part more willingly with what we really possess than with our expectations of what we wish for. The man who curbs this tendency is known as a man of wisdom. What a beautiful poem is
CAMPBELL'S "PLEASURES OF HOPE!"
How the changes ring upon the beauties of "Hope, the charmer," until, at last, we see her smiling at the general conflagration, we see her lighting her torch at nature's funeral pile! And yet what an ingenious device was that of the ancient, who, knowing the powerful allurements of Hope, put on the front of the magic shield "Be bold! Be bold!" and on the other side "Be not too bold!" There is a development of hope known as audacity. A touch of audacity is generally considered necessary to get along in the world. Be careful that your audacity is never called "cheek." When you have rights to retrieve, you cannot be too audacious; when you expect something for nothing, and demand instead of appealing, you are "cheeky." It does not pay in the long run. It is the sign and seal of a greedy nature.
WHEN POOR FRANCE
trembled in the nightmare of the Revolution, and the Kings of Europe had agreed to conquer and dismember her, there arose a dark-faced man in the tribune of the French Congress. He was a man of terrible personal power and magnetism. Hope must have cradled him in his babyhood. He hurled a defiance at Europe that fairly shook France to a delirium of patriotism, and as he was drawing to a close he thundered; "What needs France to vanquish her enemies, to terrify them? Naught but audacity!—still more audacity!—always! audacity!" Fourteen republican armies sprang forth full armed, as though Danton's words had been the fabulous dragon's teeth sown ages before in the bright fields of mythology.
FRANCE WAS RIGHT,
therefore God inspired her. Be sure, when your flights are bold, that you have the right. "Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just." Hope has been defamed more than any other of the joys of life, just as the most charitable become the target of the greater portion of the malignity of fault-finding fellow-creatures. Treat Hope fairly, my young friend, and she will never desert you, neither will she poison your expectations, as did the hags who prophesied to Macbeth.
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.—Pope.
have here quoted one of the grandest flights of the human fancy, and with a purpose. If God, who is perfection, and in whose image we are faintly formed, watches the weakliest of his lambs, supports the weariest of his poor sparrows, should not we, in trying to be true men, endeavor to pay equal care to all things intrusted to our attention, be they great or be they small! And more than that. The little errors beget myriads of their kind. "Many mickles make a muckle." The habit sooner or later, leads some of us into an awful abyss, where it had been better we had not lived. Errors creep into character just as ideas get into our brain. Says Moore:
And how like forts, to which beleaguers win
Unhoped-for entrance through some friend within,
One clear idea, wakened in the breast
By memory's magic, lets in all the rest.
Says Franklin: "A little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the driver was lost; being overtaken and slain by an enemy, all for the want of care about a horse-shoe nail." "In persons grafted with a serious trust," says Shakspeare "negligence is a serious crime." And so it is.
STORY OF SAG BRIDGE.
In September, 1873, a conductor on the Chicago and Alton Railroad started south with a freight train. He was to stop at a station a few miles from Joliet and wait for the incoming passenger train from St. Louis. He consulted his watch. That unhappy piece of mechanism told him that he had time to reach the next station. He spoke to the operator of the telegraph. That person could give him no information as to where the passenger train was, and he, determining not to wait, pulled out. As his train was still within hearing, the operator rushed to the platform with the news that the passenger train had left the nearest station! The operator knew that
TWO TRAINS WERE ABOUT TO COME IN COLLISION,
a knowledge that has sometimes deprived railroad men of their minds forever. Soon the awful shock reverberated afar, and from nine to fifteen persons were killed in a horrible manner. One of the most prominent men of Chicago was scalded so that the flesh left his skeleton. An unkind fate preserved the conductor to confront his ignominy. It was found that
HE HAD FORGOTTEN TO WIND UP HIS WATCH!
How could such a butchery have been brought about, save by a course of small errors which had eaten into his moral nature, leaving him a great ghoulish fiend of Carelessness, running his pitiless Juggernaut up and down the highway between two great cities! The hideous errors made by men are always indicative of those particular men. Some people never make errors at all! Why? Because they are careful. Simple, is it not—like Napoleon's tactics? Yet that constant care is so wonderful in its effects that human science cannot peer into the mystery of its action. Men laboring under total aberration of the mind have been known to carefully wind a clock at a given hour, and evince no other power to do a reasonable thing. Begin early in life to do all these little things with the greatest care.
IMITATE THE CELEBRATED DETECTIVES,
who actually pay little attention to things gross and palpable, but follow the more closely those minute clews which, interlacing and concentering, often as a whole, lead them, with the greatest certainty, to the dark hand that did the foul deed. Here is
A RIDICULOUS ERROR:
On Tuesday, the third of May, 1881, Scranton, Willard & Co., brokers, of New York City, sold to Decker & Co. stocks to the enormous sum of $127,000. For this property Decker & Co. wrote a check on a bank for $127,000, and a messenger was sent by the cashier of Scranton, Willard & Co., to have the check certified—that is, to have the bank officials write across the face of the check in red ink "Certified," meaning that the money was there and would thenceforth be dedicated to the redemption of that particular piece of paper. The boy returned with the check, the cashier put upon his own file a "tag" representing the amount of money, along with many other similar records, and the boy was sent with the check to the Bank of North America. The boy handed to the banker, with the check, a similar "tag" from the cashier, which was also filed. When you deposit money, at many banks, you fill out a "tag" or deposit-check, and offer it with the money, which "tag" is used by the banker as a safeguard against errors and lapses of all kinds. When Scranton, Willard & Co.'s cashier reckoned up his "tags" he found no record of a check for $127,000. He immediately accused the boy of purloining the check, and inquiry at the bank (met by the reply that no such check had been deposited, as shown by the depositor's own "tags") strengthened his suspicions.
ALL THE BANKS OF NEW YORK
were at once notified of the loss of the great check, and costly engagements were made to advertise the matter all over the country. The boy was not arrested, but his case was not neglected, you may be assured. Repeated cross-questioning failed to shake his simple statement, that he had done as he had been told to do.
THE ACCOUNTS OF THE BANK OF NORTH AMERICA
were behind that afternoon, and the cashier stayed until late in the day to get them balanced. After he had finally secured the totals of the day's transactions, he found that he had received, according to the depositors' "tags," $114,300 less than he had paid out. In some perturbation he recalled the notice of Scranton, Willard & Co., and at once sent to them, to see if that affair had anything to do with his immense discrepancy. Following this line of inquiry, Scranton, Willard & Co.'s cashier found that, in attempting to put the figures "127,000" on the "tag" of deposit he had neglected to write the last cipher, and the "tag" for $12,700 which had been made in its place, added to $114,300 which the banker lacked in "tags," exactly made up the $127,000 which the bank had in reality credited to Scranton, Willard & Co.'s account. How could a man leave off
A CIPHER WHICH MEANT $114,300?
Simply by a course of instruction and development in error, until, probably nothing save the most colossal sums would command his unqualified attention. Let us suppose your mother or sister gives you a letter to mail. Do not put that letter in your pocket. Carry it in your hand until you reach the place to post it. Do this for years. After that drill, when you get a letter to mail, you will not need to keep it in your hand, for you will feel it in your hand just as long as it is in your pocket, as the one-armed man has sensations in both hands!
"WE NEVER MAKE MISTAKES!"
I spoke in the preceding chapter of the ancient shield with its "Be Bold! Be Bold!" Now, on our modern shield we would put "Be Correct! Be Correct!" and it would not be necessary to put on the reverse side "Be not too Correct!" You cannot afford to make errors! Last year a gentleman drew a sum of money from the First National Bank of New York City. As he was about to leave the building, he discovered an error. He returned to the paying teller. He said: "I think you have made a mistake in paying me." The cashier stood there, by chance. "No, sir," said he, "we never make mistakes!" "But," said the gentleman, "you gave me twenty dollars too much money!" "No, sir!" thundered the cashier, "we never make mistakes!" Not for twenty dollars in cash would that banker admit that the establishment with which he was connected ever made a mistake. And you can be assured that
SUCH A SPARTAN SPIRIT WEEDS OUT
most of the ordinary blunders of business. Now if this great rich banker could not afford to indulge in mistakes, how much less can you, who have your whole fortune to make, be anything less than strictly accurate in all your operations? Study the spirit of that banker's answer. Imitate his horror of an error. He must have had good reasons for that feeling.
A HOMELY EXAMPLE.
A customer comes in from the country. He says: "I have brought a load of wheat to town to-day—about fifty bushel I should guess. I'll be in after noon and settle my account with you." Very good; you, the clerk, hurry to your books, to make out his account. When he comes in, he glances over it, and says: "Good gracious! you haven't given me credit for four dollars and seventy-five cents I paid you last May. I recollect it because I was in town to get a corn-planter when I paid it. And I've got your receipt, too." Sure enough, there is the receipt, which you have filled out yourself. And yet you failed to make an entry of the fact in his account. Shame covers you.
THE FARMER BEGINS TO HAVE SUSPICIONS.
Your employer begins to talk of the fall plowing as soon as he can, but the farmer goes over to your unscrupulous competitors in business, relates to them the fact that his scrupulous attention to details has saved him four dollars and seventy-five cents, and asks their opinion as to whether or not an attempt were not made to cheat him. His listeners talk about you in a mild-mannered way—
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.
Off goes your customer in his lumber-wagon, carrying that gross libel upon your place of business, to fill the prairies and the openings with its brood of gossiped offspring, until, some day, it comes back that your employer is a horsethief and has served a term in the penitentiary!
The errors which are often made in handling figures are just as annoying. It is a trifling error to call eight and four thirteen, but it often may disconcert an immense calculation. Like the pebble in the shoe, small in itself, it may do great injury. Some years ago there traveled through the country a genuine "lightning calculator." You could put down any number, big or little, while his back was turned, and he would turn again and mark the total with far greater rapidity than he could speak, and he thought out the total far quicker than he could mark it. Of course, he had a magic book to sell, but when you came to read his magic book and see how he did it, you found it was the same old way, only he was more expert than you. He could add four thousand two hundred and twenty eight and three thousand six hundred and fifty four as easily as you could forty two and thirty six, or perhaps four and three, so you see that the scheme of running up a single column of figures is at best a clumsy one.
YOU EXPOSE YOURSELF
to additional errors by enlarging the possible additions in a body of numbers. We are taught the multiplication table up to twelve times twelve. We never stumble up to that point. But it ought to continue up to one hundred times one hundred. We could then always add two figures to two figures easier then to parcel the operation out into two jobs. The "lightning calculator" had probably carried it up to five thousand times five thousand. Take an interest in "sums." Learn
THE FREAKS OF FIGURES.
For instance, to multiply any set of figures by 11—say 54—add the 5 and 4 together and put the 9 between the 5 and the 4. To multiply 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 by 11, do the same way, only carry your 10's. Thus 6 and 5 are 11, put down 1 before the 6; 5 and 4 are 9 and 1 to carry is 10; put down the before the 16, etc. Again to multiply, say 18 9's by 9, bring down a 1, then make 170's and a 9 out to the left. Again to square numbers, call even 10's the body; call the rest the surplus,—104—add surplus to body making it 108; now square the surplus (4) making 16 and put it after the 108, or 10,816. This is simply taking advantage of the 10s. Take 33 and you will see. Here 3 is the surplus; add the surplus, making 36; multiply 36 by 30, making 1,080; square the surplus, 3 times 3—9; add to 1,080—making 1,089. You see you get an even thirty to multiply by and load up the sum to be multiplied sufficiently to balance. Above 5 call it a deficit and go to your next 10 for your body.
I MENTION THESE TRICKS
not because they are good for anything practical, but to get you to take up figures and be quick with them. Get yourself up a multiplication table running to 50 times 50—there's something practical. The man quick and accurate at figures is always esteemed.
OUR LANGUAGE
is a vast record of the changes in pronunciation which have been brought about by affected people as well as careless and ignorant people. "'Tis true 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true." But you cannot change it by spelling "balance" with two ls, or "sure" with an h. Be accurate in your spelling. Restrict yourself to such words as you can spell, and you will soon improve if you are guilty of such errors. In conclusion, if you go fishing and catch three perch and one black bass, say that you caught those fish, and not that you caught three black bass and one perch. Right there is where you can form habits that will shine out in your face as you grow to the full dignity of manhood. You see I lay special stress on habit. The Duke of Wellington said that habit was ten times nature. Horace Mann said
"HABIT IS A CABLE.
We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it." Dr. Locke said with a wonderful knowledge of life: "Habit works more constantly and with greater facility than reason; which, when we have most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed." Thus, you see, when a man is spoken of as a person "of good habits," it means something more than is usually conceived. It means he is under chains which he cannot break—and, in reality, that he could not be a bad man without suffering and discomfort.
Nothing succeeds so well as success.—Talleyrand.
he man Talleyrand, who made the above mocking assertion, was one of the closest observers of human nature who have ever lived. And yet what he said in a spirit of uncommon hatred of his fellow-beings is really another way of saying the exact truth—that success comes only after so many trials and disappointments that the world, considering it a safe rule, admires the result, and feels that the reflected credit for a great result belongs to him upon whom it falls. Beside you toils a young man of your own age. He does not seem to care to rise. He dislikes the few duties of the present, and would be inclined to shrink from further responsibilities. It may be that he is the happier as compared with you, but men must not consult simply their own individual happiness. Sooner or later all men take on a broader burden than merely their own support. Try early in life to get the start which the experience of others furnishes you. You are lucky that you were born in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Men before you have, by ambition and energy, made the affair of living easier for you. Right here in youth is the time to begin the battle. You are now a private.
OFFICERS ARE VERY SCARCE.
Make up your mind to have shoulder-straps early in the campaign. You cannot afford to miss a single battle. Every opportunity which opens to you is a city to be taken, and you are to be put in command. See that it surrenders. No city ever properly besieged evaded final capitulation. The chances are all in your favor. Remember, when you contemplate your unambitious comrade, that he is likely to change his tastes as he grows older. If he cannot give a reasonable degree of encouragement to those tastes he will then become crabbed and sour. Wherever you see men crusty and difficult to please, be sure they have had cities to take and failed to capture them.
ALEXANDER SMITH,
a Scotch poet who died at a very early age, said very appropriately: "To bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all events, a moderate amount of it, is required—just as sunshine is needed for the ripening of peaches and strawberries." Now how are you to catch this marvelous sunshine of prosperity? Simply, do not shut it out. Your comrade has had the moral ague. He fears that, if the sun shine on him, it will bring a return of his fever. When the sun shines on you, do not miss a ray. It makes you grow.
YOUR PARTICULAR DUTIES
are soon learned. Why is it that the affairs of walking behind a counter and actually knowing what your employer pays for his goods so soon lose the magic there once was in them? It is because the human brain is supple, and comprehends quickly. By the time certain problems are solved others spring up. See that you solve them. The mind should be pacified in its desire for new conquests.
THE SAFE RULE
as to whether or not you are fitted for new endeavors is to find to your own true satisfaction that you can do your duties better than anyone not in daily practice of the same kind of work. If your employer can take hold and do a thing once a week better than you who do it a hundred times a day, then it should still have considerable charm for you, for your mind is strangely unfamiliar with the procedure. When a clerk stays in one position all his life, it is certain to be from
LACK OF BOTH AMBITION AND ABILITY,
and he lacks a good deal of each. Every little while, through the sickness, advancement, or bad judgment of others, a place just a little more responsible than your own is left vacant. Somebody is wanted badly. You are the man, and are put there for the interval. There is the pivotal point. By unusual endeavor you can probably fill the place better than it was filled by the regular occupant. Your employer, expecting less of you, gets more, and praises you. Now, by praising you, he is, somehow or other,
"TAKING STOCK IN YOU."
If he "keeps you down," he shows his poor judgment, and he is not going to do that if he can help it. On the other hand, your comrade is put in the vacant place. The duties are hard and perplexing. He is compelled to go and ask a man for some money. The man is mean. He not only refuses the money, but addresses some personal considerations to your comrade which sicken him to the heart. He returns to your employer with a tale of failure well tinged with his own morbid feelings and wounded vanity. Your employer is irritated, and attributes the fiasco to the ambassador. To satisfy his own views of things, he prophesies that your comrade never will amount to anything, anyhow. Now, to see this prediction verified is, unfortunately for your comrade, just as necessary to your employer's self-love as to see you succeed. The point of the first opportunity, the first impression on your employer, is really central, pivotal. If you get a big iron safe on such a spot, you can turn it with extraordinary ease.
There is no road to practical business so good as practice. You read of clerks being educated by sham forms of business. You might as well read of men gambling with counterfeit money. Business men want clerks who have been private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain. When a man starts in as captain he is likely to get discharged as private. In the great printing houses
PROOF READERS
are required, to see that the types are spelled out, one by one, into the right words, and that the right words are rightly spelled. Now let a college graduate apply for such a position. He knows Greek and Latin. He can spell—or thinks he can. He can turn you out a sentence, which, after going about so far, refers to what it is talking about, cuts a pigeon-wing like the boys on the ice, tells a little tale between two dashes, and one inside of that between two parentheses ("finger-nails," the printers call them), again refers to what it is talking about, and closes up with three unaccented syllables following a heavy sound. Sometimes folks hire this gentleman. The proof-slip is thrown in wet, greatly to his horror, and after drying it he finds they are waiting for it outside, and some other proof-reader is compelled to take it. Then he learns he must read it wet, as it is. Pretty soon the foreman of the printers brings in a proof-slip which is set in three sizes of type where the gentleman discovered but one size. Then the foreman of the proof-room has a discouraging way of taking the gentleman's proof and marking from eight to ten glaring typographical errors which the gentleman has overlooked, and eight or ten typographical absurdities, which he has approved, and, horrors upon horrors! eight or ten errors of "style." Now, for the first time, the gentleman has learned that every time the word "President" appears in the newspaper it is either capitalized or uncapitalized, while he had naturally supposed that it took its chances, the way a picnic does!
THUS THE GENTLEMAN GETS AN IDEA
of his utter incompetency to fill the place of a trained man. And he never gets half so complete a view of his uselessness as do those around him. Such proof-readers rarely work two nights. They are corporals in captains' places. Or, perhaps, they are captains of artillery in the infantry service. What do folks do when the best proof-reader is missing? They go out into the type-setting room and take the brightest printer they can find. He cannot tell French from Latin, but he can see a fair share of the errors in a proof-slip, and will not let the telegraphic abbreviation for government go into the paper as "goat," nor that for Republican as "roofer," as I have seen collegiates do.
HE IS ALREADY A LIEUTENANT.
Give him a little practice and he is a captain. With energy and ambition failure never comes if you only know the difficulties. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" is as good in business as in poetry. In the great cities there are long streets lined with retail store-rooms of every quality of location. They rent at from twenty-five to a hundred dollars a month. Many a store-room has not had an occupant in it for ten years who did not grow poorer. No good business man could be induced to enter into a business at such a point. But
THE FOOLS HAVE RUSHED IN,
like the collegiate into the proof-room, convinced that they could do what good business men know to be impossible,—that is take in eight dollars a day and pay fifty dollars rent, on forty per cent profit. Here and there is a grocer who gets up at half past five in the morning, opens up, puts out his eggs, oranges, berries, lemons, potatoes, beans, and bananas, sweeps out, gets out his horse, goes to the market-street, does a day's buying there and elsewhere, and by eight o'clock is ready for business, just about as the man who expects to share in trade with him is unlocking his doors. Speak to the eight o'clock man and he will tell you that he has to stay up till ten at night, and that he cannot burn the candle of life at both ends. But, for all that, he is grievously disappointed when the final collapse comes. Nothing succeeds like success because very few things are like success. Nothing on the street succeeds like this grocery, because nowhere else on the street is so much work done by so few men. Nowhere else does the proprietor put all of his time and his money into his business, and, in strawberry time, for instance, retail thirty-five dollars' worth of strawberries in one day with only one clerk, one delivery-boy and a cashier! At the same time, this successful grocer would not invest one cent in the store-room opposite, where, with so much confidence, the eight-o'clock man has put all his money.
THE MAN OF SUCCESS KNOWS THE DIFFICULTIES.
"Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off," says the Bible, yet that is precisely what we are doing when we smile at the sally of some envious dealer about the "luck" of our grocer—that "nothing succeeds as well as success." But the landlord goes on renting his store-room, and thanking his stars that the fools are not all dead yet. Do not desire a position two grades ahead of you. The one that is next to you is your proper goal. Over the shoulder of the companion who holds it you can get many a glance long before your chance comes to do the work, and, even then, what looked so very easy to you before it came your turn to do it, will now "shoot light horrors through you." In a large measure people are bought at their own prices. If they are worth those figures, their fortune is made. A celebrated painter was once asked how he mixed his colors. He replied that
HE "MIXED THEM WITH BRAINS."
Mix brains with your business. Like the opium or chloral slave you will be able to endure a larger quantity each day, and the effect will not be darkness and death, but light and life. Simply because you think you can do a thing is no great sign you can do it. You must have brains and probabilities in your favor. You must absolutely have done something very nearly like it. I never saw a more signal instance of the general self-conceit of the race than in the experience of a young man who once sold a little rubber reed which he laid on his tongue, and with which
HE MOCKED ALL KINDS OF BIRDS.
After seeing him do it, the crowd would gather about in great herds, with their "quarters" high in the air, anxious to purchase, and just as sure they could do the same thing as the eight o'clock man that he can get a crowd into his store. I do not remember a solitary instance where a purchaser ever acquired the least facility in imitating the sounds of birds, and I have been tempted to believe the "machine" was a "dummy" by which the salesman conveyed to the gaping crowd the hope of acquiring his wonderful art. Do not, in the journey of life, attempt impossible stages of travel because they look easy at the start. Stop at each inn which the experience of years has shown to be necessary for your continued comfort. But never, on any account, lie down between the inns, for the outlaws called Failure and Discredit will fall upon you and work your destruction. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave." "In the morning sow thy seed." "Let us crown our selves with rosebuds before they be withered."
But to our tale.—Ae market night
Tam had got planted unco right
Fast by an ingle bleezing finely
Wi reaming swats that drank divinely;
And at his elbow Souter Johnny,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;
Tam lo'ed him like a very brither—
They had been fou for weeks thegither!—Burns.
cannot but feel much apprehension in approaching a subject so nearly allied to the actual inner character of a man. "A man is known by the company he keeps." I cannot admonish the blind that they should see. I cannot suggest to Tam O'Shanter that he should not associate with Cobbler Johnny. Why, he loves him like a very brother! Indeed, as the last sublime token of friendship, have they not been drunk for weeks together? Besides, are they not such worthless wights that they will do less harm in associating with each other than in enlarging their power of evil by operating on new material? If you are Tam O'Shanter, I cannot very well advise you to seek out some worthy young man for an associate and attaint his character and his reputation by clinging to him. Now the only thing I can consistently do is to hope you are a young man
FAR REMOVED FROM TAM O'SHANTER IN HABITS
and selfishness. I can hope that you are a young man who, in going on a fishing excursion with some reputable person of your age, will not cast a cloud on the mind of that person's employer, and cause him to fear that his clerk is falling instead of rising in self-esteem. Let my hope be taken as an enduring fact. Now I feel I am on safe ground. You are building a structure. On your west party-wall your neighbor is also erecting one. He is building it so that it will fall down—that is plain. When it falls it will involve you in its ruins because the middle wall supports both edifices. What do you do? You go to the authorities, and they make him take down his house brick by brick. In this way the law surrounds you with its beneficent protection, and you need not suffer from the faults of others. But alas!
"Adieu, valor! rust, rapier! be still, drum: For your manager is in love; yea, he loveth."
MORALLY,
when you put up a party-wall you must abide by the conclusion. If your companion reflect credit on you, then you are doubly strong, but if he pull you down, then there is no relief and little sympathy. Let us suppose that, in an absolutely evil hour, you have learned to play billiards. A brother-clerk says: "Let us play a string at dinner-time!" Across your mind flits the bright green table, the beautiful ivory balls, the wonderful angle which you discovered the last time you played, and, compared with the dull routine of the store, you momentarily feel that
A GAME OF BILLIARDS
would be truly beneficial. So, at noon you go. There never was a game of billiards that would end precisely at the moment you should leave for duty. There never were two employes who played billiards who did not cheat their employers out of considerable time. There never was an employer who would not resent this injustice. The comrade who does not play billiards will, sooner or later, get an absolute advantage over you. You will come in, complaining of your luck only to find that your slow-going comrade has "got something" which you have missed. Employers do not want head-clerks or partners who hang around billiard saloons or livery stables. "He who comes from the kitchen smells of its smoke." What can you get at a billiard saloon? You can get the good opinion of some person who is never civil to anybody. His incivility has a charm for your young mind. You naturally imitate him.
YOU TRY IT ON A CUSTOMER.
He says: "Have you any buttons like this?" showing one about fourteen years old. You look at him insolently and say "Nah!" (meaning "No, sir"). This makes the other clerk (who plays billiards with you) laugh very heartily, but it makes your employer laugh out of the other corner of his mouth, for he has no business to keep such a clerk, and the customer knows it. The customer may avenge himself by refusing an extension on a note which he holds, and that note, possibly, may have your employer's name on it! The mistake you make in this particular case is in applying the manners of a billiard-saloon to the uses of a place of business. A very ordinary-looking old man was one day standing in a great bank in New York City. He was talking with a friend, and the friend spoke of desiring to have a draft cashed which had been drawn in his favor. Knowing that the old man banked at that place, he asked him to step up to the paying teller and identify the drawer of the money. This the old man, naturally, attempted to do. He said: "I know this gentleman to be Alvin H. Hamilton." The paying teller looked at the old man and judged him by his clothes. He said: "I don't know you at all, sir! Pass along." This did not please the old man. He expostulated. "Pass along!" yelled the teller, looking ominously toward the policeman, who edged toward the group.
"I'LL PASS ALONG!"
said the old man, hotly. And he drew a blank check, engraved in a costly manner, from his pocket, and wrote on the "please-pay" line "Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars." Then he signed his name to it, turned it over, put his name on the back of it, and got in line again. By the time he was at the window the word had gone along the line. The receiving teller, the collecting clerk, the certifying clerk and the examiners, had passed the news to
THE CASHIER AND THE PRESIDENT
that something unusual was about to happen, and those magnates had rushed to the paying teller's side. "Do you know that signature?" said the old man with a gleam in his eye. Now it was the teller's turn to feel wretched. "Pay five hundred and fifty thousand—Babbit, soap man! oh! what an idiot I am!" All this went through his head. The president, the cashier, abased themselves before the irate old man. It was all a mistake! They assured him! They assured him! Beg pardon! Impertinence of new teller. And a' that, and a' that. But it would not do! The money went to another bank, and a business worth thousands of dollars annually was lost, together with the natural prestige of such patronage. There was what I should call
A CASE OF BILLIARD-ROOM MANNERS,
and a costly one. Drop that style. Says Bishop Horne: "It is expedient to have an acquaintance with those who have looked into the world; who know men, understand business, and can give you good intelligence and good advice when they are wanted." "He that walketh with wise men" says the Bible, "shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed." Try to frequent the company of your betters. Good books are safe companions. Good men, a little older than yourself, are still better. Perhaps good women, who take an interest in young men, are better than all others, for they are more unselfish, and often have a spare thought for the young man that makes his life happier.
LEARN TO ADMIRE RIGHTLY.
The leer of the man who has sold lemonade in a circus has a strange charm for a young man. It has a strange repulsiveness for the "solid man" of business. The look of a man with a cigar put in his mouth at a sharp upward angle and with a hat lurched like the cargo of a bad sailer, has a strong fascination for a young man. It is a strong irritant to the man whose companionship is an honor. You cannot do better than to frequent some church, rent a sitting, and have a positive engagement two or three times a week. You are a great gainer by this. It may cost you a little; but you will get all that back in moral capital—just as valuable in business as money. Says George Washington: "The company in which you will improve most will be least expensive to you." In your church you will meet men who do not live all for themselves, as does the dominant mind in the bar-room. Their drill and discipline have made them more unselfish. They will help you in many ways. They will throw a rope to you and pull you aboard. Sooner or later your association with them will get you position, respect, family, happiness, success, and above all, that peace which passeth all understanding. Do not take this as preaching. It is as practical as anything in this book. Chesterfield says: "No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint." What makes mankind revere Shakspeare Because he said fine things? No. But because he said true things. Listen to him: "It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases of one another."
Conference maketh a ready man.—Lord Bacon.
Now stirs the lated traveler apace
To gain the timely inn.—Macbeth, Act III., Sc. 3.
hat is there about going to a strange town on business which should make a man's heart feel like a cold biscuit inside of him? A young man may have been to a certain village on endless excursions of pleasure, when his pulse beat as gloriously as the bass drum on a grand circus-entry into town, yet when he has to go to the depot to take the cars for that same town to sell goods there for the first time in his life, it is harder to carry his heart to the train than it is to lug his grip-sacks. When you feel that way, do not feel ashamed. All the "old heads" on the road have been in that predicament. Talk to your heart the way you think about a mother when she mourns for her child. You say "Let her feel bad. It's natural. It'll do her good." Now when your home begins to drop out of sight behind, and the conductor comes along to punch your ticket rather than to comfort you, say to your heart "Go it, you you old ninnyhammer! It's natural for you to thump, but you can't interfere with business, you know!" Your mind is all right. It's your body. Now, while
YOU ARE NEARING THAT FATAL TOWN,
you look back over the goods in the store. Of course, you are positively familiar with everything in stock. You came out on the road either because you asked to go, or because other folks had espied a faculty of persuasion in you which they thought would sell goods. Sometimes a man looks persuasively, sometimes he talks persuasively; sometimes he both looks and talks it. This is after he has had practice. "Iron sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Now this town you are going to is a band of enemies. How can you make a conquest? By doing as Napoleon did. Set your own time for the fight, pitch upon one man at a time, always pick out one not used to your mode of warfare, and then clean him out before he thinks the action has begun. "Formerly," says Bovee, naively, "when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war."
HERE IS THE TOWN NOW.
How dirty those houses look! O, yes, they are the habitations of the poor. You know the hotel you are going to, of course. You know where it is. Now you grab your valises, your overcoat is on, and you climb down. Want a 'bus? It's only fifty cents for a ride of a block and a half! Well, you will get along without it. The labor will get your blood going. You have thus made a sale already, equal to two dollars. Put that down to your credit. By this time, although you are among the Philistines, you are yourself again. You go into the wash-room of the hotel, enter the dining-room, eat a very poor meal, and get up to begin the fight. Now sit down a half-hour and let your food get started in your stomach.
GETTING YOUR MIND.
Does not the General spread his maps before him? You probably have a certain firm in your mind, either by chance or direction from your employer. This, of course, is the weak point in the enemy's lines. Here he has trusted to the ground as it looked from his side of the field, when, in reality, it presented few difficulties from yours. Some experience in the world has led me to believe that if a salesman has come to the opinion, even in the most absurd manner, that he can sell a certain man goods, he can do it, almost beyond the chance of a doubt. I once knew a successful solicitor who seemed to do all his work at his desk. He would sit in the greatest gloom
CANVASSING HIMSELF!
