BF 
 
 £33 
 
 TQ5 
 
 I 
 
The Majesty of Calmness 
 
THE 
 
 Majesty of Calmness 
 
 Individual Problems 
 and Possibilities . . . 
 
 BY 
 
 William George Jordan 
 
 Author of " The Kingship of Self-Control : 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revcll Company 
 
 and London 
 
 1 
 
Republished from the Saturday Evening Post through the 
 courtesy of the Curtis Publishing Company. 
 
 Copyright, 1898 and 1S99 
 
 by 
 
 CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1900 
 
 by 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall 
 
 BF639 
 69865 •Js-S- 
 
 l-ibr*/y of ConnMM 
 
 NOV 2 1900 
 
 Copyright tntry 
 SfcCONfi COPY. 
 
 §«Hv«r«<f tt 
 
 ORDtH DIVISION. 
 
 rJOV 23 1900 
 
 THE CAXTON PRESS 
 NEW YORK. 
 

 i 
 
 / 
 
 6f 
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. The Majesty of Calmness 
 
 II. Hurry, the Scourge of America 
 
 III. The Power of Personal Influence 
 
 IV. The Dignity of Self-Reliance . 
 
 V. Failure as a Success . 
 
 VI. Doing Our Best at All Times . 
 VII. The Royal Road to Happiness 
 
 PAGE 
 
 7 
 
 12 
 
 18 
 
 24 
 31 
 
 38 
 
 47 
 
The Majesty of Calmness 
 
 jJALMNESS is the rarest quality in human 
 life. It is the poise of a great nature, 
 in harmony with itself and its ideals. 
 It is the moral atmosphere of a life self- 
 eentrtdr self-reliant, and self-controlled. Calm- 
 ness is singleness of purpose, absolute confidence, 
 and conscious power, — ready to be focused in an 
 instant to meet any crisis. 
 
 The Sphinx is not a true type of calmness, — 
 petrifaction is not calmness; it is death, the 
 silencing of all the energies; while no one lives 
 his life more fully, more intensely and more con- 
 sciously than the man who is calm. 
 
 The Fatalist is not calm. He is the coward 
 slave of his environment, hopelessly surrender- 
 ing to his present condition, recklessly indifferent 
 to his future. He accepts his life as a rudderless 
 ship, drifting on the ocean of time. He has no 
 compass, no chart, no known port to which he 
 is sailing. His self-confessed inferiority to all 
 nature is shown in his existence of constant sur- 
 render. It is not, — calmness. 
 
 The man who is calm has his course in life 
 clearly marked on his chart. His hand is ever on 
 
 7 
 
8 The Majesty of Calmness 
 
 the helm. Storm, fog, night, tempest, danger, 
 hidden reefs, — he is ever prepared and ready for 
 them. He is made calm and serene by the reali- 
 zation that in these crises of his voyage he needs 
 a clear mind and a cool head; that he has naught 
 to do but to do each day the best he can by the 
 light he has; that he will never flinch nor falter for 
 a moment; that, though he may have to tack and 
 leave his course for a time, he will never drift, 
 he will get back into the true channel, he will keep 
 ever headed toward his harbor. When he will 
 reach it, how he will reach it, matters not to him. 
 Tie rests in calmness, knowing he has done his 
 best. If his best seem to be overthrown or over- 
 ruled, then he must still bow his head, — in calm- 
 ness. To no man is permitted to know the future 
 of his life, the finality. God commits to man 
 ever only new beginnings, new wisdom, and new 
 days to use the best of his knowledge. 
 
 Calmness comes ever from within. It is the 
 peace and restfulness of the depths of our nature. 
 The fury of storm and of wind agitate only 
 the surface of the sea; they can penetrate only 
 two or three hundred feet,— below that is the 
 calm, unruffled deep. To be ready for the great 
 crises of life we must learn serenity in our daily 
 living. Calmness is the crown of self-control. 
 
 When the worries and cares of the day fret 
 you, and begin to wear upon you, and you chafe 
 under the friction,— be calm. Stop, rest for a 
 moment, and let calmness and peace assert them- 
 selves. If you let these irritating outside influ- 
 
The Majesty of Calmness 9 
 
 ences get the better of you, you are confessing 
 your inferiority to them, by permitting them to 
 dominate you. Study the disturbing elements, 
 each by itself, „>ring all the will power of your 
 nature to bear upon them, and you will find that 
 they will, one by one, melt into nothingness, like 
 vapors fading before the sun. The glow of 
 calmness that will then pervade your mind, the 
 tingling sensation of an inflow of new strength, 
 may be to you the beginning of the revelation of 
 the supreme calmness that is possible for you. 
 Then, in some great hour of your life, when you 
 stand face to face with some awful trial, when 
 the structure of your ambition and life-work 
 crumbles in a moment, you will be brave. You 
 can then fold your arms calmly, look out undis- 
 mayed and undaunted upon the ashes of your 
 hope, upon the wreck of what you have faith- 
 fully built, and with brave heart and unfaltering 
 voice you may say: "So let it be,— I will build 
 again." 
 
 When the tongue of malice and slander, the 
 persecution of inferiority, tempts you for just a 
 moment to retaliate, when for an instant you for- 
 get yourself so far as to hunger for revenge, — be 
 calm. When the grey heron is pursued by its 
 enemy, the eagle, it does not run to escape ; it 
 remains calm, takes a dignified stand, and waits 
 quietly, facing the enemy unmoved. With the 
 terrific force with which the eagle makes its at- 
 tack, the boasted king of birds is often impaled 
 and run through on the quiet, lance-like bill of the 
 
io The Majesty of Calmness 
 
 heron. The means that man takes to kill an- 
 other's character becomes suicide of his own. 
 
 No man in the world ever attempted to wrong 
 another without being injured in return,— some- 
 way, somehow, sometime. The only weapon of 
 offence that Nature seems to recognize is the 
 boomerang. Nature keeps her books admirably; 
 she puts down every item, she closes all accounts 
 finally, but she does not always balance them 
 at the end of the month. To the man who is 
 calm, revenge is so far beneath him that he can- 
 not reach it, — even by stooping. When injured, 
 he does not retaliate; he wraps around him the 
 royal robes of Calmness, and he goes quietly on 
 his way. 
 
 When the hand of Death touches the one we 
 hold dearest, paralyzes our energy, and eclipses 
 the sun of our life, the calmness that has been 
 accumulating in long years becomes in a moment 
 our refuge, our reserve strength. 
 
 The most subtle of all temptations is the seem- 
 ing success of the wicked. It requires moral 
 courage to see, without flinching, material pros- 
 perity coming to men who are dishonest; to see 
 politicians rise into prominence, power and 
 wealth by trickery and corruption; to see virtue in 
 rags and vice in velvets; to see ignorance at a 
 premium, and knowledge at a discount. To the 
 man who is really calm these puzzles of life do not 
 appeal. He is living his life as best he can; he is 
 not worrying about the problems of justice, whose 
 solution must be left to Omniscience to solve. 
 
The Majesty of Calmness 1 1 
 
 When man has developed the spirit of Calmness 
 until it becomes so absolutely part of him that 
 his very presence radiates it, he has made great 
 progress in life. Calmness cannot be acquired of 
 itself and by itself; it must come as the culmina- 
 tion of a series of virtues. What the world needs 
 and what individuals need is a higher standard of 
 living, a great realizing sense of the privilege and 
 dignity of life, a higher and nobler conception of 
 individuality. 
 
 With this great sense of calmness permeating 
 an individual, man becomes able to retire more 
 into himself, away from the noise, the confusion 
 and strife of the world, which come to his ears 
 only as faint, far-off rumblings, or as the tumult 
 of the life of a city heard only as a buzzing hum 
 by the man in a balloon. 
 
 The man who is calm does not selfishly isolate 
 himself from the world, for he is intensely in- 
 terested in all that concerns the welfare of hu- 
 manity. His calmness is but a Holy of Holies 
 into which he can retire from the world to get 
 strength to live in the world. He realizes that 
 the full glory of individuality, the crowning of 
 his self-control is, — the majesty of calmness. 
 
