~   U
L 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
THE GREAT CONVERSERS,
And other Essays.
1 Volume, 12mo. Price, $1.75.
"He writes with great force and beauty." -Albany Eveningurnal.
His style is brilliant and captivating, and his myriads of
illustrative anecdotes are invariably happily chosen and judiciously used." - Liverpool Albion, England.
"A master in the ait of elegant composition. In his hand
the driest and most commonplace theme would glow with
life and beauty."- REV. A. HUELSTER, PH.D., Prof. of Greek,
Northwestern College, Ill.
"A most charming style adorned with ample and elegant
learning.....  As an essayist we think Professor Mathews
deserves to rank with the very best." - Chicago Standard.
S. C. GRIGGS & CO.,
Publishers, Chicago. 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD;
OR,
HINTS ON SUCCESS IN LIFE.
BY
WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL. D.,
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO.
Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quse ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.
HORACE.
Do not shun this maxim as commonplace. On the contrary, take the closest heed
of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat.  Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world. -ARTHUR
HELPS.
FOURTEENTH  THOUSAND.
CHICAGO:
S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
1874.
. I -   - I, - I
, %,I .
I.-:..,
II 
6
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872,
BY SAMUEL C. GRIGGS,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
. -             i
.   i  i - I
li    X   *       i X
Afti(    Sll)-                          t~; t.* -: v,1    --
WI 
Quit yourselves like men.- 1 Samuel iv. 9.
A sacred burden is the life ye bear,
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly,
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly.
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.
FRANCEs ANNE KEMBLE.
In general I have no patience with people who talk about "the thoughtlessness of
youth" indulgently; I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and the indulgence due to that. When a man has done his work, and nothing can any way be
materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will;
but what excuse can you find for wilfuilness of thought at the very time when every
crisis of fortune hangs on your decisions?  A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of an hour  A
youth thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a
moment!  A youth thoughtless, when his every action is a foundation-stone of
future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless inll
any after years, rather than now, -though, indeed, there is only one place where a
man may be nobly thoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be
done there. -RUSKIN.
There is no fault nor folly of my life that does not rise up against me, and take
away my joy and shorten my power of possession, of sighlt, of understanding. And
every past effort of my life, every gleam of rightness or good in it, is with me now, to
help me in my grasp of this art and its vision. - lb.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these, "It might have been!"
WHITTIER.
The well-known, worn-out topics of consolation and of encouragement are become
trite because they are reasonable.-RICHARD SHARP.
428055 
i 
PREFACE.
IIE origin of this book, which will account for some
of its peculiarities of style, is as follows.  In  the
early part of 1871 the author wrote for the Chicag,o Tribune a series of articles on the subject here treated, after
the publication of which a considerable number of persons in different parts of the Northwest expressed a wish
that they should be gathered into a volume. This led to
their revision, and the addition of nearly twice as much
new matter, the whole forming the work which is now
offered to the public.
That the book has many imperfections, the author is
well aware; they are due partly to the fact that it has
been written by economizing moments of leisure snatched
from professional labors, and, to use a phrase of Milton,
with his left hand.  Upon a subject which so many pens
have discussed, it is, of course, hardly possible to say
anything absolutely new; the most that a writer can
hope to do is to recombine and present in novel and attractive forms, with fresh illustrations, so as to impress
persons who have not been impressed before, thoughts
which have substantially been repeated from the days of
4
A 
PREFACE.
Solomon to those of Smiles and "Titcomb." Some of
the topics, however, have been less hackneyed than others;
as, for example, the important one of " Reserved Power,"
- in writing the chapter upon which the author has been
materially aided by some of the suggestions contained in
"The Army of the Reserve," an eloquent and scholarly
address delivered at Bowdoin College, in 1862, by Hon.
B. F. Thomas, LL.D.
If this book shall serve to'rouse to honorable effort
any young man who is wasting his time and energies
through indifference to life's prizes,- to cheer, stimulate,
and inspire with enthusiasm any one who is desponding
through distrust of his own abilities,- or to reveal to
any one who is puzzled to discover the path to success
and -usefulness the art of "getting on" to the goal of his
wishes, -the author will feel himself abundantly repaid
for his labors. Doubtless there are many persons who are
better qualified by their worldly knowledge to discuss the
subject here considered; but, unhappily, thie most successful men do not reveal the secret of their successes;
and if we do not reject criticisms on paintings from men
who have never handled a brush, nor refuse to follow the
directions of a guidle-post though it has never hopped
off upon its one leg and travelled the road to which it
points, a young man who is beginning life may accept
the hints of a well-wisher whose knowledge of his needs
has been derived from observation, rather than from experience.
CHIcAGo, October 9, 1872.
vi
ft 
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.....
CHAPTER II.
GOOD AND BAD LuCK.......
CHAPTER III.
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION...
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL CULTURE.....
CHAPTER V.
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM 
CHAPTER VI.
SELF-RELIANCE......
CHAPTER VII.
ORIGINALITY IN AIMS AND METHODS..
CHAPTER VIII.
ATTENTION TO DETAILS.......
CHAPTER IX.
PRACTICAL TALENT.....
PAGE
1
~ 19
.   34
.   52
~   65
-..    83
.   97
.  107
.   115 
viii                     CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
DECISION.......
CHAPTER XI.
MANNER....
CHAPTER XII.
BUSINESS H-ABITS........
CHAPTER XIII.
SELF-ADVERTISING........
CHAPTER XIV.
THE WILL AND TIIE WAY..
CHAPTER XV.
TIIE WILL AND TIIE WAY (continued).
CHAPTER XVI.
RESERVED POWER......
CHAPTER XVII.
ECONOMY OF TIME........ 
CHAPTER XVIII.
MONEY,- ITS USE AND ABUSE...
CHAPTER XIX.
MERCANTILE FAILURES....
CHAPTER XX.
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST....
CHAPTER XXI.
TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS...
INDEX......
12,
141
159
178
188
221
238
268
280
304
329
346
353 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD..
CHAPTER I.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of
which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done
his best. -SYDNEY SMITH.
Men must know that in this theatre of man's life it remaineth only to God
and angels to be lookers-on. -BACON.
Toil alone could not have produced the "Paradise Lost" or the "Principia."  The born dwarf never grows to the middle size.- REv. R. A.
WILLMOTT.