That was a fact. He was really revolving the weak places of the enemy in his mind. Suddenly he would start up, seize his paraphernalia, make his expedition, and return rich-laden. This taught me the wonderful power of persuasion when directed in exactly the right way. One of the first things to forget is yourself. I think possibly the finding in your mind of a man to whom you can sell goods depends principally upon your belief that when you make your dash on him you forget what he will think of you. You have the willingness to sacrifice all that to the one object before you. In the possible places of attack which you reject, you are not yet willing to make that sacrifice. You know
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
was a great man. Why? Well, here is one reason. The little men came to him one day with horror spread upon their narrow features. Said they: "O, Mr. Lincoln, we have just discovered that Grant drinks whisky. We have come to ask you to put a Temperance General in control of the more important of his actions. He has the lives of our children and our friends in his hands. Save us from his liability to plunge us all in general blood!" Now this was after Vicksburg. Mr. Lincoln took an interest in this revelation that elated the petitioners. "You are quite sure he drinks whisky, are you?" "O, yes.
HE WAS DRUNK AT SHILOH."
"Well, will you not try hard to find out where he gets his whisky?" said Old Abe; "I want some of it for my other generals!"
This man Abraham Lincoln wanted to put down the Rebellion for the sake of both the North and the South. Anything that would contribute to that end was what he wanted in large quantities.
YOU ARE DRESSED
as you have always dressed—with easy-fitting business garments. Absolutely nothing on your person gives offense, either in newness or oldness. You enter the store to whose proprietor you intend to sell goods. If you know him and he is busy, you nod and avoid a talk. This is both difficult and unlucky. If he is at your service, you state that you have come to show him your samples. You do not hope he needs anything at the start. Of course, he needs nothing. That does not enter into the question. He will buy at the end. You now, if your samples are with you, pick out some medium bargains. Reserve your powerful arguments. Try to make him understand the true value of these goods. Nothing under the sun is so powerful as example. Now, to furnish examples, you must state who sells this particular line of goods. Mention the names with all the precision, volubility and confidence in the world. He may evince no interest, but it has moved him greatly to hear all those names! Now he begins to talk prices to you. The chances are that he is "drawing the long bow"—that is, that he is putting the prices at which he buys full low enough! Do not dispute him. Never argue with him. Accept all he says as gospel. Very soon he will be on the other tack. You will be talking, and you can judge whether he has told the truth or not. Now you are both on excellent terms. He thinks you are a very decent young fellow.
BRING ON YOUR "LEADERS."
You ought to have some little line that you are selling for less than it is worth. Give him the solemn privilege of getting some of it. He wavers, he is lost. This is the entering wedge. If he is sharp enough to buy only "leaders," he is too sharp for you, and for your house. Ten chances to one he would never pay anyway. You must have picked out a poor man to start on. But if you have an ordinary gentlemanly man of business, he will take some goods of you. Canvass him for everything. Do not neglect your work now it has come. He is wavering everywhere. He is contradicting by his acts nearly every assertion he made behind his entrenchments. Never mind that. Do not leave him until there is "no more buy in him." Now, after you have all the items—and
NEVER STOP HIM
when he is giving them—sum them up, read them over, take his name (firm name), his post-office (not his railroad station), his railroad station, his express company, his railroad, absolutely everything. Make his name "Owens," not "Owen," "Ransom's Sons" not Ransom & Sons, "Smythe" not "Smith," if that be the way he puts it. A man is very tender about his name. Never forget that. Impress those things on your shipping-clerk at home. Tell him you have sold Edwards Pierrepont a bill of goods, and that this particular buyer has
A PRIVATE GRAVEYARD
for shipping-clerks who mark it "Edward." You have already consulted your commercial "testament" to see if the firm will pay. If the bill be too large for the credit allowed in the "testament," telegraph to your firm about it and get instructions. Of course, you cannot have mistaken prices or sold below the necessary profit. A firm in Boston started out a confident young man, and he sold tremendous bills of goods. He took no account of the value of the goods, freight, or time of payment. All those merchants who had friends on his "beat" telegraphed to them to be sure and give him an order. He was the rage. There was also some rage at Boston when the orders began coming in. They telegraphed to Madison
TO HEAD HIM OFF,
but he had "taken a shoot" to Rockford. They telegraphed to Dubuque, but he had doubled down toward Galesburg. They telegraphed to Galesburg but he had escaped into Iowa. Finally they sent, to every town on three parallel lines of railroad in Iowa, a postal card with "Come Home!" covering one side of it, and captured him somewhere about the middle of the State, also in the middle of the greatest of all his campaigns. The firm settled his expenses, but refused to deliver the goods, and hired an extra lawyer or two to contest
THE LARGE CROP OF LEGAL SUITS
which brought up the rear of his triumph, like the tail of a gorgeous comet. This young man was peculiar. I only mention his flight through the western commercial sky to make you smile when you think of it and lighten your heart, when this remembrance comes in a lonesome hour. If you are unacquainted with the gentleman to whom you are to sell, use your habitual salutation. A majority of successful men say "How are you, sir?" You have your card right side up, close to his hand. You say: "My name is Bennington—I am from Chicago—Remington & Company—let me talk to you a little about some of our goods." You have accompanied some such speech as this by an expeditious display of your samples. If your choice of attack was sound, he is already looking at your goods.
THE BOARD AT THE HOTEL
has greatly improved this evening, so you will find. Make up your mind that when a man does not accord you a fair hearing you have erred in your approach. There are some men who have to be approached through a personal introduction. If you take advantage of the chances that come in your way, you can afford to accept the misfortunes which befall you, for it is a real misfortune to attack a cold, hard-surfaced man in his moment of strength and get a full broadside from his guns. Go in force against such men. Two men would have him at a disadvantage.
IN CONCLUSION,
do not be in a hurry to get back home. Have books with you. Shun traveling men, as they cannot benefit you. The desire to have company often makes a man "lose a town." It often keeps him up nights. What is the reason you dread the attack? Because you have no electricity in you. You have not slept enough. Have you not often felt you could walk ten miles as easily as one? That was just the moment to "fall up against" the hard-surfaced man. Have you not often felt you would like to be in the little white cottage, reading what a wonderful place New York is? Just then you ought to be in bed,
MANUFACTURING SNAP AND SPARKLE.
In all your expedition, judgment has been at work. Judgment sent you out, and judgment pointed out your attack. You therefore have sold goods to responsible people, and your firm are delighted. You now have the most powerful lines of money-making in the world right in your hands. You are the man who can "place the goods." You are practically a partner. If you have perfected yourself in your art, and if you are not in business for yourself, it is because you do not want it so to be.
Lives of great men all remind us
We may make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time.—Longfellow.
t is hard to follow in the tracks of giants, but nevertheless the sands of our time are filled with that kind of footprints. The present century has beholden some of the most astonishing elevations of all history. Slaves have become Roman Emperors, but we hardly know what "slave" meant in those days. Within the last hundred years we see a poor old dame with three sons called Joseph, Napoleon and Jerome. We see a cooper's son called Michel Ney, an inn-keeper's son called Joaquin Murat, a lawyer's son named Jean Bernadotte, a military cadet named Louis Davout, and a lame boy called Charles Talleyrand. Behold them mounting the ladder until, at the end of thirty years, the roster stands thus. Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain; Napoleon Bonaparte, greatest warrior of modern times and Emperor of France, which meant dictator of Europe; Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia; Michel Ney, Prince of the Moskwa and Bravest of the Brave; Joaquin Murat, King of Naples; Jean Bernadotte, King of Sweden, and founder of the present dynasty; Louis Davout, Prince of Eckmuhl, and, in 1811,
COMMANDER OF NEARLY 600,000 MEN;
Charles Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento, and perhaps the greatest diplomat in history. We have Ben Franklin learning to ink type in his youth and in his maturity teaching the world how to subdue our favorite slave, the lightning. We have Daniel Webster ploughing on a farm and afterward delighting two worlds with the magic of his voice. We see John Jacob Astor arrive in America scarcely able to speak English, and die in 1848 worth more than any other man in America at that time. We see George Peabody at work in a grocery at Danvers. Years afterward, as a London banker, we chronicle his charities, almost fabulous in their extent: To Danvers, Mass., two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; to the Baltimore Institute, one million four hundred thousand dollars; to the poor of London, two million five hundred thousand dollars; to the southern negroes, three million five hundred thousand dollars; to eight institutions, three hundred and fifty thousand dollars; to his relatives, five million dollars; We see A.T. Stewart hard pressed for a dollar, and we find him worth thirty millions when he dies. We watch
THE WIFE OF ANDREW JOHNSON
teaching him the alphabet, and we listen to his proclamations as President of the United States. We tell Abraham Lincoln where he can borrow a book that will benefit him, and we pass by his great dust in numbers almost like the stars in heaven. We see Phineas T. Barnum first humbugging the people with a lemonade-stand worth all told two dollars, and we next see him humbugging the people with the greatest show on earth, worth a million. We lend Leland Stanford a quarter and he next buys up three or four high-priced legislatures and defies the Constitution of the United States to prevent him levying a tax on "his people" of a million dollars with a stroke of his pen. We see
ULYSSES S. GRANT
working by the day in a tanyard, and then receiving the sword of a warrior whose name will also echo far out into the "corridors of time," and then again accepting as the representative of America, the pent-up admiration of the Old World for the New. We see Jay Gould investing a thousand dollars in a country store and then in turn dictating to all the railroads and controlling all the telegraphs in the greatest empire that has ever existed. We watch Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr., begin as a poor lad, save, build, command, and die, leaving to his favorite son
EIGHTY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!
We see that son, beginning on that paltry patrimony, already the possessor, in a few short years, of seventy millions in addition. We help Elihu Burritt to say his letters at noon-time in a blacksmith shop, and afterward, lo! he converses in thirty languages. We see Edgar Poe, dying as poor as man ever died, yet leaving to the world a name as a writer that Europeans persist is as yet the brightest in American literature. See Horace Greeley, trudging across a State, anxious to get a job for his board and clothes; then listen to his voice in the councils of the President and in the hearts of the people. Remember Salmon P. Chase, a poor Ohio boy, Governor, Secretary of the Treasury, author of the best currency system so far conceived, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
JAMES A. GARFIELD
is now at work driving a canal-boat, now Republican leader of the House, now Senator, now President, and now the object of a weeping world's affection. See the poor boy Sherman, born in Lancaster, O. A short space flies past us, and he has cut his own communications and marched with his army into the enemy's country. The London Times says if he emerges from the unknown country with his army, he will be "the greatest captain of modern times." Soon his banners float on the coast, soon the cities are blazing behind his fearful stride, and soon the cruel war is over. We behold the third son of a very large family of
TENNYSONS
begin writing verses. He writes trash at first, but by and by he is proclaimed the greatest living poet, and his art of writing (all that part of his work which was difficult) is pronounced the greatest the world has ever seen. We see the boy Lee, studying hard to sustain the illustrious name he bore, advancing in science to the great study of astronomy, becoming the intellectual credit of his surroundings, the tutor of the scholarly. We behold him clasping the sword put in his hands by the greatest unsuccessful insurrection of all past time, and, seated on his horse, smiling at the awful repulse of
PICKETT'S IMMORTAL CHARGE AT GETTYSBURG,
saying, simply: "We cannot always expect to have our own way in an attack," when down in his great heart he knows that the proudest people ever defeated have cast the final die, and lost. We stand over his ashes and feel that they are the ashes of a truly great man whom "unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster." We see James Gordon Bennett, the jibe of all the printers because of his crooked eyes. Yet he dies the owner of the greatest money-making newspaper of all newspaper history, a journal which sends expeditions to Africa and squadrons to the north pole. We see a "canny" Scotch boy at study. He "takes wonderfully to German," and soon the English world is hailing him as the "literary Columbus." He has shown them the greatness of Frederick, of Schiller, and Goethe. He writes a history of the French Revolution, and calls it the "truth clad in hell-fire." He reads a library in a few hours, or, rather, he reads what he has not read—and finally he lies down, hating the world, hating freedom, but full of genius, and men say "Carlyle is dead."
A BOY CALLED VICTOR HUGO
is born in France. At thirty he is famous. Then for fifty years he wields an influence through the literatures of all nations second only to Shakspeare's. We see the sailor-boy Garibaldi, the commander-in-chief and savior of Uruguay in South America, the idol and king-maker of Italy, and the stern patriot without rank or gew-gaw on
THE ROCK OF CAPRI,
a joining of the characters of such men as Socrates and Washington. We see Disraeli, a poor boy and we see Disraeli more powerful than any other man on earth. We look at Gladstone as a boy starting in life, determined to be a scholar. We hear his glorious voice, we read his books, we study the laws he has framed, we watch the empire he governs, and we feel he succeeded in his boyish ambition. Everywhere—in the lives of Agassiz, Humboldt, Proctor, Seward, Farragut, Nelson, Abercrombie, Joseph E. Johnston, Longstreet, Stanton, Aspinwall, Lorillard, Ayer, Helmbold, Scott, Garrett, Ralston, Garner, Watson, Howe, Singer, Steinway, McCormick, Morse, Edison, Bell, Gray, Applegarth, Hoe, Thomas, Wagner, Verdi, Jurgensen, Picard, Stephenson, Fulton, Rumsey, Fitch, Lamb, Fairbanks, Corliss, Dahlgren, Parrot, Armstrong, Gatling, Pullman, Alden, Crompton, Faber, Remington, Sharp, Colt, Daguerre, Bessemer, Goodyear, Yale, Keene, Gould, Villard,—and
IN THE LIVES OF THE THOUSANDS
which my limits exclude me from mentioning, there is the example of the hard worker, the promise of results that will follow a well-directed effort. "In order to do great things, it is necessary to live as if one was never to die"—that is, pay attention only to the object aimed at. I remember a man of success who meant to break up housekeeping and go to Europe on a matter of business. This was the first of January. The fact that the weather suddenly turned cold to the extent of thirty degrees below zero did not seem to attract his attention. He was absent-minded on that question! When it came to going out to hire an expressman to haul his effects to a storehouse he found no one would venture out with his horse until the thermometer should rise, and his astonishment knew no bounds! He had been
SO IN THE HABIT OF RIDING OVER OBSTACLES
that his distress was very noticeable when he was compelled to wait in idleness for three days. Never allow obstacles to stop you. When the waters meet an obstacle they run around it. So do the ants. Read the lives of successful men. Watch successful men. "We are less convinced by what we hear than what we see," said Herodotus thousands of years ago. Said Seneca, nineteen hundred years ago: "Men trust rather to their eyes than to their ears; the effect of precepts, is, therefore, slow and tedious, while that of example is summary and effectual." Says Franklin: "None teaches better than the ant, and she says nothing." "Not the cry" say the Chinese, "but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow."
"CHRIST NEVER WROTE A TRACT,"
says Horace Mann. "The people look at their pastor six days in the week," says Cecil, "to see what he means on the seventh." Says Dr. Johnson: "Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one common pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier grounds," and the examples of a majority of the successful men will show this to be true. It seems to me, in conclusion, that
LIFE IS LIKE THE SYSTEM
upon which gamblers often stake their money. If they lose one, they stake two; if they lose, they stake four; if they lose, they stake eight; if they still lose, they stake sixteen; now if they win, they have, of course, won one more than they have lost altogether. The banker guards against this system by limiting their progression to a certain figure and thus breaking it down. But in the game of life we have no limit put upon our enterprises. We may redouble our efforts after every failure, and we find, upon the first success, that we have, in one stroke of prosperity, more than made ourselves whole for failures which may have extended behind us indefinitely. You cannot fail in life if you will stake an effort on each succeeding attempt twice as great as the effort which lost you your last desire.
A combination and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world "This was a man!"—Shakspeare.
hat a piece of worke is a man? How Noble in Reason? how infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing how expresse and admirable? in Action how like an Angel? in apprehension how like a God? the beauty of the world, the Paragon of Animals?" This is the exalted panegyric of the greatest mind so far vouchsafed to our race—this, then, was Shakspeare's ideal of a true man. Says Emerson: "O rich and various man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and the night, and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the city of God; in thy heart the power of love and the realms of right and wrong." "Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force," says Chapin; "the world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,
A COLUMBUS OF THE SKIES."
"Man," says Carlyle, "has reflected his two-fold nature in history. 'He is of earth,' but his thoughts are with the stars. Mean and petty his wants and his desires; yet they serve a soul exalted with grand, glorious aims, with immortal longings, with thoughts which sweep the heavens and 'wander through eternity.' A pigmy standing on the outward crust of this small planet, his far-reaching spirit stretches outward to the infinite, and there finds rest." Then turning to the combined effects of individual lives, the same great writer says: "History is a reflex of this double life. Every epoch has two aspects—one calm, broad and solemn—looking towards eternity; the other agitated, petty, vehement, and confused looking towards time." "Man," says Sir William Hamilton, one of the greatest of true philosophers, "is not an organism: he is an intelligence, served by organs." Says Whately: "The heavens do indeed 'declare the glory of God,' and the human body is 'fearfully and wonderfully made;' but man, considered, not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent, and as a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting, specimen of divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of."
MAN'S FAULTS.
So much in compliment of mankind. Now this same marvelous creature, man, has a critical spirit. He is endued with a quality of progression. The motive power in this progression is dissatisfaction. Let us listen to the sages when they drop eulogy and become out of conceit with themselves.
"MAN IS IMPROVABLE,"
says Horace Mann. "Some think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water." Says Pascal: "What a chimera is man! what a singular phenomenon! what a chaos! what a scene of contrariety! A judge of all things yet a feeble worm; the shrine of truth, yet a mass of doubt and uncertainty; at once the glory and the scorn of the universe. If he boasts, I lower him; if he lowers himself I raise him; either way I contradict him, till he learns he is a monstrous, incomprehensible mystery." "Make yourself an honest man," says Carlyle sarcastically, "and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world." This remark sprang, probably, from a reading of
WHATELEY'S COMPARISON
of a rogue with a man of honor: "Other things being equal, an honest man has this advantage over a knave, that he understands more of human nature: for he knows that one honest man exists, and concludes that there must be more; and he also knows, if he is not a mere simpleton, that there are some who are knavish. But the knave can seldom be brought to believe in the existence of an honest man. The honest man may be deceived in particular persons, but the knave is sure to be deceived whenever he comes across an honest man who is not a mere fool." "Man is
TOO NEAR ALL KINDS OF BEASTS—
a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture." This was the poet Cowley's opinion. "Of all the animals" scolds Boileau, "which fly in the air, walk on the ground, or swim in the sea, from Paris to Peru, from Japan to Rome, the most foolish animal, in my opinion, is man." People must be very bad, indeed, who get opinions as low as the two last quoted. That rapacious vulture George Peabody! that dissembling crocodile William Cowper! that robbing wolf Girard! that thieving fox Charles Sumner! that fawning dog Napoleon Bonaparte! and those most foolish animals Louis Agassiz and Isaac Newton! It does not well become the weakest links in a chain to boast that they gauge that chain's strength, for the chain can be greatly strengthened, upon this easy discovery of those weak links, by simply dropping them out of connection.
And now comes the query: "What is man?" He has always been more or less at a loss for some striking and succinct statement of his peculiar characteristics—of the mark that separates him from other animals. Diogenes Laertius says that Plato having defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, he (Diogenes) plucked a cock, and, bringing him into the school, said "Here is Plato's man." From this joke there was added to the definition "With broad flat nails." Even this definition is just as faulty, as it does not exclude many species of the monkey. Again it was thought that man was the only being who laughs. Says Addison, poetically: "Man is the merriest species of the creation; all above and below him are serious." But scientists refuse to accept this distinction as accurate. "Man is an animal
THAT COOKS HIS VICTUALS,"
says Burke. "So does the buzzard" (in the sun) say the learned men. "Man uses tools," says another. "So does the beaver—the ourang-outang hurls stones, and fights with clubs," say the scientists. Finally, says Adam Smith, in his "Wealth of Nations:" "Man is an animal that makes bargains; no other animal does this—one dog does not change a bone with another." We must be satisfied with this, I suppose, but it is a very faulty declaration, for I have seen one dog change a bone with another, in which instance a big dog traded with a little dog, and impressed the little dog with the desirability, under the circumstances, of the smaller of two bones! And I am not sure but that
ALL BARGAINS, WHETHER HUMAN OR CANINE,
are of that stripe, wherein the superior of two bone or money getters acquaints the inferior with the good points of a bad bargain. Buffon, at the beginning of his Natural History, is unable, even, to give any line of demarcation between vegetable and animal substances, and perplexes the mind with an infinitude of faulty attempts, in turn showing the weak spot in each. "For man is a plant,"
SAYS PLUTARCH,
"not fixed in the earth nor immovable, but heavenly, whose head, rising, as it were, from a root upwards, is turned towards heaven." "A man ought to carry himself in the world," says Henry Ward Beecher, continuing and building on Plutarch's thought, "as an orange-tree would, if it could walk up and down in the garden,—swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air."
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
This is the declaration of the great poet Pope, and a glance across the world's literature will show that the mandate was unneeded. For ages before the birth of the celebrated "wasp of Twickenham," mankind had been at study on the subject. "The burden of history" says George Finlayson, "is what man has been; of law, what he does; of physiology, what he is; of ethics, what he ought to be; of revelation, what he shall be." "Man is the product of his own history," says Theodore Parker. "The discoverer finds nothing so grand or tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star is that at the end of the telescope—
THE STAR THAT IS LOOKING, NOT LOOKED AFTER,
nor looked at." "Man is greater than a world, than systems of worlds; there is more mystery in the union of soul with the physical than in the creation of the universe." This sentence is by Henry Giles. To the first portion of it I give unqualified belief. I believe, too, with John Ruskin, that "the basest thought possible concerning man is that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual—coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other." "Man is the metre of all things," says Aristotle,
"THE HAND
is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms." The remark of the great Athenian regarding the hand, while no truer than that one touching the mind, is yet easier of demonstration to the unphilosophical reader. For instance, the printers of the finest engravings to this day use the palm of the hand to apply the ink; the type-setting machine is so far a failure for the want of the human fingers; the most perfect performance of music on a machine yet lacks that sympathy and exception to mathematical rule which the human fingers, highly trained, impart to the keyboard, and the violin, that thing most nearly in communication with the soul of man,—pays no allegiance whatever save to the human hand well practiced in its mastery; the hand skilled in love soothes the aching brow; the whole framework of this instrument, the hand, filled with gold coins, almost without volition spurns the spurious piece; the false bank-note is lifted with suspicion; across the signature the deft fingers run to aid the eye; over the letters the mind of the sightless pushes its loyal touch, and the signal comes faithfully back to the dungeoned intelligence!
OUR OPPORTUNITIES
are the greatest of those of any living beings. It follows, it seems to me, that our responsibilities should be greater, both in justice and in reason. Every opportunity is equivalent to a duty. We owe—with all these miracles of the living world centered and perfected in our bodies,—a duty equally grand and difficult. Let us ennoble ourselves. John Fletcher wrote a beautiful metaphor in very clumsy verse when he said:
Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate,
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
HOLY WRIT.
The Lord has well loved man: "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him." "The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be a captain over his people." "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, [then] what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him
A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS,
and hast crowned him with glory and honor!" "I have set the Lord before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." "Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." "I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." "For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told." "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." "He giveth his beloved sleep." "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps." "One event happeneth to them all." "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall turn unto God who gave it."
We perceive, upon a glance at this broad subject, that a book would be better fitted to its treatment than a chapter, and yet a chapter alone will aid in attuning the mind to the nobility of our destiny. A single thought entering the mind at the right time will turn the current of a life. Let us elevate and strengthen our present into the nobler foundation of a happier future on earth and a blissful eternity in heaven. We are endowed with shame. Let it keep us from meriting the stinging epigram: "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man."
She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight.
And now I see, with eye serene,
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveler betwixt life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warm, to comfort, and command
And yet a spirit still, and bright,
With something of an angel light.—Wordsworth.
an is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man," says the great Book. This is so true that most of the charities and mercies for which mankind gets credit in his own moral intelligence are inspired by the charitable and merciful attributes so characteristic of true womanhood. Campbell, in the "Pleasures of Hope," speaks thus of the Garden of Paradise:
The world was sad—the garden was a wild,
And man, the hermit, sighed, till woman smiled.
And lovely woman has smiled forever. Into the lot of life she has put all that has endeared it or made it tolerable; into the hope of the hereafter she has ever breathed the breath of life and kept it a living force. Besides the charms she has for man as a thing of superexcellent beauty, woman has ever held him in the second greatest debt he owes. She teaches him, not less, a greater debt (to God), and brings him before that Chief Creditor with little thought of her own dues. Upon
A SUBJECT SO PLEASANT TO MAN,
it is not strange that he has spent his days in framing speeches to reward the admirable devotion of woman, and it is pleasant to believe the object of those encomiums has received them as the most desirable form of remuneration. She has listened to his praise with beating heart, and blossomed into greater loveliness. She has had no greed of money, save as it would array her in beauteous raiment, that she might better guard the love she has won; she has had little ambition, save as she might be of service to her mate, whose unquiet soul has never ceased its
PLUNGING INTO THE NIGHT OF DESTINY,
the storm of life. But she has had great powers of love, great powers of sacrifice, great depths of forgiveness, great fountains of tears—those still waters where bathes the human soul and rises clean before God's sight. "Women are the poetry of the world, in the same sense that the stars are the poetry of heaven," says Hargrave; "clear, light-giving, harmonious, they are the terrestrial planets that rule the destinies of mankind." "Man," says Washington Irving, "is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of his acts. But a woman's whole life is
A HISTORY OF THE AFFECTIONS
the heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure, she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart." "O, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman," cries Jean Paul Richter, "Should open before man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would he see reposing therein!" "Honor to women!" sings his brother-countryman,
SCHILLER;
"they twine and weave the roses of heaven into the life of men; it is they that unite us in the fascinating bonds of love; and, concealed in the modest veil of the graces, they cherish carefully the external fire of delicate feeling with holy hands." "Win her and wear her, if you can," says Shelley; "she is the most delightful of God's creatures—Heaven's best gift—man's joy and pride in prosperity—man's support and comforter in affliction." "Her passions are made of the finest parts of pure love," says Shakspeare. "Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears," says Rousseau. "She was
LAST AT THE CROSS, EARLIEST AT THE GRAVE,"
says Barrett. "Her errors spring almost always from her faith in the good or her confidence in the true" declares Balzac. "She has more strength in her looks than we have in our laws, and more power by her tears than we have by our arguments," says the Duke of Halifax, a great statesman. "All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of woman," says Voltaire, skeptic in all else. "Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men," writes Addison, "whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as some have imagined, there may not be a kind of
SEX IN THE VERY SOUL,
I shall not pretend to determine." "It is not strange to me" says Boyle, a good, sensible man, "that persons of the fairer sex should like, in all things about them, that handsomeness for which they find themselves most liked." Man reviles woman for her vanity. At the same time it is the particular delight of the man who will himself wear no decoration to load upon his willing wife the trinkets of his fancy as far as his purse will pay for them. Without woman's almost savage love of display, man would be robbed of nearly all the pleasure which
PERSONAL ORNAMENTS
now give him. He loves woman, just as she is. Just as she is she is much above the level of the thing he would love had he not her to claim his rapt attention. Man smiles at woman's weaknesses, but if he thought of his great meanness of soul when his mercy and fidelity are in the scale against her own, he would look grave and troubled. She dresses with expense and variety, because it is the first ordinance of her master. Her very love of dress is the sign and seal of her intelligence. If it be folly, arraign man at the dock! Says
STAID OLD DR. JOHNSON:
"We see women universally jealous of the reputation of their beauty, and frequently look with contempt on the care with which they study their complexions, endeavor to preserve or supply the bloom of youth, regulate every ornament, twist their hair into curls, and shade their faces from the weather. We recommend the care of their nobler part, and tell them how little addition is made by all their arts to the graces of the mind. But when was it known that female goodness or knowledge was able to attract that officiousness, or inspire that ardor, which beauty produces wherever it appears? And with what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that
THE TIME SPENT AT THE TOILET
is lost in vanity, when they have every moment some new conviction that their interest is more effectually promoted by a ribbon well disposed than by the brightest act of heroic virtue?" Listen to the praise of practical John Ledyard, whose word has the solid ring of fact about it: "I have observed among all nations [that he had seen, the statement not being applicable to a majority of the savages] that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that,
WHEREVER FOUND, THEY ARE THE MOST CIVIL,
kind, obliging, humane, tender beings; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest. They do not hesitate, like man, to perform a hospitable or generous action; not haughty, nor arrogant, nor supercilious, but full of courtesy and fond of society; industrious, economical, ingenuous; more liable, in general, to err than man; but, in general, also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship to a woman, whether civilized or savage, without receiving
A DECENT AND FRIENDLY ANSWER.
With men it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the widespread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so: and, to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that, if I was dry, I drank the sweet draught, and, if hungry, ate the coarse morsel with a double relish." Woman may read
THIS CANDID TESTIMONY
with a blush of gratification, for there breathes no flattery in it—only the serious observations of an old man bent on getting knowledge by personal experience. "A man may flatter himself as he pleases," says Sir Richard Steele, "but he will find that the women have more understanding in their own affairs than we have." Man suffers in his loves for woman. She often casts him on the rocks like an angry unfeeling sea, but when, at last she has smiled upon him, he becomes a broader, better man. Without the companionship of woman, man is truly half-made up. He loses his self-esteem, he lives without laws, without churches, without hospitals.
THE WESTERN WILDS,
during the early period of their settlement by Americans, have furnished us with accurate views of society without women. And what has that society been? More a den of wild beasts than a congregation of the most reasoning of God's creatures! There we find men living in constant suspicion of their comrades, in constant danger of hazarding their lives for some sentimental canon of personal vanity that, if they were boys in civilized society, would be flogged out of their moral code.
THE WHOLE HISTORY OF HUMAN SICKNESS
is a continuous outcry of the goodness of woman. Wherever the red hand of war has risen to smite, there the white hand of woman has hastened to soothe. After the roar of the conflagration and amidst the ruins piled up by the earthquake ever has that sweet minister sought out the hungry and succored the suffering.
CRITICISM OUT OF PLACE.
One does not feel that he can do any good by criticising woman. We love fruit that is perfect. We do not describe, and we would have little thanks for a description of, those specimens of cherries, strawberries, or grapes which fail to realize our anticipations of a delightful product of the orchard, the garden, or the vineyard. But I have perhaps, by showing the respect in which men of intellect and honor hold a good woman, given needed encouragement to patient hearts, and testified my own humble regard for womanhood.
His hair just grizzled,
As in a green old age.—Dryden.
he word papa, I believe, goes back, just as it is, through all the languages, to the Sanscrit, and even beyond to the unknown Aryan, the stock of our civilized tongues. The Pope is papa, kind father, in Italian. How his name ever came to be twisted into the ugly sound we hear in English is a problem, for the difference on the feelings between the sounds of Pope, and papa, kind father, cannot well be exaggerated. The kind father of a good man occupies an enviable place in that man's thoughts. It is no passing admiration; that father is no hero of to-day no study of to-morrow, no dim recollection when the future shall have come—but an active exemplar, an honored memory, a potent spur and stay combined—a spur to urge to all a man should do; a stay to curb unwisdom's flying feet. That father has toiled in weariness that his son might follow an easier path of life. Perhaps you now tread that path. How carefully should your steps be taken; how earnestly you should climb to reach the round which meets your self-denying parent's gaze! With him there have come few paroxysms of delight in his labor. He has not been endowed with that mysterious joy your mother has felt in all your existence. He has delighted in you because he hoped you would bring honor to his house; he would rather you had not lived than to see you in a prisoner's cell—far rather. This could not be said of your mother. She would be contented that you had lived at all, that you had looked into her eyes and laughed. Your father has taken care of you, dutifully. Repay him in kindness. "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." This was graven by the Lord in the marble tablets on Sinai, and has been in turn graven on the countless millions of hearts that have beaten "their short funeral marches" since that awful hour.