II 
 Hurry, the Scourge of America 
 
 HE first sermon in the world was preached 
 at the Creation. It was a Divine protest 
 against Hurry. It was a Divine object 
 lesson of perfect law, perfect plan, per- 
 fect order, perfect method. Six days of work 
 carefully planned, scheduled and completed were 
 followed by, — rest. Whether we accept the story 
 as literal or as figurative, as the account of suc- 
 cessive days or of ages comprising millions of 
 years, matters little if we but learn the lesson. 
 
 Nature is very un-American. Nature never 
 hurries. Every phase of her working shows 
 plan, calmness, reliability, and the absence of 
 hurry. Hurry always implies lack of definite 
 method, confusion, impatience of slow growth. 
 The Tower of Babel, the world's first sky- 
 scraper, was a failure because of hurry. The 
 workers mistook their arrogant ambition for in- 
 spiration. They had too many builders,— and no 
 architect. They thought to make up the lack of 
 a head by a superfluity of hands. This is a char- 
 acteristic of Hurry. It seeks ever to make energy 
 a substitute for a clearly defined plan,— the result is 
 ever as hopeless as trying to transform a hobby- 
 horse into a real steed by brisk riding. 
 
 12 
 
Hurry, the Scourge of America 13 
 
 Hurry is a counterfeit of haste. Haste has an 
 ideal, a distinct aim to be realized by the quick- 
 est, direct methods. Haste has a single compass 
 upon which it relies for direction and in harmony 
 with which its course is determined. Hurry 
 says: "I must move faster. I will get three 
 compasses; I will have them different; I will be 
 guided by all of them. One of them will prob- 
 ably be right." Hurry never realizes that slow, 
 careful foundation work is the quickest in the 
 end. 
 
 Hurry has ruined more Americans than has any 
 other word in the vocabulary of life. It is the 
 scourge of America; and is both a cause and a 
 result of our high-pressure civilization. Hurry 
 adroitly assumes so many masquerades of dis- 
 guise that its identity is not always recognized. 
 
 Hurry always pays the highest price for every- 
 thing, and, usually the goods are not delivered. In 
 the race for wealth men often sacrifice time, 
 energy, health, home, happiness and honor, — 
 everything that money cannot buy, the very 
 things that money can never bring back. Hurry 
 is a phantom of paradoxes. Business men, in 
 their desire to provide for the future happiness of 
 their family, often sacrifice the present happiness 
 of wife and children on the altar of Hurry. They 
 forget that their place in the home should be some- 
 thing greater than being merely "the man that 
 pays the bills;" they expect consideration and 
 thoughtfulness that they are not giving. 
 
 We hear too much of a wife's duties to a hus- 
 
14 Hurry, the Scourge of America 
 
 band and too little of the other side of the ques- 
 tion. " The wife," they tell us, "should meet her 
 husband with a smile and a kiss, should tactfully 
 watch his moods and be ever sweetness and sun- 
 shine." Why this continual swinging of the 
 censer of devotion to the man of business? 
 Why should a woman have to look up with 
 timid glance at the face of her husband, to " size 
 up his mood " ? Has not her day, too, been one 
 of care, and responsibility, and watchfulness ? 
 Has not mother-love been working over perplex- 
 ing problems and worries of home and of the 
 training of the children that wifely love may 
 make her seek to solve in secret ? Is man, then, 
 the weaker sex that he must be pampered and 
 treated as tenderly as a boil trying to keep from 
 contact with the world ? 
 
 In their hurry to attain some ambition, to 
 gratify the dream of a life, men often throw honor, 
 truth, and generosity to the winds. Politicians 
 dare to stand by and see a city poisoned with 
 foul water until they " see where they come in " 
 on a water-works appropriation. If it be neces- 
 sary to poison an army,— that, too, is but an in- 
 cident in the hurry for wealth. 
 
 This is the Age of the Hothouse. The element 
 of natural growth is pushed to one side and the 
 hothouse and the force-pump are substituted. 
 Nature looks on tolerantly as she says : "So far 
 you may go, but no farther, my foolish children." 
 
 The educational system of to-day is a monu- 
 mental institution dedicated to Hurry. The chil- 
 
Hurry, the Scourge of America 15 
 
 dren are forced to go through a series of studies 
 that sweep the circle of all human wisdom. 
 They are given everything that the ambitious 
 ignorance of the age can force into their minds; 
 they are taught everything but the essentials, — 
 how to use their senses and how to think* Their 
 minds become congested by a great mass of 
 undigested facts, and still the cruel, barbarous 
 forcing goes on. You watch it until it seems 
 you cannot stand it a moment longer, and you 
 instinctively put out your hand and say : " Stop ! 
 This modern slaughter of the Innocents must not 
 go on!" Education smiles suavely, waves her 
 hand complacently toward her thousands of 
 knowledge-prisons over the country, and says: 
 " Who are you that dares speak a word against 
 our sacred, school system ? " Education is in a 
 hurry. Because she fails in fifteen years to do 
 what half the time should accomplish by better 
 methods, she should not be too boastful. In- 
 competence is not always a reason for pride. 
 And they hurry the children into a hundred text- 
 books, then into ill-health, then into the colleges, 
 then into a diploma, then into life, — with a dazed 
 mind, untrained and unfitted for the real duties of 
 living. 
 
 Hurry is the deathblow to calmness, to dignity, 
 to poise. The old-time courtesy went out when 
 the new-time hurry came in. Hurry is the father 
 of dyspepsia. In the rush of our national life, the 
 bolting of food has become a national vice. The 
 words " Quick Lunches " might properly be 
 
16 Hurry, the Scourge of America 
 
 placed on thousands of headstones in our ceme- 
 teries. Man forgets that he is the only animal 
 that dines; the others merely feed. Why does 
 he abrogate his right to dine and go to the end 
 of the line with the mere feeders ? His self-re- 
 specting stomach rebels, and expresses its indig- 
 nation by indigestion. Then man has to go 
 through life with a little bottle of pepsin tablets 
 in his vest-pocket. He is but another victim to 
 this craze for speed. Hurry means the break- 
 down of the nerves. It is the royal road to 
 nervous prostration. 
 
 Everything that is great in life is the product 
 of slow growth; the newer, and greater, and 
 higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its 
 growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mush- 
 rooms attain their full power in a night; oaks re- 
 quire decades. A fad lives its life in a few 
 weeks; a philosophy lives through generations 
 and centuries. If you are sure you are right, do 
 not let the voice of the world, or of friends, or of 
 family swerve you for a moment from your pur- 
 pose. Accept slow growth if it must be slow, and 
 know the results must come, as you would accept 
 the long, lonely hours of the night,— with absolute 
 assurance that the heavy-leaded moments must 
 bring the morning. 
 
 Let us as individuals banish the word " Hurry" 
 from our lives. Let us care for nothing so much 
 that we would pay honor and self-respect as the 
 price of hurrying it. Let us cultivate calmness, 
 restfulness, poise, sweetness,— doing our best, 
 
Hurry, the Scourge of America 17 
 
 bearing all things as bravely as we can; living our 
 life undisturbed by the prosperity of the wicked or 
 the malice of the envious. Let us not be impatient, 
 chafing at delay, fretting over failure, wearying 
 over results, and weakening under opposition. 
 Let us ever turn our face toward the future with 
 confidence and trust, with the calmness of a life 
 in harmony with itself, true to its ideals, and 
 slowly and constantly progressing toward their 
 realization. 
 
 Let us see that cowardly word Hurry in all its 
 most degenerating phases, let us see that it ever 
 kills truth, loyalty, thoroughness; and let us de- 
 termine that, day by day, we will seek more and 
 more to substitute for it the calmness and repose 
 of a true life, nobly lived. 
 
HI 
 
 The Power of Personal Influence 
 
 HE only responsibility that a man cannot 
 evade in this life is the one he thinks 
 of least,— his personal influence. Man's 
 conscious influence, when he is on 
 dress-parade, when he is posing to impress those 
 around him, — is woefully small. But his uncon- 
 scious influence, the silent, subtle radiation of 
 his personality, the effect of his words and acts, 
 the trifles he never considers, — is tremendous. 
 Every moment of life he is changing to a degree 
 the life of the whole world. Every man has an 
 atmosphere which is affecting every other. So 
 silent and unconsciously is this influence work- 
 ing, that man may forget that it exists. 
 