The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well,
without a thought of famine. - HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
N attending a concert in one of our large cities, did you ever
observe the wide chasm that separates the first and second
violinists of the orchestra? One is all pomp, fire, bustle,
enthusiasm, energy.   Now waving his bow high in the air, he
silently guides the harmony; now rapidly tapping on the
rest-board, he hurries the movement; and again, bringing the
violin to his shoulder, he takes the leading strain, and high
above the crash of sound, above the shrill blast of the trumpet,
the braying of horns, the ear-piercing notes of the fife, the'
sobbing of oboes, the wailing of violoncellos, and all the thunders of the orchestra, are heard, distinct and clear, the shrieking
notes of the first violin. Dressed in unimpeachable broadcloth,
with kids and linen of immaculate purity, stamping his feet,
wagging his head, nodding earnestly to the right and to the
left, and beating time with mad energy, he enters heart and
1
0 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
soul into the music, oblivious of all things else; and  all
because he is the leader, and plays the first violin. Standing
by his side, but upon a lower platform, and before a lower
music-rest, is a patient, careworn man, who saws quietly on
the strings, with the air rather of the hired laborer than of the
enthusiast.   His eye you never see in a fine frenzy rolling,
glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, nor does
his facile hand run off in roulades of melody; he never wags
his head, nor stamps his foot, nor labors to wreak his thoughts
upon expression; but steadily and conscientiously he pours a
rich undercurrent of harmony into the music, which few hear,
fewer care for, but without which, losing the charm of contrast;
it would be as dreary as the droning of a bagpipe, as monotonous as a picture which is all lights and no shadows.   With
his eye fixed on the notes, he scrapes away with diligence, not
with enthusiasm; he is moved, not by the inspiration of a
master, but by the reflection that he is exchanging his notes
for dollars, and that, with each quaver, he earns so much bread
and butter for his family. Yet this automaton- this musical
machine, that plays its part so mechanically, with apparently
as little interest in the result as Babbage's calculating-machine
in the solution of a mathematical problem -may have been
endowed by nature with as much genius and fire as that thundering Jupiter of the orchestra, the leader; but, alas! he plays
second fiddle.
The world is an orchestra, and men are players.   All of us
are playing some part in the production of life's harmony,
some wielding the baton, and fired by the sympathy of lookerson; others feeling that they are but second fiddles, humbled
by conscious inferiority, and drudging on as the treadmili horse
plods through his monotonous task. Our object will -be, in
this series of papers, to show the reason of this inequality, and
especially how, whether one plays first or second fiddle, or is
gifted with talents that qualify him only to strike the cymbals
or beat the drum, he may magnify his calling, and act well his
part, "wlhere all the honor lies."
2 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
We purpose, in this volume, to discuss the subject of suc cess in life; or, in other words, to answer the question which
every young man, as he enters upon his career of self-depen dence, is likely to ask of himself or others, " Iow shall I get
on in the world." The theme is as old as the human race;
yet, though volumes have been written on it, it is still new
to each successive generation, and assuming, as it does, new
phases with the ceaseless changes in society, must be inex haustible. Out of the thousand topics which it offers for con sideration, we shall select only those of vital interest, just
notions of which are indispensable to every young man who
would act well his part in the great drama of life. To the
mass of men, and especially to those who are about embarking
on the voyage of active life, no theme can be of deeper interest
than this. A man sailing on that voyage has been compared
to a vessel of war leaving port under sealed orders. Hle knows
not, but as the ways of Providence are disclosed, to what ports
he must go, or on what seas he must sail. The dangers of the
voyage -the sunken reefs, the icebergs, or the stormy capes,
which may be his ruin - are unknown. Through perilous
storms and treacherous calms must he steer his unknown course,
nor is there any exact chart laid down for the voyage. No man
ever sailed over exactly the same route that another sailed over
before him; every man who starts on the ocean of life arches
his sails to an untried breeze. Like Coleridge's mariner, "he
is the first that ever burst into that lonely sea."
In looking about among the circle of our acquaintances, we
are surprised to see how few have made the voyage successfully,
that fewer still have reached the ports for which they sailed.
MIany a shallop, which sailed out of harbor noiselessly and unnoticed, has anchored at last safely in port; many a noble
argosy, freighted with precious hopes, and launched with streamers flying, amid the salvos of artillery and the huzzas of thousands, has sunk beneath the waves. To what impotent conclusions, indeed, do young men of brilliant parts frequently
come! What becomes of the foremost boy at the academy,
0
-a 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
of the "senior wrangler" of the university, of the champion
of the debating club, the law school, or the lyceum 7 Where
are to be found, in the various walks of life, all of the geniuses
to which almost every village periodically gives birth? All
along the shores of the great ocean, on whose currents we are
borne with resistless sweep, are strewn the wrecks of those
whose embarkation was seemingly under the very star of hope.
On whatever shoals or hidden rocks they may have struck, it
matters not to them; only one voyage is vouchsafed, and failure
is irretrievable; but to all who come after them, an explanation
of the causes of disaster is of deep interest, and may save many
from a similar fate.
Before discussing, however, the causes of shipwreck, let us
anticipate a few of the objections that may meet us at the
threshold. And, first, there are those who deny that success
is pre-eminently desirable, or that it is by any means identical
with happiness. No doubt there are many enjoyments outside
of worldly success. After all, it is pleasant to lie in bed till
eight o'clock in the morning, instead of turning out at five; it
is pleasant to hug the chimney-corner, instead of breasting the
pitiless storm; it is pleasant to pass one's evenings in the
bosom of a family; pleasant, too, to taste the difference between winter and spring, fine sunsets and storms, town and
country.  The path of success, never "a primrose path of dalliance," is steeper and more thorny to-day than ever before.
Never before in the world's history was competition in every
calling and pursuit so fierce as now; never did success, in more
than a moderate degree, demand for its attainment such a union
of physical and intellectual qualities,- of alertness, activity,
prudence, persistence, boldness, and decision, - as in this latter
half of the nineteenth century.   Carlyle truly says that " the
race of life has become intense; the runners are treading upon
each other's heels; woe be to him who stops to tie his shoestrings!"  This fact alone is sufficient to show the absurdity
of the opinion sometimes advanced, that success is not, as a
general thing, a test of merit. In spite of the occasional tri
4
0 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
umphs of mediocre men and charlatans, the rule still holds,
that the men who make their way to the front, becoming rich
or famous by force of their personal characters, must have
something more in them than impudence, and even the Hudsons and Fisks could not have won their positions without
some sterling qualities, however alloyed with their opposites.
Again, it must be confessed that success does not always
yield the happiness expected; that the prizes of life, like the
apples of Sodom, often turn to ashes in the grasp. Of every
object of human pursuit, however dazzling in the distance, it
may be said as the poet has said of woman,               "The lovely toy, so fiercely sought,
Hath lost its charm by being caught."
But persons who reason thus concerning human happiness forget its true nature. They forget that it does not consist in
the gratification of the desires, nor in that freedom from care,
that imaginary state of repose, to which most men look so
anxiously forward, and with the prospect of which their labors
are lightened, but which is more languid, irksome, and insupportable than all the toils of active life. True, the objects we
pursue with so much ardor are insignificant in themselves, and
never fulfil our extravagant expectations; but this by no means
proves them unworthy of pursuit. Properly to estimate their
value, we must take into view all the pleasurable  emotions
they awaken prior to attainment.