ALL SOCIETY
has at one time or another rested on the sustaining power of the father. The patriarch, in ancient times, protected and sustained his dependents, and, in return, received their entire allegiance, wielding over them the power of life and death, and thus initiating the first form of human government. Next came the cities where the government was formed by all the fathers together in council, and our village and city legislators are, to this day, called "the city fathers," although the reverence in which so august a body was once held has departed with the silent flight of the dignity of our modern convocations. Some one has said of
A FINE AND HONORABLE OLD MAN,
that he is in the childhood of immortality. "One's age should be tranquil," says Dr. Arnold, "as one's childhood should be playful; hard work at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place; the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at midday the sun may burn, and men may labor under it." See to it, if it be within your power, that your father has the rest due to the evening of his days. Let him sit in the cool. Let him listen to the voices of his night—the crickets that cry out his mortality and the nightingales that sing of Paradise!
"GRAY HAIRS
seem to fancy," says Richter, "like the light of a soft moon silvering over the evening of life." "Old age," says Madame Swetchine, "is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies. The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty. Shadows give light its worth; sternness enchances mildness; solemnity splendor."
EXPERIENCE.
"Old age was naturally more honored," says Joubert, "in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen." There are still many avenues of learning in which practical experience seems to be paramount in value. In business its great worth is never underestimated. You have heard of the partnership built on a contribution by one firm-member of the money, and by the other of the experience; and of the dissolution of that firm, leaving the one who put in the money with all the experience, and the one who put in the experience with all the money! The practices of law and medicine are famous for the need of age, which they harness anew with the labors and exertions ordinarily demanded of youth. "Tell me," says Shakerly Marmion, "what you find better or more honorable than age. Is not wisdom entailed upon it?
TAKE THE PRE-EMINENCE OF IT IN EVERYTHING—
in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree." "I venerate old age," says the great and good poet Longfellow; "and I love not the man who can look without emotion upon the sunset of life, when the dusk of evening begins to gather over the watery eye, and the shadows of twilight grow broader and deeper upon the understanding." "It is only necessary to grow old to become more indulgent," writes Goethe; "I see no fault committed that I have not committed myself." "An aged Christian," says Chapin, beautifully enlarging on Goldsmith's and Dr. Donne's ideas, "with the snow of time on his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest heaven."
OLD AGE
"Age is the outer shore against which dashes an eternity."
"LIKE A MORNING DREAM,"
again says Richter, "life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end." "Time has laid his hand upon my heart gently," says Longfellow, "not smiting it; but
AS A HARPER LAYS HIS OPEN PALM
upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations." "I think that to have known one good old man," George William Curtis says, "one man who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm branch, waving all discords into peace—helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other more than many sermons." "He that would pass the declining years of his life with honor and comfort," says Addison, with fine opposition, "should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young." On the principle that blessings brighten as they take their flight we come to love the sunshine and the birds and all God's glorious works just as we grow old.
"IF WE NEVER CARED FOR LITTLE CHILDREN BEFORE"
says Lord Lytton, "we delight to see them roll on the grass over which we hobble. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, care-worn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn, and feel most delight in the returning spring." "Winter," says Richter, "which strips the leaves from around us, makes us see the distant regions they formerly concealed; so does old age rob us of our enjoyments, only to enlarge the prospect of eternity before us." Seneca says that there is nothing more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to produce as a proof that he has lived long except his years. I love Longfellow's picture of
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH,
the mighty man. It has been set to one of the best musical accompaniments that I have ever heard. When the verses below are reached, the key is changed to one where the sadness intensifies, until the honest old heart hears the "mother's voice singing in Paradise:"
He goes on Sunday to the church;
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise;
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
I wish, instead of merely printing these simple words, I could breathe them out to you, as some great tenor or baritone like Sims Reeves or Santley sings them—there is such a world of human life and feeling hidden there, ready to spring forth with the touch of sympathetic sounds!
NOTHING BECOMES A YOUNG MAN SO MUCH
as a respectful demeanor toward a reverend man. Nothing lowers a man so much as flippant speech concerning his elders. The young man with the most dignity has the most deference for age. He takes sincere delight in bowing before ripe years and wisdom. Alas! how sad that ever age should come to one who is not fitted for its honors!
I have known a son to thwart every dream of his father. I have seen the parent, struggling with adversity, yet succeed in opening before the child a career of honor and comfort; and I have seen the son clutch those opportunities as a highwayman seizes upon the wayfarer, and throttle them in the dust and ashes of failure and disgrace. How sad the picture!
A BRIGHTER VIEW.
I have seen a parent toil for years, carrying to his cottage the wages which should support his son in seven long years of careful education. I have watched that son in his ceaseless studies and found he thought only of gladdening his father's heart. I have seen him graduate second in a class of one hundred and fifteen, and then after two years of additional study, first in a body of eighty young men, each of whom was a scholar. The best men of a great city have given that young man encouragement. Their homes and their wives and their daughters have smiled at his approach, and his course has been upward without a fall, and with few pauses for rest. Has he forgotten his poor father? No. He still lives in the cottage, and will make the small house with a great man in it more hospitable and more honorable than a wide door that swings open to a narrow soul. How pleasant the picture!
A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.—Coleridge.
Not learned save in gracious household ways,
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants,
No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise.
Who looked all native to her place, and yet
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce
Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved,
And girdled her with music. Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood.—Tennyson.
o high and holy a title as mother cannot fall too reverently from man's lips. That he might live the mother has gone down into the valley of the shadow of death; that he might thrive she has fed him with willingness from her own weak body, and grown spectre-like as he grew strong and importunate; that he might go among his fellows on an equal footing, she has toiled with his small weak brain teaching him the beginning of his education and tilling "a rank unweeded garden;" that he might have everlasting life, she has instilled into his mind that saving fear of God, which, though he think himself an atheist, will claim the mastery when Death grins by his couch, and grant him a stay of the awful judgment till he may make his peace with a Creator whose mercy endureth forever. Everything a man is he can owe but to his mother; everything he may be in future life has possibly come from her fond intercession, her gentle admonitions. "Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable," says Richter. "The future destiny of the child,"
SAYS NAPOLEON,
"is always the work of the mother," and it is certain that he had ample reason in his own remarkable career for making this important admission. He inherited from his mother all those attributes which made him great, and owed his sudden downfall to none of her teachings. She was noted for her sagacity and prudence, but possibly it required more than human sagacity and prudence to balance the mighty impulses which moved Napoleon Bonaparte. "A father may turn his back on his child," says Washington Irving, "brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still
SHE REMEMBERS THE INFANT SMILES
that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy." "There is in all this cold and hollow world," says Mrs. Hemans, "no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart." "Even He that died for us upon the cross," says Longfellow, "in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of his mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought—the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven." Who ever saw
A MOTHER ROMPING WITH HER THREE-YEAR-OLD
that did not look upon her as one of the happiest, therefore, necessarily, one of the best of God's creatures? O, in that peek-a-boo, that capturing of that last squealing "pig," the little toe, that paddy-cake opera, is there not the one great bliss of life, to be happy in making others happy? And how the laughter rings through the house! And then the toil and self-denial for the stocking and the tree
AT CHRISTMAS!
Is it any wonder that the child is so easily deceived, and credits all his joys to unseen ministers? It would not be hard to convince the philosopher himself of the dual earthly character of the mother, visibly a woman, invisibly but not the less really to her child, an ethereal spirit of mercy and goodness! What gnaws her cheek and cheats Death into the belief a flag of truce summons him to the final parley? Has not her babe, her hope, been fevered and in pain, and should she sleep lest it should leave her on this world behind, that then would need her not? "Canst bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?" No more can her anxiety be
FETTERED INTO SLEEP;
no more can her quick ear be deafened to the little wail that echoes pitiful within the chambers of her heart! When we remember the great passion of motherhood, the intensity of the drama, the prolongation into years of its deep interplots, we cannot marvel longer at the perennial, lasting character of the mother's love. Given, the marvel, there is no further marvel. Given life, the scientists say, there is no other problem on this narrow world. And thus the marvel and the mystery never grow less.
MAN ENTERS THE WORLD,
of all animals the most pitiable and weakly. Left to himself he would immediately perish. Extinguish the mother's love and he would at once perish. His growth is by far the slowest of that of all animals, therefore the wisdom of God in so lengthening the tenure of the mother's solicitude. The mighty man who wields the iron halberd which no two people can lift was still a helpless infant, unable to put his own chubby fist into his own mouth! The autocrat who sweeps whole communities into Siberia with a stroke of his pen was ill when his mother was alarmed, was in agony when she was indiscreet with her food! She cannot forget this. It is but yesterday she dried his flesh to keep it sound. It is but yesterday she let him bite his aching gum upon her finger, wishing the ache might go from him to her—hoping that if he gave her pain he would have less. One can well pardon the vanity that would lead a son to insist that his mother should accompany him to
THE EXECUTIVE MANSION OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC,
that she might behold him enter upon the Chief Magistracy of fifty millions of freemen, gained by the first choice of a majority of those freemen, yea, by the unanimous first and second choice, for none so ready to fight for his right to rule as he who yesterday voted for an honored opponent—the very summit of true political ambition—the apex of the mother's boldest hope! "The mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to old age," says Bovee; "and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of
THE BEST FRIEND
that God ever gives us!" I knew an aged woman, who interested me very greatly in tales of "her boy"—that good son who had so often proven his gratitude for her long love. One day, chancing to consider her great number of years, I inquired how old "her boy" was, and found that he had been a grandfather for twenty-three years, and had lately had the satisfaction of holding a great grandson in his arms. Still he was her curly haired-boy—she could remember him in no other condition of life with so much satisfaction.
"I WOULD DESIRE FOR A FRIEND,"
says Lacretelle, "the son who never resisted the tears of his mother." "Love droops, youth fades, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother's secret hope outlives them all," sings Oliver Wendell Holmes. "At first," says Beecher, "babies feed on the mother's bosom, but always on her heart." "Stories first heard at a mother's knee," affirms Ruffini, "are never wholly forgotten—a little spring that never quite dries up in our journey through scorching years."
"AN OUNCE OF MOTHER,"
says the Spanish proverb, "is a pound of clergy." "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom," says another writer. "Men are what their mothers made them," says Emerson, in study of Napoleon's idea; "you may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber." "It is generally admitted," says Theodore Hook, "and frequently proved, that virtue and genius, and all the natural good qualities which men possess, are derived from their mothers." "It is well for us," says Bishop Hare, "that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with
A CONCEIT OF OUR OWN IMPORTANCE
which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it." Perhaps the praises of our mothers tarry in our brains too long anyway. It may be a provision of nature that woman shall inspire her child with sufficient self-esteem to take him through the world with a first-class ticket, a cabin passage, that he may escape the poor accommodations of excessive humility, the steerage of the ship of life. It seems incredible that our mother was mistaken in thinking her boys the brightest, best, and most creditable in all the region roundabout! Let us by our lives, marvel rather at the correctness of her vision than the blindness of her love.
"SHE WHO HAS LOST AN INFANT,"
says Leigh Hunt, "is never, as it were, without an infant child. Her other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence." The mother teaches us the one grand lesson of
UNALTERABLE FIDELITY.
"Nothing is more noble," says Cicero, "nothing more venerable." One of the most beautiful tributes to an aged mother was written by Lamartine. "The loss of a mother," he says "is always severely felt. Even though her health may incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand endeavors to please, concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn! It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends."
THERE ARE MEN WHO FORGET THE CLAIMS
their mothers have upon them. Of such ungrateful wretches, though clothed in outward excellences, the pen can write nothing too harsh in justice. As old Dr. South says, "the greatest favors are to such a one but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them. All kindness descend as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not all changed or sweetened by them. If you look backward and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you look forward enough, it is a thousand to one that you will find that
HE ALSO DIES SO.
The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death. I do not by this limit the operation of God's grace, for that may do wonders." Be glad, if you are ungrateful, that a wise man has given you so good counsel to pray—and pray as you do when you think yourself in extreme peril!
IF YOUR MOTHER IS YET YOUNG,
you have many years of her great friendship before you. Try and pattern after her boundless affection. Let it melt into your heart and make it warmer. If "age has snowed white hairs" upon her head, treasure her the more fondly during the few swift years she will be left to you. Soon she will go to her reward, and you will be without the only friend of man whose love seems to be inalienable—whose esteem he cannot barter away, either in greed or in vice.
THE MOTHER OF MOTHERS.
In almost every community there is "a mother in Israel," a mother of mothers, whose great heart is like the ocean, and claims the outpourings of every stream of life. To these grand souls of virtue and goodness let every man bow in reverence, for they are mothers to the motherless. When the Reaper came forth to reap he aimed to take the richest sheaf, but lo! the mother in Israel gathered the orphans together, and poured out her tenderness upon them.
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted!—Burns.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those for others; deep as love.
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life! the days that are no more.—Tennyson.
ove, says Cowley, "is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it." I think most people will agree with this sentiment. Love is such a tyrant, it leaves common sense so little to say, that the majority of people are heartily glad when reason returns to her throne and the thrilling lunacy is a remembrance instead of a fact. The remembrance is sweet, and has no angry thorn, no peremptory mandate. The young man is going along in the full enjoyment of his life, when suddenly a huge coiled spring, the existence of which has not attracted his notice, is loosed in his breast, his whole intellectual forces centre on the attainment of one object, and a mental strain begins which is of the exact nature of madness, and has ever been termed so by people who have looked at things merely by what they have seen. In the highly-feverish state of the brain the nerves of the whole system soon become involved, the stomach refuses to perform its functions, and physical emaciation and deep melancholia rapidly ensue. The obvious reason is the insane state of the brain. Nature has suddenly impressed that organ with the one idea that a certain fair maid is actually without the faults of her associates. She is the prize of the whole world! Had the world the information of her perfections which is lodged in this young man's secret brain, there would be a war of extermination for her possession—a second sack of Troy at the very least. Deep pity for other men with wives, who cannot marry this maiden, and pity for young men who have seemingly preferred other maidens, intermit with joy that all the world has been so blind.
CAUTIOUSLY THE YOUTH ADVANCES
toward his prey. The expedition is one of tremendous importance, therefore his exceeding amount of thought. When he is in the ineffable presence, he is there as an actor in a tragedy, or as a tenor in an opera. He has almost counted his hairs; he certainly counts the winkings of his eyelids! Can any detail be unimportant in an undertaking of such measureless risk? It is no wonder, then, that a young man who is giving as much thought as this to a young, thoughtless girl is not worth much in his business for the time being! In fact, it is a miracle to him, after
SOME DOOMFUL FROWN
from his queen, that he has survived the night and goes to his work at all! He is confident that it is base habit. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt!" he cries, as his dissatisfied employer, or father, requires some reasonable action and fails to get it. In after-life this same young man is glad the "grand passion" will never come to him again. He feels that it has not heightened him in his own regard. His love may have been smooth or it may have been swallowed in the quicksands of adversity—the difference is small. It is not creditable to the human brain to be so hoodwinked and purblind as Cupid makes his victims. But
LOVE RULES THE UNIVERSE,
having its climax in God himself, and its earthly ideality in the mother's affection. We should not complain that when the potent essence is first administered to us it shakes us seriously. Without this passion, selfishness would triumph, and man would not take on the cares of wedded life. Society and religion would wither. The world would be a howling den of chaos and deep crime.
HOW HAVE THE SAGES LOOKED UPON LOVE?
I think they are inclined to praise it, as a whole—to indorse it merely as a sensation, a passing gratification. It has always, on the contrary, seemed to me like an exquisitely painful means to an exquisitely beautiful end. The warm genial love of the home—the love which is as an open grate, cheerful, and which is without those thunderstorms needful to clear the heavily charged atmosphere of youthful love—pleases and repays me for "the dangers I have passed." "The greatest pleasure of life is love," says Sir William Temple. "Love is like the hunter," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness." This is true of only a minority of the hunters. I have more frequently bought additional fish than thrown away those I have caught. Why? Because the weariness and difficulty of catching two or three rock bass had impressed me with the value of a whole string of fish. You have seen
THE ANXIETY OF THE CAT
to make the captive mouse believe she is not on guard. She walks away with the utmost indifference. But let the mouse so much as move its crushed little body, she is upon it with the ferocity of the greatest members of her agile tribe. So it is with us. Let our possession escape us, our consternation is complete. Again the spring uncoils, and again we are madmen. "A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seem hid; love's night is noon," says Shakspeare. "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" sings Tennyson. "Nothing but real love," says Lord Lytton, "can repay us for the loss of freedom, the cares and fears of poverty,
THE COLD PITY OF THE WORLD
that we both despise and respect." "Love," says Sir Thomas Overbury, wittily, "is a superstition that doth fear the idol which itself hath made." "To reveal its complacence by gifts," says Mrs. Sigourney, "is one of the native dialects of love." "Love is never so blind as when it is to spy faults," says South. "Love reckons days for years," says Dryden, "and every little absence is an age." "Where love has once obtained an influence," observes Plautus dryly, "any flavoring, I believe, will please." "That is the true reason of love," says Goethe, "when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could either have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us."
"NO CORD OR CABLE CAN DRAW
so forcibly or bind so fast," says melancholy Burton, "as love can do with only a single thread." "Where there exists the most ardent and true love," says Valerius Maximus, "it is often better to be united in death than separated in life." "A man of sense may love like a madman," says Rochefoucauld, "but not like a fool." Says Addison, who was a bachelor, and knew little about the heart: "Ridicule, perhaps, is a better expedient against love than sober advice; and I am of the opinion that Hudibras and Don Quixote may be as effectual to cure the extravagance of this passion as any one of the old philosophers." "Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's," says Richter. This accords with common observation. "It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is returned," says Hazlitt, in a rambling manner; "it ought to make us prouder still when we can love her for herself alone, without the aid of any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of love." All such argument proceeds on the theory that love is a sawing of wood, a digging of potatoes, or some such "emotion," to be entirely controlled by the will and regulated by the decencies. "Loving," says Shakspeare, "goes by haps; some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps." "The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden, in her acceptance of him," says Emerson, again; "she was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star—she cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as he." I do not think Emerson has got exactly the right idea of the way a lover feels just there. Here it is and nearer the truth—I do not know the author's name:
I've thought, if those dumb, heathen gods could breathe,
As shapeless, strengthless, wooden things they stand,
And feel the holy incense round them wreathe,
And see before them offerings of the land;
And know that unto them is worship paid
From pure hearts, kneeling on the verdant sod,
Looking to helplessness, for light and aid
Because by fate they know no higher god:
How their dull hearts must ache with constant pain,
And sense of shame, and fear to be flung down
When all their weakness must one day be plain,
And fire avenge the undeserved crown.
And reading my love's letter, sad and sweet, I sigh,
Knowing that such a helpless, wooden god am I.
"The comparison of love to fire holds good in one respect," says Henry Home, "that the fiercer it burns the sooner it is extinguished." "Love me little love me long" says Marlowe. "The plainest man, that can convince a woman," says Colton, "that he is really in love with her, has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce there is a silence in it that suspends the foot; and the folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects." "Love is but another name for that inscrutable presence by which the soul is connected with humanity," says Simms. "The beings who appear cold," says Madame Swetchine, "adore where they dare to love." "Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved," says Charles Lamb. "It is possible," says Terence, referring to the unquestionable temporary insanity of the passion, "that a man can be so changed by love that one could not recognize him to be the same person." "Solid love, whose root is virtue, can no more die, than virtue itself," says Erasmus, who was probably talking about a requited affection.
THE CASE OF THE POET PETRARCH,
who loved another man's wife all his life, simply because he fell in love with her before she married the other fellow, does not strike me as exactly the proper thing, or exactly the manly thing. I like better the Sensible Shepherd of George Wither, who sang jauntily:
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?
Kill off your love if it be not returned, as though it were a condemned felon. The execution is a painful scene, but the effect on your manhood is good. "True love were very unlovely," says Sir Philip Sidney, "if it were half so deadly as lovers term it!" "There are few people," says Rochefoucauld, "who are not ashamed of their loves when the fit is over." "In love we are all fools alike," says Gay. "We that are true lovers" says Shakspeare, "run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly." "O love," cries LaFontaine, "when thou gettest dominion over us,
WE MAY BID GOOD-BY TO PRUDENCE."
"Love can hope where reason would despair," says Lyttleton. "O love, the beautiful, the brief!" exclaims Schiller. "Love at two-and-twenty is a terribly intoxicating draught," says Ruffini. "At lovers' perjuries they say Jove laughs," smiles Shakspeare. "Where love and wisdom drink out of the same cup, in this everyday world, it is the exception," said Madame Neckar. "The poets, the moralists, the painters, in all their descriptions, allegories, and pictures," says Addison, "have represented love as a soft torment, a bitter sweet, a pleasing pain, or an agreeable distress." "O how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day!
ADIEU, VALOR! RUST, RAPIER!
be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth!" says Shakspeare. "I do much wonder," says the King of Thought, again, "that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool when he dedicates his favor to love, will, after he hath laughed at such shallow follies in others, became the argument of his own scorn, by falling in love."
"LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP EXCLUDE EACH OTHER,"
says DuCoeur. "Love begins by love, and the strongest friendship could only give birth to a feeble love." "Love, which is only an episode in the life of man," says Madame DeStael, "is the entire history of woman's life." "Love is a spaniel," says Colton, "that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another." "A man loved by a beautiful and virtuous woman, carries a talisman that renders him invulnerable," says Madame Dudevant; "everyone feels that such a one's life has a higher value than that of others." "There are no little events with love," says Balzac; "it places in the same scales the fall of an empire and the dropping of a woman's glove." "There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream," says Moore. "Where there is love in the heart," says Beecher, "there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues." "The greatest happiness of life," says Victor Hugo, "is the conviction that we are loved for ourselves—say,
RATHER IN SPITE OF OURSELVES."
"Love makes its record in deeper colors," says Longfellow, "as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple." "The heart of a young woman in love is a golden sanctuary," says Paulin Limayrac, "which often enshrines an idol of clay." This thought, the reader can see is a close neighbor of the Boston poet's idea of the "base wooden god," spoken of a while back. "We forgive more faults in love than in friendship," says Henry Home; "expostulations betwixt friends end generally ill, but well betwixt lovers."
"Gold," says Deluzy, "does not satisfy love; it must be paid back in its own coin." "The platform of the altar of love," says Jane Porter, with great accuracy of metaphor, "is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection; such is the pyre, such the offering; but the ethereal spark must come from heaven that lights the sacrifice." "This passion is," says Dr. South, "the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spring and spirit of the universe. It is the whole man wrapped up into one desire, all the power, vigor, and faculties of the soul
ABRIDGED INTO ONE INCLINATION."
"Samson was so tempted," says Shakspeare, "and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced; and he had a very good wit." There has always been one time in a man's life when he felt poets should sing only of this one act in the drama of life. Here is the idea—the same idea we have all had, only dressed in better raiment, for Alexander Smith took great pride in the children of his brain: "Methinks all poets should be gentle, fair, and ever young, and ever beautiful; I would have all poets to be like to this—gold-haired and rosy-lipped, to sing of love." Finally, said the Great Napoleon: "Love is the occupation of the idle man, the amusement of the busy one, and
THE SHIPWRECK OF A SOVEREIGN."
Thus, if we will turn through the pages of our books, we will see everywhere the marks of love upon men's minds. It is a rude bath, which when we have grown more accustomed to the waters, delights and satisfies, and in our sleep our dreams are beautiful. It is natural, and therefore need not be called laudable—though if it were not a part of our development, schools of love would be a necessity, to teach men how to love without scandal in the sight of God.
THE FIRST ATTACK OF LOVE IS RIDICULOUS
to those not acting one of the two parts, yet it is well to remember our own experience. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," says the Bible; "many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it." Neither can the selfish aim nor the cruel jest of the parent whom it discommodes do aught but fan the flame if God and not folly have truly lighted it. The danger of handling carelessly the fire of the heart is one of the gravest which confront the guardians of younger lives. The switch is fixed; the train is approaching; if you attempt to turn the train you must not only know where it is going after it shall be turned, but you must have the skill to see whether there yet remains time to make the movement with success. A wreck by a switchman is a fearful thing!
"Their Love was like the lava-flood
That burns in Ætna's breast of flame."
And when with envy Time, transported,
Shall think to rob us of our joys,
You'll in your girls again be courted,
And I'll go wooing in my boys.—Percy.
n flies time, and thus the tale goes on. You are in love with an amiable maiden, and she is pleased. If you could see further into her heart you would find she was idolatrous. But this matter of courtship must have shown you how careless you have been with your money through all those years you might have been hoarding it for this great need. But you did not save your wages, probably, or if you did you are an exceptional young man. You now need money. You should work about fifteen months before you marry. It will be a long, tedious, unpleasant pull, trying to the affections, and it is generally very trying to the health; but it is necessary, and if you have not the persistence to save money for fifteen months, in the meantime quarreling and making up, with all the quarters of the moon, you have not the solidity of citizenship, and will be better unmarried. "Successful love takes a load off our hearts, and puts it upon our shoulders" says Bovee. Square up your shoulders! Get under the load so that you can carry it! The days of responsibility have come. The larger the responsibilities look, the deeper the young man usually loves. The day of the Chicago fire a man put up a pine shed on the ruins of a marble palace, and on his sign he painted
"ALL GONE BUT WIFE AND HOPE!"
People who thought those two things a small capital were greatly mistaken, for that same man is now rich again. When you hear of a man being ruined by getting married, ask for names and dates. The name will usually settle it. Along the front of the lake at Chicago is a breakwater. In hot weather this pier is nearly covered with men of leisure, taking midsummer-night dreams. They are the so-called "harvesters" who start out in droves into the country after something to do—"forced to search for work and not find it!" Marriage has not ruined them. You will find that the men your adviser shows you who has been ruined by marriage, was a born wharf-rat, fit only to be shot with a gun big enough to save the expense of any further funeral.
THERE IS NO POSSIBLE CHANCE
of a man being worse off married than single. As a married man, he is on the right path. As a single man, there is no anchor for him. He may be here to-day, in San Francisco next week. Then, in two or three years, he will be back, as poor as ever. You will have to work, of course. But you have never before done your share of the work. If you are a smart man, you can do your share and more too. You will have a home of your own. You could never get one as a single man, perhaps, because you would not need one.
YOU WILL BE SAFER
as a married man. It seems to me that a virtuous, sober, christian, unmarried man should have twice the credit of a married man, for he is certainly exposed to thousands of extra temptations. Everything is natural in marriage. The builder has "builded wiser than he knew." At thirty-five he finds himself well along on the successful journey of life. His bachelor friend who has lived a selfish existence is poorer, has lost the charm of youth, and is skurrying around to get a wife who will be a queen and slave at the same time. His bachelor friend is
A LAUGHING-STOCK
among the last crop of young girls, who can recollect how he went with their married sisters, and he will be satisfied with nothing above eighteen, though his hair is dropping out, or frosting like a cold night in September. If he had not been so selfish he would have been married eight or ten years ago. Now
NATURE BEGINS TO ASSERT HERSELF.
The friends of his youth have formed the new ties that have come with the march of the years. The trees have their leaves, and cast a grateful shadow, cool and sweet. The bachelor is bare, and under his branches the hot and withering sun pours down unpleasantly. You are lucky to have escaped such a lot, for it is O, so lonesome and unsatisfactory to man! It is not good for him to be alone. Now,
IN TALKING TO YOUR SWEETHEART,
there is one bearing alone which will bring forth good fruit. Be honest and sincere. Remember that the philosophers and sages of the centuries have been studying and marveling over the thing called Truth—why it is that it always asserts itself—why it is that its parts always coincide with each other, as though they had first been put together! When you see cut stones unloading before the site of a building, you know by the marks on them that, when they are put together, they will make a fine-looking front, for the architect has copied them from the front of some building which has, sometime or other, been erected just as this projected structure will be. But here is
THIS QUARRY OF TRUTH;
you enter it without a human architect, hew out a stone, hew out another, and another, and soon a beautiful edifice arises, in the walls of which there is not a single peep-hole or blemish. Everything fits. So bear yourself toward your future partner for life that when you enter the quarry of your brain for her information, you also enter this quarry of Truth. The stones you now cut out will stand as the buttresses of the walls!
HOW SHOCKING IF THEY ARE LIES!
Tell her, when you tell her anything at all, the exact truth. Be very careful about this. Tell her particularly about your money affairs. Your happiness depends more on food and clothes than you are now able to understand. But if you put in solid blocks of truth for the basement, the finer developments of your life will join on with precision and effect. I know a young man who went in debt for a fine span of horses and wagon. His bride supposed they were his own, and he "let her suppose."
A WHOLE AFTERLIFE
of the veriest toil and the most honorable career never wholly expunged the blame which attached to him in both her mind and the minds of her people. It was so foolish in him! One little speech, and long years of bitter pride-wounding would have been averted. The young woman would have married him, just as quickly, for it is easy to make terms before marriage in this country. Do not promise to do things which depend more on events than on yourself. Do not promise to love your future wife always. She may prove unworthy of it. You may prove incapable of it.
INWARDLY MAKE UP YOUR MIND
to ennoble yourself so that your affections will solidify. The companionship of a woman will do much to help you. Promise little by word of mouth—everything by actions. Then, as your days come and go, your character constantly comes more fully into the light, and that light is one of broad, pleasant, humanly love. Your wife will be sure to live happily, for you have built within her mind no extravagant expectations.
LOOK AT A CIRCUS POSTER!
See the absurd and ridiculous promises made upon it! Why do they dare so to humbug the people? Because, in no other way could they get people to ride ten or twelve miles through a summer drouth to hand over their money to the man who is anxious to get it! Here is a man in a chariot, with tigers plunging under his rein like the rays from the sun.
COURTSHIP.
"New hope may bloom, and days may come.
Of milder, calmer beam,
But there's nothing half so sweet in life,
As love's young dream."
Here is a pyramid of elephants four elephants high! Here is the acrobat in the midst of the smoke and blaze of an Armstrong cannon, beginning some flight to a far-off trapeze, or swing, in the air! It is somewhat different inside.
THE CHARIOT OF TIGERS
is an enlarged rat trap with two sleepy, disgusted overgrown cats in it—cats which do not thrive well in this cold land, and which do not smell any too sweet and clean. The pyramid of fine-looking picture-elephants is an ugly live elephant or two standing on a beer-keg or two, which is a wonderful feat for elephants, of course, but not an entertaining one to human sight-seers; and as a final swindle, the cannon act is a man on a spring disguised as a wooden cannon, who is thus hoisted a few feet into the air, where he catches hold of his swinging bar and completes the usual act of an "aerial acrobat." "Fi on't!" as Hamlet says; "reform it altogether!"
DO NOT "BILL YOURSELF TOO STRONGLY"
before your divinity. She would love you if she thought you were just a common man, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; so, if you tell her you are poverty-stricken and prodigal, and it be true, then she will think that she had rather have a demi-god, poor as Job's turkey, than a common young man, like your brother or your friend, with all the gold of King Plutus! Bring to her an honest heart, and you will, indeed, bring treasures before her, and she would have no right to complain, even were she so inclined. Love does not seem to be a matter of volition—
OF "WANT TO, OR DON'T WANT TO."