 All the forces of Nature, — heat, light, elec- 
 tricity and gravitation, — are silent and invisible. 
 We never see them; we only know that they 
 exist by seeing the effects they produce. In all 
 Nature the wonders of the "seen" are dwarfed 
 into insignificance when compared with the 
 majesty and glory of the "unseen." The great 
 sun itself does not supply enough heat and light 
 to sustain animal and vegetable life on the earth. 
 We are dependent for nearly half of our light 
 and heat upon the stars, and the greater part of 
 
 18 
 
The Power of Personal Influence 19 
 
 this supply of life-giving energy comes from in- 
 visible stars, millions of miles from the earth. 
 In a thousand ways Nature constantly seeks to 
 lead men to a keener and deeper realization of 
 the power and the wonder of the invisible. 
 
 Into the hands of every individual is given a 
 marvellous power for good or for evil, — the 
 silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. 
 This is simply the constant radiation of what 
 a man really is, not what he pretends to be. 
 Every man, by his mere living, is radiating sym- 
 pathy, or sorrow, or morbidness, or cynicism, or 
 happiness, or hope, or any of a hundred other 
 qualities. Life is a state of constant radiation 
 and absorption; to exist is to radiate; to exist is 
 to be the recipient of radiations. 
 
 There are men and women whose presence 
 seems to radiate sunshine, cheer and optimism. 
 You feel calmed and rested and restored in a 
 moment to a new and stronger faith in humanity. 
 There are others who focus in an instant all your 
 latent distrust, morbidness and rebellion against 
 life. Without knowing why, you chafe and fret 
 in their presence. You lose your bearings on life 
 and its problems. Your moral compass is dis- 
 turbed and unsatisfactory. It is made untrue in 
 an instant, as the magnetic needle of a ship is 
 deflected when it passes near great mountains of 
 iron ore. 
 
 There are men who float down the stream of 
 life like icebergs, — cold, reserved, unapproach- 
 able and self-contained. In their presence you 
 
20 The Power of Personal Influence 
 
 involuntarily draw your wraps closer around 
 you, as you wonder who left the door open. 
 These refrigerated human beings have a most 
 depressing influence on all those who fall under 
 the spell of their radiated chilliness. But there 
 are other natures, warm, helpful, genial, who 
 are like the Gulf Stream, following their own 
 course, flowing undaunted and undismayed in 
 the ocean of colder waters. Their presence 
 brings warmth and life and the glow of sun- 
 shine, the joyous, stimulating breath of spring. 
 
 There are men who are like malarious swamps, 
 — poisonous, depressing and weakening by their 
 very presence. They make heavy, oppressive and 
 gloomy the atmosphere of their own homes; the 
 sound of the children's play is stilled, the ripples 
 of laughter are frozen by their presence. They 
 go through life as if each day were a new big 
 funeral, and they were always chief mourners. 
 There are other men who seem like the ocean; 
 they are constantly bracing, stimulating, giving 
 new draughts of tonic life and strength by their 
 very presence. 
 
 There are men who are insincere in heart, and 
 that insincerity is radiated by their presence. 
 They have a wondrous interest in your welfare, 
 — when they need you. They put on a "prop- 
 erty" smile so suddenly, when it serves their 
 purpose, that it seems the smile must be con- 
 nected with some electric button concealed in 
 their clothes. Their voice has a simulated cor- 
 diality that long training may have made almost 
 
The Power of Personal Influence 21 
 
 natural. But they never play their part abso- 
 lutely true, the mask will slip down sometimes; 
 their cleverness cannot teach their eyes the look 
 of sterling honesty; they may deceive some 
 people, but they cannot deceive all. There is 
 a subtle power of revelation which makes us 
 say: "Well, I cannot explain how it is, but I 
 know that man is not honest." 
 
 Man cannot escape for one moment from this 
 radiation of his character, this constantly weak- 
 ening or strengthening of others. He cannot 
 evade the responsibility by saying it is an uncon- 
 scious influence. He can select the qualities that 
 he will permit to be radiated. He can cultivate 
 sweetness, calmness, trust, generosity, truth, jus- 
 tice, loyalty, nobility, — make them vitally active 
 in his character, — and by these qualities he will 
 constantly affect the world. 
 
 Discouragement often comes to honest souls 
 trying to live the best they can, in the thought 
 that they are doing so little good in the world. 
 Trifles unnoted by us may be links in the chain 
 of some great purpose. In 1797, William Godwin 
 wrote The Inquirer, a collection of revolutionary 
 essays on morals and politics. This book in- 
 fluenced Thomas Malthus to write his Essay on 
 Population, published in 1798. Malthus' book 
 suggested to Charles Darwin a point of view 
 upon which he devoted many years of his life, 
 resulting, in 1859, in the publication of The 
 Origin of Species, — the most influential book of 
 the nineteenth century, a book that has revolu- 
 
22 The Power of Personal Influence 
 
 tionized all science. These were but three links 
 of influence extending over sixty years. It might 
 be possible to trace this genealogy of influence 
 back from Godwin, through generation and gen- 
 eration, to the word or act of some shepherd in 
 early Britain, watching his flock upon the hills, 
 living his quiet life, and dying with the thought 
 that he had done nothing to help the world. 
 
 Men and women have duties to others, — and 
 duties to themselves. In justice to ourselves we 
 should refuse to live in an atmosphere that keeps 
 us from living our best. If the fault be in us, 
 we should master it. If it be the personal in- 
 fluence of others that, like a noxious vapor, kills 
 our best impulses, we should remove from that 
 influence, — if we can possibly move without for- 
 saking duties. If it be wrong to move, then we 
 should take strong doses of moral quinine to 
 counteract the malaria of influence. It is not 
 what those around us do for us that counts, — it 
 is what they are to us. We carry our house- 
 plants from one window to another to give them 
 the proper heat, light, air and moisture. Should 
 we not be at least as careful of ourselves ? 
 
 To make our influence felt we must live our 
 faith, we must practice what we believe. A 
 magnet does not attract iron, as iron. It must 
 first convert the iron into another magnet before 
 it can attract it. It is useless for a parent to try 
 to teach gentleness to her children when she her- 
 self is cross and irritable. The child who is told 
 to be truthful and who hears a parent lie cleverly 
 
The Power of Personal Influence 23 
 
 to escape some little social unpleasantness is 
 not going to cling very zealously to truth. The 
 parent's words say "don't lie," the influence of 
 the parent's life says "do lie.*' 
 
 No man can ever isolate himself to evade this 
 constant power of influence, as no single cor- 
 puscle can rebel and escape from the general 
 course of the blood. No individual is so insig- 
 nificant as to be without influence. The changes 
 in our varying moods are all recorded in the deli- 
 cate barometers of the lives of others. We should 
 ever let our influence filter through human love 
 and sympathy. We should not be merely an in- 
 fluence, — we should be an inspiration. By our 
 very presence we should be a tower of strength 
 to the hungering human souls around us. 
 
IV 
 The Dignity of Self-Reliance 
 
 ELF-CONFIDENCE, without self-reliance, 
 is as useless as a cooking recipe, — with- 
 out food. Self-confidence sees the pos- 
 sibilities of the individual; self-reliance 
 realizes them. Self-confidence sees the angel in 
 the unhewn block of marble; self-reliance carves 
 it out for himself. 
 
 The man who is self-reliant says ever: "No 
 one can realize my possibilities for me, but me; 
 no one can make me good or evil but myself." 
 He works out his own salvation,— financially, 
 socially, mentally, physically, and morally. Life 
 is an individual problem that man must solve for 
 himself. Nature accepts no vicarious sacrifice, 
 no vicarious service. Nature never recognizes a 
 proxy vote. She has nothing to do with middle- 
 men, — she deals only with the individual. Na- 
 ture is constantly seeking to show man that he is 
 his own best friend, or his own worst enemy. 
 Nature gives man the option on which he will be 
 to himself. 
 