"Man never is, but always to be blest,"
says the poet.  That is, his true happiness consists in the
means, and not in the end; in acquisition, and not in possession.
The principle and source of it is not the gratification of the
desires, nor does its amount depend on the frequency of such
gratifications. He who cultivates a tree derives far more satisfaction from the care he bestows upon it than from the fruit.
Give the huntsman his game, and the gambler the money that
is staked, that they both may enjoy, without care or perplexity,
the objects they pursue, and they will smile at your folly.
5 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
"If my son," said a certain wealthy man, whose wasteful heir
was fast dissipating the fruits of his exertions, "can take as
much pleasure in spending my property as I have derived from
acquiring it, I will not complain."   Lessing declared that if
he had been offered the choice between the possession' of truth
and the pleasure of seeking for it, he would unhesitatingly have
preferred the latter. A state of constant fruition would be,
according to our present notions, a state truly lamentable, since
it would preclude, in a great degree, the pleasing emotions that
spring from hope and expectation, and thus extinguish the
lights that principally serve to cheer our path through life.
Were all our desires satiated at their birth, or were we always
satisfied with our present condition, in either case, as there
would be nothing to draw forth our active energies, life would
stagnate. In short, man was made for action, and life is a
mere scene for the exercise of the mind and the engagements
of the heart,- a scene where the most important occupations
are, in a sense, but graver species of amusement, and where, so
long as we take pleasure in the pursuit of an object, it matters
but little that we attain it not, or that it fades when acquired.
Hope is, indeed, a deceitful enchantress; but she sheds a sweet
radiance on the stream of life, and never exerts her magic
except to our advantage.   We seldom attain what she beckons
us to pursue; but her deceptions resemble those which the
dying husbandman  in the fable practised upon  his sons,
who, by telling them of a hidden mass of wealth, which he
had buried in a secret place in his vineyard, led them so sedulously to delve the ground, and turn up the earth about the
roots of the vines, that they found, indeed, a treasure, though
not in gold, in wine.
The truth is, we owe a large part of our happiness to our
mistakes. As in the natural world, it would be only necessary
to improve our vision to a higher degree of acuteness, to make
the sublimest scenes in nature and the most magnificent works
of art appear horrid and deformed, so in the moral, too nicely
to consider the intrinsic worth of the objects we pursue, will
6 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
infallibly lead to a wrong estimate of the value  of human
life.
But whatever the views we may take of this subject, one
thing is quite certain, and that is, that if happiness is not found
in success, it is not found in failure.  It is a sad thing to feel,
even when we have done our best, - when the stinging sense
of time and talents wasted is absent,- that we have foundered
in our earthly voyage; to feel that we have ingloriously stranded,
while those who set sail with us pass by with streamers flying
and swelling sail. Mediocre men often mistake aspiration for
inspiration; they have first-class ambition along with third-rate
powers; and these coming together make a most ill-matched
pair of legs, which bear a person along awkwardly in his path
of life, and expose him to endless mortifications. Philosophy
or religion may take the sting out of disappointment; but generally the impossibility of connecting the ideas of felicity and
failure is so great, that though examples abound to show that
success is not happiness, it is yet clear that it is essential to it.
The moments in a man's life when, Alexander like, he feels
that the world has no more prizes to be coveted, are few indeed.
It has been truly said that an object to be desired is at once
the pleasure and the torment of life; sometimes a great object
to be steadily pursued, all else being made subservient to it; or,
more commonly, a succession of minor objects, rising, one after
another, in endless succession. If Keats did somewhat exaggerate when he declared that "there is no fiercer hell than
the failure in a great attempt," yet it must be admitted that the
pleasure of a long-sought, ardently desired success, dreamed of
by night and toiled for by day, is, probably, as complete as
anything this side of heaven; and it is universally felt to be
a compensation for all toil or hardship; it is well, if not for
any sin.
Again, while success is necessary to happiness, it must be
remembered that the term is a relative one; in other words,
that there are many degrees of success, among which the highest
are neither attainable by all, nor essential to felicity. A man
7 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
may be a very successful lawyer, though he should fail of becom ing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States;
a successful physician, though far inferior in skill to a Brodie or
Mlagendie; a successful merchant, though he may never accu mulate a tithe of the wealth of a Stewart, a Girard, or an Astor.
All this, we are aware, is obvious enough; and we should not
think of repeating such truisms, were not the contrary so often
explicitly or implicitly taught in so many "Young Men's Own
Books," "Student's Manuals," and articles in popular newspapers. As if restlessness, dissatisfaction with its lot, contempt
for reasonable and attainable successes, were altogether wanting
in Young America, our youth are hardly out of their jackets
ere they are urged by a certain class of writers and lecturers
to look with scorn upon, and to struggle out of, the sphere or
place in life to which, if a lowly one, Providence has assigned
them, and to become "great men," that is, governors, members of Congress, foreign ministers, major-generals, railroad
kings, et id omne, which they are told they may become, if
they only will to do it. Forgetting that all callings are alike
honorable, if pursued with an honorable spirit; that it is the
heart only which degrades, the intention carried into the work,
and not the work a man does; that the most despised calling
may be made honorable by the honor of its professors; that a
blacksmith may be a man of polished manners, and a millionnaire a clown; that a shoemaker may put genius and taste into
his work, while a lawyer may cobble;- these writers are continually pointing to the Herschels and the Stevensons, the Astors
and the Angelos, and telling the young that they, too, may
shine as stars in the firmament of art, science, or mammon,
provided that they will scorn delights, "outwatch the bear,"
concentrate their energies, and convert their intellectual diamond dust into a diamond.
From the general spirit of these appeals, one would suppose
the writers to believe that every human being at birth is potentially a Shakespeare or a Newton, and that, provided he is
educated properly, and labors long and hard enough, he may
8 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
astonish the world with "Hamlets" and "Principias."  Genius
these writers are fond of defining with Buffon as "patience,"
and they will quote to you with gusto the saying of Newton,
that, if he differed from other men, it was only by "patient
thought." A great orator, like Clay or Chatham; a wondrous
musical composer, like Handel or Bossini; a great architect of
buildings, like Wren, or a more marvellous architect of periods,
like De Quincey,- all the great lights of physical science, the
superior intelligences of art and literature,   have attained to
eminence by steps easily traceable by themselves, and which
all other men may follow, if they will but concentrate their
efforts upon one point, and not fritter away their resources in
a variety of pursuits. Let us, it is said, but search into and
anaLyze the causes of that excellence which in its intensity has
dazzled and confounded us, -let us but trace it through the
various minor stages through which it has passed to its present
summit of power, -  and we shall find that to labor unceasing
does it owe its splendor, and that under similar circumstances,
with equal advantages of culture, equal incentives, and as firm
a will, there are few persons who could not present the same
result. Shelley, we may infer, hardly exaggerated, when he
said that the Almighty had given men arms long enough to
reach the stars, if they would only put them out. If the
young man will but exert himself to the utmost, say these
writers, there is no height of greatness to which he may not
soar.  Ah! but how immense is that "if! "  It is the castle
in which these possible Mirabeaus, unlike the thunderer of the
French tribune, are always confined.   "If my aunt had been
a man, she would have been my uncle "! They forget, who
talk thus, that the power of patient labor was the very essence
of Newton's genius; that continuity and concentration of
thought are in exact proportion to the size and vitality of the
thinking principle. What a man does is the real test of what
a man is; and to talk of what great things one would accomplish, if he had more activity of mind, is to say how strong a
man would be if he only had more strength; or how swiftly
1*
9 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
a steamer would cut the waves, if she had only a bigger boiler,
or could generate steam fast enough!