"No man or woman," says Arthur Helps, "was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long rainy days in the country, has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed." Just think of that during all the time of your courtship. Dread the "living together," and when you come to stand the test, the test will not be too great for you. A young man, truly, doesn't need to be married, as a full-grown one does. But
IN ORDER TO REAP WE MUST SOW.
Our bachelor friend of forty wants to reap just as badly as you, but his fields will be waste while yours will be growing. When you get your life insured at twenty-one they charge you about ten times what the risk really is. Why? Because, although they have not the least idea that you are going to die now, they know the mortgage is on your life, and the dues, when you pass fifty, would, in justice, be higher than mortal man would pay. Therefore they even it up.
YOU LAY ASIDE A SURPLUS
for your old age, and, until lately, the courts held you could collect that surplus, if your contract were not completed to the end of your existence. Thus, in marrying, you are following the wise ordinance of God. You are choosing a blooming, healthy young woman while you are yourself fresh enough to attract her love and hold it. You are living as a married man while you might, probably, live with more strictly selfish personal comfort up to thirty-five as a single man; but you are,
AFTER THIRTY-FIVE,
immensely better off than the single man, and you will, besides, always be given a better place in society than he, because society likes to see every member in its ranks doing his duty like a man and helping to bear the burdens as well as reap the benefits which our system of living deals out to those who participate in it.
IF YOU HAVE THE CONSUMPTION
and the young lady also have that disease, consult the physicians of your families. A very learned man, in a series of papers in the Atlantic Monthly, some years ago, refused to forbid such marriages entirely. Put yourselves especially under the care of your doctors, and follow their advice implicitly. If the young lady, alone, is consumptive, extend your engagement and wait for events. If you yourself are thus tainted with disease, I have little hesitation in saying that it is not manly to get married until you are entirely out of the reach of pecuniary want without your labor, and even then there are other considerations of nearly equal importance which should lead you to frequent conferences with your family doctor.
YOU THUS SEE THAT "LIFE IS REAL,
and life is earnest." If you are healthy, thank God for it, and sing merrily while you build the nest which will hold the mate in warmth and comfort. After the harbor of refuge is built, the ship will find a pleasant and ever-welcome anchorage during the big storms outside.
Take the daughter of a good mother.
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell.—Byron.
uotation of this verse is made, not because it celebrated a marriage—it, rather, commemorated the frightful carnage of Waterloo—- but because it very faithfully represents the fashionable beginning of wedded life, to which it alludes. There seems to be in woman an inherited, instinctive desire for this kind of thing at her marriage. It is cruel to deny her, therefore man usually goes through with it like a martyr. My prejudices are so heartily enlisted against "blow-outs" of this kind that I feel the compunctions of an honest judge at sitting in such a case. Nevertheless, I may relate some things I have seen, to show how badly a couple may start in life. Here is one instance: The dust has filled the air for six blocks around some stately church. The "hacks" and private barouches and coupes have been packed together so that any movement was entirely impossible; the bride has come like a queen of the orient; she has walked on flowers to the vestibule; there she has passed under an arch of tuberoses; half-way down the aisle a gate of jessamines and smilax has opened with a smothering sense of richness; at the altar she has actually knelt on a pillow of camellias (fifty cents apiece); and a fifty-dollar organist has put on his full instrument, as though he were proclaiming the glory of God most mighty, instead of the folly of man most miserable. Into the church have thronged the elect, proud and disdainful; on the outside has stared the vulgar multitude, too ignorant for anything but rapt wonderment. From the temple of high-priced worship the celebrants have passed, in a still more exclusive body, to a residence where a banquet has been prepared by a man who generally makes ice cream for a living, and where a dazzling display of wedding presents has been uncovered to the careless gaze. Then the train bears away the twain of one foolish flesh, and the farce is over.
OF COURSE IT WAS A FARCE.
The elect read the newspapers next morning with a smile. None but he of the vulgar multitude was hoodwinked. The man and the woman have spent all their money to purchase a "swell wedding." The presents were hired, so were most of the "hacks." The florist has got part of his money. The couple, six months afterward, are "beating" some poor landlady out of their board, and the man, in all likelihood, will never again be heard of. But the women have been intensely agitated by the event. They have never thought about the subsequent aspects of the case.
NO ONE OF THE SAME "SET"
would be willing to spare a single "hack" or one double camellia. Why did the young man and the young woman do it? They did it principally out of vanity, in imitation of some rich person who desired to distribute his money among hard-working folks and at the same time create a feeling of envy among his fellows and "please the women folk."
LET US HAVE THE MANHOOD AND THE WOMANHOOD,
if we have five hundred or a thousand dollars, to buy those necessaries of life which will enable us to live without debt after we are settled for life. We are sailing out of the harbor. Would it not be ridiculous for us to heave into the water our provisions, as a symbol of our delirious joy?—would not our ship be a ship of death when we reached the middle of the sea? There is just as much joy in a simple wedding which has properly shown our respect for the event as the third in importance of all which will punctuate our history. We have been born; we will die;
WE NOW MARRY.
"A man finds himself seven years older, the day after his marriage," says Lord Bacon. "Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards," says Madame Scuderie. "Marriage is a feast," says Colton, "where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner." "Mistress," cries Shakspeare, "know yourself; down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love. For I must tell you friendly in your ear,—sell when you can; you are not for all markets." "To love early and marry late," says Richter, "is to hear a lark singing at dawn, and at night to eat it roasted for supper." "Marriages are best of dissimilar material," says Theodore Parker.
"TO BE A MAN
in a true sense," says Michelet, "is, in the first place, and above all things, to have a wife." "It is in vain for a man to be born fortunate," says Dacier, "if he be unfortunate in his marriage." "When it shall please God to bring thee to man's estate," says Sir Philip Sidney, "use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil; and it is an action of life, like unto a stratagem of war; wherein a man can err but once!" "We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages," says Ralph Waldo Emerson;
"WE LIVE AMID HALLUCINATIONS,
and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with, and all are tripped up, first or last. But the mighty mother nature, who had been so sly with us, as if she felt she owed us some indemnity, insinuates into the Pandora box of marriage some deep and serious benefits and some great joys." "It is a mistake to consider marriage merely as a scheme of happiness," says Chapin; "it is also a bond of service. It is the most ancient form of that social ministration which God has ordained for human beings, and which is symbolized by all the relations of nature." "Marriage" says Selden, "is a desperate thing;
THE FROGS IN ÆSOP
were extremely wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again." Why were they wise? They were not wise at all. I have seen frogs in wells who are more contented than they would be outside. "Men are April when they woo, December when they wed," says Shakspeare; but he also says that "maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives," so it is an even tilt between two forms of human nature. "If idleness be the root of all evil," says Vanbruch, "then matrimony is good for something, for it sets many a poor woman to work." "In the opinion of the world," says Madame Swetchine, "marriage ends all; as it does in a comedy;
THE TRUTH IS PRECISELY THE REVERSE.
It begins all. So they say of death, 'It is the end of all things.' Yes, just as much as marriage!" "Humble wedlock," says St. Augustine, "is far better than proud virginity." "Never marry but for love," says William Penn, in his will; "but see that thou lovest what is lovely!" "Strong are the instincts with which God has guarded the sacredness of marriage," says Maria McIntosh. We cannot bear this remark too constantly in mind. You would not dare shut off your supply of water, because you know you will need it. But you are sometimes tempted to shut off your supplies of love; and men do sometimes do it, and
AFTERWARD GO MAD
from clear soul-starvation. "Up to twenty-one I hold the father to have power over his children as to marriage," says Coleridge; "after that age he has authority and influence only. Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes." "He that takes a wife takes care," says Ben Franklin. "I chose my wife," says Goldsmith, "as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well." "Before marriage," says Addison,
"WE CANNOT BE TOO INQUISITIVE
and discerning in the faults of the person beloved, nor after it too dimsighted and superficial. Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and miseries.
A MARRIAGE OF LOVE
is pleasant; a marriage of interest easy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life." "It is the policy of the Londoners," says Thomas Fuller, "when they send a ship into the Mediterranean Sea, to make every mariner therein a merchant, each seaman venturing somewhat of his own, which will make him more wary to avoid, and more valiant to undergo dangers. Thus married men, especially if having posterity, are
THE DEEPER SHARERS IN THAT NATION
wherein they live, which engageth their affections to the greater loyalty." "Matrimony hath something in it of nature, something of civility, something of divinity," says Bishop Hall. "Though matrimony may have some pains, celibacy has few pleasures," says old Dr. Johnson, a bachelor. Again says he: "Marriage is the best state for man in general; and every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for the married state." "Marriage is an institution," says Sir Richard Steele "celebrated for a constant scene of as much delight as our being is capable of."
ONE THING KEEP IN MIND!
When the sages, the critics, and the people who love to say smart things, paint the infelicities of marriage, they as often paint simply the general troubles of life, which are common to all people. The bachelor is more apt to be kept awake by the crying child in the next chamber than is the father in the same room with the child. The young man quarrels with his landlady as often as the young husband quarrels with his wife. The young man notoriously finds his wants as lightly resting on the memories of those he hires to attend to them as does the husband of the most careless wife. He cannot escape the sickness of life with even the good fortune of a married man, according to the statistics of the Government. The married woman is also healthier than the maid. So, then, get the critics of the married state to specify its various unhappinesses; then subtract from that schedule all that come alike to the single state, and you will find that marriage, for its separate joys, has not a separate set of troubles in as great proportion. The very highest evidence of the usefulness and agreeableness of marriage is gathered from the well-known haste in which both men and women, when death takes away their companions, seek, in a second marriage, a renewal of those relations which, in their opinion, lend additional charm to the drama of life.
You are my true and wedded wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.—Shakspeare.
She's adorned
Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely—
The truest mirror that an honest wife
Can see her beauty in.—John Tobin.
f all the actions of a man's life, his marriage does least concern other people," says Selden, "yet, of all actions of our life, it is most meddled with by other people." In fact, if people would take home their attention thus so liberally bestowed abroad, it would enable them to make matches of their own far better than those which now burden the records of the churches and the courts. If a young man and a young woman can be left alone three or four years, to wear into the new relations they have assumed, there is little chance of their being unhappily married. An instinct of the strongest character brought them together, and is likely to hold them by its own force. Man is a creature of habit. Strip him of his home after he has been for four years habituated to it, and he will be unhappy, no matter how unpeaceful that home may have been. Therefore, if possible, have your wife and yourself in a house by yourselves for the first four years of your married life. As a general thing this is possible, and I think a firm will, in most cases, greatly aids the possibility of such a course. One thing, at least, is clear,
NO HUSBAND IS DOING RIGHT
to admit to his home as a sharer of its comforts any other man. It is a common sentiment among any two homeless young men that the first one who marries shall take the other to live with him. Nothing is more absurd or out of place. I do not think there could be so dangerous a foe to the peace of the wife, in case the young man do not think his friend has married wisely,—and he must think so, or he would himself have married her if he could have done so. His criticisms will estrange the husband's heart and cool his love. On the other hand, if he has admired the lady, then the situation is all the more atrocious.
THOSE HORRIBLE EVENTS IN LIFE,
where a man's home is transformed suddenly into what has been bitterly but justly termed a "hell on earth," are more than half the time traceable to the carelessness of the husband in not throwing around his wife those barriers which shall ever keep her from temptation. The wife of pure instincts will generally object to the admission of another man to her home as a member of it. How often her womanly and honorable objection is overruled by the husband as the mark of an inhospitable nature. Live alone. Let no one see your meannesses, for the third party will remember and recite those meannesses where you would either never have seen them, or have forgotten them altogether.
BE KIND TO YOUR WIFE.
If you find this difficult, begin by making up your mind that, during the next week, you will not, under any circumstances whatever, speak a cross word to her. Carry out this resolution as well as you can. Then the next week takes off the strain. The natural tendency of cross words to misery will so startle you that you will soon try it for another week. You will do better on the second trial. This is important for your own peace of mind, for, in scolding and fretting, the average woman, if you get her started, can easily hold her own. This woman is bound to you by stronger ties than you suppose.
GO OFF TWO HUNDRED MILES AND SEE!
She is also bound to you by very strong bonds in the law, as you would find out if you deserted her. She is also entitled to a very high place in your goings and comings, as society teaches you. When the President is inaugurated, there is a front seat close by for his wife. The Chief Justice administers the oath, and there is another front seat for his wife, also. So you need not be afraid of doing her too much honor. Speak to her respectfully. Perhaps there is a youngster watching you—you have no idea how closely. This youngster will try on his hand governing his mother, if he sees any opportunity whatsoever. Just look to it that he does not see such an opening! Your wife as you will know, has cares of a multifarious kind. Her hours of labor greatly exceed yours, though she cannot concentrate her mind on one thing as you can. She is fitted, by long years of inherited housewifery, to do this and then that with untiring devotion to the interests of her household. You cannot, as a general thing, lighten those legitimate cares save by your smiles. But you are a selfish man if you increase them by requiring any great amount of extra personal attention. You will find it her nature to minister to you in many ways. Let her alone in it. Accept all gratefully, and do something in return
BY WAY OF FORMAL RECEIPT.
You will grow happier day by day, and your wife will be the happiest woman in the neighborhood. She will be proud of you because you have had the brains to be happy and sensible. We hear a good deal of railing against the general wisdom of getting married. There seems to be a sort of popular contagion lately, making it fashionable to fling jeers and jibes at the cares and sorrows of marriage. We find young men writing to the newspapers that it costs them six dollars to board singly, and that the same "style" of living and enjoyment could not be purchased at
A "BOARDING-HOUSE OF ONE'S OWN"
for less than twenty-two. And again the same sort of writer will assert that he can quit one "boarding-house" when he pleases, whereas he must eat the cold roast beef and cranberry sauce of the other until he crosses the creek called Styx. Let me call this young man Mr. Bachelor, and reply to him in about his own style:
A FEW THOUGHTS IN GENERAL:
1. A man named Payne wrote a seemingly-ordinary song entitled "Home, Sweet Home." This piece, on account of certain sentiments conveyed, at once received the seal of nearly universal approbation. It is safe to say Mr. Bachelor and the class in which he may be placed were not among those who accorded extraordinary attention to the little song. He is and they are, therefore, at once separated from the vast mass of the people. Evidently the sentiments of the song were based on experiences largely known to the general gender and unknown to Mr. Bachelor.
2. The man Daniel McFarland was so worthless that his wife refused to live with him, and, sadly enough, fell in love with still another man. The worthless husband, discovering that Richardson was coming into property which had not always been his own, resorted to an ambuscade, and killed Richardson. To the dullest comprehension this act revealed a deep jealousy. Jealousy is founded on a solid fear of losing something. In this unhappy family, where the man believed he had nothing to care for, he suddenly awoke to find he had thrown away a pearl richer than all his tribe.
3. It seems to me as natural for a man to establish a home, with a wife, as to grow a beard on his face.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS IN PARTICULAR.
1. At twenty-seven years of age a man whom I know met the finest young woman he had ever seen. He wanted her and he got her. Five years have passed.
2. At marriage the man found himself endowed with a godlike selfishness. This he probably owed to the past struggle for existence. With this not very estimable faculty he carried to his home a young woman endowed with nearly the opposite faculties. She only acquired selfishness through association with her companion. At the start, then, they were both willin' oxen—one ox was willing to do all the pulling, and the other ox was willing he should.
3. Now the man had also a high faculty called judgment. He continually wondered why the woman did not despise him on account of his selfishness. He soon discovered that it was because the woman lacked sadly in judgment. The baby would lift up its voice in the night. That baby must be attended to. The weather might be very cold. The man despised that fact, but the woman, because it made her teeth ache and her body cake and cramp, feared the cold. But the man also despised the baby and all its appertainings—particularly the appertainings. Therefore, the man debated within himself that he was very selfish, or he would get up. Perhaps, being a "just" man, the way men go, he really got up about once in a dozen times, but, candidly, he would probably have seen that baby suffer ere he would have attended its wants any oftener. The woman took it for granted that the man would not get up, and yet she did not despise him. She did not have judgment enough to do it.
VANITY AND SELFISHNESS.
4. A man's vanity and selfishness are present (to a woman's perception) in every movement. She likes them. They are the characteristics of masculinity.
5. The man entered matrimony with all the trepidation born out of thinking too much about it. It seemed to him like buying a fifteen-thousand-dollar horse on instalments. This is just as it seems to Mr. Bachelor, too. It was a pretty good price, but it was a high-stepper, a flyer, a beauty. It would take him all his life to pay for it, and it might founder the first year. But he had never in his life wanted anything the way he wanted that woman. Mr. Bachelor has not yet got to that stage.
RETURNING GOOD FOR EVIL.
6. There is little doubt that, speaking of man as an animal, unchastened by the benign influence of religion, "the male hates the sick female." The female knows that. Yet in return she exhibits toward the sick male a tenderness that makes his hair stand on end when he thinks of his own short-comings.
7. The man's astonishment at reaching thirty was tremendous. He found he was changing, and that marriage was evidently
THE EXPRESS PREPARATION FOR THIS CONTINGENCY.
He used to go to the theatre a great deal. He did not then notice that the air in the auditorium was more rotten than the midnight winds that blow over Chicago from the industrious rendering-houses on her outskirts. It is now a real hardship to go to an ordinary dramatic performance, and he thinks theatre-goers are as a class the most discontented people there are in society. He used to spend his earnings in various other places which now weary him beyond measure, and are equally wearisome to those bachelor friends of his who used to keep him company, and are forced by single life, to still frequent such resorts.
THIS HE FINDS OUT
when his wife goes into the country for a week or two. Those two weeks are never halcyon days with him. There is a smell about a restaurant that eloquently pleads the sweetness of home, and there is a lack of confidence expressed in a pewter spoon and a general disinclination to believe that anyone is careful molded in with the thickness of the teacup, which startle him at once into a better conception of his wife's confidence in him.
8. My friend comes home and finds his dressing-gown and slippers in front of the fire. He is tired and cross, and doesn't want to sling ashes nor bang a coal-hod. But the sight of the fire makes him feel better at once, and if there be no fire, there are no ashes. He sits in front of a coke fire in a grate. His little girl brings his slippers and carries off his shoes—or carries off one shoe and one slipper. Then he falls to thinking that girls are poor property as compared with boys, but that any kind of children are a pretty good investment against one's old age. His increasing wonder is that the whole state of things is so natural. His wife takes comfort in having him in the same room with her. When he is reading and she is darning socks, she is the very embodiment of the fine French expression "I am content." She is not as beautiful as she once was. But
ALL THE ELEMENTS OF HER BEAUTY
are still present, and with a return of the flesh she has lost in hard work she will have all her looks. A handsome woman is just as handsome to a man as a handsome girl is to a green young man like Mr. Bachelor. My friend is hugging the shores of personal expense very closely for the purpose of having two weeks in the country with his wife during the heat of July. This woman's face does not intoxicate him as it once unquestionably did. Neither does the "Trovatore miserere," nor the "William Tell" or "Poet and Peasant" overtures so delight him as once upon a time. Nevertheless there is in him a secret joy of possession, calm and pleasant, in contemplating the wife, and a quiet satisfaction, in hearing the music, that the taste of his youth was so thoroughly good.
A WIFE'S PRAYER.
9. When his wife goes to bed she loves to put her head on her husband's knees to say her prayers, and he loves to have her. He has great confidence in a woman's prayers, and he is disposed, selfishly but correctly, to believe the supplication is nearly dual in its character. In his speech he treats his wife as though she were the wife of an honored friend. If he talked either loosely or coarsely to his wife he might fall in love with any woman to whom he showed greater respect. He would, beside, proclaim his folly, for woman has small sense of humor.
DEATH OR WORSE.
10. If my friend were suddenly to lose this home by the death of the wife, he would receive an unmeasured sympathy from all thoughtful men not included in the small class who never understood what there was in "Home, Sweet Home," to set people to humming it. If he were to have this wrenched from him by a sudden awakening of his wife to all his faults, and as blind an infatuation with the faults of another man as was once extended to his own, he would know just how Daniel McFarland felt. My friend is induced to believe, however, that his wife will be strongly under his influence so long as he does not inspire her with fear. He will not pound her unless he falls to whisky-guzzling, which, considering that he does not yet use tobacco, is impossible.
SO MUCH OF A PARTICULAR HOME.
By the study of other women than his own wife (which is a very unjust mode of study) man learns to hate women in general. By observing his wife, however, he is inclined to love all her sex. Again, by contemplating himself he falls into detestation of all humankind. Such "men" as young Mr. Bachelor have spent their time in exhaustive subjective researches. They know themselves too well. They should, in reforming, take an easy step upward, and, by contemplating the good points of Swift's Yahoos, somewhat elevate their opinion of the species which they so graciously ornament! A green old age is universally admired. The color of greenness at thirty, however, is not fashionable. If I have lacked in charity in defending the wisdom of married life, it is because I have seen too much grass thrown at bad boys. When you hear a fool prating of the misery of married men as compared with single men, answer him according to his folly, or, perhaps better, answer him not at all.
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumspection and confine,
For the sea's worth.—Shakspeare.
When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.—Shakspeare.
othing is further from the single man's thoughts than that he will continue in the single state all his life. He expects, when the young woman meets his gaze who satisfies either his esthetic or pecuniary ideas, generally the latter, or both, to take that young woman to his bosom and begin married life. This is a natural state of mind, and there is no harm in indulging it. It shall be the object of a few of these pages to present such aspects of the unmarried state of man as have principally commended themselves to general attention. The bachelor has plenty of arguments to keep him single while he is not in love. He thinks the arguments keep him single, good fellow. He says, as I heard one of them say: "I would ask the unbiased observer what there is in the world, after all, to induce a man to commit matrimony. Some one will say: 'To have some one to care for him when sick.' This is complimentary to woman—indicating that she marries to become a nurser of the sick and old. And must a man endure all the pains and throes of years of matrimonial cyclones that he may have some one to stew his gruel during the brief space of his last illness? If a bachelor have money, he will have friends to care for him, no fear, and if he be poor, a wife is the last thing in the world he needs. She divides his pleasures and doubles his sorrows.
HE MUST DANCE TO FASHION'S TUNE—
a palatial residence, a corps of servants, a livery, and dresses from Paris—for the sake of having some one to receive and entertain his friends' wives. He must support his wife's relations, and endure no end of feminine abuse, which is not always so feminine. The world is divided into two classes: Those who are unmarried, but wish they were, and those who are married, but wish they were not."
THIS IS A FAIR SPECIMEN
of the argument by which the bachelor convinces himself that he is happy. If it does contribute to his peace of mind, why should the world care? And the world really does not care. When he comes to have his gruel stewed for him in a hospital, or, worse yet, a boarding-house, he finds out, all of a sudden, that he is really in the way, and that, in his life of perfect selfishness, he has never secured that thing which cannot be bought, yet which he so yearns for now in the hour of his feebleness, a woman's love. A good long sickness has greatly enlarged many a man's philosophy!
Still, it is not in the destiny of every man to have a wife, or to keep her if he get one. It is not unwise, therefore to consider that state as one of the phases of life, and to contemplate its various aspects, good and bad, as we have the other conditions of existence. "A man unattached and without wife," says Bruyere, "if he have any genius at all, may raise himself above his original position, may mingle with the world of fashion, and hold himself on a level with the highest; this is less easy for him who is engaged; it seems as if marriage put the whole world in their proper rank." "I have" says Burton, the melancholy, "no wife or children, good or bad, to provide for, and am a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures."
THE ONE GRAND RESULT OF SINGLE LIFE,
so far as is generally noticeable, is selfishness. The chief lesson of marriage is self-denial. Which is the more pleasing of the two traits? When the bachelor views life, he sees nothing good in it, for it all looks selfish. Being so deeply jaundiced, the eye tints everything with yellow. At forty he is heartily sick of it all. Why? Because he has learned that he has squeezed the orange dry. The faculties which God gave him to be pleased with when a recipient have been worked to death.
HE HAS BEEN A RECIPIENT WITHOUT CEASE.
He has chewed on one side of his mouth all his life. The teeth on the other side have loosened and are ready to fall out, while the overworked molars on the other are about to run into decay. The faculties whereby he was expected to please other people have become rudimentary, and he can now no more fascinate other people than he can sing soprano. He makes an effort to engage the interest of a young lady. The hollowness of his attack at once arrests her attention. The ease with which he speaks long sentences of admiration proclaims his long practice in the art, and the utter lack of real meaning in them. He knows that the girl will
LAUGH BEHIND HIS BACK,
and it irritates him, and disposes him to attribute her act to "the falseness of her sex," when it is merely her keen intelligence in such matters. The fact of the matter is, that though an old bachelor is seemingly greatly smitten with nearly every young girl he sees, he does not succeed in marrying because he is a hard man to catch. The young woman takes his measurement. His devotion is overpowering, but she easily sees that it is a sham. The bachelor looks at her glove, and, instead of admiring the hand, as the "marrying young man" does, he says "Dollar and a half!"
HE LOOKS INTO HER EYES AND FIGURES
on the probable cost of board for two. The time of mating is past with him, and that young woman can see it "as quick as a flash of lightning." He may be the man she could love if she "let go of herself," but his slippery words do not mean "marry," and she "passes him around." He loves to go to picnics and church sociables, for he must be amused, and he hopes to find that pleasure in next Tuesday's donation party which he did not get at last Friday's rehearsal.
THE TROUBLE ALL LIES
in his intense love of self. Society in general regards him as useful, and pities him. The older women generally suppose he would marry the first girl who would have him, and he himself hopes to sooner or later to come across a lady who is superior to all others, and who has money enough to pay her share of the expense of living. I wish him success, for
HE IS GENERALLY A GOOD FELLOW,
and strictly a creature of circumstances. If we catch the small-pox nothing is surer than that we will have it in spite of our pride. If a man is cast into a mold of events where he is bound to be taught nothing but selfishness, and to see nothing but the selfishness of others, the wonder is that he will assume, in the matter of self-denial, those relations, even for a day, which he so assiduously avoids for life.
SCHOLASTIC OPPORTUNITIES.
The single man has a fine chance to be "a scholar and a ripe good one." Having been denied the joys of a household all dependent on him, he may surround himself with books, he may pursue investigations, he may gather the ideas of the wits and the thinkers, and he may thus broaden his brains until he is the honored associate of the best minds in his region. This form of happiness is, to those who are within reach of it, one of the most satisfying within the gift of God. There is no reaction, there is no sorrow.
MAN LIVES TO LEARN,
after all. If the mind goes on in the culture of those high qualities which have been inwoven with his weak frame, it seems to me his selfishness has been well disposed of. The dollar which, in the cautious mind, was begrudged to a wee toddler who never lived, for a pair of shoes, has been placed where it has brought new knowledge of the power and wisdom of God, the Creator and Conservator of the Universe. The wisdom thus born out of selfishness will inculcate in those to follow him the folly of selfishness, and the tastelessness of its brightest apples of gold.
BE KIND TO THE OLD BACHELOR.
When he tries to be friendly, give him a lift. His mode of life has left him with many advantages for usefulness which married people have not got. On committees and in preliminary work he is often the best man in the neighborhood. At funerals, in sickness, he has been known to be almost the very instrument of the merciful Father. Teach the young ladies that he is harder to "catch" than they suppose, and perhaps they will turn toward him a portion of their character which will please him better with womankind.
TO HEAR SOME MEN TALK,
and from experience, too, you would think that a breed of creatures born from such women as are now living would be a herd of monsters, incapable of civilization and refinement. And yet the world will go on, and we know, almost, that our posterity will bring about wonders in the arts and sciences, and perhaps even in society itself,—wonders which will even surpass the triumph of our own generation. We are on the eve of both traveling and talking through the bare air. We are in a way to avoid the worst of our wars. It cannot be that the women who will bear the men who will do all these things are to be
JUDGED AS THE BACHELORS VIEW THEM.
The bachelor sees as through a glass, darkly. Being, for the time, incapable of the passion of love, having failed to exercise it when it came upon him, he thus rails at woman. If you are young enough, watch the events of the next thirty years, and see how they will give the lie to such a tirade as this, from
THE SAME BACHELOR
I quoted at the start: "Not one-half of our marriages have unbiased love as a foundation on both sides. (The love is usually on the man's side.) A woman marries for money, position, spite, pride, contrariness, fear of being an old maid, or for a home which she thinks will afford her more pleasure than the one she leaves. Love is the last thing to enter her head, and never her heart. Men of real sound judgment in business throw this judgment entirely aside when they come to select a wife. A man might better remain single than marry with the chances nine out of ten in favor of his making a mistake for life."
SEE HOW LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
of anybody's good points this gentleman displays. The young woman who has worked at ironing in the forenoon until her feet were swollen and her head has got dizzy, comes into the parlor in the evening, all frills and tucks, all "highty-tighty," all full of fun and God's good humor, and impresses my friend with the belief that she has never done an honest hour's labor in her life! Pshaw! she has got more pluck, and nerve, and "sand," than half a dozen men, when it comes to where the need is! She is going to be
THE MOTHER OF AN AMERICAN,
and Americans are not noted for their servility, their laziness, their mediocrity, or their lack of brains! For shame, then to judge a young woman as she appears to you when she is anxious to get rid of you! How would you like to be judged solely at those times when you were "carrying on," and "didn't care whether school kept or not"? That is precisely the way this gentleman has spoken of young women a page back. He thinks they love no one because they have never loved him! He never loved them, and how could he expect them to be swindled? Read his remarks over again, and see how events themselves deny his correctness.
HOW MANY HUSBANDS HAS HE SEEN
follow a drunken wife into a gutter? And, on the contrary, has he not seen the reverse of this sad picture many a time? I heard a Judge say to a poor woman once,—she was all scars: "I would send this woman-beater to the work-house for two hundred days if I did not know you would starve yourself to pay his way out." And then the poor, foolish, faithful heart appealed to his Honor to "spare the man, just once more;" she was sure he was a little the worse for drink when he misused her. What does our friend call this thing in woman, if it be not love? The being capable of a wife's love, and a mother's love, and a sister's love, is not much in danger of the criticisms of a man who has only a front-porch knowledge of all her sex!
ven with the best of our philosophy we who are well are unable to command at will the feelings of those who are ill. We lie on a bed, racked with the pains of some passing affliction, and the chasm which separates us from the hale and hearty seems prodigious. We are led down the stairs, out into the sunlight. The very rays themselves sit heavily upon our shoulders, and nearly crush us to the earth. With those vivid impressions of the terrors of illness, we feel that our brains will remain steeped in memories such as will enable us to appreciate our health if we ever get it again, yea, though we have hardly a crust of bread to spare. But lo! behold us once well again, and we have forgotten our good fortune; at the slightest turn in our personal affairs we bemoan our fate as sharply as though the whole night had been rolling in upon us through some fever, or all the blasts of the arctic world had crept through our bones in some frigid chill. There is no boon so great as health. Of course everybody admits that. But why can we not attach meaning to it? If a man rise in a public gathering and say "I will give a hundred dollars!" he knows exactly what he is saying, and so do his hearers know. But if he rise behind a pulpit or on a rostrum and say
"PRESERVE YOUR HEALTH
at all hazards!" no significance so deep attaches, though the one statement is a thousand times as important as the other. I cannot understand why we are so oblivious to the sufferings of illness while we are well unless it be a provision of nature to keep us from that suffering through sympathy which we would surely undergo if we really had any vivid feeling for the sick. On this earth each one has to do his own suffering—the King in the palace of the royal family and the baby in the hut of the miner. All who are well go their way rejoicing, even having no momentary realization of the state of mind of the disabled associate. It may be that this has not always been so, for we inherit a salutation among our other traits which implies a desire to be informed as to the physical condition of the body of the person addressed. Two men of affairs meet. One says:
"HOW ARE YE?"