 All the athletic exercises in the world are of no 
 value to the individual unless he compel those 
 bars and dumb-bells to yield to him, in strength 
 and muscle, the power for which he, himself, 
 
 24 
 
The Dignity of Self-Reliance 25 
 
 pays in time and effort. He can never develop his 
 muscles by sending his valet to a gymnasium. 
 
 The medicine-chests of the world are powerless, 
 in all the united efforts, to help the individual 
 until he reach out and take for himself what is 
 needed for his individual weakness. 
 
 All the religions of the world are but specu- 
 lations in morals, mere theories of salvation, un- 
 til the individual realize that he must save him- 
 self by relying on the law of truth, as he sees it, 
 and living his life in harmony with it, as fully as 
 he can. But religion is not a Pullman car, with 
 soft-cushioned seats, where he has but to pay for 
 his ticket, — and some one else does all the rest. In 
 religion, as in all other great things, he is ever 
 thrown back on his self-reliance. He should ac- 
 cept all helps, but, — he must live his own life. 
 He should not feel that he is a mere passenger; 
 he is the engineer, and the train is his life. We 
 must rely on ourselves, live our own lives, or we 
 merely drift through existence, — losing all that 
 is best, all that is greatest, all that is divine. 
 
 All that others can do for us is to give us op- 
 portunity. We must ever be prepared for the 
 opportunity when it comes, and to go after it 
 and find it when it does not come, or that op- 
 portunity is to us, — nothing. Life is but a suc- 
 cession of opportunities. They are for good or 
 evil, — as we make them. 
 
 Many of the alchemists of old felt that they 
 lacked but one element; if they could obtain 
 that one, they believed they could transmute 
 
26 The Dignity of Self-Reliance 
 
 the baser metals into pure gold. It is so in char- 
 acter. There are individuals with rare mental 
 gifts, and delicate spiritual discernment who fail 
 utterly in life because they lack the one element, 
 —self-reliance. This would unite all their ener- 
 gies, and focus them into strength and power. 
 
 The man who is not self-reliant is weak, hesi- 
 tating and doubting in all he does. He fears to 
 take a decisive step, because he dreads failure, 
 because he is waiting for some one to advise him 
 or because he dare not act in accordance with his 
 own best judgment. In his cowardice and his 
 conceit he sees all his non-success due to others. 
 He is "not appreciated," "not recognized," he 
 is " kept down." He feels that in some subtle way 
 11 society is conspiring against him." He grows 
 almost vain as he thinks that no one has had 
 such poverty, such sorrow, such affliction, such 
 failure as have come to him. 
 
 The man who is self-reliant seeks ever to dis- 
 cover and conquer the weakness within him that 
 keeps him from the attainment of what he holds 
 dearest; he seeks within himself the power to 
 battle against all outside influences. He realizes 
 that all the greatest men in history, in every phase 
 of human effort, have been those who have had 
 to fight against the odds of sickness, suffering, 
 sorrow. To him, defeat is no more than passing 
 through a tunnel is to a traveller,— he knows he 
 must emerge again into the sunlight. 
 
 The nation that is strongest is the one that is 
 most self-reliant, the one that contains within its 
 
The Dignity of Self-Reliance 27 
 
 boundaries all that its people need. If, with its 
 ports all blockaded it has not within itself the 
 necessities of life and the elements of its contin- 
 ual progress then, — it is weak, held by the 
 enemy, and it is but a question of time till it 
 must surrender. Its independence is in proportion 
 to its self-reliance, to its power to sustain itself 
 from within. What is true of nations is true of 
 individuals. The history of nations is but the 
 biography of individuals magnified, intensified, 
 multiplied, and projected on the screen of the 
 past. History is the biography of a nation ; biog- 
 raphy is the history of an individual. So it must 
 be that the individual who is most strong in any 
 trial, sorrow or need is he who can live from his 
 inherent strength, who needs no scaffolding of 
 commonplace sympathy to uphold him. He 
 must ever be self-reliant. 
 
 The wealth and prosperity of ancient Rome, 
 relying on her slaves to do the real work of the 
 nation, proved the nation's downfall. The con- 
 stant dependence on the captives of war to do 
 the thousand details of life for them, killed self- 
 reliance in the nation and in the individual. 
 Then, through weakened self-reliance and the 
 increased opportunity for idle, luxurious ease 
 that came with it, Rome, a nation of fighters, be- 
 came,— a nation of men more effeminate than 
 women. As we depend on others to do those 
 things we should do for ourselves, our self-reli- 
 ance weakens and our powers and our control of 
 them becomes continuously less. 
 
28 The Dignity of Self-Reliance 
 
 Man to be great must be self-reliant. Though 
 he may not be so in all things, he must be self- 
 reliant in the one in which he would be great. 
 This self-reliance is not the self-sufficiency of con- 
 ceit. It is daring to stand alone. Be an oak, not 
 a vine. Be ready to give support, but do not 
 crave it; do not be dependent on it. To develop 
 your true self-reliance, you must see from the 
 very beginning that life is a battle you must fight 
 for yourself, — you must be your own soldier. 
 You cannot buy a substitute, you cannot win a 
 reprieve, you can never be placed on the retired 
 list. The retired list of life is, — death. The 
 world is busy with its own cares, sorrows and 
 joys, and pays little heed to you. There is but 
 one great password to success, — self-reliance. 
 
 If you would learn to converse, put yourself 
 into positions where you must speak. If you 
 would conquer your morbidness, mingle with 
 the bright people around you, no matter how dif- 
 ficult it may be. If you desire the power that 
 some one else possesses, do not envy his strength, 
 and dissipate your energy by weakly wishing his 
 force were yours. Emulate the process by 
 which it became his, depend on your self-reli- 
 ance, pay the price for it, and equal power may 
 be yours. The individual must look upon him- 
 self as an investment, of untold possibilities if 
 rightly developed, — a mine whose resources can 
 never be known but by going down into it and 
 bringing out what is hidden. 
 
 Man can develop his self-reliance by seeking 
 
The Dignity of Self-Reliance 29 
 
 constantly to surpass himself. We try too much 
 to surpass others. If we seek ever to surpass 
 ourselves, we are moving on a uniform line of 
 progress, that gives a harmonious unifying to 
 our growth in all its parts. Daniel Morrell, at 
 one time President of the Cambria Rail Works, 
 that employed 7,000 men and made a rail famed 
 throughout the world, was asked the secret of the 
 great success of the works. ' ' We have no secret, " 
 he said, " but this, — we always try to beat our last 
 batch of rails." Competition is good, but it has its 
 danger side. There is a tendency to sacrifice 
 real worth to mere appearance, to have seeming 
 rather than reality. But the true competition is 
 the competition of the individual with himself, — 
 his present seeking to excel his past. This means 
 real growth from within. Self-reliance develops 
 it, and it develops self-reliance. Let the indi- 
 vidual feel thus as to his own progress and pos- 
 sibilities, and he can almost create his life as he 
 will. Let him never fall down in despair at dan- 
 gers and sorrows at a distance; they may be 
 harmless, like Bunyan's stone lions, when he 
 nears them. 
 
 The man who is self-reliant does not live in 
 the shadow of some one else's greatness; he 
 thinks for himself, depends on himself, and acts 
 for himself. In throwing the individual thus 
 back upon himself it is not shutting his eyes to 
 the stimulus and light and new life that come 
 with the warm pressure of the hand, the kindly 
 word and the sincere expressions of true friend- 
 
30 The Dignity of Self-Reliance 
 
 ship. But true friendship is rare; its great value is 
 in a crisis, — like a lifeboat. Many a boasted 
 friend has proved a leaking, worthless ''lifeboat" 
 when the storm of adversity might make him 
 useful. In these great crises of life, man is 
 strong only as he is strong from within, and the 
 more he depends on himself the stronger will he 
 become, and the more able will he be to help 
 others in the hour of their need. His very life 
 will be a constant help and a strength to others, 
 as he becomes to them a living lesson of the dig- 
 nity of self-reliance. 
 