It is easy to theorize as to what men might become, if they
were something different from what they are. Give a man
the mental energy, the spiritual force of Newton, and he may
unquestionably do as great things as Newton. Give a dog the
muscular strength, the physical qualities of the lion, and he
will be as terrible as the monarch of the forest; or, vice versa,
make the lion cease to be carnivorous in his instincts, and he
will be a pleasant playfellow for your dogs and children.
All experience shows that it is the nature of genius to labor
patiently, and hence it is easy to leap to the conclusion that
genius is but patient labor. But though genius is essentially
active, and will labor, though not always by square rule and
compass, it is the falsest of notions that will can do the work
of intellect, that effort can supply genius, and that mere intensity of desire can give intensity of power. As well might the
tortoise hope, by intense striving, to run as fast as the greyhound, the truck-horse to rival Dexter in fleetness, or the
monkey to acquire the strength of the elephant.   It is perhaps doubtful whether any great intellectual thing was ever
done by great effort; a great thing can be done only by a great
vzan, and he does it without effort. Hazlitt goes so far as to
say that "an improving actor never becomes a great one.   I
have known such in my time, who were always advancing by
slow and sure steps to the height of their profession; but in
the mean time some man of genius rose, and, passing them,
at once seized on the topmost round of ambition's ladder, so
that they still remained in the second class." As the same
acute writer further adds, a volcano does not give warning
when it will break out, nor a thunderbolt send word of its
approach. Kean stamped himself the first night in Shylock;
he never did it any better.  A  man of genius is sui generis;
to be known, he needs only to be seen; you can no more
dispute whether he is one, than you can dispute whether it is a
panther that is shown you in a cage.
10 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
Neither do great occasions make great men,- as our late
civil war and the struggle of France with Prussia too painfully
prove. Great occasions are the necessities only for which great
men are the supplies.   Great men even make great occasions;
nay more, they are great occasions, the great events of history;
"not merely the beacon —lights on the line of human progress,
but the efficient motive-powers, the causce causantes;  they
make, they constitute history." There was never a truer sentiment uttered, than that quoted some years ago at a scientific
meeting in England, by Professor Owen, from the note-book of
the late Dr. Hunter, namely, that no man was ever a great man
who wanted to be one. To achieve any species of greatness, we
must be utterly unconscious of the way we arrive at it. It is
not to be acquired by "malice prepense." As well might one
by taking thought add a cubit to his stature. Great works do
not make greatness; they only reveal it.  They are the outgoings of an inward being; they are the embodiments of the
soul, which was born great.  The greatest works of human
genius were written, not to immortalize their authors, but to
provide for some practical need. Homer sang, partly to kindle
patriotism in his countrymen, partly, perhaps, to get a good
night's lodging as he wandered on the shores of Greece and
Asia; Shakespeare wrote his dramas, not for glory, but to "put
money in his purse";  Hooker's great work was composed to
quiet the strifes of his time; and the masterpiece of Burke, on
which he lavished such a prodigality of thought, was thrown out
as a bastion to protect the British citadel from French republicanism.   So in all other callings.  When  the Duke of Wellington carried out any of his great strategical operations in
Spain, or put the keystone to the arch of his glory at Waterloo,
think you he was dreaming of a star and a garter?  No;  he
thought only of giving the French a sound thrashiing.
It is well known that hero-worshippers are almost universally
disappointed in President Grant. The closest scrutiny of his
features or manner fails to detect any signs of genius in him.
Senator Yates well observed in a speech, that the genius of
11 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
General Grant "is not ostentatious nor dramatic.   It is thd
genius of accomplishment that he has. When his work is done,
there it is, done; and there is the man, except for the work,
ordinary as before."   Such men are content to do, and leave
their glory to take care of itself.
Paradoxical as this may all seem, it is nevertheless true, nor
does it offer any encouragement to idleness, or flatter the conceit of heaven-descended genius in turn-down collars, that labor
may be dispensed with. It simply says that the crow is not
the eagle, and that no amount of sun-starings will make it one;
therefore as an able writer, himself a man of brilliant genius, has
said, "It is no man's business whether he has genius or not;
work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily, and
the natural and unforced results of such work will be always
the things that God meant him to do, and will be his best.
No agonies, nor heart-rendings, will enable him to do any
better! If he be a great man, they will be great things; if he
is a small man, small things; but always, if thus peacefully
done, good and right; always, if restlessly and ambitiously
done, false, hollow, and despicable."
The writers who talk of the great things that may be achieved
by a determined will-by an intense, continuous act of volition to do and to be such and such things- forget that this
power of willing strongly is, to a large extent, a gift of nature,
and as rare as any other good thing in the world. Again,
while some pre-eminently successful men have pursued paths
previously marked out, many have proposed to themselves no
distinct goal to be reached. As a sensible writer says: "A
man starts on his career with a tacit understanding with himself that he is to rise. It is a step-by-step progress. He
probably has no distinct aim. It is only in books that he
resolves from the first dawning of ambition to become owner
of such an estate, or bishop of such a see.  But he means to get
on, and devotes all his powers to that end. He fixes his
thought beyond immediate self-indulgence, chooses his friends
as they will help the main design, falls in love on the same
12 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
principle, and, habitually deferring to a vague but glowing
future, learns to work towards it, and for its sake to be selfdenying and long-sighted.   His instincts quicken; he puts
forth feelers, which men who take their pleasure from hand to
mouth have no use for; he lives in habitual caution, with an
eye alwvays to the main chance. Thus he refines and enhances
that natural discretion which doubles the weight and value of
every other gift, and yet keeps them on an unobtrusive level,
leaving itself the most notable quality, till he is universally
pronounced the man made to get on, by people who do not
know that it is a steady will that has made and kept him what
he is."
The truth is, men differ from birth in mind as they differ in
b      o       d       y,         though in each case the differences may be  modified
to a certain degree by training, regimen, and so forth. But is
there anything in this truth to discourage the young man who
is anxious to get on in the world X By no means. No man
knows what are his powers, whether he is capable of great or
only of little things, till he has tested himself by actual trial.