The other responds: "How are ye? Are you going to be at the meeting to-night?" etc., the conversation being now under full headway. The words indicate that, at one time, they carried a meaning which they have lost. Yet we are not worse than our fathers before us, and are not exceeded in the milk of human kindness. It may be that the old form was such a cumbrous piece of hypocrisy that latter-day people have thrown it off in disgust. Anyway, there is nothing more certain nor more astonishing than that a well man cannot conceive the feelings of a sick man, even though he try, and that those who are sick have to grin and bear it all without any very great affliction falling to the lot of those who stand at the bedside.
BEHOLD THE STRONG MAN IN THE FEVERISH AIR
of the sick-chamber. Last week all his clock-wheels worked with ease, and merrily struck the hours of feast and sleep. Afterward the wheels dragged a little and annoyed him some. Suddenly a whole handful of sand was thrown into the cogs, and the cogs have been grinding it and the hammer striking continuously ever since. His brain is distracted, his soul is sorely perplexed, and his mind is like an infant in house-cleaning time, strangely in the way and infinitely aware of it. Here lies proud-riding vanity, thrown from his high saddle. Kindnesses are showered on him of which he feels that he deserves few, and yet wants more.
SYMPATHY IS EXPRESSED
for him which greatly moves him, for he is accompanying the words he hears with the ills he feels, while the speaker is speaking a conventionality which he would feel had he the ability. The sick man mentally resolves that all the mistakes of his life shall be corrected if he shall survive, and yet there are few who are able to fulfill the programmes thus formulated—frequently the thriftless man is more prodigal after an illness which has stabbed his pride with an advertisement of his indigence than he was before his great vow of future economy was recorded up on the ceiling, where,
IN THE RIFTS OF THE PLASTER,
the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi! Perhaps if the would-be reformer would take a look frequently at those objects in his whilom sick-room which so riveted his fevered attention, some of their old association would return upon him, and do him good. The ancients practiced the memory in this way. After a course of meanderings through a garden, each object represented and recalled some piece of knowledge which it was important the pupil should retain in his mind. "Few persons," says Thomas a Kempis "are made better by the pain and languor of sickness; as few great pilgrims become eminent saints." Here lies your bachelor now. He has always felt that when he got sick he could get his gruel stewed as well by the hired girl of his landlady, as the French say, as by a wife. He lies up there, O, so in need of care and kindness!
HIS BRAGS WERE MADE IN TIME OF STRENGTH,
and he expected to have strength to keep himself stoical. But now he is weak,—weak and truly miserable. He hears the people come in to their supper, go to their rooms, wash, run gayly down-stairs, chat, go down another pair of stairs,—and then come the jarring sounds of plates and knives and spoons, and, worse, the sickening smell of victuals. How can they laugh and joke when he, a man and a brother, lies sick of a fever? Ah! my friend, it would not be so were you the head of the house. All would be changed. The supper-hour would come with a hush instead of a clatter. The light stol'n forth o' the building would leave the whole house in gloom. And in your selfish soul you would be glad, for God so made all of us! Now you turn yourself to the wall, and marvel at the lightness of human words and
THE GREEDINESS OF HUMAN WANTS.
You are little to be pitied in justice—greatly, in mercy! Lie there and pity humanity, for they would be all like you, did not they follow in nature's paths, where the roses of the wayside hide more of their ugliness. All I would impose is that you walk where you will look least hideous, even in your own eyes.
As, in Paradise, when Milton was all ablaze with poetic glory, he waved his more than kingly sceptre and thus ushered in the night—
Now came still evening on—
Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest—
—So does woman, soft as still Evening, shining as all the starry hosts with goodness and with mercy, come into the night of disease, and soften its harsh desert with the dews of her kindness. Sickness teaches us how good and true is woman, how useful in the world, how necessary to our welfare and proper destiny. If any man have learned this on a sick bed
HE HAS NOT BEEN SICK FOR NAUGHT.
He is a man of progressive ideas and unfolding nature. Sir Walter Scott has put into words a thought that has ever had man's approbation:
O woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light, quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
"It is in sickness," says Hosea Ballou, "that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent one upon another for our comfort and even necessities. This desire, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing." "Sickness," says Burton, "puts us in mind of our mortality, and while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a sense of our duty." "It is then," says Pliny, "that man recollects there is a God, and that he himself is but a man. No mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration, or his contempt." "In sickness," says Shakspeare, playing with his prepositions, "let me not so much say, 'Am I getting better of my pain?' as 'Am I getting better for it?'"
LET US THEREFORE GIVE UP THE IDEA
of those great reformations which we formulate upon our mattresses of misery, and rather confine ourselves to a few betterments of our lives which are possible. If we are spendthrifts, we should vow to spend our money for goods of more solid worth than a taste of this thing, a whiff of that, or a sight of the other. If we are proud, let us resolve to speak kindly at least to those who have been lately ill. If we are stingy, let us make ready to give, notwithstanding, to those who need as badly as we have needed. If we are doubtful of the goodness of the gentle sex, let us at any rate thereafter except forever their qualities as a faithful succor of
THE MOST MISERABLE OF CREATURES,
a sick man who cannot move from his bed of pain and discontent. If we are impenitent, let us arise out of our wearying couch respectful to those who worship God, and reverent also before God in the presence of other worshipers. Perhaps if we aim our sudden goodness at a lower mark, we may make a record that will not entirely proclaim (as the quick eye of Pope has cynically perceived) our unpromising folly, and our unteachable ignorance of human nature.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.—Shakspeare.
But sorrow returned with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.—Campbell.
athering clouds crowd thickest round the tallest mountain, yet do their summits, far up above, forever gaze out upon the undimmed sun. So is it with the great heart smitten with deep sorrow. There is no soul upon whom the glory of God's love falls more serenely and uninterruptedly. There is no better friend, no lovelier associate. "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." And comfort does come, in the broad and kindly love and mercy toward humanity which those who have known suffering so frequently evince, "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;" says Chapin, "the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of heaven." "The echo of the nest-life, the voice of our modest, fairer, holier soul" says Richter, "is audible only in a sorrow-darkened bosom, as the nightingales warble when one veils their eye." "Every noble crown is, and on earth will ever be, a crown of thorns," says Carlyle "Sorrow", says Haunay, with rare knowledge, "turns all the stars into mourners, and every wind of heaven into a dirge." Sometimes all nature seems to condole with animate woes:
One weeping heart may tone a rural scene
To sadness. Reverently the trees will bend;
The little stream will sigh, with heaving pulse,
And swans, in soft and solemn silence float—
Grief's snowy celebrants.
It is a manifest peculiarity of the human mind to believe that its sorrows should be more enduring than they really are. We have in this phenomenon some of the clearest views of our weakness and inconsistency, for though we deplore the destiny which deals out so much misery to us, yet we despise ourselves, and are also thought somewhat less of by our associates, if we do not embalm our griefs and remain a sort of mummy-house above ground until the memory of our friends has grown faulty and unreliable when applied to our affairs. Thus,
A WIFE LOSES HER HUSBAND.
The grief which she feels nearly crushes her spirit and evokes the sympathies of her neighbors, as well it may. She finds a bitterness within her heart which it is difficult to sweeten into resignation. Why should the blow have singled her as its object? Then, with the lapse of the days, comes a change of the season, and the wonderful climatic effects on both mind and body accompanying them. She wanders into the woods, and the rustling of the leaves beneath her feet betrays her from her dead husband for the first time, and her
CONSCIENCE, THE SOLEMN OFFICER
of her moral nature, suddenly arrests a little girl wandering in the woods in search of a butternut tree which lives like a hermit in the deep of the forest. It is a stray memory of herself in the long ago! It has wandered into her house of grief, and when it falls under the hand of the law she feels great guilt for having harbored it. "O, my poor, dear husband, have I so forgotten you?" she cries in mental sackcloth and ashes. And then the frailty of human reason and action appear before her and appall her. The time flies by. Soon still another season is here, with
A TROOP OF LITTLE TRAITORS, HAPPY MEMORIES,
carrying her "over the hills and far away" into that dim past whence she emerged, all happiness and health. The conscience now has loosened its harsh rule. The memories play in her brain like children on a lawn, and their merry music often drowns the dirges still sadly chanted in her deeper soul. And thus the winter passes—not in a whirlwind of grief as did the summer, whose days she never saw, or will not know she saw, until they come again hot and heavy with the association of her bitterness. But it is safe to say her dread of those days will exceed the actual grief they cause her, and she can soon look back upon her sorrow, and say that she has mourned
RATHER NOT ENOUGH THAN TOO MUCH.
If there be joined to this a new association, one that nature and God have both approved, then there is lifted up the sneer of the world, and again the weakness of woman, the frivolity of humanity, is deplored by those who demand that grief shall co-survive with remembrance. We do not suffer so much as we think we ought to, and yet, foolish and illogical, we call upon our fate in a grand monotony of complaint at the heaviness of our ills. The young man falls in love. His love is not returned. He has believed himself capable of undying and unalterable affection for a maiden. Unselfish, therefore, it must endure, whether she love him or not, for
HAS HE NOT PROCLAIMED IT TO HIS OWN SOUL?
She loves him not! The test is come. He must despise himself as a shallow-hearted hind, or dwell in extacies of adoration over one who will resign herself into the keeping of another, a thing most detestable to this young man. Either horn of the dilemma shows him life, true life. Not a poem or a dream, but as a range of mountains would form if they were piled down from some other world; first a row of little peaks, then monster heights arising where valleys hid, and valleys forming on the points of peaks.
THIS YOUTHFUL PEAK OF GRIEF,
the young man finds in after years, is but the more substantial bottom of two slopes which rise sublimely toward the zenith of his life. He banishes his false conceptions of the grandeur of the human mind. He banishes an attachment which had not a substantial girder under it, and within a few years his heart is all the broader, gentler and more charitable for his young sorrow. Do not think me underrating the poignancy of ill-requited love. It is no mean sorrow. But no great mind ever was crushed under it. No great mind ever was crushed under any sorrow dealt out to humanity.
TRUE GREATNESS,
after all, lies in true humanity, true understanding of the feebleness of our nature and our capacities. We do not overload an animal, merely because it evinces a willingness to make an effort. We therefore must not overweight our soul with sorrow. We must not nurse our woe. We must not have that grand, conceited idea of our nobility which demands of us a great long future of melancholy; but rather must we nurse our bodies, suspecting our liver if our soul be heavy, and blaming our chamber if our brow be clouded. Then, if a high intelligence wait at the couch of our sick soul, as does faithful woman by an invalid, soon will vanish all the clouds, soon will come a brighter vista in the journey of our lives. We are as God has made us, weak, miserable and sinful. Let us expect from ourselves conduct becoming a being weak, sinful and miserable. It would seem that this is the secret of those great lives who profit by adversity. They have charity, for they have erred. They have hope, for it has been their true anchor, never failing. They have withal more consistency than have we, though they have
NEVER MADE SUCH HIGH-SOUNDING REQUISITIONS
on their untried natures. Where they have stepped into the stream of their existence in some new fording-place, they have gone with great caution, not with an immature confidence born of naught save foolish audacity. Their river of life is an open water before their pleasant eyes; they prepare not for a flood in the fall, neither do they make ready to pass over dry-shod when the waters come down in the spring. Though they have the more mercy, they make the lesser appeals for mercy; though they have the more strength, they pray the oftener for aid. Sorrow has brought it about. Affliction has stretched their heart-chords
INTO TRUE HARMONY.
"The safe and general antidote against sorrow," says Dr. Johnson, "is employment. It is commonly observed that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep himself equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. Time is observed to wear out sorrow, and its effects might doubtless be accelerated by quickening the succession and enlarging the variety of objects."
SORROW.
THERE IS ANOTHER AND AN UNHAPPY PHASE
of sorrow. "When it is real," says Madame Swetchine, "it is almost as difficult to discover as real poverty. An instinctive delicacy hides the rags of the one and the wounds of the other." "The deeper the sorrow, the less tongue hath it," says the Talmud. "Light griefs do speak," says Seneca, "while sorrow's tongue is bound." "The wringing of the hands and knocking of the breast," says Dr. South, "or the wishing of one's self unborn: all are but the ceremonies of sorrow, the pomp and ostentation of an effeminate grief, which speak not so much the greatness of the misery as the smallness of the mind."
NOW COMES RELIGION,
shining down into this Alpine valley of grief, not as the sun of the Alps, but as a continual orb of light; not between a few short hours in a "long, long weary day," but as a constant illumination of the soul, irradiating its beams out upon the countenances of God's afflicted, and setting them before mankind as a beacon for groping humanity. I know of no more perfect expression of the power of sorrow to chasten the soul and draw it nearer the Maker than is contained in
MARIA LOWELL'S "LAMB IN THE SHEPHERD'S ARMS."
I quote it as giving that lesson which my humble prose would never teach:
1. After our child's untroubled breath
Up to the Father took its way,
And on our home the shade of death,
Like a long twilight, haunting lay,
And friends came round with us to weep
Her little spirit's swift remove,
This story of the Alpine sheep
Was told to us by one we love:
2. They, in the valley's sheltering care,
Soon crop the meadow's tender prime,
And, when the sod grows brown and bare,
The shepherd strives to make them climb
To airy shelves of pastures green
That hang along the mountain-side,
Where grass and flowers together lean,
And down through mist the sunbeams glide.
3. But nought can tempt the timid things
That steep and rugged path to try,
Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings,
And seared below the pastures lie;
Till in his arms their lambs he takes
Along the dizzy verge to go,—
Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks,
They follow on o'er rock and snow;
4. And, in those pastures lifted fair,
More dewy soft than lowland mead,
The shepherd drops his lowly care,
And sheep and lambs together feed.
This parable by Nature breathed
Blew on me as the south wind free
O'er frozen brooks that float unsheathed
From icy thralldom to the sea.
5. A blissful vision, through the night,
Would all my happy senses sway,
Of the Good Shepherd on the height
Or climbing up the starry way,
Holding our little lamb asleep;
And like the burthen of the sea,
Sounded that voice along the deep,
Saying, "Arise, and follow me."
'Tis a little thing
To give a cup of water, yet its draught
Of cool refreshment, drained by fevered lips,
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame
More exquisite than when nectarean juice
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.—Talfourd.
eal poverty, it may not be impossible, is to the individual, more of a question when directed to his country than to his actions. In Ireland or Italy, it seems to me, the greatest of individual excellence in sobriety and economy may not shield the citizen from abject want, which is a terrible thing. But in America the man who is often called "poor" gets as much rest for his body and quite as beneficial food for his stomach as the man whose wealth is the wonder of the world. It is a magnificent land where there is so much food raised and so many clothes made that a man calls himself poor if he have only plenty to eat and wear! Our definition of the word "poverty" is a marvelous corruption of the word. To be poor in the true sense of the word, in this great land, one must have either been sick or criminally negligent. Many a clerk eats as much and dresses as well as Vanderbilt. What does Vanderbilt do with the great number of millions which he controls?
HE FEEDS AND DRESSES AN ARMY
of about one hundred thousand other men. If he kept his wheat, it would rot. If he kept his clothes, they would pass into speedy decay. By spending one hundred and fifty million dollars he is enabled to secure services which return an aggregate result of about one hundred and sixty-five million dollars in a year. Men have eaten up his first one hundred and fifty million dollars, but their works are worth one hundred and sixty-five million dollars, and he has fifteen million dollars profit. Suppose the men took his one hundred and fifty million dollars away from him and ate it up and wore it out in a year, doing no work in the mean time. At the end of the year they would begin starving if they relied on him alone, and he would have neither one hundred and fifty million dollars capital nor fifteen million dollars profit.
VIEWED AS IT IS,
Vanderbilt is really only richer than other people to the extent that he can gratify rational desires more than others, and this at once puts him alongside hundreds of thousands who have money enough to purchase everything they can rationally want. In the system of labor for wages, Vanderbilt is only a commander, having the largest force intrusted to his supervision—or paid with his money; the thing is the same. Almost all
THE ENORMOUSLY RICH MEN OF THE WORLD
have lived in the apprehension of having the bulk of their possessions seized by envious rulers or fellow citizens. Not many years ago Vanderbilt suddenly bought fifty million dollars of four per cent Government bonds, simply, it is believed, for the purpose of shifting the enormous risk of active employment upon shoulders which would be less apt to excite popular manifestations of greed should the Commune bring about its foolish and chaotic reign. The cares of great wealth are a class of the most serious burdens borne by humanity.
THEY SHOULD NEVER BE FORGOTTEN
in making up the account between the citizen who has all he needs and the citizen who has to spare for others who will pay him a profit. Men who have lived in constant dread of poverty have been astonished, upon being stranded on that shore of ill-repute to find the sun shining more brightly and the birds singing more cheerily than when, driven with the ever multiplying engagements of business, they had no slumber which was not an imaginary hurrying into a bank-president's parlor, and no conversation which was not distressing some impatient caller in an ante-room.
BUT ACTUAL, HARSH, GRINDING WANT
is a nightmare, a delirium of misfortune. It lowers the human being at once to the condition of a brute somewhat of the order of the cats. Men on board a ship, driven to despair by hunger, enter the most wretched state conceivable. The qualities of faith and mercy disappear at once. No man trusts anybody else. Each expects the others to pounce upon him to eat him, and none of them would dare to sleep if he could, owing to the certainty of his peril should his vigilance be relaxed. From this baleful picture of the lowest depths of poverty we may rise to comparatively stupendous heights, and yet be relatively poor as to the consideration of other conditions of life still above us. Let us, then, view poverty as
A REAL, ACTIVE, "INCONVENIENCE,"
as the French wit has put it. "One solitary philosopher maybe great, virtuous and happy in the depth of poverty," says Isaac Iselin, "but not a whole people." "Poverty" says Lucian, "persuades a man to do and suffer everything that he may escape from it." "It requires a great deal of poetry to gild the pill of poverty," says Madame Deluzy; "and then it will pass for a pleasant dose only in theory; the reality is a failure." "A generous and noble spirit" says Dionysius, "cannot be expected to dwell in the breast of men who are struggling for their daily bread."
"HOW LIKE A RAILWAY TUNNEL
is the poor man's life," says Bovee, "with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!" "Poverty," says Euripides, "possesses this disease—through want it teaches a man evil." "Poverty," says Saadi, "snatches the reins out of the hands of pity," which is true only in one sense.
MANY PEOPLE ARE GOOD
who would not be so good were they poorer, but the Irish in Ireland are perhaps the poorest and at the same time the most pious people of whom we read or hear. "Poverty makes man satirical, soberly, sadly, bitterly satirical," says Friswell. "Men praise it," says Alexander Smith,
"AS THE AFRICAN WORSHIPS MUMBO JUMBO—
from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate it." "It oft deprives a man of all spirit and virtue," says Ben Franklin; "it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright."
THE SCENES OF DARKEST POVERTY
in this land of ours are surely the results of ignorance and folly. With the crops which follow each other in our favored region of the earth, and with membership in any mutual aid society, the industrious poor man of America has an assurance that no picture so black can be drawn of his class="center"lot "in the rainy day." We cannot reform human nature. When men cheat, steal, lie, and remain idle, they must suffer the results of their deeds, and, at present, those whom they drag down with them must also suffer. But, with industry and sobriety assured,
THE FANGS OF POVERTY
have been drawn, for the poor man in sickness receives his support, and in health contributes his small share to his sick brother. In leaving this painful branch of so vital a portion of any book devoted to the improvement of humanity, let us abjure each other to fly from the sins of idleness and waste, that make this dark panorama in a world which could be bright, and which, rolling along in its foolish fashion, even now gives promise of exceeding joy in the future. Work and save and give work! This is the light of the world, the open sesame of the millennium? Let us come again to the follies of
FALSE POVERTY.
How ridiculous that one should suffer from want of a frill or a furbelow! "I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man poor," says the eloquent Edmund Burke; "I cannot pity my kind as a kind, merely because they are men." "It is the great privilege of poverty" says Dr. Johnson, "to be happy unenvied, to be healthy without physic, and to be secure without guard." Is it not ridiculous for the poor man, by aping the habits of the rich, to spurn some of the greatest blessings attaching to our life? Thus, as Dr. Johnson says:
"POVERTY, IN LARGE CITIES
is often concealed in splendor and often in extravagance." The tendency of people in comfortable circumstances to move out of a pleasant cottage into a brick house with two inches of marble-front is a sorrowful one. We can progress only through this same sad tendency, but how many happy homes are thus ruined! It requires much brains to count the ultimate cost. There is hardly an article of furniture in the old home which does not look out of place in the new. There is additional work to be done which had been entirely overlooked. The servant is a grievious expense. We do not get the result of her work—only the profit. If she earn the one hundred and fifty million dollars we get only the fifteen million dollars. She must be "kept"—must add her clothes to the wash, her meat to the dish, her bed-room to the house. She breaks with a smile. She scatters as the sower who goeth forth to sow. From every conceivable cranny creep forth disbursements—the expenses of the rich man creeping like tigers upon his poor but vainer neighbor. O, pshaw! why will men and women do it? If those two fine spirits, Prudence and Economy look down upon us, such houses must attract attention only by seeming to mark out upon the earth they cover the writing at Belshazzar's feast—
THE MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,
of the nineteenth century. I know of an actual instance of a family being forced to eat the bread of charity within the walls of a house for which they had engaged to pay, and had so far paid, the sum of two thousand dollars a year as rent! What foolish thing a vain human being will not do is a more difficult problem than what he will do. If we had no rich people to fire up our self-conceit, we would be happier, though we rose more slowly; yet are we to be despised for being willing to throw the blame so freely from our shoulders. "Poverty is," says Cobbett, "except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty—the shame of being thought poor—it is
A GREAT AND FATAL WEAKNESS,
though arising in this country from the fashion of the times themselves." Let us shake off this fatal weakness. That man is a coward who, from whatever reason, keeps up the expenditure of a rich man a moment longer than his income will warrant it.
"POVERTY IS ONLY CONTEMPTIBLE
when it is felt to be so," says Bovee. "That man," says Bishop Paley, "is to be accounted poor, of whatever rank he be, who suffers the pains of poverty, whose expenses exceed his resources; and no man, properly speaking, poor, but he." "The poor are only they who seem poor," says Emerson, "and poverty consists in feeling poor." Doubtless you are familiar with the story of the unhappy Sultan to whom the Magi, traveling from the East to his relief, could give no hope unless he could get and wear the shirt of a happy man. Proclamation went forth to all the lands of the empire, offering glittering rewards for a happy man. At last learned doctors and experts, who had gone out into the outer regions, brought in a shepherd, who was vowed to be an entirely happy man. But lo! when he came before the Magi, it was found that
HE HAD NO SHIRT!
The men who have caught this circling planet in the palms of their hands, as God grasps the inconceivable universes, were born poor and struggled in adversity; the men who have throttled the fiery lightning, and chained the fire and the water into willing servitude, were poor boys; the men who have developed the human imagination into a thing almost perfect and unapproachable were poor boys; the men who have led millions of their Maker's feet, were poor both in youth and age. Bear it then, in mind, that all honorable endeavors to ease the yoke of life are good; that all repinings whatsoever are totally ridiculous, and mostly dishonorable.
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
Tennyson.
ne of the pillars upon which the atheists and social iconoclasts and demolishers base their erroneous philosophy is a seeming belief that the men of to-day work harder for a living than the men of olden times. Now I will lay hold of this pillar, and, although I be not Samson, I may yet hope to rend an ill-constructed edifice. With the aid of a few figures and a little history the mind may possibly discern, through the centuries behind us, some evidence of that progress which Victor Hugo has called "the stride of God."
It is reasonable to suppose that the poor man, during the period of his veritable history, has always, when not suffering severe privation, eaten nearly the same amount of food in any given number of hours. We may, I think, judge of the amount of work cast to his lot if we can find the ruling values of several of the articles of food which have contributed to sustain his life. I have chosen the earlier civilization of England in my examples, not because the Book of Exodus, the Pyramids, and the temples of Baalbec and Karnac fail to betray the needed evidences of almost super human toil, but because the authorities at my disposal touching upon earlier times fail to furnish me
THE SATISFACTORY COMMERCIAL DATA
also needed as a parallel. Let us, then, put our laborer in England in the year 1350. He had at that time so far progressed that, under certain very restricted circumstances, his life was preserved, and he was allowed to earn wages for his labor. He worked fourteen hours for a legal day's work in winter and fifteen hours in summer, but I have everywhere in the following statements computed his hours as fourteen. If he were a common laborer he received one penny. If he were
A SKILLED FIELD HAND,
he could earn three times as much money. The English penny is to-day a very large copper coin, being worth two cents, but in those times it weighed three times as much as to-day, as did all current coins. In addition to this great weight, money was very scarce, and fully six or seven times as valuable in many commodities as to-day. We will not err far in calling the laborer's penny forty American cents. In 1350, then, the skilled laborer earned 3 pence in a day. He paid of his dear money, 1 shilling 10-1/2 pence for a bushel of wheat, and £1 4 shillings 6 pence for an ox. This means that he paid eight days' (112 hours') labor for his bushel of wheat, and 98 days' (1372 hours') labor for his ox. The ox would to-day rate far below a "scalawag" at the Stock Yards of Chicago or East St. Louis, weighing, perhaps, 400 pounds.
TWO HUNDRED YEARS LATER,
in 1550, the same kind of a laborer earned 4 pence in a day. He paid 1 shilling 10-1/2 pence for a bushel of wheat and £1 16 shillings 7 pence for an ox. This means that he paid nearly six days' (about 80 hours') labor for his bushel of wheat, and 110 days' (1540 hours') labor for his ox. The high price of the latter was justified by its great improvement in weight and quality.
IN THE FORTY-THIRD YEAR OF ELIZABETH
the coinage was lowered to about its present weight. In 1675, therefore, we see the laborer getting 7-1/2 pence for a day's service. But he was compelled to pay 4 shillings 6 pence for a bushel of wheat, and £3 6 shillings for an ox. He thus was going backward, for temporary reasons, however, and had to pay seven days' (98 hours') labor for his bushel of wheat and 110 days' (1540 hours') labor for his ox. The ox had twice as much beef on him as the ox of 1350.
AND STILL FOR ANOTHER HUNDRED YEARS,
the march of the laborer upward was retarded by wars, famines, and "deaths," as their plagues were called. In 1795, one of the darkest of those dark years, we find the skilled laborer receiving 1 shilling 5-1/4 pence per day (still of fourteen hours in winter, fifteen in summer). He paid 7 shillings 10 pence for a bushel of wheat and £16 8 shillings for an ox. This means that he paid five days' (70 hours') labor for his bushel of wheat and 119 days' (1666 hours') labor for his ox. The ox was what is technically called "a fair critter."
TO-DAY THE SAME LABORER,
working ten hours a day—counting all the perquisites which have fallen to his lot,—the crumbs from the tables of his prosperous superiors,—the same laborer, I say, gets 3 shillings a day. He pays 6 shillings for a bushel of wheat and £12 for an ox. This means that he pays two days' (twenty hours') labor for his bushel of wheat and 80 days' (800 hours') labor for his ox. The ox rates better than a butchers' "beast," as the English say. In the meantime,
THE CHILDREN OF THE LABORER
have sailed across the ocean and settled in a land where the fields yield steady harvests and where the genius of the inventor has exceeded with its results the wonders of the Arabian Nights. In this land of freedom and plenty the day laborer gets $1.50 a day. He pays 90 cents to $1.30 for a bushel of wheat, and if he desire such food, he can pay $80 for a monster ox weighing 1600 pounds. He thus pays less than a day's labor of ten hours for his bushel of wheat, and about fifty-three days' (530 hours') labor for his ox. He does not need this high grade of meat, however, as few English laborers ever buy from even the round of such beef, and no ordinary American householder in city or country gets as good once a year.
PROGRESS IN FIVE HUNDRED YEARS.
We thus see the condition of the laboring man rise, in five hundred years, from 112 hours' labor for sixty pounds of wheat to about six or seven hours' work, and from 1372 hours' labor for 400 pounds of beef to 267 hours' labor for the same weight of better food!
But the atheist will say that the laborer of the olden time did not work, and got along by hook or crook; that, as it was a miracle if he lived with such wages, anyway, he had every inducement to become a vagabond. But all this had "been seen to." Such things are never unforeseen.
FOR INSTANCE:
"Here is a package of worm-medicine which, for one dollar will save the life of your child. Will you have it? No!! you will not pay one single dollar to save the life of your little child! Here is a man, who, for one standard dollar, in silver, worth intrinsically less than 90 cents, will let his child be lowered into the grave—will listen to the clods falling on its little coffin! But ah! I am provided against such men! They cannot escape me! Here is a smaller package which will save your child's life for fifty cents. It is yours. Death has missed his mark!" Now, with the inevitable forethought of
THIS VERMIFUGE FIEND
whom I have quoted, the law-makers of those days also saw to it that the laborer should not escape the original terms of Eve's surrender to "that first grand thief who clomb into God's fold." Under a statute of Richard II. the laborer was forbidden to remove from one part of the kingdom to another, or to otherwise seek to raise the price of his labor. This law stood for centuries, and was reiterated in the seventeenth George II. and the thirty-second George III., along with fixed wages for services rendered. Personal liberty was held to be the privilege of the proprietary class. By a statute of Henry VIII. (1536), children of five years and up, were compelled to labor. A man able to work who refused a proffer of work was, according to law, dragged to the nearest town on a hurdle, stripped, and whipped through the town until his body was covered with blood. For a second offense his right ear was cut off and he received the bastinado. For a third offense he was put to death. An act passed under Edward VI. (1555) provided that the able-bodied laborer refusing work should be branded on the breast with the letter V and adjudged to the informer as his slave for two years. The master might fasten a ring about the neck, arm, or leg.
REFORM.
Under William IV., by the act of 1832, the laboring hours of children were reduced to ten hours. By the act of 1847 women were included in the ten-hour law. By 1867 the power of the English working man had secured the permanence of a custom making ten hours a day's work. In the factories of Nottingham, England, the men make as high as fourteen dollars a week. Improved machinery has raised their wages. At the spinning machines which formerly required two men, who each received $4.50 a week, there is now required one man, who gets $6.25. At the beginning of the present century the workman in these mills earned 4-1/2 shillings a week. At the present day he earns 10-1/2 shillings, with twenty-four hours' less labor.
THE ENGLISH FIELD-LABORER
who now earns 3 shillings a day spends, for a family of eight, 15 shillings a week in bread, cheese, butter, washing, tea, sugar and schooling. How much cheese, tea, butter, washing, sugar and schooling did our friend and his cubs of the fourteenth century enjoy?
Invention and economy are keeping far in advance of the effects of growth in population. In 1766 England and Wales had but 8,500,000 inhabitants; now, there are 25,000,000. The same thing is
TRUE OF AMERICA.
I have for authorities "England, Political and Social" by August Laugel, private secretary of the Duc d'Aumale, Notes and Queries, No 283, Green's "History of the English People," "Froude's History of England," and current numbers of the Mark Lane Express.
In the terms applied to the laborer, from pariah, helot, servus, serf, knecht, thrall, slave, villain, peasant, and laborer, to artisan and working-man—there is a vision of progress as bright as the light which fell upon Saul of Tarsus as he journeyed toward Damascus.