V 
 
 Failure as a Success 
 
 T ofttimes requires heroic courage to face 
 fruitless effort, to take up the broken 
 strands of a life-work, to look bravely 
 toward the future, and proceed undaunted 
 on our way. But what, to our eyes, may seem 
 hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a 
 greater success. It may contain in its debris the 
 foundation material of a mighty purpose, or the 
 revelation of new and higher possibilities. 
 
 Some years ago, it was proposed to send logs 
 from Canada to New York, by a new method. 
 The ingenious plan of Mr. Joggins was to bind 
 great logs together by cables and iron girders and 
 to tow the cargo as a raft. When the novel 
 craft neared New York and success seemed as- 
 sured, a terrible storm arose. In the fury of the 
 tempest, the iron bands snapped like icicles and 
 the angry waters scattered the logs far and wide. 
 The chief of the Hydrographic Department at 
 Washington heard of the failure of the experi- 
 ment, and at once sent word to shipmasters the 
 world over, urging them to watch carefully 
 for these logs which he described; and to note 
 the precise location of each in latitude and longi- 
 tude and the time the observation was made. 
 
 31 
 
3 2 
 
 Failure as a Success 
 
 Hundreds of captains, sailing over the waters of 
 the earth, noted the logs, in the Atlantic Ocean, 
 in the Mediterranean, in the South Seas— for into 
 all waters did these venturesome ones travel. 
 Hundreds of reports were made, covering a 
 period of weeks and months. These observa- 
 tions were then carefully collated, systematized 
 and tabulated, and discoveries were made as to 
 the course of ocean currents that otherwise would 
 have been impossible. The loss of the Joggins 
 raft was not a real failure, for it led to one of the 
 great discoveries in modern marine geography 
 and navigation. 
 
 In our superior knowledge we are disposed to 
 speak in a patronizing tone of the follies of the 
 alchemists of old. But their failure to transmute 
 the baser metals into gold resulted in the birth of 
 chemistry. They did not succeed in what they 
 attempted, but they brought into vogue the natu- 
 ral processes of sublimation, filtration, distillation, 
 and crystallization ; they invented the alembic, the 
 retort, the sand-bath, the water-bath and other val- 
 uable instruments. To them is due the discovery 
 of antimony, sulphuric ether and phosphorus, the 
 cupellation of gold and silver, the determining of 
 the properties of saltpetre and its use in gun- 
 powder, and the discovery of the distillation of 
 essential oils. This was the success of failure, a 
 wondrous process of Nature for the highest 
 growth,— a mighty lesson of comfort, strength, 
 and encouragement if man would only realize 
 and accept it. 
 
Failure as a Success 33 
 
 Many of our failures sweep us to greater 
 heights of success, than we ever hoped for in 
 our wildest dreams. Life is a successive unfold- 
 ing of success from failure. In discovering 
 America Columbus failed absolutely. His in- 
 genious reasoning and experiment led him to be- 
 lieve that by sailing westward he would reach 
 India. Every redman in America carries in his 
 name " Indian," the perpetuation of the memory 
 of the failure of Columbus. The Genoese navi- 
 gator did not reach India; the cargo of "souve- 
 nirs " he took back to Spain to show to Ferdinand 
 and Isabella as proofs of his success, really at- 
 tested his failure. But the discovery of America 
 v/as a greater success than was any finding of a 
 "back-door" to India. 
 
 When David Livingstone had supplemented 
 his theological education by a medical course, he 
 was ready to enter the missionary field. For 
 over three years he had studied tirelessly, with 
 all energies concentrated on one aim, — to spread 
 the gospel in China. The hour came when he 
 was ready to start out with noble enthusiasm 
 for his chosen work, to consecrate himself and 
 his life to his unselfish ambition. Then word 
 came from China that the "opium war" would 
 make it folly to attempt to enter the country. 
 Disappointment and failure did not long daunt 
 him; he offered himself as missionary to Africa, 
 — and he was accepted. His glorious failure to 
 reach China opened a whole continent to light 
 and truth. His study proved an ideal preparation 
 
34 
 
 Failure as a Success 
 
 for his labors as physician, explorer, teacher and 
 evangel in the wilds of Africa. 
 
 Business reverses and the failure of his partner 
 threw upon the broad shoulders and the still 
 broader honor and honesty of Sir Walter Scott 
 a burden of responsibility that forced him to 
 write. The failure spurred him to almost super- 
 human effort. The masterpieces of Scotch his- 
 toric fiction that have thrilled, entertained and 
 uplifted millions of his fellow-men are a glorious 
 monument on the field of a seeming failure. 
 
 When Millet, the painter of the "Angelus" 
 worked on his almost divine canvas, in which 
 the very air seems pulsing with the regenerating 
 essence of spiritual reverence, he was painting 
 against time, he was antidoting sorrow, he was 
 racing against death. His brush strokes, put on 
 in the early morning hours before going to his 
 menial duties as a railway porter, in the dusk 
 like that perpetuated on his canvas, — meant 
 strength, food and medicine for the dying wife 
 he adored. The art failure that cast him into the 
 depths of poverty unified with marvellous inten- 
 sity all the finer elements of his nature. This 
 rare spiritual unity, this purging of all the dross 
 of triviality as he passed through the furnace of 
 poverty, trial, and sorrow gave eloquence to his 
 brush and enabled him to paint as never before,— 
 as no prosperity would have made possible. 
 
 Failure is often the turning-point, the pivot of 
 circumstance that swings us to higher levels. It 
 may not be financial success, it may not be fame; 
 
Failure as a Success 35 
 
 it may be new draughts of spiritual, moral or 
 mental inspiration that will change us for all the 
 later years of our life. Life is not really what 
 comes to us, but what we get from it. 
 
 Whether man has had wealth or property, 
 failure or success, counts for little when it is 
 past. There is but one question for him to an- 
 swer, to face boldly and honestly as an individual 
 alone with his conscience and his destiny: 
 
 1 'How will I let that poverty or wealth af- 
 fect me? If that trial or deprivation has left 
 me better, truer, nobler, then, — poverty has been 
 riches, failure has been a success. If wealth 
 has come to me and has made me vain, arro- 
 gant, contemptuous, uncharitable, cynical, clos- 
 ing from me all the tenderness of life, all the 
 channels of higher development, of possible 
 good to my fellow-man, making me the mere 
 custodian of a money-bag, then, — wealth has lied 
 to me, it has been failure, not success ; it has not 
 been riches, it has been dark, treacherous poverty 
 that stole from me even Myself." All things be- 
 come for us then what we take from them. 
 
 Failure is one of God's educators. It is experi- 
 ence leading man to higher things; it is the reve- 
 lation of a way, a path hitherto unknown to us. 
 The best men in the world, those who have 
 made the greatest real successes look back with 
 serene happiness on their failures. The turning 
 of the face of Time shows all things in a won- 
 drously illuminated and satisfying perspective. 
 
 Many a man is thankful to-day that some petty 
 
36 Failure as a Success 
 
 success for which he once struggled, melted into 
 thin air as his hand sought to clutch it. Failure 
 is often the rock-bottom foundation of real 
 success. If man, in a few instances of his life 
 can say, "Those failures were the best things 
 in the world that could have happened to me/' 
 should he not face new failures with undaunted 
 courage and trust that the miraculous ministry of 
 Nature may transform these new stumbling- 
 blocks into new stepping-stones ? 
 
 Our highest hopes, are often destroyed to pre- 
 pare us for better things. The failure of the 
 caterpillar is the birth of the butterfly; the pass- 
 ing of the bud is the becoming of the rose; the 
 death or destruction of the seed is the prelude to 
 its resurrection as wheat. It is at night, in the 
 darkest hours, those preceding dawn, that plants 
 grow best, that they most increase in size. May 
 this not be one of Nature's gentle showings to 
 man of the times when he grows best, of the 
 darkness of failure that is evolving into the sun- 
 light of success. Let us fear only the failure of 
 not living the right as we see it, leaving the re- 
 sults to the guardianship of the Infinite. 
 