Let every beginner in life put forth his whole strength, without troubling himself with the question whether he has genius
or not; then, as Sir Joshua Reynolds says; "if he ha              s       great
talents, industry will improve them; if he has but moderate
abilities, industry will supply their deficiency." The more
limited your powers, the greater need of effort; the smaller the
results of your efforts, the greater need that they should be
repeated. The mediocre capacity must be eked out by brave
resolve and persistent effort. The Spartan youth who complained to his mother that his sword was too short, was told
to add a step to it; and so must your scant capacity be increased by redoubled diligence and a more earnest determination. If it be not true that, as Sir Joshua Reynolds says,
"nothing is denied to well-directed labor," it is certain that, as
he                                     further says, "nothing is to be  obtained without it."  To a
large extent, as William Penn declares, "industry supplies the
want of parts; patience and diligence, like faith, remove moun
13. 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
tains." "There lives not a man on earth, out of a lunatic
asylum," says Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and the words
should ring in every young, man's ears, "who has not in him
the power to do good. What can writers, haranguers, or speculators do more than that? Have you ever entered a cottage,
ever travelled in a coach, ever talked with a peasant in the
field, or loitered with a mechanic at the loom, and not found
that each of those men had a talent you had not, knew some
things you knew not? The most useless creature that ever
yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags, under the
suns of Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect. What
men want is, not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the
power to achieve, but the will to labor."
There is, perhaps, no mistake of the young more common
than that of supposing that, in the pursuits of life, extraordinary
talents are necessary to one who would achieve more than ordinary success. To minds that lack energy, it seems impossible
to believe that those persons who  have made themselves a
place in history by their connection with striking events, and
whose influence has been felt through ages in the changes they
have produced in the destinies of nations, have been men of
ordinary intellectual calibre, and not possessed of that comprehensive grasp of the wholeness of things which embraces all
their bearings and relations, and places a man in advance of
the philosophy of his age. But the experience of the world
is not so discouraging to its mediocre men. The spectacle of
triumphant mediocrity is exhibited daily; and every man of
great intellectual capacity, who has made the observation of his
fellow-creatures his business during an extended career, must
have had frequent occasion to be forcibly struck by the successes of eminent persons whose abilities, in comparison with
his own, appeared to striking advantage. The wants of society
raise thousands to distinction who are not possessed of uncommon endowments. The utility of actions to mankind is
the standard by which they are measured, and not the intellectual supremacy which is established by their performance.
14 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
But very ordinary abilities will suffice to make a man eminently
useful; and surpassing talents have frequently been unserviceable in proportion as they were objects of admiration. Nor
has it escaped the notice of any close observer of human affairs,
that in numerous instances men are pushed forward by events
over which  they have  no  control.   It often happens  that
schemes work out their own execution, and that benignant
fortune obviates astounding deficiencies and extravagant blunders.  Besides, worldly success depends less on the general
superiority of one's intellectual powers, than on their peculiar
adaptation to the work in hand.   A  moderate talent well
applied will achieve more useful results, and impose more on
mankind, than minds of the highest order, whose temper is
too fine for the mechanical parts of a profession. The astonishing variety of talents which some men display is purchased at
the dear price of comparative feebleness in every part. The
highest reputation in every department of human exertion is
reserved for minds of one faculty, where no rival powers divide
the empire of the soul, and where there is no variety of pursuits to distract and perplex its energies.
The life of Sir Francis Horner strikingly illustrates the
truth we have tried to enforce.  "The valuable and peculiar
light in which Horner stands out," says Cockburn in his
]iemorials of this eminent Scotchman, "the light in which
his history is calculated to inspire every right-minded youth,
is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight, possessed of greater
public influence than any other private man, and admired,
beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless or the
base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any
deceased member. Now, let every young man ask, How was
this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh
merchant. By wealth? N either he nor any of his relatives
ever had a superfluous sixpence. By office? He held but
one, and only for a few years, of no influence, and with very
little pay. By talents? His were not splendid, and he had no
genius; cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right.
15 
GETTING ON IN THE VWOPRLD.
By eloquence 7 He spoke in calm good taste, without any of
the oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination
of manner?  His was only correct and agreeable. By what,
then, was it? Merely by sense, industry, good principles, and
a good heart, - qualities which no well-constituted mind need
ever despair of attaining. It was the force of his character
that raised him, and this character not impressed upon him by
nature, but formed out of no peculiarly fine elements by himself. Horner was born to show what moderate powers, unaided
by anything whatever except culture and goodness, may achieve,
even when these powers are displayed amidst the competition
and jealousy of public life."
It is indeed wonderful with what slender qualifications one
may, under favorable circumstances, attain success, and even
fill a large space in society. The high reputation of many persons is acquired in a great measure by mere dexterity and cunning, by siding with prevailing opinions, or by flattering the
prejudices of a powerful party. Besides, there is a discretion
more valuable than the most extensive knowledge or the highest
intellectual endowments. There are some men who give excellent advice touching the affairs of others, but who, from some
inexplicable reason, show a total want of judgment in directing
their own. They are useful when under able guidance, but, if
left alone, plunge into some quagmire, and render useless the services they have already performed.   We see other men, who,
with comparatively slender talents, are the instruments of achieving more important results than are effected by men of far greater
endowments. They know precisely the extent of their faculties, and never aim at objects beyond their reach. They carefulfly survey their means of success, and never fix their attention
so strongly upon one point as to overlook others equally important. Never struggling obstinately against the stream, they
are constantly ready, as the aspect of things changes, to vary
their plans or remit their exertions, yet in all their variations
they keep one object steadily in view. Preferring to play
a small game rather than to stand out, and content with petty
16 
SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
advances when a more rapid progress is impossible, they
quicken their pace and enlarge their schemes as fortune favors,
and, though unnoticed by the world, exert a more important
influence over its destinies than many who have filled a larger
space in the eye of mankind.
A still greater source of discouragement than the conscious ness of mediocre abilities, to many beginners, is the feeling
that there is no place for them in the great beehive of society.
Looking about in the world they see, or fancy they see, every
place filled,- a complement of hands in every department of
the great workshop, and, even if a vacant place for them could
be found, a skilful workman has anticipated their best efforts;
so, like the rustic who waited for the river to run by, they
hesitate to embark in any business, or embark without spirit
or hope. Had they lived a little earlier or a little later in the
world's history, they could have "got on" without difficulty,
but not at this epoch. They could have won fame or a fortune half a century ago, could win it, perhaps, half a century
later, but not at this unlucky time. Success, always a coy
maiden, is now, when crowds of wooers have made her saucy,
harder than ever to win.   The would-be poet, it is said, is
always laboring under this disorder. He always somehow falls
on evil days.  The good time is either past or to come; it is
never now. The truth is, however, that there is no occasion
for these croakings, nor ever was at any period of the world's
history.  The world is a hard world, but in the long run it is
an eminently just one. It is always groping about for men of
ability and integrity to fill its places of responsibility, and
those who have these qualifications, if they do not hide them
from shyness, are almost sure to find employment.   It always
has been, and always will be, more difficult to find talents for
the places than places for the talents. Human selfishness,
were there no other agencies at work, will not suffer men of
ability to languish in idleness.