To the man whose whole mind is given to the work he does, the time goes swiftly. Many a man whom success has translated from the grocery, the plow-factory, the farm, to the matting and the yellow bedsteads of the seaside hotel, finds that he was happier at home, when he was poor, and that he was then often far more comfortable in body.
THE ATHEIST
does not "look upon a beautiful face and see a grinning skull." He must not, then, gaze upon the freest body of workingmen of all the ages and see but a chain of quarry-slaves scourged to their dungeons.
"God is a worker, He has thickly strewn
Infinity with grandeur. God is love;
He yet shall wipe away Creation's tears,
And all the worlds shall summer in His smile."
Macbeth. If we should fail—
Lady Macbeth. We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail.—Shakspeare.
ou see that scrag over in the woods there? Crack! goes the lightning! The scrag has been hit again! Unfortunate! Now, perhaps you know somebody who is a scrag in society. When the thunder storms of life roll and rumble, tell him to look well to himself. He is very liable to another dose of disaster. Why is this? The reason is plain. There is some particular attraction for the bolt which hits him. There is a loadstone of reason in the earth at his roots for this constant attack of misfortune. However badly off he may be, something still worse will happen to him. If he have something profitable to do with his hands, he will get a felon on his finger. If he have walking to do, he will get a peeled heel. If he have only to sit and attend to a certain thing, he will get the brain fever. If he be expected at seven in the morning, his child will suffer an attack of croup at 6:45. The lightning is darting around him silently all the time, a good deal like the movements of a snake's tongue. After all, it is a scrag that has been struck, and everybody laughs and seems to think it a good joke. It is, indeed, close to the ridiculous to see the number of undoubted afflictions which will beset
"A REAL OLD FAILURE IN LIFE."
He is a good old fellow. He hates with a mortal hate only one thing, and that is hard work; that will make him deliriously ill inside of three days. The boils, and felons, and fevers, and chilblains, and fractures, and bereavements he has had are enough to fill an encyclopedia. He never has worked long at any one thing, and he never will. He can relate to you how the lightning broke off his biggest limb, knocked off his bark, broke him off half-way up, finally split him clear through the trunk, and never hit another tree in the whole piece of timber! This will bring tears to his eyes, for it seems so strange to him. But if you get tears in your eyes, also, hire him by the day for a while, and look into "the pulse of the machine," you will soon understand the wonderful workings of society, and the nicety of that order of things which separates the wheat from the tare. When the winds of adversity sweep down upon us,
IT IS THE CHAFF WHICH RISES ON THE GALE.
Many a man with a bilious attack coming upon his system goes to his work, sets his blood dancing, and, drives away the intruder before the reinforcements of the disease arrive. The failure goes out to the enemy, makes a weak parley, and opens his gates to the first squad that will enter.
WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THESE RANK FAILURES?
Nothing. We can take warning from them. "A failure establishes only this," says Bovee, "that our determination was not strong enough." This is very nearly the truth. We fail because we feel the game to be hardly worth the candle. We are not willing to pay the price and the value of success. We had rather slide down the hill than climb up higher. When you hit your head against a door in the dark, you are stunned. You are then twice as likely as before to hurt yourself. Bear that in mind. Stop. Move with the greatest of caution.
THIS IS WHY SHAKSPEARE SAYS
that when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. When you have failed, try and get a new start, clear of the consequences of the last disaster. You know exactly where you erred, and can guard against the weak places in your judgment, the cause of your defeat. Above all, study the "dead rank failure" in your community, and do everything precisely opposite to the way he invariably operates.
Virtue without success
Is a fair picture shown by an ill light;
But lucky men are favorites of heaven:
All own the chief, when fortune owns the cause.—Dryden.
ucky men are favorites of heaven, simply because they have been endowed with that charming blindness which keeps them from seeing when they are whipped in the battle of life. The man of success has usually a greater sense of the value of a ten-dollar note than his clerk who, like the braggart Pistol, has got the world for his oyster, and expects to open that tough old mollusk with his rusty sword. The man of success sees each young helper around him given better opportunities than he himself had to begin with. His astonishment that inexperienced young men should think they have no chance is always noticeable. He half-envies some stripling soldier in the battle who is yet a high private in the rear rank. The high private cannot understand how this envy can be possible, and will not believe it exists. If you will study the lucky man you will see that his "luck" is usually more of a matter of course than an extraordinary happening. Reverse the thing, and you can comprehend it. Here is a brakeman. He gets killed by the cars.
WAS IT NOT ASTONISHING?
Well, yes, it was; still, if anybody were going to be killed, the brakeman would be the most likely to be the victim. Go to the accident insurance office and observe how little anxious they are to take such a risk, and what an enormous premium they ask when they do take one! Here is a man running a powder-factory. The insurance men will not touch him at all! Now our man of success is like the brakeman, in a sense. He is always on the train, always between the cars, always standing in the frog. If any such thing as luck is out, it must hit him, or some other brakeman like him. Certainly, it will not touch the man asleep in his house
HALF A MILE FROM THE TRACK!
You have a very small chance to draw money in a lottery, and it is a very foolish thing to throw away earnings buying tickets—yet of two fools who expected to draw the grand prize, that one would be the greatest who had no ticket in the lottery! The man of success wants something to strike around his premises. He, therefore, has got conductors of the celestial fluid on his house, and on his barns. His chicken-coops, his corn-cribs point to heaven, and even the stumps in his back yard
BRISTLE WITH LIGHTNING-RODS.
Clap! comes the bolt; the man of success is the one who has been hit, and those persons who do not understand it are astonished at his luck! The man of success is a stone; there are a number of eggs who are bent on dancing in the same cotillon with him; they think he has great luck to last through to such music! The man of success is a thoroughbred; his sire won a Derby; all the drayhorses believe that, when this lucky thoroughbred runs,
THE EARTH MOVES BACKWARD
beneath his feet, to help him in overcoming distance! The man of success is a lightning calculator; the spectators all think he is a lucky fellow to guess at the sum of a great block of figures so quickly and always guess right; they never could do it!
"LUCK" SAYS RICHARD COBDEN,
"is ever waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance. Labor on character." The man of success who owns a mill is seen in the water up to his waist, dragging a log behind him. "Is he not lucky to get his dam fixed so soon after the flood!" say the neighbors. The man of success who owns a grocery has got ten barrels of flour on the sidewalk, two casks of petroleum in the alley, and twelve barrels of sugar on his trucks. At night the barrels are all in their places, and, so far as I have ever seen,—in the retail business, at least,—it was not the clerks of the man of success who did
THE HEAVY END OF THE LIFTING.
"I never" says Addison, "knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest, who complained of bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all the ill-luck that fools ever dreamed of." "Strong men believe in cause and effect," says Emerson. "There are no chances so unlucky," says Rochefoucauld, "that people are not able to reap some advantage from them, and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage."
WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LUCK,
we never mean that a man is lucky to be endowed with successful qualities. So long as we do not go back to the real matter of fortune, which lies in the character, let us, at least, be intelligent, and stop talking about one man having any more good things happen to him than another. There is only one sure thing about events, and that is the law of chance. If men take to chance, they will come out even, if it be a fair chance.
THIS IS CERTAIN.
If you try to match the penny some one has covered, and fail ten times in succession, it is a certainty that you will succeed often enough, ere long, to make your failures and your successes balance. Everything which depends entirely on chance is exactly even. If the man you envy to-day on account of some piece of unquestionably good luck, were to be as closely watched to-morrow, he would be seen to suffer some piece of as unquestionably bad luck. You cannot help noticing his good fortune, and he never howls about his disasters.
FORTUNE TELLERS
thrive on this principle—taking even guesses, and trusting to the victim's remembrance of all that comes true and his forgetfulness of all that does not.
Put up your lightning-rods, get between the cars, begin making powder—increase your probabilities of getting blown up, of having something out of the ordinary run happen to you. If you are food for big fish, go where the big fish are, and you will not be left over for lunch. If you can be useful to a great railroad man, a great statesman, or, even, a great nation, they are going to thrive on you. They will take a taste of you almost before you know it. If you are smart, sober, and were not born tired, there is no bad luck that can get even a shade the best of you.
"Tarry a while," says Slow.—Mother Goose.
ur generation is formed largely of men who went to war and experienced the trials and the combats of one of the greatest commotions of all history. Upon those men was imposed the glorious rod of discipline. "Thus far and no farther!" is written upon their broad foreheads as plainly as the God of the great sea marks it on the rocks with which he has hemmed the shores, and I would not wonder if the vast prosperity of the present day were largely attributable to that stern fondness with which the true man passes into the action of daily life, and obeys orders under fire. Young man, carve yourself down to that rugged line that will make you a fitting part of the structure in which you are an element.
BE RATHER THE GIRDER
holding the building than the creaking clapboard flapping in the wind. When you get an order from your employer, school yourself to move mechanically to the action implied. Glory in it. Be sure, only, that you are carrying out the wishes of your superior. Make it your pleasure. It will become an intense delight. Suppose that you are allowed a holiday. You return to your home and find a command to appear at your place of business. A delay in finding you has happened. You can reach your employer just at the end of business hours. You say "I will not mind this; there is not time enough." Alas! You have done yourself
A CRUEL WRONG.
You have given an entrance to a wedge that will rend you in pieces. On the other hand, you do not stop to look twice at the dial. You go. Good! You have strengthened your character. You can depend on yourself. You admire yourself. "I received your directions at 5.30. I have obeyed orders." Drill of this sort will soon hew your mind down to the solid heart of oak. You will know what you mean when you say a thing. "I will get up at 6 o'clock." When 6 o'clock arrives, and you are aroused, your mind is not
A MESS OF PULP,
ready to take the impression of the first lazy wish that comes over you. No, your brain says resolutely, "I will arise," and lo! a victory!—and no small one either. In this way, true firmness is made. It is a growth. Beware of the insects which beset the lordly tree, withering its leaves and driving its sap into the earth.
"Let us put a cable under the ocean," says Cyrus Field. "Tarry a while," says Slow. "Let us put the cities within actual speaking distance!" say Bell, and Gray and Edison. "Tarry a while," says Slow. "Let us print thirty thousand newspapers in an hour, and give them out of the press folded, and pasted, and cut!" say Potter, and Hoe, and Kahler. "Tarry a while" says Slow. And yet, in spite of Slow and Sleepyhead, wonders have accumulated upon wonders, until the Arabian Nights and Gulliver's Travels are only the creations of a poor fancy, while the intimations which the future affords us stagger the understanding and make us almost idolatrous in our admiration of the quiet, keen-acting men who have dared out into fairy-land and returned laden like the spies coming from Canaan.
Our whole history is one of discipline. And what has it made of us? A nation that has sung
THE DEATH-KNELL OF THE KINGS OF THE EARTH.
I think a good deal of these lines of James Russell Lowell:
This land o' ourn, I tell ye's gut to be
A better country than man ever see;
I feel my sperit swellin with a cry
That seems to say: "Break forth and prophesy."
O strange New World, that yet wast never young,
Whose youth from thee by gripin' want was wrung,
Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby bed
Was prowled round by the Injun's cracklin' tread,
An' who grewst strong thru' shifts, and wants, an' pains.
Nursed by stern men, with empires in their brains!
Another sweet poet has sung:
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
There can be no question that wealth is fast accumulating. Let fathers, and mothers, and preceptors spur the rising generation to that love of accuracy, of "right dress," as the soldiers say, which puts each man in his place, certain to stay there as long as he has agreed to, and certain to act when the fitting time arrives.
THE ORGAN AND ITS PIPES AND REEDS.
Perhaps I can impress the true necessity of discipline no more forcibly than by comparing society to a grand organ upon which the Creator sounds his mighty fugue of years. We are the pipes—some the colossal columns which shake the world, and others the tiny tubes which make a feeble cry, almost unheard. No one of us must sound his note save in that proper place and at that proper time which Duty indicates. We mar a perfect harmony by ill-tempered silence, and perhaps ruin the labors of our associates by a continuous sounding of our own ridiculous reed.
WHEREVER WE ARE
In the factory, the counting house, the workshops of the grand industries,—or on the broad acres which watch so fondly for the sun, let us be careful, when there is a troubling jar, a fatal discord, that our key is not the guilty one.
—Books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.—Wordsworth.
y the aid of books we multiply our sensations a million-fold. Often the reader actually feels what he reads. Such impressions would perhaps never have fallen to his lot in the ordinary way of getting experience. Our indebtedness, then, to the art of printing, is perhaps greater than to any other of the remarkable discoveries which have lent enduring charms to human life. And yet, with all its progress, the book-reading world is still in its infancy. The people do not read half enough, they do not discriminate wisely between good reading and indifferent reading, and they read too much matter of an ephemeral nature, little calculated to be of the slightest benefit to them a week after its perusal. If a man lived on the banks of a beautiful lake, and went down to its shore each pleasant day to take a ride, and, after an excursion upon the peaceful waters, stove his boat in, or cast it adrift, he would be actually following the practice of our people of the present day. The man who owns a library in these times, is considered either a book-worm or an opulent citizen. And yet what treasures are within everyone's reach! Suppose you buy and read a volume. You are
FILLED WITH IDEAS NEW TO YOU,
and you derive great pleasure. Keep that book a year and read it over. It is safe to say you will gain more benefit and reap greater enjoyment from the second perusal than from the first. A library of books, every one of which you have read, is a mine without "walls." It is a merry assembly of old friends ever faithful. Grief cannot drive them away. Slander cannot alienate them. They cannot have rival interests. They cannot want anything you have got, and you can take all they have got,
AND NOT ROB THEM AT ALL.
You have a memory which is as treacherous as the most of the other attributes of human nature. You sit down and read two hours on an interesting topic. A friend opens the same subject to you, a day afterward, in conversation, and you fairly carry him by storm. That is unfair, for you should say you have been "posting up"—but it shows the value of a library. By frequent "posting" on whatever you have read, you become a learned man, which is
A TITLE OF GREAT CREDIT AND DIGNITY
in most men's eyes. The men who read once and "read everything" are never called "learned." They are called "superficial." It is a little unjust, for they have been just as studious as the "learned men," but they have spread themselves out too thin. They have not bought and kept the books they have read, and they cannot remember the vital points. Suppose you recollect that Lord Bacon has said something very wise about riches. That is all you can call to mind. That carries no impression to anybody. If you had the book in which you saw the speech, you could repeat it accurately, and the probability is that the next time you referred to it you could give
THE GIST OF THE WHOLE THOUGHT,
and, by the next attempt, the language itself. You could say to your friend when you were talking about wealth, that you have admired that speech of Bacon where he says that he cannot call riches better than the "baggage" of virtue; that he thinks the Roman word "impedimenta" still better; that, as baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue; it cannot be spared or left behind, but, in his quaint expression, "it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory." Your friend would be gratified with so perfect a figure of speech, and he would never call you "superficial." That is real experience. It is not theory. A book has little value to a man until he has read it at least twice. He has then labeled and pigeon-holed it, and really needs to possess it.
A MAN OUGHT TO READ
his favorite portions of Shakspeare a thousand times—of the Bible a million times. Reading is much more like painting than we think. Go into a palace car. Do you think this polish was put on the wood with one application of the brush—with two, three, four? No; it would possibly be cheaper to cover it with silk plush than to go over it as the skilled workmen have done. Let us buy less ephemeral stuff, to be set adrift and stove in when we have skimmed over it. Let us season our reading, polish it, grain it, varnish it, repolish it and revarnish it, until we are just like it ourselves—clear, concise, intelligent. How enjoyable it is to meet an intelligent person!
WHAT A CHARM
there is about a comrade who can understand what you say, and who can swap ideas with you "even Steven!" It cannot be done without books.
Considering the vast importance of learning in saving labor and reducing the actual cost of existence, there has been little growth in the business of bookmaking compared with what there should have been. The trade in books in America is large, because the country is large. Everything is large here. Comparatively, however, it probably sinks below fishing for mackerel as an industry. As it is now, a shockingly large portion of the industry such as it is is given over to costly bindings. It does not seem that the people, even when they first had books, cared so much for the privilege of reading as they did for a gaudy covering to the volume, on which they could expend a barbaric love for ornament. The wise men of those times marveled, just as the wise men marvel nowadays. "Learning hath gained most by those books," says Old Fuller, "by which the printers have lost." Our follies in the way of "books that are all binding" are almost microscopically small when put beside those of the olden times, when, one would think the art of printing, being new, would have been best appreciated, for surely the grass looks the greenest to us in the spring! Let us do something more than
MAKE JEWELRY OUT OF THE ART OF GUTTENBERG.
"A book may be as great a thing as a battle," said Disraeli, and he meant by that a decisive battle. Now there are sometimes very decisive battles. A Turk once came up against the walls of Vienna and the walls of Tours, in France, and, if he had got through, you and I would to-day, so the scholars say, be "good Mussulmans," instead of Christians, living in freedom and decency. "When a book," says Bruyere, "raises your spirits, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other rule to judge the work by; it is good, and made by a good workman." The books you buy should have large clear type. They are to be
YOUR COMPANIONS THROUGH LIFE.
Your eyes will not be so bright in their old age. The volumes should not be bulky—that is, for true, practical use. "Great books," says Clulow, "like large skulls, have often the least brains." "Books," says Dr. Johnson, "that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful, after all." There is no objection to a costly and beautifully-bound Bible, out of which you may read each day with added veneration, but your sons and daughters should have pocket copies. From these modest little volumes, the marvels of language and thought may be gathered without seeming effort.
Do not be afraid you are spending too much money on reading. If you read each book as you buy it, you cannot buy too many—that is, if you are an honorable man, earning your living in the world, and not sponging it off some one else. Read your book slowly, above all things. Read it as you would ride in your boat on the waters, looking down at the pebbles, the fishes, the grasses, and the roots of the pond-lilies which, being of God's creation like yourself, send a responsive thrill of acquaintance through your heart as you float above them. You can, at best, but glide over a book. Even the writer has been but a passing observer of a few of its truths. It is
THE RECORD OF THE CENTURIES.
Respect it. "My latest passion will be for books," said Frederick the Great, in his old age. He had hardly looked down into the waters until he got nearly to the other shore. Gibbon declared that a taste for books was the pleasure and glory of his life; and Carlyle, who, it is supposed, was better acquainted with books than any man who has yet lived, declared that of all man could do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy were the things we call books.
HELP OTHERS.
If any members of your family have the love of books, aid them in satisfying it. Such are the salt of the earth. They are the blazed trees in the dark forests of the present generations, to mark out that course which shall, in future ages, be the highway of the whole world.
The friend thou hast, and his adoption tried,
Grapple him to thy soul with hooks of steel.—Shakspeare.
I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd,
"How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude!"
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper "Solitude is sweet!"—Cowper.
hatever the number of a man's friends" says Lord Lytton, "there are times in his life when he has one too few." "Life," says Sydney Smith, "is to be fortified by many friendships." Says Bishop Hare: "Friendship is love without its flowers or veil." "A faithful friend is the true image of the Deity," said Napoleon, who never believed he had a true friend not a born fool. "A friend loveth at all times," says the Bible. Says Herr Gotthold: "with a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty, but let fortune frown and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove
LIKE THE STRINGS OF THE LUTE,
of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch." "What an argument in favor of social connections," says Lord Greville, "is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasures we have more." Horace Walpole has given clear expression to one of the chief pleasures of friendship:
"OLD FRIENDS
are the great blessings of one's latter years. Half a word conveys one's meaning. They have memory of the same events, and have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old friends? My age forbids that. Still less can they grow companions. Is it friendship to explain half one says? One must relate the history of one's memory and ideas; and what is that to the young but old stories?" "Fast won, fast lost," says Shakspeare. Says Dr. Johnson: "If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair!"
ALL THROUGH THE WRITINGS OF THE SAGES
on this subject there is a tinge of melancholy. "There are no friends!" says Aristotle. "There have been fewer friends on earth than Kings," says the poet Cowley. Why is this? Let us peer into the solemn question. The ideal of true manhood is easily formulated. Alas! what an abyss separates a man's daily life, as it is, from that high quality he has pictured in his imagination. We are all the time reaching for
THINGS WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND,
and could not assimilate with if they were placed at our disposal. In this way a weary, well-read novel-reader, worn out in all lines of light letters, enters a circulating library, and queruously asks: "Have you any new books?" She expects a negative answer, and in that case would suffer a keen disappointment. The man says "Yes," and brings out several new books. Every one of these is new in every sense. It may be the most trivial set of pages yet printed in this era of scribblers, or, yet, it may be a great work, worthy of the attention of the thoughtful, and the commendation of the pure in heart. Nobody can tell. Then, illogically, she asks: "Is this good?" or "Is that good?" and upon being reminded that she wanted something new or nothing, she asks for something by May Agnes Fleming, or Mary Jane Holmes, and goes off happy, to re-read those expressions which have so well pleased her in the past.
I think I espy in this exhibition of the working of the mind in a rude and unsatisfactory state
A GENERAL PRINCIPLE,
just as potent in the mighty brain of Sir Isaac Newton or of Louis Agassiz. Man idealizes the affair of friendship. He forgets whether he really wants it or not, and then persistently inquires for it. It is not in the library of possibilities. He therefore goes off angry and disappointed. Could he get a glimpse at it, I am afraid he would walk away satisfied with something more nearly en rapport with his nature and his habits. Let us view this golden word friendship as man idealizes it: Being a changeable thing, he views friendship (of which he knows nothing), entirely by comparison with something of which in its turn he knows but little. This something is always a mother's love for her son, notorious as the strongest affection shown by our species. He therefore doubles up this marvelous fact of a mother's love, and creates in his imagination a reciprocatory agency co-respondent to this mother's love. Now, with this magnificent product of invention, he goes forth into the world, seeking for some man upon whom he may bestow a mother's love (of which the "bestower" is entirely incapable), and who will, in payment, respond with a mother's love (of which that man would, of course, be also incapable). In the jargon of electricity a positive and a negative are absolutely necessary to electric energy.
A MOTHER'S LOVE
is a deplorably one-sided action, but it is the highest and noblest of the faculties of affection. Anything beyond it is ideal, made up of two positives, and a thousand years ahead of us. Is it any wonder that when man makes his experiments with the mother's love which he supposes himself capable of bestowing that a universal wail arises, or that Shakspeare, the greatest of mortal minds, brought in those awful verdicts against mankind—"Lear" and "Timon of Athens"?
I THINK THAT IS WHY
the very deepest philosophers grow sad when they touch the question of friendship. The problem is itself the saddest of commentaries upon the weakness of our higher faculties. Separate man from his wife and family and view him in his relations to other persons similarly placed, and the result is not only unsatisfactory, but distressing to a mind anxious to hold to a good opinion of humanity. Put to the right test the quality of human friendship is found to be highly strained—to be liable to curdle in the first thundershower—to sour upon the sensitive stomach. We at once behold mankind forced to flee to God's kind institution of the family and the home to escape a desolation of the heart which follows fruitless efforts to kindle a blaze out of the damp driftwood of life's general associations.
Now, what is possible? Spot friendship is possible, and delightful. "To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day." Man is a social animal. He "gregates," he flocks. Of nothing am I fonder than the sparkle of a friend's eye, and the gabble of half an hour, or three hours. But I ought not to build on any future gabbles, for, to-morrow, lo! my friend may have discovered my ignoble reality, whereas he has heretofore been shaking hands with my noble ideality.
ANOTHER THING
should always be considered: "Kindred weaknesses" says Bovee, "induce friendships as often as kindred virtues." Here is Herder's beautiful view: "As the shadow in early morning, is friendship with the wicked; it dwindles hour by hour. But friendship with the good increases, like the evening shadows, till the sun of life sets." "People young, and raw, and soft-natured," says South, "think it an easy thing to gain love, and reckon their own friendships a sure price of any man's: but when experience shall have shown them the hardness of most hearts, the hollowness of others, and the baseness and ingratitude of almost all, they will then find that
A TRUE FRIEND IS THE GIFT OF GOD,
and that He only who made hearts can unite them." Says the wise Lord Bacon: "It is a good discretion not to make too much of any man at the first; because one cannot hold out that proportion," and that is so, for some of the strongest bonds of friendship ever felt have been woven without thought of pleasure on either side at the commencement.
"Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided." "I am distressed for thee, my brother, Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman."
"Very few friends," says Sydney Smith, "will bear to be told of their faults; and, if done at all, it must be done with infinite management and delicacy; for if you indulge often in this practice, men think you hate, and avoid you. If the evil is not very alarming, it is better, indeed, to let it alone, and not to turn friendship into a system of lawful and unpunishable impertinence. I am for frank explanations with friends in cases of affront. They sometimes
SAVE A PERISHING FRIENDSHIP,
and even place it on a firmer basis than at first; but secret discontent must always end badly."
Let us love our friends for what they are to-day—not for what they will be when we come to make unreasonable demands on them. The sun is beautiful and delightful. It will not shine for us in the night nor, in the daytime shine for us alone. We were bereft of our minds did we, therefore, enter a cave and forswear all further pleasure in its genial rays.
IT IS EASIER TO RAIL
against friendship than to enact our parts in that drama of life which is to elevate the term. Thus we hear Goldsmith cry—
What is friendship but a name,
A charm that lulls to sleep,
A shade that follows wealth or fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep.
Yet this same Goldsmith was a burden on his friends. He did his duty to posterity, in leaving them beautiful literature and song, but to his own associates he was unsparing in his good-natured demands. It is safe to say that he who tries to ennoble friendship is best worthy of the name of friend, and he who belittles it, has fewer claims to man's humanity. Everytime we deny the existence of a satisfying, friendship, we proclaim aloud our own baseness. Let us avoid it.
Envy will merit as its shade pursue,
But, like a shadow, proves the substance true.
Pope.—Essay on Criticism.
o passion has been more universally recognized than envy as the basest of all the traits that undermine the nobility of man; and yet there is no obnoxious quality so universal in men's characters. In the life of the good man it reminds one of the mice, in our houses, which eat their way to our attention and their own destruction; for there are few men who have looked into their own hearts who have not seen the small but odious traces of this gnawing evil. Again, the mind of the bad man, who has given himself entirely up to envy, is
A WOLF'S DEN—
a howling pandemonium, where no quarter is given, and where the merits of the deserving rather than the lapses of the blameworthy are torn as the most toothsome morsel in a furious feast. The Bible says that envy is the rottenness of the bones, meaning that utter corruption which has finally reached the framework of the structure. Society as now organized is really making progress toward the extinction of this hideous blemish. When, as in Æsop's fables,
A TAILLESS FOX
is found advocating the disuse of tails, he is at once suspected, and his influence greatly limited. For the world is waking up to the meanness of envy. The world, in its better moments, is rising above it. It is one of our principal duties, on entering the Temple of Life, to search our hearts for the little fox with the sharp tooth. When we find ourselves about to enter upon a course of action, either momentary or long continuous, which will be adverse to another of our fellow-creatures, let us ask: "Is there anything of envy in this act?" If there be, let us refrain from acting—the soul is not yet pure, the body fragrant.
Let us see how ignorant this contemptible quality of envy becomes under the lenses of practical life. "Base envy withers at another's joy." What has caused it? In nine cases out of every ten, it is simply the one-sided view of an ignorant mind, which sees only the bare result of unceasing efforts. Envy sees Fame on the peak. Envy therefore hates Fame, and declares that there are no crags, or rifts, or snows, or storms on the way up—that, the path is an easy one, over which all who ever went that way traveled in preference to all other routes!
I lay upon a boarding-house bed day after day, one summer, sick of a fever. On the one side, a building was going up, and workmen filled the air with mighty din. On the other side, a young man sang
"DO, HOORAY, ME, FAH, SOLE, LAH, SE, DO!"
I thought: "The one will be a grand house, and the other will be a great tenor, but oh the way is long. The feet grow weary!"
It has often seemed to me that this was my first true view of life, and nowadays, when—I am tired, especially,—I do not envy the truly great in any avenue of distinction. The walker has walked, the builder has groaned, the fighter has fought, the scribe has scribbled, the statesman has lied and betrayed. Any one of them will tell you his pay has been sadly inadequate.
TAKE A MAN LIKE THEIRS.
Born in an age still drunk with the glory of Napoleon, but himself infused with ideas of popular liberty; chained to the chariot of circumstances, and made to swell the sawdust-magnificence of unpopular kings and the ridiculous success of Napoleon III., the greatest impostor of all history, this Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers went through a life the bare retrospect of which would actually tire the mind. In his old age this little lover and critic of greatness—this man who could show the weaknesses of Napoleon Bonaparte so clearly that one would feel the critic must be the superior of Napoleon—this squeak-voiced orator, must have felt that whatever greatness might come to him in history was well-earned—that the way had indeed been long!
THE SAME OF GLADSTONE.
Who in his sane mind would be Gladstone living any more than Homer living? Of course, he survives those horrible crises in which public duty has made him the most pitiable object, and in the most dreadful complication of great interests shines forth as Venus fresh-lighted. But I would not have Gladstone's fame for the boon of rest eternal, from fear that his retrospect of inconsistency and apostacy would be its accompaniment, its deeper shadow. Yet who shall blame Gladstone? He was the executor and administrator of the policy of a parvenu Jew, one of the very bad men of the earth. He
REAPED ANOTHER MAN'S WHIRLWINDS.
Forced into geographical relations with the Irish, an unwarlike people with indomitable tongues, England has in the middle ages, naturally done to this unwarlike people just what a warlike people would do in the middle ages—taken everything. With painful volubility the unwarlike people has for centuries sounded its fate over the world, touching the heart of Gladstone and other good Englishmen, and tempting him and them to many struggles. Behold him at the next step, then, in the role of warring upon the unwarlike, of oppressing the oppressed, of answering an Irish clack with a British click! Is it not pitiful? Gladstone fell ill from it. He paid there and then for his illustrious name. And, next, of those brave Boers! God nerved their quick muscles and darted straight their wonderful eye; and when the single hand rose against the hundred hands of British Briarius they were not forsaken. Oh! how clearly that question seemed to an American! No geographical necessity was there—no race hatred, no hotbed to foment conspiracy against the sister country England. The independence of those Boers, if they desired it, ought to have been fought for by England, by Gladstone, willingly, irresistibly—in the very name of England's own love of liberty for herself. And finally Gladstone so saw it.
What a puzzle are those Hibernians!
HOW BITING THE WITTICISM OF CHIN LAN PIN,
the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, that they are able to govern every other country save their own! Behold a statesman like Gladstone, forced to change his policy toward them the moment he has the responsibility of governing them! Oh! what an opportunity for the little foxes! How easily Envy spears him with its jest! How truly Envy shines with the wings of that fly that passes all the sounder parts of a man's body to dwell upon the sores! In this rapid glance across two of the trials of a great man, across the path up to the peak where one clambering must bind himself with strong ropes to his companions, that if one sink into a snow-covered abyss the others may bring him forth—we get, perhaps, a truer view of
THE MEANESS OF ENVY.
Let us look at Gladstone as the great, wise, good, learned man he is, whose wreath of laurel covers a crown of thorns. And if we find an associate making those fatiguing efforts that ever precede the recognition of this cold world, let us glance rather at his efforts than at his fame, that no rust may gather on the brightness of our eye, and no withering cloud shut out the sunlight from our spirits.
I CANNOT CLOSE THIS CHAPTER
without imploring the reader to exterminate this characteristic of envy altogether. Because it is at first so little and so ridiculous, envy often escapes the hand of discipline. Yet the homely saying is a true one that "they which play with the devil's rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword," and the force of a nature given up to envy is truly a two-edged sword from the bottomless pit, cutting both the fiend who smites and the victim who smarts.