 If we think of any supreme moment of our 
 lives, any great success, any one who is dear to 
 us, and then consider how we reached that mo- 
 ment, that success, that friend, we will be sur- 
 prised and strengthened by the revelation. As 
 we trace each one, back, step by step, through 
 the genealogy of circumstances, we will see how 
 logical has been the course of our joy and sue- 
 
Failure as a Success 37 
 
 cess, from sorrow and failure, and that what 
 gives us most happiness to-day is inextricably 
 connected with what once caused us sorrow. 
 Many of the rivers of our greatest prosperity and 
 growth have had their source and their trickling 
 increase into volume among the dark, gloomy 
 recesses of our failure. 
 
 There is no honest and true work, carried 
 along with constant and sincere purpose that 
 ever really fails. If it sometime seem to be 
 wasted effort, it will prove to us a new lesson of 
 "how" to walk; the secret of our failures will 
 prove to us the inspiration of possible successes. 
 Man living with the highest aims, ever as best he 
 can, in continuous harmony with them, is a suc- 
 cess, no matter what statistics of failure a near- 
 sighted and half-blind world of critics and com- 
 mentators may lay at his door. 
 
 High ideals, noble efforts will make seeming fail- 
 ures but trifles, they need not dishearten us ; they 
 should prove sources of new strength. The rocky 
 way may prove safer than the slippery path of 
 smoothness. Birds cannot fly best with the wind 
 but against it; ships do not progress in calm, when 
 the sails flap idly against the unstrained masts. 
 
 The alchemy of Nature, superior to that of the 
 Paracelsians, constantly transmutes the baser 
 metals of failure into the later pure gold of higher 
 success, if the mind of the worker be kept true, 
 constant and untiring in the service, and he have 
 that sublime courage that defies fate to its worst 
 while he does his best. 
 
/ 
 
 VI 
 
 Doing Our Best at All Times 
 
 IFE is a wondrously complex problem for 
 the individual, until, some day, in a mo- 
 ment of illumination, he awakens to the 
 great realization that he can make it 
 simple, — never quite simple, but always simpler. 
 There are a thousand mysteries of right and 
 wrong that have baffled the wise men of the 
 ages. There are depths in the great fundamental 
 questions of the human race that no plummet of 
 philosophy has ever sounded. There are wild 
 cries of honest hunger for truth that seek to 
 pierce the silence beyond the grave, but to them 
 ever echo back, — only a repetition of their unan- 
 swered cries. 
 
 To us all, comes, at times, the great note of 
 questioning despair that darkens our horizon and 
 paralyzes our effort: " If there really be a God, 
 if eternal justice really rule the world/' we say, 
 "why should life be as it is? Why do some 
 men starve while others feast; why does virtue 
 often languish in the shadow while vice triumphs 
 in the sunshine; why does failure so often dog 
 the footsteps of honest effort, while the success 
 that comes from trickery and dishonor is greeted 
 with the world's applause ? How is it that the 
 
 38 
 
Doing Our Best at All Times 39 
 
 loving father of one family is taken by death, 
 while the worthless incumbrance of another is 
 spared? Why is there so much unnecessary 
 pain, sorrowing and suffering in the world — 
 why, indeed, should there be any?" 
 
 Neither philosophy nor religion can give any 
 final satisfactory answer that is capable of logical 
 demonstration, of absolute proof. There is ever, 
 even after the best explanations, a residuum 
 of the unexplained. We must then fall back 
 in the eternal arms of faith, and be wise enough 
 to say, '* I will not be disconcerted by these 
 problems of life, I will not permit them to 
 plunge me into doubt, and to cloud my life with 
 vagueness and uncertainty. Man arrogates much 
 to himself when he demands from the Infinite the 
 full solution of all His mysteries. I will found 
 my life on the impregnable rock of a simple 
 fundamental truth: — 'This glorious creation with 
 its millions of wondrous phenomena pulsing ever 
 in harmony with eternal law must have a Crea- 
 tor, that Creator must be omniscient and om- 
 nipotent. But that Creator Himself cannot, in 
 justice, demand of any creature more than the best 
 that that individual can give/ I will do each 
 day, in every moment, the best I can by the light 
 I have; I will ever seek more light, more perfect 
 illumination of truth, and ever live as best I can 
 in harmony with the truth as I see it. If failure 
 come I will meet it bravely ; if my pathway then 
 lie in the shadow of trial, sorrow and suffering, I 
 shall have the restful peace and the calm strength 
 
40 Doing Our Best at All Times 
 
 of one who has done his best, who can look back 
 upon the past with no pang of regret, and who 
 has heroic courage in facing the results, what- 
 ever they be, knowing that he could not make 
 them different." 
 
 Upon this life-plan, this foundation, man may 
 erect any superstructure of religion or philosophy 
 that he conscientiously can erect; he should add 
 to his equipment for living every shred of strength 
 and inspiration, moral, mental, or spiritual that is 
 in his power to secure. This simple working 
 faith is opposed to no creed, is a substitute for 
 none; it is but a primary belief, a citadel, a refuge 
 where the individual can retire for strength when 
 the battle of life grows hard. 
 
 A mere theory of life, that remains but a theory, 
 is about as useful to a man, as a gilt-edged menu 
 is to a starving sailor on a raft in mid-ocean. It 
 is irritating but not stimulating. No rule for 
 higher living will help a man in the slightest, un- 
 til he reach out and appropriate it for himself, 
 until he make it practical in his daily life, until 
 that seed of theory in his mind blossom into a 
 thousand flowers of thought and word and act. 
 
 If a man honestly seeks to live his best at all 
 times, that determination is visible in every 
 moment of his living, no trifle in his life can 
 be too insignificant to reflect his principle of 
 living. The sun illuminates and beautifies a fal- 
 len leaf by the roadside as impartially as a tower- 
 ing mountain peak in the Alps. Every drop of 
 water in the ocean is an epitome of the chemistry 
 

 Doing Our Best at All Times 41 
 
 of the whole ocean ; every drop is subject to pre- 
 cisely the same laws as dominate the united in- 
 finity of billions of drops that make that miracle 
 of Nature, men call the Sea. No matter how 
 humble the calling of the individual, how uninter- 
 esting and dull the round of his duties, he should 
 do his best. He should dignify what he is do- 
 ing by the mind he puts into it, he should vital- 
 ize what little he has of power or energy or abil- 
 ity or opportunity, in order to prepare himself to 
 be equal to higher privileges when they come. 
 This will never lead man to that weak content 
 that is satisfied with whatever falls to his lot. It 
 will rather fill his mind with that divine discon- 
 tent that cheerfully accepts the best, — merely 
 as a temporary substitute for something better. 
 
 The man who is seeking ever to do his best is 
 the man who is keen, active, wide-awake, and 
 aggressive. He is ever watchful of himself in 
 trifles; his standard is not " What will the world 
 say ? " but " Is it worthy of me ? " 
 
 Edwin Booth, one of the greatest actors on 
 the American stage, would never permit him- 
 self to assume an ungraceful attitude, even in his 
 hours of privacy. In this simple thing, he ever 
 lived his best. On the stage every move was 
 one of unconscious grace. Those of his company 
 who were conscious of their motions were the 
 awkward ones, who were seeking in public 
 to undo or to conceal the carelessness of the 
 gestures and motions of their private life. The 
 man who is slipshod and thoughtless in his 
 
42 Doing Our Best at All Times 
 
 daily speech, whose vocabulary is a collection of 
 anaemic commonplaces, whose repetitions of 
 phrases and extravagance of interjections act but 
 as feeble disguises to his lack of ideas, will never 
 be brilliant on an occasion when he longs to out- 
 shine the stars. Living at one's best is constant 
 preparation for instant use. It can never make 
 one over-precise, self-conscious, affected, or prig- 
 gish. Education, in its highest sense, is con- 
 scious training of mind or body to act uncon- 
 sciously. It is conscious formation of mental 
 habits, not mere acquisition of information. 
 
 One of the many ways in which the individual 
 unwisely eclipses himself, is in his worship of 
 the fetich of luck. He feels that all others are 
 lucky, and that whatever he attempts, fails. He 
 does not realize the untiring energy, the unre- 
 mitting concentration, the heroic courage, the 
 sublime patience that is the secret of some men's 
 success. Their "luck" was that they had pre- 
 pared themselves to be equal to their opportunity 
 when it came and were awake to recognize it 
 and receive it. His own opportunity came and 
 departed unnoted, it would not waken him from 
 his dreams of some untold wealth that would fall 
 into his lap. So he grows discouraged and 
 envies those whom he should emulate, and he 
 bandages his arm and chloroforms his energies, 
 and performs his duties in a perfunctory way, or 
 he passes through life, just ever "sampling" 
 lines of activity. 
 