D)o not despair, then, because to win the prizes of life you
must struggle against many competitors.   Dryden says that no
B
17 
GETTING ON IN THIE WOIPLD.
mana  ever need fear refusal from any lady, if he only give his
heart to getting her; and the same is true of success.  As
Lady Miary Wortley Montagu used to say, "If you wish to get
on, you must do as you would to get in through a crowd to a
gate all are equally anxious to reach. Hold your ground and
push hard.  To stand still is to give up your hope."  Give your
energies to "the highest employment of which your nature is
capable"; be alive; be patient; work hard; watch opportunities; be rigidly honest; hope for the best; and if you fail
to reach the goal of your wishes, which is possible in spite of
the utmost efforts, you will die with the consciousness of having done your best, which is, after all, the truest success to
which man can aspire.
18 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
CHAPTER II.
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
Le bien, nous le faisons; le mal, c'est la fortune
On a toujours raison, le Destin tonjours tort. -LA FONTAINE.
People do not very readily blame themselves. They call in a third party,
like the mysterious sleeping partner of a money-lender, who always finds
the money; this third party is Fate or Destiny. - J. H. FRISWELL, The
Gentle Life.
Qua(nd il vous arrivera quelque grand malheur, examinez vous bien, et
vous verrez qu'il y aura totjours un pen de votre faute. - LE SAGE.
Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus with thy faults; nor make
Saturn, Mars, or Venus guilty of thy follies. - SiR THOMAS BROWNE.
Untoward accidents will sometimes happen; but, after many, many years
of thoughtful experience, I can truly say, that nearly all those who began life
with me have succeeded or failed as they deserved. - RICHARD SHARP.
EFORE proceeding to inquire what are the elements of suc  cess in life, it may be well briefly to discuss a question which
starts up at the very threshold, namely, How far do men owe
their success to their own merits, and how far to favoriing
circumstances or luck? There are some persons who proverbially never get on in the world, whom Fortune seems to persecute with unrelenting cruelty from the cradle to the grave. If
they were born rich, they contrive to become poor; and if
they begin poor, they have a knack of always remaining so,
"holding their own" with remarkable steadiness through life.
Perhaps they were born blockheads; yet, even in that case,
their blunders are so gross and glaring that it seems as if, like
those of Foresight in one of Congreve's comedies, they must
have required infinite study, consideration, and caution,caution, lest by any chance they should deviate into sense.
Dr. Johnson graphically described these persons in his account
of the conversation of the elder Sheridan: "Why, sir, Sherry
is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great
l9 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
excess of stupidity is not in nature." Yet never will you
extort from such persons the admission that their ill-success is
their own fault. They ascribe it to their hard luck, to the rascality of the men they have confided in, to the improper organization of society, to anything but their own folly, indolence,
or lack of brains.
Indeed, there is hardly a word in the vocabulary which is
more cruelly abused than the word "luck."  To all the faults and
failures of men, their positive sins and their less culpable short
comings, it is made to stand a godfather and sponsor. We are all
Alicawbers at heart, fancying that "something" will one day
"turn up" for our good, for which we have never striven.  Go
talk with the bankrupt man of business, who has swamped his
fortune by wild speculation, extravagance of living, or lack of
energy, and'you will find that he vindicates his wounded selflove by confounding the steps which he took indiscreetly with
those to which he was forced by "circumstances," and complacently regarding himself as the victim of ill-luck. Go visit
the incarcerated criminal, who has imbrued his hands in the
blood of his fellow-man, or who is guilty of less heinous crimes,
and you will find that, slumping the temptations which were
easy to avoid with those which were comparatively irresistible,
he has hurriedly patched  up  a treaty with conscience, and
stifles its compunctious visitings by persuading himself that,
from first to last, he was the victim of circumstances. Go talk
with the mediocre in talents and attainments, the weak-spirited
man who, from lack of energy and application, has made but
little headway in the world, being outstripped in the race of
life by those whom he had despised as his inferiors, and you
will find that he, too, acknowledges the all-potent power of
luck, and soothes his humbled pride by deeming himself the
victim of ill-fortune. In short, from the most venial offence to
the most flagrant, there is hardly any wrong act or neglect to
which this too fatally convenient word is not applied as a palliation.  It has been truly said that there is a fine generality
20 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
in the expression, -  a power of any meaning or no meaning,which fits it for all purposes alike. It is the great permanent,
non-papal, and self-granted indulgence of all mankind.
Now that there is such a thing as luck   meaning by it
the occasional operation of causes over which we have no
control, though their influence is greatly exaggerated- is not
to be denied.   True as it may be generally that, as Shakespeare says,
"It is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings,"
yet, it is equally true, as the same great moralist has qualified
the sentiment, that
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."
A De Moivre may calculate, with mathematical nicety, what
he calls the "doctrine of chances"; but experience will falsify
the calculation in perhaps five cases out of ten. The profound
mathematician tells you that, if you throw the dice, it is thirty
to one against your turning up a particular number, and a
hundred to one against your repeating the same throw three
times running; and so on, in an augmenting ratio.  You take
the box, and throw.   At the first cast up comes the unlucky
number, that beggars you, if a gambler; and you repeat
it ten times running.   An  unskilful commander sometimes
wins a victory; and again a famous warrior finds himself,
"after a hundred victories, foiled."  Some of the skilfullest
sea-captains lose every ship they sail in; others, less experienced, never lose a spar. Some men's houses take fire an hour
after the insurance expires; others never insure, and never are
burned out. Some of the shrewdest men, with indefatigable
industry and the closest economy, fail to make money; others,
with apparently none of the qualities that insure success, are
continually blundering into profitable speculations, and, Midaslike, touch nothing but it turns to gold.  Beau Brummell,with
his lucky sixpence ill his pocket, wins at every gaming-table,
and bags ~ 40,000 in the clubs of London and Newmarket; he
21 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
loses his magic talisman and with it his luck, is plucked of
his fortune, and obliged to fly to the Continent.  The experience of a character in one of Cumberland's plays hardly burlesques an actual truth.  " It is not upon slight grounds," says
he, "that I despair.  I have tried each walk, and am likely to
starve at last. There is not a point to which the art and faculty of man can turn,'that I have not set mine to, but in
vain. I am beat through every quarter of the compass. I
have blustered for prerogative; I have bellowed for freedom;
I have offered to serve my country; I have engaged to betray
it. Why, I have talked treason, writ treason; and if a man
can't live by that, he can't live by anything.  Here I set up as
a bookseller, and people immediately leave off reading. If I
were to turn butcher, I believe, o' my conscience, they'd leave
off eating."  On the other hand, the crazy-headed Lord Timothy
Dexter sends a cargo of warming-pans to the West Indies, and
lo! while everybody is laughing at him, it proves a brilliant
adventure.