Mrs. Lofty keeps a carriage—
So do I.
She has dappled grays to draw it—
None have I.—Alma Calder.
nquestionably, the baby-carriage of the poet, with contentment, was a far richer establishment than the gilded barouche and the dappled grays of childless Mrs. Lofty. Riches are often childless; poverty is often contented. Happiness is a golden spell inwoven with most of our lives at certain times, whether we be rich or poor. The first surprise of the newly-rich comes in the non-discovery of additional happiness. Additional cares and duties come thickly enough. The greed of the envious, and the demands of the poor who are likewise needy in thoughtfulness for their more fortunate neighbors, fall upon the wealthy like a mist. There is no escaping it. As James Russell Lowell says of a Scotch fog—an umbrella will afford no protection. They must give all, or accept the hatred of those who believe it to be easier to give than to receive. "Contentment is natural wealth," says Socrates; "luxury is artificial poverty." Contentment is generally a sign of a high class of character. "If two angels were sent down," says John Newton, "one to conduct an empire and the other to sweep a street, they would feel no inclination to change employments."
HUMAN GREATNESS
is at best such a little thing that wise men do not lament its absence in their own persons. Our main pleasures are free to rich as well as poor. What sight is so grand as the sun? What pleasure is greater than to breathe? What fluid is more grateful for all purposes than water? What music is sweeter than the singing of birds, the ringing of free school bells and the hum of machinery? The extra pleasures which the rich man, if he be foolish, tries to buy, almost invariably
END IN HIS EARLY DEATH,
and in his hatred of the whole world. Those noble men of wealth who gain the plaudits of their fellows, have earned those plaudits just as poor men would earn them—by service to their fellow-creatures. Man is not constituted so that he can "take his ease" and be happy. The prisoner in solitary confinement is forced to take his ease, and we are told that he suffers terribly under the ordeal. Of course you have heard of
THE PRISONER IN THE DARK DUNGEON
who had three pins, and who gave himself employment by throwing them into the air and then beginning the long search which should finally secure them. Sometimes a pin would be hidden for years in a crevice. In this way the prisoner preserved his mind from utter decay, and was almost happy—nay, was really happy when his arduous labor would result in the discovery of all three of the objects of his pitiful quest. Instances like this should impress upon us the fact that the principal sum of our happiness is inalienable. We cannot, in health, possibly lose it. The hale pauper is far better off than the invalid Duke. We breathe and eat and see and hear with ease. All of those offices of the body are unquestionably delightful, as is proven by the relative view we get when we are ill and can neither breathe nor eat nor see nor hear without great suffering. "There is scarce any lot so low," says Sterne, "but there is something in it to satisfy the man whom it has befallen." The reason of this lies in this same fact that when the tree of happiness loses superfluous wealth, it but loses its foliage.
THE POOR MAN CARRIES INTO HIS COTTAGE
all the great and marvelous blessings of life. He leaves outside only a lot of artificialities, the most of which are so-called pleasures, but are really miseries. If we cannot be contented without these artificialities, we certainly would not be satisfied with an addition so unimportant. "A tub was large enough for Diogenes," says Colton; "but a world was too little for Alexander." Alexander valued the true blessings of life as nothing, and the power of life and death over others as everything. His disappointment and the contentment of Diogenes, who viewed things more correctly, are matters of tradition. "Contentment," says Fuller, "consisteth not in adding more fuel, but
IN TAKING AWAY SOME FIRE."
Therefore, if you are spending so much money that you need more income, take away some of the fire. If you reduce your expenses two dollars a week, you have added nearly eighteen hundred dollars to your account in fifteen years. If you wear your boots one month after you could well persuade yourself to have a new pair, your new ones will not wear out a month sooner for that reason!
GOOD FORTUNE OF OUR LITTLE EGOTISMS.
We are all, fortunately, greatly disposed to contentment with our lot. We do not seem to realize it, but the importance of the pleasures of life which cannot be bartered in, has its noticeable effect on the mind. Horace remarked this ages ago, and Dr. Johnson has thus translated the thoughts hinging upon it: "Howsoever every man may complain occasionally," says he, "of the hardships of his condition, he is seldom willing to change it for any other on the same level. Whether it be that he who follows an employment, chose it at first on account of its suitableness to his inclination; or that when accident, or the determination of others, have pleased him in a particular station, he, by endeavoring to reconcile himself to it, gets the custom of viewing it only on the fairest side; or whether every man thinks that class to which he belongs the most illustrious, merely
BECAUSE HE HAS HONORED IT WITH HIS NAME—
it is certain that, whatever be the reason, most men have a very strong and active prejudice, in favor of their own vocation, always working upon their minds and influencing their action." Let us be thankful for that laughable egotism which is born with us, and within us, and which, in this natural and unobtrusive affair of contentment, becomes a true anchor, holding us inside the peaceful haven.
Marble may rise from crystal waters spanned
By other marbles: founts may plash on stone,
And fashionably-branched trees may stand
As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how cold!
How cold!
e are made up of elements. These elements should be well balanced. The delicacy of equilibrium is what makes the perfect man, or, rather, the honorable man. Too much avarice makes a contemptibly mean man; not enough makes a foolish spendthrift, who is always appealing to his friends for help. Too much bravery in man makes a bully; not enough a coward. Too much speech in man makes a bore; not enough a "stick." Too much hope in man makes a speculator and a gambler; not enough, a hermit and a man-hater. So of ambition. It is a flame to be guarded—a willing slave, an unpitying master. In its full sway it is the very essence of self-conceit and selfishness,—two traits, a little of which goes a good way. You know that you do not put much blueing into a washtub full of water. Well, use ambition in the same sparing way. If you spill it in using it, you will have a difficult affair on your hands. It may be just possible, of course, that you have clothes to wash, so to speak, which require the whole box or bottle. If so, your chance of happiness is not great.
"HE WHO SURPASSES OR SUBDUES MANKIND,"
says Byron, "must look down on the hate of those below." "Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings, melts them," says Shakspeare. We all have upon us golden wings of happiness. Let us not soar near the sun. "Fling away ambition," mourns old Cardinal Wolsely in Henry VIII; "by that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?" "It often puts men upon doing the meanest offices," says Swift, "as climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping." It has been aptly called by Sir William Davenant,
"THE MIND'S IMMODESTY."
Watch this petty man. He is consumed by a desire to be a little higher than he now is. He is driver on a street car, in a city. Unconsciously, he is an excellent driver. He has not become so by the silent care which befits a real climber. No! he was born a horseman. But he was also born ambitious. If he were private secretary to the President, he would want to be President, simply because his attention would be more closely directed to the Chief Magistracy than elsewhere.
BEHOLD HIM INSTALLED AS CONDUCTOR.
He rings the bell incessantly for a milk-wagon to get out of the road. The passengers expostulate. One of them is drunk, therefore extra-expostulatory. Our conductor beholds the moment arrived when he must "bounce" the passenger. The passenger is landed free on track, with only the conductor's badge in his mind, which he reports to the office. The next day the conductor tells a passenger to get his feet off that seat, or he will put him off. In a dispute which follows, the conductor loses a chance to get across a swinging-bridge, and a passenger who has thus missed a train, gets angry and reports the conductor. The driver is quietly asked about our friend, and our friend is thrown out of his place like a shot out of a gun. He is too proud to drive again, and takes a trip into the country for his health. This homely drama is played in all the hotels where head-waiters are employed, in all the departments of business where head-clerks are needed; in all the great stores where floor-walkers "strut their brief hour,"—everywhere that gives an opportunity for little Envy to peep, from
THE RIDICULOUS AMBUSCADE
of some incompetent subordinate, out upon the goings and comings of unsuspecting Merit. "There is a native baseness," says Simms, "in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object." So, to me, there has always seemed a real baseness in these attempts of unfit people, who have only their self-conceit for training and their cheek for capital. Half our failures in business come from men attempting something they know nothing about. A printer will open a drug store, and a country dry goods merchant will start a daily paper in a city! "Alas!" says Young, "ambition makes my little less."
Once in a while there is born, in every State, a soul which is to be "like a star and dwell apart." It is to be gifted with qualities of an exalted character. But it is also to be lashed with the scourge of ambition. It is to stand, as William Penn said,
"THE TALLEST TREE,
therefore the most in the power of the blasts of fortune." How little should we desire the dizzy niche in which it seats itself. Our little heads would swim in the sickness of our unfamiliarity. We would fall. "Remarkable places," said Madame Necker, "are like the summits of rocks; eagles and reptiles only can get there." Napoleon, possibly, never had a true friend in his life. He certainly never deserved one. Each year saw him surrounded by new associates, whom he meant to sacrifice, if he could.
UPON THE BLOODY FIELD OF ASPERN AND ESSLING,
he offered up Marshal Lannes. He was forced to stand by that brave dying man and listen to his awful reproaches. So, again, in the terrible carnage of Spain at Eylau, at Borodino, Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Leipsic, Hanau, everywhere, he was compelled to hear the outspoken protests of the men who had held the ladder for him—to stamp his foot at the constant declarations of "Dukes," "Princes," and "Kings," that he was a monster whose thirst demanded only human blood. At last, the whole world cried out that it had had
"ENOUGH OF BONAPARTE!"
The expression became a war-cry, and the world escaped from the baleful sceptre under whose shadow it had too long suspired. "What millions died that Cæsar might be great!" cries Campbell. "None think the great unhappy but the great," says Young. They deserve their unhappiness. It is the mess of pottage to obtain which they have sold everything. Fame has always seemed to the philosopher like some mountain in a polar clime—cold, lonesome, inhospitable.
Tall mountains meet, and giddy greet
The clouds in their exalted homes;
What may they show, save ice and snow,
Unto the fleets that pass their domes?
Their crests are bold with solar gold:
Their charming cliffs enchant the eye;
Yet earth shows not more dreary spot
Than toilers in their heights descry.
There points a peak which mortals seek—
Fraught are its crags with human woes;
Shrill through its fasts shriek envy-blasts—
Forever drift hate's blinding snows.
Its towering height beams with a light—
The wondrous blaze of Glory's orb;
Still those who gaze feel most the rays,
While they who climb no warmth absorb.
Contentment creeps—Renown climbs steeps
Where consummations ne'er appease;
Below, how oft, when Care's aloft,
Unhappiness, distrusting, flees.
In ancient times the sacred plough employed
The kings and awful fathers of mankind.
work of this character—a book for the home—would be manifestly halt without some consideration of that grand subject, Agriculture,—the tilling of the continents of this wide earth, to whose fruitfulness the oceans apply their beneficent offices; to whose generosity the sun lends his quickening rays of brightness and beauty. "The awful fathers of mankind" to-day pay attention to the "sacred plough" as in ancient days, aye, thousands of times as much attention! The tribes which then wandered upon the globe have now increased until Nature must needs groan with the load of her gifts to sustain them, and the rulers must scan the sky, and send the telegraph out-riding the storms, to warn the husbandman that danger to his crops approaches—danger, which if not averted, were more deadly than the hatred of an enemy on a foreign strand.
The magnificent, conservative forces of our Republic live upon its farms. There is our safety in the hour of trial! Rome fell because
HER LOAFERS AND CITYITES
were the only voters. They had no homes to protect—they had only votes to sell. But here, with our mighty experiment in human government, we have an irresistible power, the elements of which are straight-thinking men, who want only the right to prevail, and who have wheat and corn to sell, but absolutely no votes! God be thanked for this! When the torch of Communism shall
BURN THE SENATE HOUSE
in the city, the swords which were yesterday plow-shares will surround the glaring pile, and steadfastly blot out of existence the conspiracy of the beer-saloon and the "dead-fall;" when the bayonet of the gaudy foreigner shall glisten on our coasts, the ranks of farmers will hurry, side by side with the metropolitans, to chase the adventurers back into the seas.
"Agriculture," says Zenophon, "for an honorable and high minded man, is the best of all occupations and arts by which men obtain the means of living." How true this is! One would think
"BUSINESS"
in the days of the Greek were carried on just as it is now—the concourse of a pack of men turned wolves, hungry for trade, and devouring each other in the absence of common sustenance. To succeed in business in a city in this epoch, and to be at the same time a high-minded and honorable man, is very rare—is usually the result of employing lieutenants to do the "business," and keeping the "dirty work" away from the knowledge of the principal. But when the farmer drives a bargain with
"THE GOOD GODDESS"
how clean is the transaction! There is no lying, no cheating, no treachery, no rivalry. How frank and open is the face of him who has concealed nothing! How hearty is his laugh—for has he not laughed with nature—with the twitter of the birds, with the low beating of the bells? Has he not faithful friends—friends of a life-time? When he has gone into debt has he not paid? Has he ever considered
FIFTY CENTS ON HIS NEIGHBOR'S DOLLAR
a full return, and has he walked into his neighbor's parlor (shabby for lack of the fifty per cent) and congratulated him on the return of the holidays? A spade is a spade with him. A thief is a thief. He does not like thieves. He says so. Neither does his city cousin like thieves. His city cousin is very careful not to say so. He does not like monopolies, he says so. Neither does his city cousin like monopolies. His city cousin would "turn off" any clerk who said so very loudly, let alone saying it himself. He does not like corruption and hypocrisy. On this point his city cousin has
POSITIVELY NO OPINION,
as "it really would ruin his business." Thus we see the farmer—free, ingenuous, independent. Thus we see the city merchant—smooth, prudent, sycophantic. Thank God for Agriculture! And now
CANNOT WE INSPIRE YOUNG MEN
with a little truer idea of life? Cannot we teach them that money in itself is not what they want above all things? How little wealth the really wise find necessary! On the farm is health, independence, high standing—all within the reach of any young man. He certainly sacrifices one or two of these objects when he enters a city. He can get money but he will lose his health. If he get true independence he will be
ONE OUT OF TEN THOUSAND,
all the rest of whom are slaves. With the new combinations forming in the business of the world, new experiences are constant. The man employing three hundred fortunate workers to-day, may be himself searching for work next year. The man getting $5,000 a year to-day may next week be trying to find labor at a dollar a day, and may absolutely fail. The financial panic has no such thing in store for the farmer. He will live on, just as his brook runs on, and when the sleek magnates in the hotel-parlor decree that he must lose his farm, as they need it for a "colony," he will rise up and smite them, and thereafter the sleek magnate will be an affair of the past. Young man, if you have not an absolute genius for something else, stay on the farm. Read books which will make you desire to be a pure man, just for the noble name it will give you. If you can get as great a desire to be a good man as you have to be a purse-proud man, you will be on the right track; for you will see that honesty is easier in the perfumed fields than it is in the polluted air of a city business-house. Read over the biographies, and see how certainly all our great men got their greatness in the open air of the country. Take a big city, for instance. Has it not surprised you to see how few great men New York or Chicago have furnished to the nation? The city levels men. It drags them down. Their individualities are put into a dredge-box, and the flour of mediocrity is scattered on all alike.
"IN A MORAL POINT OF VIEW,"
says Lord John Russell, "the life of the agriculturist is the most pure and holy of any class of men; pure because it is the most healthful, and vice can hardly find time to contaminate it; and holy because it brings the Deity perpetually before his view, giving him thereby the most exalted notions of supreme power, and the most fascinating and endearing view of moral benignity."
Farmers, you take pains to get two teams, so that the boys can take hold at the ploughing and in the corn. See to it that you also get the boys a light wagon, so that they can go to a picnic or a bee without discommoding you.
START YOUR BOYS OUT IN THIS WAY,
and they will not abuse their opportunities. Instead of going six miles on Sunday to a lake or river, they will "turn out" of their own accord and go to church with their heads up, self-reliant, perhaps just a little bit proud. Why? Because when they sneak off to a river, it is because they have nothing with which they are decently pleased for all their hard toil. Make your home a pleasant place for your sons, even if it be at great hazards. It will all come out right. Give the children some comforts before you take big chances on a short-horn herd. Rig up a bath-room, a swing, a sort of gymnasium. Buy games of recreation, such as your taste approves. Buy above all things good books and plenty of them. Remember some book in your own old childhood-home! What a gigantic influence that book has exercised on your whole life! It does not seem to you that your sons will pay so much attention to the books in your house, but they will. Some one book will furnish a key to a life—will sway its reader while young, while old, until he goes over the bounds of its dominion into the next life. You and Society both desire your young people to
STAY OUT OF THE CITIES.
The safety of our Great Republic entirely depends upon the existence of a conservative class of independent individuals, unable to become crazed, through laziness, over some miserable idea unconnected with the business of living. When any great wrong is to be righted by absolute force it is necessary that the body exercising that force should be amenable to a sense of practical justice. If it shall be necessary to take the railroads away from their owners, or to close the boards of trade, or to go the other way and farm out the post-office and machinery of the government to get rid of the crime of office-hunting,—why then, the action of independent men is necessary—the doings of wage-workers are not satisfactory, and are almost always fatal to the order of things which was to be renovated. If this Republic have any vitality not enjoyed formerly by the democracies now buried in the yellow pages of history, it is the tremendous scope of her quarter-section farms. Not many years ago one of the largest business houses in Chicago put up a placard, just before election, stating that the proprietor considered his interests justly the interests of his clerks, and it was decidedly to his interests to have the Honorable Barnacle Bigbug re-elected. All employes were requested to note well. You see the crime of this dry-goods "prince" (how we all run to idiotic titles!) lay in subordinating the good of the State to the good of his particular millions. He totally forgot that the good of each clerk was as much to be looked after by the Government as the good of his own ambitious flesh and blood. He drowned every principle of democracy in the monarchical desire to "get it all and then give some away." The desire to give away is where the theory gives away. Now this can never happen on the farm.
The plutocrats must always tremble before the man with hay-seed in his hair. They cannot reach him. They cannot tempt or debauch him. Teach this to your sons. Teach it with horses, buggies, churches, picnics, schools, books, rest, and travel. Take the boys to the rank-smelling cities; show them the factories, the store-gangs, and the street gangs. Then they will go home with joy in their hearts, and when Old Brindle moos and Old Sorrel whinnies in recognition at their gate you may be sure that the greedy city will never swallow up your sturdy sons, the pride of your declining years. I have been somewhat earnest in this because my life on a farm was harder than circumstances make imperative nowadays. Clearing is heavy work. The culture of an Indiana opening among stumps that make a field look like a drag turned wrong-side-up leaves little chance for gymnasium or bath-room. But all that is gone by. I have been earnest, again, because
THE FOREIGNERS
are all getting our farms, while our own folk seem to think that a precarious existence as a rich man's slave in the city, is a more sensible thing than to take advantage of opportunities for which the people of other worlds tear out their heart-strings, leave native climate, language, habits, government, everything, and hurry hitherward. For shame upon ourselves!
My lord rides through his palace gate;
My lady sweeps along in state;
The sage thinks long on many a thing
And the maiden muses on marrying;
The minstrel harpeth merrily,
The sailor plows the foaming sea,
The huntsman kills the good red deer,
And the soldier wars without a fear;
Nevertheless, whate'er befall,
The farmer he must feed them all.
O thou invisible spirit of wine; if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee—devil.—Shakspeare.
ociety has much to attend to. The whole wonderful mechanism by which those citizens who now do measurably right, can have blessings far beyond the totals of luxuries enjoyed by Kings a few centuries ago—this whole mechanism, I think, has been perfected by one law, the self-interest of the class wielding the force necessary to compel the change desired. To-day, among the evils which we suffer,—not as results of the new civilization, but as vestiges of the old barbarism,—is the abuse of stimulants. The effects of this abuse are, perhaps, next to atrocious crime, the most discouraging which menace the march of progress, and
EVEN THE ANNALS OF ATROCIOUS CRIME
so closely link the curse of strong drink with deeds of violence as to totally extinguish the mark of difference in the minds of many good men. Society as to-day organized, commits the keeping of a woman to the hands of a man, who in turn, is legally free to condemn her to the horrors of companionship with a man (that man being himself) bereft periodically or continuously of his moral motives of conduct. He is entitled by law to return to his wretched home with murder in his heart, and to vent upon a woman from whom he fears no defense, the anger which
IT WOULD BE UNSAFE TO MANIFEST
toward the person who may have originally inspired the passion. The point at which this cruelty becomes practically illegal is that limit which the wife puts to her own endurance, which in turn, is generally gauged not by her own powers, but by the personal safety of her children. So long as her own life seems to be alone in jeopardy, she waits to be killed—as in the notable case at Minneapolis, Minn.,—and Society permits itself to be called in simply to attend the funeral of the murdered woman, who, however, is often buried as a victim of some hypothetical disease, invented to take the blame off the prevailing order of things. Now while this is
ENTIRELY HORRIBLE IN THE ABSTRACT,
the abstract is notoriously a false way of getting the general drift of things. The abstract philosopher, the moment he is charged with the practical conduct of an affair, as a general rule, fails ignominiously, even in his own opinion. With regard to drunkenness, for instance, let us ask ourselves: "Is drunkenness less prevalent now than in olden times?" Yes. "Is the condition of the woman better, in addition to the improved habits of the man?" Yes. Therefore, it is evident Society,
THE GRAND MACHINE
(let us never say "Society" when we mean spike-tailed coats), has an eye on the scourge of Rum, and will eventually stamp it out. "But why," asks the Impracticable, "does not Society stamp it out at once?" "Why does not the sun shine twenty-four hours in America on the Fourth of July?" Simply because America is not the whole world. Neither is the subject of the murder of wives and the degradation of offspring the whole affair with which Society deals.
THE FIRST GREAT DUTY OF SOCIETY
is to feed and clothe her individuals. This burden is just beginning to sit on her shoulders without galling weight. The next effort is to protect the more industrious against the forays of the wicked and the mistakes of the unwise. This is the problem with which the past century has had most to deal. It is an immeasurably greater question than is that of drunkenness, and it is immeasurably far from solution. For instance, a foolish statesman can to-day plunge fifty millions of people into
WAR
—a thing represented among words by three letters, but which among events entirely fails to find complete expression, from the lack of any other misfortune worthy of comparison. An angry statesman, acting like a boy, may stop, not a game of marbles, but ten thousand grain-laden ships. But, notwithstanding, as an attendant in the betterment of her condition, Society is advancing rightly toward the rum-bottle. She does not hearken always to the voice of
THE PROFESSIONAL TEMPERANCE "WORKER"
because a betterment in Society is naturally and rightly the result of self-interest. The man who spends his time altogether in the bettering of others does not establish reforms on the surest basis. Society usually has to do his work after him, with considerable delay and additional cost. He is all right in the abstract, but he delays matters. What I would illustrate is this: The place for the reformer to deal with drink on a fair battle field is in the city. The place where the professional reformer finds it profitable to go is in the country, where the youth wear
THE BADGE OF TEMPERANCE
in their cheeks—not in the button-hole of their coats. In the country, surrounded by circles of persons as free from stimulants or the need of them as is their snow from the smut of soft-coal, they swear eternal "conversion" to the views of a man—usually a former victim of intoxication,—often a subsequent wallower in his same old gutters. Society sometimes looks upon this Peter the Hermit with little pleasure. The excitements, the passions and the commotions which he sometimes foments are pitiable from the very fact that
NO RUM CAN BE BLAMED
as having fired the unhappy brains that rush into the vortex of public confusion, like ships into the whirlpool. All the practical laws would be passed (and at a date earlier than that at which the public finally accept them in reality) without the sacrifices of the man who proudly calls himself a "horrible example" of the power of strong drink. How does Society do it? I am sure I do not know. All I know is this:
ON THE REAL BATTLE-GROUND,
in the city, where stimulant is often needed—whisky, iron, quinine, coffee, tobacco, opium, or tea—the men who waste the most nerve-tissue are more rigidly required to abstain from the abuse of stimulants than was the case fifteen years ago. To put it plainer, fifteen years ago, a smart man would be employed on a newspaper to "write" or "report". If he were brilliant, he was entitled almost by custom to "go on the war-path" once a week—that is, to be drunk that often, and to be totally unable or unwilling to do the current day's work.
NOW-A-DAYS,
if a man in the same position were to get drunk once a year he would be superseded. No matter how brilliant he may be, the drunkard at once sinks to the bottom. The "fat jobs" are filled by men as steady as clock-work. How has Society done this wonderful thing? Hard to tell. She has constantly tempted the steady man. In fact, she inclines to treat him a shade the better if he can drink some stimulant each day without unbalancing himself—some alcohol, some coffee or some tea—but
WOE TO HIM
if he transgress her limits. In the country it is asked "Does he drink?" In the city it is asked "Does he get drunk?" The two methods are essentially the results of two conditions. The mistake of the one locality is to apply its own preliminary to the other. Now, again, to this frightful question of woman-torture: Society knows all about woman. It knows that the wife must be the arbiter of her own sufferings. Her brother, being less wise than Society, separates the wife from
THE OCCASIONAL BRUTE
who married her, takes her ills and her children to his house, kicks the brute on the street, and, for all his pains, is eventually either assassinated by the wretch or anathematized by the wife. Having made matters much worse (by unanimous opinion), he abandons his reform, and then, with his valuable experience, joins Society and becomes a wave in the tide of events, instead of a presumptuous pebble rolling in small opposition on the beach of time. How will Society approach the wife-beater? Nobody knows. Probably she will exterminate the breed. The woman, like the newspaper proprietor, will at last awake. The man who gets drunk will not gain her affections—above all, he will not keep them. The "old soak" will be wifeless. Monsters will cease to propagate their species. When once the strong hand of Bread-and-Butter gets hold of Whisky, then whisky will be as useful for good as it now is powerful in evil. Society however deals with the affections cautiously, and wisely, because her experience is inconceivably great.
TRY PLAYING ON HEARTSTRINGS YOURSELF
to hear the music you make! Let us then pray for the day when the "drop too much" with the bottle will be as nefarious as a cut too much with the razor or a blaze too much with the torch.
Virtue maketh men on the earth famous, in their graves illustrious, in the heavens immortal.—Chilo.
erhaps there is no man so well known and yet so little thought about in any one community as he who, in the universal opinion, bears a good name. Upon his brow he wears the modern laurel, the highest emblem of his worth, yet the simplest tribute of his fellow citizens.
There are certain exigencies in the histories of all groups of people when the ordinary machinery of life will not operate. The citizens require the utmost letter of the bond; they look with suspicion on all who have usually given satisfaction by their services. A great man is needed. It is then that the people, with one voice, cry out for succor from him of of whom, in days of greater prosperity, they had no imploring need; and it is then astonishing to what a degree the voice of the people at once becomes the voice of God.
A bank which, owing to its high-sounding title, had attracted the savings of the people, fell into the hands of a clique of scoundrels and was compelled to suddenly suspend, the President flying to a distant land to escape the penalties of his crimes. When thirteen thousand depositors were thus confronted with total or partial ruin, there was but one man in a great city whom they would trust to enter the desecrated temple of their hopes and set to rights the treasure yet unstolen. This man came
LIKE CINCINNATUS FROM HIS FARM—
like a father to his children—and from the hearts of plundered widows and orphans there breathed relief in every sigh. In peaceful times this great man was seldom heard of; rogues could be elected over him to places of usual trust; but, in a crisis, his whole biography seemed embossed upon the people's hearts, rising forth like muscles in an agony.
Again a city—itself an exhalation, rising like Milton's hall of Pandemonium—perished in a night. Where, in one week, there had been one hundred "leading candidates" for Mayor, in the next week there was none so rash as to offer himself. A stricken city—the pity of a Christlike world—cast its eyes upon one citizen; and he, as an act of supreme duty, took the perilous post of helmsman through a storm that unsettled the deeps of credit and prosperity all over the earth.
In each of these illustrations party politics played no part. Tall masts were needed for the great ships, and these two men, like red wood patriarchs, touched hard against the zenith of the people's vision. Admirable tributes! Magnificent rewards of life-times of virtue and high character!
THE SILENT GROWTH OF REPUTATION.
How does a man become so great that malice and envy and utter hatred cannot by their constant stings infect his blood? How can a man silently amass a capital of virtuous renown which, when the clear vision of adversity is given to the people, will show with unerring certainty his assets and liabilities of character? It is hard to say. Accidents and circumstances so surround us all that we are the clay, baked either in fair moulds or foul. When the mould is made we have the least judgment; yet when the clay is baked we must abide.
Josh Billings has said that, "after the age of forty, a man cannot form new habits; the best he can do is to learn to steer the old ones." Yoke, therefore, the ox you call Firmness with the one you call Contentment. When you come to drive them down the road the neighbors may laugh at the hawing and jeeing, and jee-hawing, but keep on until you break your oxen in. No man ever got so he could handle that team but had
A HIGH STANDING ON THE ROAD OF LIFE.
Never discuss other folks' affairs except with the common-sense view of doing the folks good. Never start out to do a thing which is impossible of execution. Never start back after you have started out. Never pay the slightest attention to the criticism of persons who are trying to do what you are trying to do. When he who has ever done you a kindness gets angry and addresses you angrily, ponder on every word he says. Pearls then drop from his mouth. Live in no great regard of the passing fashion; it may be a very foolish one, and people who are foolish have a surprising power of perception in pointing to folly in others. Owe no man other than your good office. Have no pride above your fellow mortal; he is essentially like you.
THE BAG OF THINGS
in which ye are alike (if each thing were a grain of wheat) would freight a ship; the things in which you are better than he could be put into your vest-pocket. Gold does not tarnish, and good names do not soil easily, though herein custom has something to do with the affair. "The soul's calm sunshine" however, should spread abroad. It often reflects hidden beauty in other faces. "Be just, and fear not." You may stand apparently without honor when you have it most. If you are the man of good name in your community, you are on the high hill where your people will gather in time of need, as did the ancients to the rocky acropolis.
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And "Let us worship God," he says, with solemn air.—Burns.
he good and holy custom of family prayers is, I fear, dropping into disuse. Our lives are so full of business that a season of God's service in the morning and in the evening is almost thought to be an excuse of sloth. But what a sad effect do we see on our youth! They have quick eyes for cant and hypocrisy. They follow us to church on Sunday less and less willingly, until finally there is rebellion in their hearts and irreligion in their souls. Family worship is a fount of piety pure enough for even the young, who are pure themselves. Into its depths they look and see only a chastity of spirit reflected. The machinery and the ambition that adulterate the true faith at the church have not had their birth at the fireside of a good man. At that fireside the child grows up religious, because he loves religion. It is kind and good to him. His shrine is at home. And where can we ever build
SO HOLY AN ALTAR
as at that sweet spot where life has come in upon us, and love been wrapped around us! Burns sees the humble cotter finish his family service in the presence of his little ones, and then, to show a further duteous regard for the souls intrusted to his care, kneel again with the wife:
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,
That he who stills the raven's clamorous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flowery pride.
Would in the way his wisdom sees the best,
For them and for their little ones provide;
But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.
"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs," sings the sweet poet, and this very poem has touched a chord in the hearts of all humanity, in every clime, and nearly every tongue, that has almost doubled that Scotia's fame. "A house without family worship," says Mason, "has neither foundation nor covering." "Measure not men by Sundays," says Fuller, "without regarding what they do all the week after." "Educate men without religion," said the Duke of Wellington, "and you make them but clever devils."
THE IRON DUKE
was forced to fight one of the cleverest of this kind, and his victory was earned so hardly that he remembered it. "The dullest observer must be sensible," says Washington Irving, "of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the key-note to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony." "It is for the sake of man, not of God," says Blair, "that worship and prayers are required; not that God may be rendered more glorious, but that men may be made better—that he may acquire those pious and virtuous dispositions in which his highest improvement consists." How can religion bear fruit so well as by daily instruction from God? How can the family bear its burdens more easily than with God's help?