 The honest, faithful struggler should always 
 
Doing Our Best at All Times 43 
 
 realize that failure is but an episode in a true 
 man's life, — never the whole story. It is never 
 easy to meet, and no philosophy can make it so, 
 but the steadfast courage to master conditions, in- 
 stead of complaining of them, will help him on 
 his way ; it will ever enable him to get the best 
 out of what he has. He never knows the long 
 series of vanquished failures that give solidity to 
 some one else's success; he does not realize the 
 price that some rich man, the innocent football 
 of political malcontents and demagogues, has 
 heroicly paid for wealth and position. 
 
 The man who has a pessimist's doubt of all 
 things; who demands a certified guarantee of his 
 future; who ever fears his work will not be 
 recognized or appreciated ; or that after all, it is 
 really not worth while, will never live his best. 
 He is dulling his capacity for real progress by his 
 hypnotic course of excuses for inactivity, instead 
 of a strong tonic of reasons for action. 
 
 One of the most weakening elements in the 
 individual make-up is the surrender to the on- 
 coming of years. Man's self-confidence dims and 
 dies in the fear of age. " This new thought," he 
 says of some suggestion tending to higher de- 
 velopment, "is good; it is what we need. I am 
 glad to have it for my children; I would have 
 been happy to have had some such help when I 
 was at school, but it is too late for me. I am a 
 man advanced in years." 
 
 This is but blind closing of life to wondrous 
 possibilities. The knell of lost opportunity is 
 
44 Doing Our Best at All Times 
 
 never tolled in this life. It is never too late to 
 recognize truth and to live by it. It repuires only 
 greater effort, closer attention, deeper consecra- 
 tion ; but the impossible does not exist for the 
 man who is self-confident and is willing to pay 
 the price in time and struggle for his success or 
 development. Later in life, the assessments are 
 heavier in progress, as in life insurance, but that 
 matters not to that mighty self-confidence that 
 will not grow old while knowledge can keep it 
 young. 
 
 Socrates, when his hair whitened with the 
 snow of age, learned to play on instruments of 
 music. Cato, at fourscore, began his study of 
 Greek, and the same age saw Plutarch beginning, 
 with the enthusiasm of a boy, his first lessons in 
 Latin. The Character of Man, Theophrastus' 
 greatest work, was begun on his ninetieth birth- 
 day. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was the work 
 of the poet's declining years. Ronsard, the 
 father of French poetry, whose sonnets even 
 translation cannot destroy, did not develop his 
 poetic faculty until nearly fifty. Benjamin 
 Franklin at this age had just taken his really first 
 steps of importance in philosophic pursuits. 
 Arnauld, the theologian and sage, translated 
 Josephus in his eightieth year. Winckelmann, 
 one of the most famous writers on classic an- 
 tiquities, was the son of a shoemaker, and lived 
 in obscurity and ignorance until the prime of life. 
 Hobbes, the English philosopher, published his 
 version of the Odyssey in his eighty-seventh 
 
Doing Our Best at All Times 45 
 
 year, and his Iliad one year later. Chevreul, the 
 great French scientist, whose untiring labors in 
 the realm of color have so enriched the world, 
 was busy, keen and active when Death called 
 him, at the age of 103. 
 
 These men did not fear age; these few names 
 from the great muster-roll of the famous ones 
 who defied the years, should be voices of hope 
 and heartening to every individual whose courage 
 and confidence is weak. The path of truth, 
 higher living, truer development in every phase of 
 life, is never shut from the individual — until he 
 closes it himself. Let man feel this, believe it 
 and make this faith a real and living factor in 
 his life and there are no limits to his progress. 
 He has but to live his best at all times, and rest 
 calm and untroubled no matter what results come 
 to his efforts. The constant looking backward to 
 what might have been, instead of forward to what 
 may be, is a great weakener of self-confidence. 
 This worry for the old past, this wasted energy, 
 for that which no power in the world can restore, 
 ever lessens the individual's faith in himself, 
 weakens his efforts to develop himself for the 
 future to the perfection of his possibilities. 
 
 Nature in her beautiful love and tenderness, 
 says to man, weakened and worn and weary 
 with the struggle, " Do in the best way you can 
 the trifle that is under your hand at this moment; 
 do it in the best spirit of preparation for the future 
 your thought suggests; bring all the light of 
 knowledge from all the past to aid you. Do this 
 
46 Doing Our Best at All Times 
 
 and you have done your best. The past is for- 
 ever closed to you. It is closed forever to you. 
 No worry, no struggle, no suffering, no agony 
 of despair can alter it. It is as much beyond 
 your power as if it were a million years of 
 eternity behind you. Turn all that past, with its 
 sad hours, weakness and sin, its wasted oppor- 
 tunities as light; in confidence and hope, upon 
 the future. Turn it all in fuller truth and light so 
 as to make each trifle of this present a new past 
 it will be joy to look back to; each trifle a 
 grander, nobler, and more perfect preparation for 
 the future. The present and the future you can 
 make from it, is yours; the past has gone back, 
 with all its messages, all its history, all its records 
 to the God who loaned you the golden moments 
 to use in obedience to His law. 
 
VII 
 
 The Royal Road to Happiness 
 
 URING my whole life I have not had 
 twenty-four hours of happiness." So 
 said Prince Bismarck, one of the 
 greatest statesmen of the nineteenth 
 century. Eighty-three years of wealth, fame, 
 honors, power, influence, prosperity and triumph, 
 — years when he held an empire in his fingers, — 
 but not one day of happiness! 
 
 Happiness is the greatest paradox in Nature. 
 It can grow in any soil, live under any conditions. 
 It defies environment. It comes from within; it 
 is the revelation of the depths of the inner life as 
 light and heat proclaim the sun from which they 
 radiate. Happiness consists not of having, but 
 of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It 
 is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself. 
 A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a 
 king on his throne might envy. Man is the 
 creator of his own happiness; it is the aroma of 
 a life lived in harmony with high ideals. For 
 what a man has, he may be dependent on others; 
 what he is, rests with him alone. What he ob- 
 tains in life is but acquisition; what he attains, is 
 growth. Happiness is the soul's joy in the pos- 
 session of the intangible. Absolute, perfect, con- 
 
 47 
 
48 The Royal Road to Happiness 
 
 tinuous happiness in life, is impossible for the 
 human. It would mean the consummation of 
 attainments, the individual consciousness of a 
 perfectly fulfilled destiny. Happiness is para- 
 doxic because it may coexist with trial, sorrow 
 and poverty. It is' the gladness of the heart, 
 — rising superior to all conditions. 
 
 Happiness has a number of under-studies, — 
 gratification, satisfaction, content, and pleasure, — 
 clever imitators that simulate its appearance rather 
 than emulate its method. Gratification is a har- 
 mony between our desires and our possessions. 
 It is ever incomplete, it is the thankful accept- 
 ance of part. It is a mental pleasure in the 
 quality of what one receives, an unsatisfiedness 
 as to the quantity. It may be an element in hap- 
 piness, but, in itself, — it is not happiness. 
 
 Satisfaction is perfect identity of our desires 
 and our possessions. It exists only so long as 
 this perfect union and unity can be preserved. 
 But every realized ideal gives birth to new ideals, 
 every step in advance reveals large domains of 
 the unattained; every feeding stimulates new 
 appetites, — then the desires and possessions are 
 no longer identical, no longer equal; new crav- 
 ings call forth new activities, the equipoise is 
 destroyed, and dissatisfaction reenters. Man 
 might possess everything tangible in the world 
 and yet not be happy, for happiness is the satis- 
 fying of the soul, not of the mind or the body. 
 Dissatisfaction, in its highest sense, is the key- 
 note of all advance, the evidence of new aspira- 
 
The Royal Road to Happiness 49 
 
 tions, the guarantee of the progressive revelation 
 of new possibilities. 
 