A writer in the Edinburgh Review, in speaking of success
at the bar, says, with much truth, that, when there is not legal
business enough for all the profession, some must starve. An
overstocked profession is like a crew trying to save themselves
upon a raft scarcely large enough to carry half of them; or
like the inmates of the Black Hole at Calcutta, where all who
could not get near the aperture in the wall were suffocated,
the survivors owing their safety as much to position and selfishness as to strength. Erskine once declared in Parliament that
success oftener depended upon accident and certain physical
advantages, than upon the most brilliant talent and the most
profound erudition. A high-spirited and popular leader lately
illustrated the matter thus: "When I look round upon my
competitors, and consider my own qualifications, the wonder
to me is, how I ever got the place I now occupy. I can only
account for it by comparing the forensic career to one of the
crossings in our great thoroughfares. You arrive just when it
is clear, and get over at once; another findss it blocked up, is
22 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
kept waiting, and arrives too late at his destination, though the
better pedestrian of the two."
So powerfully does fortune appear to sway the destinies of
men, putting a silver spoon into one man's mouth, and a
wooden one into another's, that some of the most sagacious of
men, as Cardinal Mazarin and Rothschild, seem to have been
inclined to regard luck as the first element of worldly success;
experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if
linked to an unlucky star. Whittington, and his cat that
proved such a source of riches; the man who, worn out by a
painful disorder, attempted suicide, and was cured by opening
an internal imposthume; the Persian, condemned to lose his
tongue, on whom the operation was so bunglingly performed
that it merely removed an impediment in his speech; the
painter who produced an effect he had long toiled after in vain,
by throwing his brush at the picture in a fit of rage and
despair; the musical composer, who, having exhausted his
patience in attempts to imitate on the piano a storm at sea,
accomplished the precise result by angrily extending his hands
to the two extremities of the keys, and bringing them rapidly
together,   all these seem to many fit types of the freaks of
Fortune by which some men are enriched or made famous by
their blunders, while others, with ten times the capacity and
knowledge, are kept at the bottom of her wheel. Hence we
see thousands fold their arms and look with indifference on the
great play of life, keeping aloof from its finest and therefore
most arduous struggles, because they believe that success is a
matter of accident, and that they may spend their heart's
choicest blood and affection on noble ends, yet be balked of
victory, cheated of any just returns.
There is one curious fact noticeable in regard to this thing
called "luck," which is, that while it is made responsible for
any turn of affairs that we feel to be discreditable to us, it
rarely has credit for an opposite state of things; but, like most
other faithful allies in victory, comes poorly off. Every good
deed we do, every triumph we achieve, either in the battle
23 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
field of the world or of our own hearts, is due to ourselves
alone. Stoutly as we may affirm that our disasters and vices
are chliargeaile to luck, we never dream of ascribing our meritorious deeds, in the slightest degree, to its agency.  In such
cases we quite unconsciously blink out of sight the magic
power of the latter principle, so wondrous and all-controlling
in its influence at other times, and coolly appropriate to ourselves not merely the lion's share, but the whole glory of our
position. We would, in fact, persuade the world, that, throughout, all the circumstances were actually against us, but that by
our own stern resolve and heroic energy we crushed our way
through them. In cases like this, we act very much like the
English sailor in Joe Miller. Falling from the ship's topmast
upon deck without injury, he instantly jumped up, and, springing to the side of the vessel, called out to the crew of a Dutch
vessel near by, one of whom had performed some wonderful
feats in leaping, "Can any of you lubbers do anything like
that M"
The sum of the whole matter is this. Man is, to a considerable extent, the child of opportunity. Estimate as highly as
we may the power of the individual in the achievement of success, there is yet another factor in the product, the power of
circumstances, which we cannot wholly ignore. It has been
remarked that the same tree that is soft and spongy in a fat
swamp, with its heavy air, grows hard and noble on the hillside.   Spitzbergen forests are breast high, and Nova Scotia
hemlocks mourn their cold wet sky in long weird shrouds of
white moss. As the acute French writer, M. Taine, says:
" Nature, being a sower of men, and constantly putting her
hand in the same sack, distributes over the soil regularly and
in turn about the same proportionate quantity and quality of
seed. But in the handfuls she scatters as she strides over
time and space, not all germinate. A certain moral temperature is necessary to develop certain talents; if this is wanting,
these prove abortive. Consequently, as the temperature changres,
so will the species of talent change; if it turn in an opposite
24 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
direction, talent follows; so that, in general, we may conceive
moral temperature as makiny a selection among different species
of talent, allowing only this or that species to develop itself, to
the more or less complete exclusion of others."
Gray's musings on the Cromwells and Miltons of the village
only exaggerate a real truth.   There are times in every man's
life when, if he were a pagan, he would incline to believe that
his career is directed by an ironical fate which finds a certain
pleasure in mocking his best plans and most strenuous efforts
by an unexpected reverse; when, finding himself baffled at
every turn, he sits down in despair and says to himself, "It is
useless to struggle in the meshes in which I am entangled; all
things have conspired against me; I can never extricate myself, and the sooner I cease to fight against destiny the better."
The ancients fully believed in destiny.   "Some people," says
Pliny, "refer their successes to virtue and ability; but it is all
fate." Alexander depended much upon his luck, and Plutarch tells us that Sulla was so lucky that the surname of
"Fortunate" was given him. Cicero speaks of the luck of
Fabius Maximus, lMarcellus, Scipio, and Marius as a settled
thing.  "It was not only their courage," he says, "but their
fortune, which induced the people to intrust them with the
command of their armies. For there can be little doubt but
that, besides their great abilities, there was a certain Fortune
appointed to attend upon them, and to conduct them to honor
and renown, and to uncommon success in the management of
important affairs."   Cmsar believed in his own good luck, and
told the pilot in the storm, Cesarem portas et fortunam ejus,
- "You carry Cxsar and his good fortune."  Some of the greatest modern generals have agreed with Bacon that "outward
accidents  conduce  much  to  fortune."   Marlborough,  who
planned  his  battles so carefully, talked  more  than  once
about his destiny. Cromwell had his lucky days, of which
his birthday, when he gained two great battles, was one; and
Nelson had his white days and his black ones.