HOW CAN THE BROOD BE GATHERED TOGETHER
at night so surely as when there is an engagement with the Creator at the hearth where life began? In all views, from all sides, this holy custom is seen to be founded in divine wisdom—and divine wisdom includes human wisdom "as the sea her waves."
I have prefaced this subject of worship with the matter of family services, on account of its vital importance. Without the reading of the Bible and the praise of God at home, worship appears to the young like the grinding of the corn, the shoeing of the horses, or the aid of the physician—a matter to be paid for rather than to be done by one's self.
SOME OF THE HAPPIEST AND BEST FAMILIES,
who have turned out into the world the strongest, bravest men, have not limited their worship to stated hours, even, but upon occasions of unusual peril or unusual gladness have poured out to God their prayers or their gratitude. Charnock, in his "Attributes," says: "As to private worship, let us lay hold of the most melting opportunities and frames. When we find our hearts in a more than ordinary spiritual frame, let us look upon it as a call from God to attend Him; such impressions and notions are God's voice, inviting us into communion with Him in some particular act of worship, and promising us some success in it. When the Psalmist had a secret notion
'TO SEEK GOD'S FACE'
and complied with it, the issue is the encouragement of his heart, which breaks out into an exhortation to others to be of good courage, and wait on the Lord: 'Wait on the Lord and be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.' One blow will do more on the iron when it is hot, than a hundred when it is cold; melted metals may be stamped with any impression; but once hardened, will, with difficulty, be brought into the figure we intend."
THE WISEST AND THE BEST.
We have in religion the experience of the wisest and the best minds before us. Their guarantee in all else is of the very highest human standing and degree. We must, therefore, in reason, profit by their knowledge. In this, also, we are aided by our own development. Behold the truth of this from the mouth of Colton: "Philosophy is a bully that talks very loud when the danger is at a distance, but the moment she is hard pressed by the enemy she is not to be found at her post, but leaves the brunt of the battle to be borne by her humbler but steadier comrade Religion, whom, on most other occasions, she effects to despise." There died in Paris, not long ago, a man named Emile Littre, as well known in France for his infidelity as is Colonel Ingersoll in this country. Over there
THEY CALL ATHEISM POSITIVISM,
which is a good name. It signifies that a man is positive he knows more about the future state than God! Upon his death-bed this Monsieur Littre,—although he had been the means of sending thousands of other souls before their Maker, rebellious and unredeemed—this same Monsieur Littre dared not to meet God with his Positivism on his soul, and embraced the offices of the Church with great relief. Men, before entering upon a course which flings away the only hope a man has,
SHOULD LOOK WELL TO IT
that they know what they are doing. I wandered in the terror-stricken streets of burned Chicago. The multitudes—nearly two hundred thousand—were eating in gratitude; the mothers with babes were under shelter. Was the unburned temple of the atheist open? Oh, no! He had none. Who was cutting the meats and breaking the bread? The wives and daughters of the parishes which had been spared from the hot flames. It was a solemn lesson. I said: "I will not, Colonel Ingersoll, throw away the hope I have." By their works shall ye know them! 'Tis as true upon the field of blood as in the track of fire, but we must pass on. "When I was young," said
THE GREAT NEWTON,
the ornament of his race, "I was sure of many things; there are only two things of which I am sure now: one is that I am a miserable sinner; and the other, that Jesus Christ is an all-sufficient savior." The closing pages of Dr. Johnson's works are filled with simple little prayers to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. "I have lived long enough to know what I did not at one time believe—that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion." This is the language of La Place, the author of "La Mecanique Celeste," one of the greatest books of the world. He spoke from real experience. He had seen religion "abolished by law." He had seen the "worship of Reason" established with the decapitation of seven thousand innocent citizens of France. He had heard one of the apostles of Reason arise in the Constituent Assembly and demand two hundred and ninety thousand corpses instead of seven thousand. Then this man who had grasped the machinery of the heavens, who had shown the absolute accuracy of Newton's great discovery, wrote, in the same spirit of absolute knowledge: "I have lived long enough to know what I did not once believe." Magnificent testimony! Almost as valuable as the teachings of our own hearts! The same statement comes from
THE ROCK OF ST. HELENA.
Victor Hugo, with a mind like that of Shakspeare, says: "I believe in the sublimity of prayer." "If we traverse the world," says Plutarch, "it is possible to find cities without walls, without letters, without Kings, without wealth, without coin, without schools, without theatres; but a city without a temple, or that practiceth not worship, prayers, and the like, no one ever saw." "Wonderful!" cries Montesquieu, "that the Christian religion, which seems to have no other object than the felicity of another life, should also constitute the happiness of this!"
SAYS GEORGE WASHINGTON:
"Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion." "Religion is a necessary, an indispensable element in any great human character," says Daniel Webster. "Nothing," says Gladstone, "can be hostile to religion which is agreeable to justice." "It is the property of the religious spirit," admits Emerson, "to be the most refining of all influences. The writers against religion," says Edmund Burke, "whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own." "I fear God," says Saadi, "and next to God, I chiefly fear him who fears him not." "Space is the statue of God," cries Joubert. "Truth is his body and light his shadow," says Plato.
There is almost a revelation of God in the cries upward to Him, of some of his human souls. Says Wordsworth:
Thou who didst wrap the cloud
Of infancy around us, that Thyself,
Therein with our simplicity awhile
Mightst hold on earth communion undisturbed;
Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,
Or from its deathlike void, with punctual care,
And touch as gentle as the morning light,
Restor'st us daily—
Thou, Thou alone.
Art everlasting!
The poet Young, driven by sorrow to God's foot-stool, addresses his Creator in the same nobility of language:
Thou, who didst put to flight
Primeval silence, when the morning stars,
Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball;
O Thou! whose word from solid darkness struck
That spark the sun, strike wisdom from my soul;
My soul which flies to Thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.
"Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Therefore, accept this boon. Take your own child by the hand, and pray, and pray:
The way is long, my Father! and my soul
Longs for the rest and quiet of the goal;
While yet I journey through this weary land,
Keep me from wandering, Father, take my hand.
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings, athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious Sun in heaven,
Cries out: "Where is it?"—Coleridge.
he laugh of the foolish infidel and the sneer of the solemn atheist are abroad in the land. The awful draught they hold to the lips of humanity is well honeyed with some of the adjuncts of religion itself, else the perilous cup would be rejected. Let us see how the atheist secures his victim, for he is never content to enjoy alone the extravagances of his folly. I have noticed that when a Democratic editor receives dispatches containing news of a Republican victory, he is frequently expert enough in the guile pertaining to his profession to put a displayed heading on those same dispatches which clearly saves the day for the Democrats—or vice versa. And I have also noticed that it takes true mental pluck to rightly scan, first, that rooster of roosters (invented during the last few years), then the ten lines of Democratic Io Paians which follow, and lastly, the small type containing the real facts.
MAN IS SO MUCH LIKE A FISH
that certain bait is sure to catch him. The morning after the election the most astute Republican or Democrat in the country trembles before the terrors of a ten-line Democratic or Republican displayed heading, as the case may be. Now the crafty atheist has a way of laying down fallacies which often terrifies one into involuntarily believing that those fallacies are facts, until one stops to think that the atheist is but a man, after all, and that there is an appeal from his findings. It is, therefore, in the defense of humanity that I advance against him,
HOPING TO HIT HIM BECAUSE HE IS SO BIG,
and to escape his blows because I am so small. "What though the day be lost, all is not lost!" Though man have glaring faults, he is still a problem far beyond the fiat of any atheist. He still has a destiny. The atheist lays down dogma after dogma. In this changing world, where even the little balance-wheel of a watch must be "compensated," it is clearly as impossible for any atheist to lay down an undeviating dogma as it was for the Cretan to truly say that all Cretans were liars! "Broadly, an unselfish deed is impossible. There never was a human thought that reached beyond the human body." Let us capture those two atheistic dogmas and take off their displayed headings.
AWAY BACK ON THE PLAINS OF CHALDÆA,
in the youth of the world, there lived men who watched their flocks by day and the hosts of heaven by night. Their study of the heavens lifted them out of themselves, in my belief, and their observations of celestial phenomena led them to the discovery of the fact that eclipses of the great heavenly lights happened in a regular rotation of eighteen years and ten days. This discovery has been very useful in purging the idolatry from eclipses—as, had it not been for the Chaldæans, perhaps the mother of the atheist might have offered him as an oblation in
THE FIRST TOTAL ECLIPSE
after his birth! Again, Proctor and Airy have been for ten years mapping stars for the use of humanity 25,868 years after the map is done—that is, that period will furnish the first opportunity for the utilization of a truly laborious task. There is no glory in it. The difference between glory and hard work in astronomy is just the difference between Ptolemy and Hipparchus. The one made a great noise in the world and got up an atheistic solar system which put science back a thousand years, while the other stayed on his island and mapped stars to the best of his ability, rendering possible some of
THE GODLIKE DEDUCTIONS
of Kepler, Halley, and Newton. The affairs of this world are managed in the light of history. It is technically called precedent. There is yet no history of astronomy. In the desired actual placing of the present positions of the stars there would be a record which, 25,868 years hence, would enable the observer of those times to accurately measure movements of the earth now beyond mortal ken for lack of history. By the character of those movements, the force, speed, heat, and
OTHER QUALITIES OF GRAVITATION
might possibly be determined. Now I cannot connect the idea of selfishness with this view of the aspirations of humanity. Proctor and Airy absolutely know that they will be forgotten so far out in on-coming time, but still they drudge away, in the belief that man can only acquire knowledge of God's works as the coral reef attains continental proportions—that is, by the infinitesimal contributions of countless unselfish individualities. They are desirous that man should some day know the truth. Is there any unselfishness in the aspiration?
THE ATHEIST
says: "First and last of all, we have no idea of anything beyond, above, or superior to these curious bodies of ours. The highest flight of genius in art, religion, or invention has never reached beyond the body of man." These statements are false. They should not be accepted by anybody as true, for they tend to a lower grade of existence. They lead the pardoned convict back to his hatching-house of crime. Philosophy of this kind forgets the "still small voice."
THE NOBLE "IT BEHOOVETH ME!"
rings in every intelligent mind. "I have not done that which I ought to have done; I therefore am disturbed and in unrest." Where does this thought come from? Why do I sit in judgment on myself? The atheist says it is selfishness. A peculiar selfishness is that voice of duty which cries to those whom we rightly call good to go forth to the bedside of the distressed, is it not? At the corner of Lake and Paulina streets, in Chicago, a man, his wife, and his child were nearly burned to death. The child died, and perhaps they all died. They were taken to the hospital. The next day a thrifty landlord tumbled their goods down-stairs to the sidewalk.
WHAT WAS IT IN MY SOUL
which, when I saw the young barbarians all at play tearing and destroying those meagre comforts, cried out so sharply: "O, ignoble! you do not lift your finger to succor this poor man! Have shame upon you!" Why is it that that voice still sounds in my ears? Surely it is not selfishness. Listen to a short colloquy:
Immanuel Kant—Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, nor flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law to the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel; whence thy original?
The Atheist—I am glad to inform you that selfishness is the original you seek!
FURTHER FALLACIES.
In the interest of an advancing Christian humanity, I call attention to still further fallacies as I hear them in the mouth of atheism: "While we cannot quite hold that the idea expressed by the modern word 'selfishness' is new to mankind, we can safely say that it is only recently that selfishness came to be held a very sin. In the day of lance, and fort, and mailed right hand, the Knight took what he could, and held what he could, and there were no mealy-mouthed words about the rights of others, and a broad Christian charity, either. To-day, all of society has the precise motive of the old Robber-Barons."
LET US LOOK DOWN BROADWAY
some Saturday forenoon. Myriads of vehicles confuse the common mind with their din and their movement. A horse comes along, walking on a hoof that is no longer a hoof. What stops every team within two blocks for twenty minutes? Why, an officer has rushed into that torrent of traffic, has grasped that poor beast by the bridle, and has sent a bullet on a mission of mercy through its brain. How is it that the frightful objurgations of the high-charioted host fall so lightly on that officer? Why does he not get killed himself? Because he is in the second largest aggregation of human beings in the world, where the voice of religion is strongest, and where that voice cries in unmistakable tones,
"WELL DONE!"
It could not be done in Leadville! It could not be done even in Chicago! Not enough religious education; not enough development; not enough of the voice of duty! Let not the atheist say that there is a child in the back alley dying. So there is, but society will get there in time. Let not the atheist criticise society; it is too big an affair. Inside of a thousand years it will be a necessity of society as well as it now is of religion, to be kind to humanity as well as to the brute creation. Society will then attend to it. When a victim fell before Achilles or Diomedes, that victim begged for mercy. The spear then went through his bowels. The times demanded it. They knew no mercy. There is no mercy in the Iliad. The Barons, also, were a crowd of thugs. To-day, in New York, or London, or Paris, they would each get twenty years on general principles. We have no sluggers who are not their superiors. The atheist should know it, and does. The world moves.
THERE MUST BE THOUGHTS
which reach beyond the human body. I remember well a day of serious mental depression which I once suffered. But out of my sadness came peace. Points in our memory lose their coloring rapidly, of course, yet the feelings of that day and night still cause a thrill of pleasure in my mind. I had been for days convinced that there were no real joys in life. As my peace came, I began laboriously to pick out some chords on a piano from the opera of "Lucretia Borgia"—the finale of the second act. My labor was rewarded by the most pleasing sounds I had ever made with my own fingers, and there was a general ebullition of pleasure and expectation of future harmonies through my whole body for many hours afterward. That night I went to hear a great scientist lecture on astronomy.
THE SUBLIMITY OF HIS SUBJECT,
the idea of a universe of stars as yet unbounded, the higher idea of an infinitude of such universes, each but a handful of mist in the greatest telescope, raised me to a point of feeling which made life an ineffable delight. I went to my bed, and thanked a Creator out of a boundless thankfulness. I have thought that the twenty-third Psalm (beginning, "The Lord is my shepherd)" is a hymn of thanksgiving inspired with the same high quality of satisfaction. Surely,
MAN IS NOT THE VICIOUS LUMP OF CLAY
which the atheist would have him when he is able to command that picture of Faith which Wordsworth wrote:
I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell;
To which in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy,—for murmurings from within
Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
Even such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things.
No! No! To found the problem or the actions of man on any one agent, and to cut him off from God, is peurile! The reason of man necessitated the discovery of gravitation, and it is to-day the best-established physical fact before our view. The reason of man also demands a Creator, to endow us with motives above our own development, and that reason, in the soul of every man, atheist and Christian alike, must and will, secretly or openly, have divine satisfaction.
The atheist, in these days, is the champion and the leader of a scrubby lot of social and religious ideas. He should not "march them through Coventry that's flat."
Those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed
For our advantage on the bitter cross.—Shakspeare.
our little child, on Christmas day, may give you a beautiful copy of the history of "those holy fields." But a few hundred years ago, it might have cost a throne. To-day we may have either Testament printed in our daily newspaper and put upon our table before breakfast. So free is the word of God that only the mere wish to have it is necessary to secure at once the greatest of spiritual boons and the most perfect piece of writing in our language, or in any other tongue. The beauties of the Bible have charmed the critical of all ages. The young have departed from its simplicity of speech only to return in riper years for rapt tuition. The wise have lingered over its perfect sentences, striving to catch the art which was showered upon those unassuming translators who gave its pages to the English-speaking world. One of the brightest wits of his time was Sidney Smith. His love of the Bible, not only as his guide and his strength, but as the greatest of all literary works, was passionate. He once impressed a circle of friends very deeply with this noble veneration: "What," said he, "is so beautiful as
THE STYLE OF THE BIBLE?
what poetry in its language and ideas!" and taking it down from the book-case he read, with his clear, manly voice, and in his most affecting manner, several of his favorite passages; among others: "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of an old man;" and part of that most beautiful of Psalms, the 139th: "O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me; yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike unto thee." And thus he would charm his hearers, visiting their ears, perhaps, with the first true knowledge of Biblical beauty which had ever sounded upon them. Listen to
THE MERITED EULOGY
of a Roman Catholic, in the Dublin Review, of June, 1853: "Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvelous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is worshiped with a positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose gross fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it The potent traditions of childhood are
STEREOTYPED IN ITS PHRASES.
The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath the words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. It has been to him all along as the silent, but oh! how intelligible voice of his guardian angel; and in the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."
WHAT A PANEGYRIC
from an avowed opponent of this translation! And to whom are we principally indebted for this lovely poem of God? To William Tyndale. Says Froude, the historian: "The peculiar genius, if such a word may be permitted, which breathes through the Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars—all are here, and bear the impress of one man, and that man William Tyndale."
AND WHO WAS WILLIAM TYNDALE?
He was a gentle clergyman of great piety and learning. He was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1477. He endured great persecution and was forced to quit England. He visited Luther in Germany. He printed his New Testament at Antwerp. Its beauties were at once recognized in England, although to read it was illegal and punishable with death. Cardinal Wolsely did his best to entice the translator to England, to destroy him. An assistant in the work, named John Frith, was lured back and burned to death. Finally Henry the Eighth of England procured Tyndale's arrest at Antwerp. He was given a "trial," at Vilvoorden, near Antwerp, and pronounced guilty. In September, 1536,
THEY STRANGLED THIS INSPIRED SERVANT
of God, and then burned his body. At the stake he cried: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" Upon Tyndale's version of the Bible the King James translation is solidly based. "It is astonishing," says Dr. Geddes, a profound scholar, "how little obsolete the language of it is, even at this day; and, in point of perspicuity and noble simplicity, propriety of idiom, and purity of style, no English version has yet surpassed it." Of course our language has changed greatly in 400 years. Yet
THE LORD'S PRAYER
does not contain, in Tyndale's exact language, one unrecognizable word. It ran as follows: "Oure Father which arte in heven, halowed be thy name. Let thy kingdom come. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth, as hit ys in heven. Geve vs this daye oure dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure treaspases, even as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs from yvell. Amen."
THE MARKED POETICAL SUPERIORITY
of the Protestant over the Catholic Bible may be shown in the twenty-third Psalm, and elsewhere. The first says: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want;" the second: "The Lord ruleth me; and I shall want nothing." The first says: "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul;" the second: "He hath set me in a place of pasture; he hath brought me up on the water of refreshment; he hath converted my soul" (thus completely losing the original metaphor of the shepherd). The first says: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;" the second: "For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils." In Job v. 7, the first says: "Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward;" the second: "Man is born to labor, and the bird to fly." In Job xiv. 1, the first says: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble;" the second: "Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries." These examples will suffice to show the differences which pervade the two translations.
"INTENSE STUDY OF THE BIBLE
will keep any one from being vulgar in point of style," says Coleridge. "There are no songs," says Milton, "comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the scriptures teach." "The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified simplicity of language," says Pope, "is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer." "I use the Scriptures," says Boyle, "not as an arsenal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as
A MATCHLESS TEMPLE,
where I delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored." "There never was found, in any age of the world," says Bacon, "either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible." "It is the window in this prison of hope," says Dwight, "through which we look into eternity." "How admirable and beautiful," says Racine, "is the simplicity of the Evangelists! They never speak injuriously of the enemies of Jesus Christ, of his judges, nor of his executioners. They speak the facts without a single reflection. They comment neither on their Master's mildness, nor on his constancy in the hour of his ignominious death, which they thus describe: 'And they crucified Jesus.'" "Men cannot be well educated without the Bible," says Dr. Nott. "It ought, therefore, to hold a chief place in every situation of learning throughout Christendom." "I am of the opinion," says Sir William Jones, "that the Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written." "I will answer for it," says Romaine,
"THE LONGER YOU READ THE BIBLE
the more you will like it; it will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more you get into the spirit of it, the more you will get into the spirit of Christ." "The greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with," says Sir Richard Steele, "are to be found in the Bible; and even the style of the Scriptures is more than human."
THE BIBLE IS AUTHENTIC.
It is old. It is beautiful. It is the only hope we have. If we cast it away we become as the brutes of the field, both in spirit and in body. The strong take from the weak and perish into nothing—this is all that is offered us by those who reject and revile the Bible. Such have exceeding deep ignorance, exceeding ill manners, exceeding bad taste, and exceeding great folly. "I find more sure marks of the authenticity of the Bible," says Sir Isaac Newton, "than in any profane history whatever." We use the word "secular" nowadays where "profane" was formerly written. "Profane" meant "before" or "outside" the "fane," or "temple."
THE BOOK OF JOB
is older than any other writing on earth. It antedates the Chinese Empire. It is lost in the mist of years. The histories of Moses are as old as the pyramids, and the pyramids and obelisks proclaim the integrity of the Hebrew leader and chronicler. So let us prize this greatest gift of God to man. Let us humbly thank Him for the liberties and comforts it has brought us—for even the Atheist himself refrains from robbing us of our property through the influence of the Christian religion. Let us thank God for the schools, and the hospitals, and the charities which have
THE BIBLE AT THEIR FOUNDATION,
and which, without it, it is fair to say, would not be in existence to-day. Those who are the best are guided by its precepts. Those who are the wisest have implicit confidence in it. Those who are the most eloquent have studied it intensely. Those who are powerful in narration of events have imitated its divine simplicity. Have it at your bedside. Your mind will broaden faster under its influence than under that of the daily newspaper. If you have not time to read both, sacrifice the paper. The paper is trash. The Bible is solid gold. If you fill your mind with grand thoughts, your mind will be noble. You will have principle.
WHERE CAN YOU FIND AS GRAND LANGUAGE
in any politician's speech?—"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thundereth; deep calleth unto deep; the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness." Where can you find as graceful speech?—"He shall come down as rain upon the mown grass; mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." The day is now dawning in this Western world when taste and poetic feeling are to flourish. We have got the dollars. We must now get something for the dollars. Now will the Bible, as ever at such epochs in the past, shine out anew, the criterion, not only of the soul, but of the sentiments—the book that is first under the scholar's lamp and alone in his bedchamber.
Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,
Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh
A melancholy slave;
But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.—Wordsworth.
ge is the outer shore against which dashes an eternity. The mysterious ocean is either tempestuous or tranquil, just as we view it. If we look hard down the cliff of death we are appalled with the force of the waves; we are frightened by the din and shock of collision. But if we gaze afar off we see no great disturbance. All is moving with the true poetry of motion, in the fitness of God's plan, even as viewed by one of His works. "The more we sink into the infirmities of age," says Jeremy Collier, "the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden; to be decrepit one minute and all spirit and activity the next, must be a desirable change. To call this dying is an abuse of language." Death to the aged is natural, therefore as pleasant and easy as any other natural office of the body. Indeed, it is far easier than the operation by which we even get our teeth in youth. If we, then, are able to forget that greatest shock of pain so quickly as we do, why shall we dread a little sinking of the breath, and the unwilling battle of a body that is tired and
LITERALLY WILLING AT HEART
to surrender? "In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life," says Sir Thomas Browne, "yet in my best meditations do I often desire death. For a pagan there may be some motive to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma—that he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come." We are now of the earth; but all the high reason which has taught us to master fire, and water, and the thunderbolts themselves, has also instructed us that we are only sojourners on this little planet.
THE EVENING OF LIFE
OUR MINDS ARE AS BROAD
as the range of stellar systems. We are not as large as a horse or an elephant. Are we, therefore, inferior? We are inhabiting bodies which thrive but a few years, on a planet remarkable for its smallness. But we stretch our knowledge over mighty distances; we construct triangles which have for one side the whole sweep of the earth, over 180 millions of miles; we measure the distance of other worlds by this side of a triangle, and the nearest star is thus found to be 103,000 of our measures away from us—103,000 times 180,000,000 miles! Young has well said that
THE UNDEVOUT ASTRONOMER IS MAD.
So did Napoleon die. Was he not the mightiest man of his time? Did not the whole world sigh with relief when the final end came? Yet he was on a tiny rock in the great ocean? On a map of the world that rock has no title even to a dot. Yet it would be foolish to say he belonged simply to that rock. No. He had come from other human worlds. He was as broad as the earth. We, too, have come from other worlds. We are as broad as the universe. Even our minds, clad in clay, betray the high character of our souls.
DOES THE BEAST PEER INTO THE STARS?
Do the birds that pass so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties—the fit companions of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit. The eclipses are not our conceit. The awful sweep of our whole family of planets, moons, and sun, onward in celestial space, is not a conceit. Therefore we possess our souls, flashing within caskets which have not been altogether unworthy of their priceless treasures.
AS THE CASKET DULLS
and grows to its decay, we cannot weep greatly over its loss, for will it not reveal the splendors all within?
"It is worthy the observing," says Lord Bacon, "wisest of men," "that there is no passion in the mind of men so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and, therefore, death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat from him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the Emperor had slain himself,
PITY (WHICH IS THE TENDEREST OF AFFECTIONS)
provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over again." We all must die, sooner or later. It is easier to die than to live again our stormy and tempestuous lives. Few would re-embark at the cradle, suffer the pains of childhood, the hurts which the feelings of youth get, the pangs of love, the shock of loneliness coming from the departure of those we cling to, the vicissitudes of fortune, the stings of penury, the journeys into the lands of strangers, the flight of summer friends, the alienation of children, and the fevers and the wounds which human nature crosses on its way to the kind haven of a good old age. Jesus stands near. When death comes, his voice will sound, just at the brink: "It is I; be not afraid." "When I look at the tombs of the great," said Joseph Addison, on
HIS VISIT TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY,
"every motion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great judgment day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."
THE AGED MAN
who has "walked with God" is always ready for the Master's call. His loins are girded about and his lights burning. He "lies down with the Kings of the earth," and that leveling process which is thus intimated and begun in death he feels is the order of a higher plane of life to come, when all the abuses and incongruities of human government will be swept away, and the light of omniscient wisdom will shine on all alike. There will he meet the little child who strayed from the fold into the snows of death early in the married life, and there will he sit beside that fond old heart who heard his first piteous wail in this cold world, and nestled him to her bosom all warm with a mother's love.
IT IS THE ONE POSSIBLE CHANCE
of happiness, and only death stands in the way. Nature carries the soul gently over the river, where those who have gone before stand waiting in glad expectation. Shall we doubt either the goodness of God or the perfection of nature? Shall we hesitate to weave the silk of death around our bodies when we know that we may thence issue a being worthy of a celestial sphere of action?
APOSTROPHE.
Venerable sir, thou hast borne the burdens of the world to the last mile-post. Thy companions have fallen by the wayside, and even some of them may have gone unbidden to their Judge. But thou, having in view the dignity of the human mind and the will of God, hast labored while the light was given thee, and hast journeyed while thy strength remained. Thy destiny is now but opening to thy sight. Thou lookest through the inner doors and seest that infinite cathedral which openeth beyond the vestibule of death.
"The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds."
Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.
Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!—Addison.
sk and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." So spake the Savior. "We know," says Paul, "that all things work together for good to them that love God. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is my sting? O grave, where is thy victory? For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me
A CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS,
which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." "These things saith He that holdeth the Seven Stars in his right hand: Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." These are a few of the bright promises held out to us in the Book of Life. Are we not blest? "The joys of heaven," says Bishop Norris, "are without example, above experience, and beyond imagination, for which the whole creation wants a comparison; we an apprehension; and even the Word of God a revelation." "Heaven," says Shakspeare, "is the treasury of everlasting joy." "By heaven we understand a state of happiness," says Franklin, "infinite in degree, and endless in duration." With man's finite mind man solaces himself with
PICTURES OF PARADISE
mortal in their scope. He is not to be blamed for this, for it is God's will to let him grope in darkness a few short years. But man's imagination in all earthly things conjures up that which is far beyond the earthly reality, leaving him a prey to dissatisfaction. How good to believe that our imagination finds in heaven a field where all our most beautiful ideas, collated, joined and woven together into a whole, fail to approach the true glories of the home in the far skies which our kind Father, taking us in His arms, will open before us. "How should we rejoice," says Sir Robert Hall, "in the prospect,
THE CERTAINTY, RATHER,
of spending a blissful eternity with those whom we loved on earth; of seeing them emerge from the ruins of the tomb and the deeper ruins of the fall, not only uninjured, but refined and perfected, 'with every tear wiped from their eyes,' standing before the throne of God and the Lamb, 'in white robes and palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice, Salvation to God that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever!'
WHAT DELIGHT WILL IT AFFORD
to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils of combat and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amid the splendor and fruition of the beatific vision!" Dr. Dick supposes that the soul may find endless employment in beholding "those magnificent displays which will be exhibited of the extent, the magnitude, the motions, the mechanism, the scenery, the inhabitants, and the general constitution of other systems, and the general arrangement and order of the universal system comprehended under the government of the Almighty."
THIS IS ENTIRELY IN REASON.
So far as we are able to judge, there is absolutely no limit to the universe of stars. We are as sure of the law of gravity as we are of the existence of heaven. We build larger telescopes each year only to behold additional millions of stars, each star, possibly, the larger on account of our being able to see it at all. We absolutely know that one star is larger than our sun by 324 times. The moon is about nine times around the earth away from us. The sun is larger than the track of the moon around the earth by 167,000 miles in every direction. If you had a ball which would just fit in the track of the moon, and stuck it all full of pins 167,000 miles long, you would have the size of the sun.
SIRIUS, THE STAR,
is 324 times as large as the sun, and so are many other stars. Now, the most distant star in the largest telescope cannot be at the edge of the universe. Why? It must be in the middle. It must be balanced by exactly as much attraction on one side as another. There must be, above, below, beyond that star, the same stupendous array of worlds, and each relatively outer star, aye, even the star on the farther side of that outer star, must in its turn, be held in the same magnificent and awful suspension. So forever. We actually have Infinity forced on our reason. Eternity is the correlative and co-existent necessity of infinity. Infinity, Eternity, Immortality, become the solemn Trinity confronting the physical as well as the spiritual world! God has even ordained that, when you move your hand, you affect the farthest of His worlds. Can you not grasp the idea that, in reason, the universe is boundless? Why, then, in reason, shall it not be our infinite pleasure to study God's plans forever? I know of no greater pleasure which I could conceive. Those who ask for evidences,
AS THEY ASK FOR BREAD AND CHEESE,
expecting these great truths to be clear to their clotted minds, cannot even be brought to believe a house-fly has 25,000 eyes, constructed each on the plan of our own? They will hardly believe an unseen force flows through the magnetic needle, turning it to the north. If they had refused, with the same logic, to believe that A was A when they had to so believe in order to learn at all, they would now be groping in that stupid illiteracy, which, by a parity of reasoning, they so richly deserve.
SHALL GOD WEIGH OUT ARCTURUS FOR US,
to exhibit His power or its magnitude? Shall He speak to us, and not only kill us with his softer syllables, but send our nicely-balanced earth whirling in toward the sun, and all because some fool hath said in his heart there is no God? No. Our reason and our Oldest Record both point to Eternity as our proper life, the ripening of our soul, our comprehension of the infinite, and our better worthiness to praise God's holy name.
CONCLUSION.
No author of a work calculated to elevate the mind and ennoble the ambitions of mankind could aspire to a higher climax; no writer of a series of admonitions, in escaping "a lame and impotent conclusion," could rest more calmly than he who, having built his tower upon the solid duties of to-day, peers out with the great lenses of Religion, into the hopes of the future—
"Past flaming bounds of place and time,
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze."
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