 Content is a greatly overrated virtue. It is a 
 kind of diluted despair; it is the feeling with 
 which we continue to accept substitutes, without 
 striving for the realities. Content makes the 
 trained individual swallow vinegar and try to 
 smack his lips as if it were wine. Content ena- 
 bles one to warm his hands at the fire of a past 
 joy that exists only in memory. Content is a 
 mental and moral chloroform that deadens the 
 activities of the individual to rise to higher planes 
 of life and growth. Man should never be con- 
 tented with anything less than the best efforts of 
 his nature can possibly secure for him. Content 
 makes the world more comfortable for the in- 
 dividual, but it is the death-knell of progress. 
 Man should be content with each step of prog- 
 ress merely as a station, discontented with it as 
 a destination; contented with it as a step; dis- 
 contented with it as a finality. There are times 
 when a man should be content with what he 
 has, but never with what he is. 
 
 But content is not happiness; neither is pleas- 
 ure. Pleasure is temporary, happiness is con- 
 tinuous; pleasure is a note, happiness is a sym- 
 phony; pleasure may exist when conscience 
 utters protests; happiness, — never. Pleasure may 
 have its dregs and its lees; but none can be found 
 in the cup of happiness. 
 
 Man is the only animal that can be really 
 happy. To the rest of the creation belong only 
 
50 The Royal Road to Happiness 
 
 weak imitations of the understudies. Happiness 
 represents a peaceful attunement of a life with a 
 standard of living. It can never be made by the 
 individual, by himself, for himself. It is one of 
 the incidental by-products of an unselfish life. 
 No man can make his own happiness the one 
 object of his life and attain it, any more than he 
 can jump on the far end of his shadow. If you 
 would hit the bull's-eye of happiness on the tar- 
 get of life, aim above it. Place other things 
 higher than your own happiness and it will surely 
 come to you. You can buy pleasure, you can 
 acquire content, you can become satisfied, — but 
 Nature never put real happiness on the bargain- 
 counter. It is the undetachable accompaniment 
 of true living. It is calm and peaceful; it never 
 lives in an atmosphere of worry or of hopeless 
 struggle. 
 
 &The basis of happiness is the love of some- 
 ing outside self. Search every instance of 
 happiness in the world, and you will find, when 
 all the incidental features are eliminated, there is 
 always the constant, unchangeable element of 
 love,— love of parent for child; love of man and 
 woman for each other; love of humanity in some 
 form, or a great life work into which the in- 
 dividual throws all his energies. 
 
 Happiness is the voice of optimism, of faith, of 
 simple, steadfast love. No cynic or pessimist can 
 be really happy. A cynic is a man who is 
 morally near-sighted,— and brags about it. He 
 sees the evil in his own heart, and thinks he sees 
 
The Royal Road to Happiness 51 
 
 the world. He lets a mote in his eye eclipse the 
 sun. An incurable cynic is an individual who 
 should long for death, — for life cannot bring him 
 happiness, death might. The keynote of Bis- 
 marck's lack of happiness was his profound dis- 
 trust of human nature. 
 
 There is a royal road to happiness; it lies in 
 Consecration, Concentration, Conquest and Con- 
 science. 
 
 Consecration is dedicating the individual life to 
 the service of others, to some noble mission, to 
 realizing some unselfish ideal. Life is not some- 
 thing to be lived through ; it is something to be 
 lived up to. It is a privilege, not a penal servi- 
 tude of so many decades on earth. Consecration 
 places the object of life above the mere acquisi- 
 tion of money, as a finality. The man who is 
 unselfish, kind, loving, tender, helpful, ready to 
 lighten the burden of those around him, to 
 hearten the struggling ones, to forget himself 
 sometimes in remembering others, — is on the right 
 road to happiness. Consecration is ever active, 
 bold and aggressive, fearing naught but possible 
 disloyalty to high ideals. 
 
 Concentration makes the individual life simpler 
 and deeper. It cuts away the shams and pre- 
 tences of modern living and limits life to its truest 
 essentials. Worry, fear, useless regret, — all the 
 great wastes that sap mental, moral or physical 
 energy must be sacrificed, or the individual need- 
 lessly destroys half the possibilities of living. A 
 great purpose in life, something that unifies the 
 
52 The Royal Road to Happiness 
 
 strands and threads of each day's thinking, some- 
 thing that takes the sting from the petty trials, 
 sorrows, sufferings and blunders of life, is a great 
 aid to Concentration. Soldiers in battle may for- 
 get their wounds, or even be unconscious of 
 them, in the inspiration of battling for what they 
 believe is right. Concentration dignifies an 
 humble life; it makes a great life, — sublime. In 
 morals it is a short-cut to simplicity. It leads to 
 right for right's sake, without thought of policy 
 or of reward. It brings calm and rest to the in- 
 dividual, — a serenity that is but the sunlight of 
 happiness. 
 
 Conquest is the overcoming of an evil habit, 
 the rising superior to opposition and attack, the 
 spiritual exaltation that comes from resisting 
 the invasion of the grovelling material side of 
 life. Sometimes when you are worn and 
 weak with the struggle ; when it seems that justice 
 is a dream, that honesty and loyalty and truth 
 count for nothing, that the devil is the only good 
 paymaster; when hope grows dim and flickers, 
 then is the time when you must tower in the 
 great sublime faith that Right must prevail, then 
 must you throttle these imps of doubt and de- 
 spair, you must master yourself to master the 
 world around you. This is Conquest; this is 
 what counts. Even a log can float with the cur- 
 rent, it takes a man to fight sturdily against an 
 opposing tide that would sweep his craft out of 
 its course. When the jealousies, the petty in- 
 trigues and the meannesses and the misunder- 
 
The Royal Road to Happiness 53 
 
 standings in life assail you, — rise above them. Be 
 like a lighthouse that illumines and beautifies 
 the snarling, swashing waves of the storm that 
 threaten it, that seek to undermine it and seek to 
 wash over it. This is Conquest. When the 
 chance to win fame, wealth, success or the attain- 
 ment of your heart's desire, by sacrifice of honor 
 or principle, comes to you and it does not affect 
 you long enough even to seem a temptation, you 
 have been the victor. That too is Conquest. 
 And Conquest is part of the royal road to Happi- 
 ness. 
 
 Conscience, as the mentor, the guide and com- 
 pass of every act, leads ever to Happiness. 
 When the individual can stay alone with his con- 
 science and get its approval, without using force 
 or specious logic, then he begins to know what 
 real Happiness is. But the individual must be 
 careful that he is not appealing to a conscience 
 perverted or deadened by the wrongdoing and 
 subsequent deafness of its owner. The man who 
 is honestly seeking to live his life in Consecra- 
 tion, Concentration and Conquest, living from 
 day to day as best he can, by the light he has, 
 may rely explicitly on his Conscience. He can 
 shut his ears to " what the world says " and find 
 in the approval of his own conscience the high- 
 est earthly tribune, — the voice of the Infinite com- 
 muning with the Individual. 
 
 Unhappiness is the hunger to get; Happiness is 
 the hunger to give. True happiness must ever 
 have the tinge of sorrow outlived, the sense of 
 
54 The Royal Road to Happiness 
 
 pain softened by the mellowing years, the chas- 
 tening of loss that in the wondrous mystery of 
 time transmutes our suffering into love and sym- 
 pathy with others. 
 
 If the individual should set out for a single day 
 to give Happiness, to make life happier, brighter 
 and sweeter, not for himself, but for others, he 
 would find a wondrous revelation of what Hap- 
 piness really is. The greatest of the world's 
 heroes could not by any series of acts of heroism 
 do as much real good as any individual living his 
 whole life in seeking, from day to day, to make 
 others happy. 
 
 Each day there should be fresh resolution, new 
 strength, and renewed enthusiasm. * ' Just for To- 
 day " might be the daily motto of thousands of 
 societies throughout the country, composed of 
 members bound together to make the world bet- 
 ter through constant simple acts of kindness, 
 constant deeds of sweetness and love. And Hap- 
 piness would come to them, in its highest and 
 best form, not because they would seek to absorb 
 it, but,— because they seek to radiate it. 
 




 
 

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