When we see M\ahomet flying from his enemies, saved by
2
25
I 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
a spider's web; when we think that a Whig Ministry was
hurled from power in England by the spilling of some water
on a lady's gown; when we find a Franklin ascribing his turn
of thought and conduct through life to the accident of a tattered copy of Cotton Mather's "Essays to do Good" falling
into his hands, and Jeremy Bentham attributing similar effects
to a single phrase, "The greatest good of the greatest number,"
that caught his eye at the end of a pamphlet; when we see a
Bruce pass through a series of perils greater than any which the
most daring romance-writer or melodramatist ever imagined for
his hero, and then perish from a fall in handing a lady down
stairs after dinner, and a Speke accidentally shoot himself in
England, after escaping innumerable dangers in penetrating
to the furtive and reedy fountains of the Nile; when we find
that one manl may suck an orange and be choked by a pit,
another swallow a penknife and live; one run a thorn into his
hand and die, in spite of the utmost efforts of medical skill,
another recover, after a shaft of a gig has run completely
through his body,-  we cannot help believing, with Solomon,
who, doub)tless, had himself witnessed many such grim antitheses of life and death, that time and chance happen to
all men, and that circumstances have much to do with every
man's career in life.  "We talk of life as a journey," says
Sydney Smith, "but how variously is that journey performed!
There are those who come forth girt, and shod, and mantled, to
walk on velvet lawns and smooth terraces, where every gale is
arrested and every beam is tempered.  There are others who
walk on the Alpine paths of life, against driving misery, and
through stormy sorrows, over sharp afflictions; walk with bare
feet and naked breast, jaded, mangled, and chilled."
The degree in which fame - one of the prizes of life for
which men struggle- is dependent on accident, sometimes the
result even of ill-luck, is strikingly illustrated by the fate of
Sir John  Moore.  "He had fought," says a writer in the
Dublin University Magazine, "as other generals had, had his
successes as well as his reverses, amn  had just kept his head
26 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
above water before the advancing army of Soult. On the walls
of Corunna he met his fate, and might have lain there, as hundreds of others did, in an unrecorded grave, to this hour and to
all future ages, had not an ordinary Irish parson, from a remote
country parish, and from amid common prosaic pursuits, caught
a glance, in his imagination, of the lifeless warrior, as he was
hurried to a hasty grave, in the silence of the night, within the
sound of the advancing enemy's guns. The look was enough,
- the pietmue was taken, with its full significance of pathos,
into the heart of the poet; and, when it reappeared, it was
found to have been incrusted with amber, thereafter nevermore to pass away. It is true, little ceremony was observed at
that burial,
'Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note';
but the lyre was struck, and the echoes went forth to the ends
of the earth; and so Sir John Moore passed, by the narrow
channel of those few'hasty and careless stanzas, from the shores
of oblivion, where lie would have wandered till doomsday with
thousands of unrecorded comrades, to those same Isles of the
Blest, wherein, as we have already observed, the favorite heroes
of all ages have pitched their tents and exalted their standard."
It cannot be denied, therefore, that there is, in the sense
already explained, an element of chance in human affairs, to
which success or failure is sometimes owing. But, while
circumstances may make or mar a man, it is equally true that
he may often make his circumstances. Admitting that luck or
fortune, which are but other names for unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances, does sometimes shape our destinies, yet
it would be easy to sho.w that, in nine times out of ten, it is a
mere bugbear of the idle, the languid, and the self-indulgent.
Two men may seem to adopt the same means to attain the
same end, and, because one succeeds and the other fails, we say
that the one is more fortunate than the other. But the one
succeeds and the other fails because they do not really adopt
the same means toward the same end.  Of the two pilgrims
who started on their journey each with peas in his shlooen, it
27 
GETTING ON IN TIlE WORLD.
has been justly said that "the one was not more fortunate
than the other; he was simply more wise. The man who
sank by the way, toil-worn and foot-sore, with drops of agony
on his forehead, groaning with pain, may have been the better
walker of the two. The race is not always to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong. It is by the right application of your
swiftness or your strength to the particular object in view that
you make your way to success." It is not enough to do the
right thing, but we must do it in the right way, and at the
right time, if we would achieve great triumphs in life.  Again,
the "circumstances," of which so many complain, should be
regarded as the very tools with which we are to work, the
stepping-stones we are to mount by. They are the wind and
tide in the voyage of life, which the skilful mariner always
calculates upon, and, generally, either takes advantage of or
overcomes.   The true way to conquer circumstances is to be a
greater circumstance to yourself.  As Burke says, "you have
only to get into the trade-wind, and you will sail secure over
the Pactolean sands."  " Common sense," says Wendell Phillips, "plays the game with the cards it has.  Common sense
bows to the inevitable, and makes use of it. It does not ask an
impossible chess-board, but takes the one before it, and plays
the game." Instead of bemoaning our hard lot, or the unfavorable circumstances under which we are compelled to act, we
must put forth the vivida vis animi of him
"Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star."
We must place ourselves en rapport with the circumstances;
strike with, not against, the forces of nature, as the pile-driver
does when it deals its mighty blows.
Mfr. Galton, in his work on Hereditary Genius, observes:
"I believe that if the' eminent' men of any period had been
chiangelings when babies, a very fair proportion of those who
survived and retained their health up to fifty years of age would, 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
notwithstanding their altered circumstances, have equally risen
to eminence.   Thus, to take a strong case, it is incredible that
any combination of circumstances could have repressed Lord
Brougham to the level of undistinguished mediocrity.  If a man
is gifted with vast intellectual power, eagerness to work, and
power of working, I cannot comprehend how such a man
should be repressed.   The world is always tormented with
difficulties waiting to be solved, struggling with ideas and feel
ing,s to which it can give no adequate expression. If, then,
there exists a man capable of solving those difficulties, or of
giving a voice to those pent-up feelings, he is sure to be
welcomed with universal acclamation.   We  may almost say
that he has only to put his pen to paper and the thing is
'done."
The part which luck plays in relation to human success is
strikingly illustrated in the case of the celebrated advocate,
Thomas Erskine. When he began his career, his prospects
were far from  encouraging.   Without  means, and without
professional or social connections, he looked forward probably
to a weary probation upon the back benches of the court,
among the horde of nameless and briefiess juniors, lingering
like the ghosts upon the banks of the Styx, waiting wearily
for a passage over the river. He had scarcely a shilling in his
pocket when he got his first retainer; and that hlie would not
have received, and consequently might not have risen to be
Lord Chancellor, but for the fortunate sprain which caused
him hastily to relinquish an intended visit, and return home,
where he was waited on by a maritime gentleman, Captain
Baillie, whose case he took up, mastered, and triumphantly
conducted before Lord AIansfield. Even after the brief was
handed to him, he might have had no opportunity to display
his powers, had not a series of lucky circumstances favored
him. When the case came on, lie found in the list of barristers retained the names of four senior counsel, and, despairing
of being heard after so many predecessors, he gave himself no
more trouble about the matter.  But, fortunately, the affidavits
29 
GETTING ON IN TIIE WORLD.
were so long, atnd some of the counsel so tedious,-  a tediousness aggravated by the circumstance that one of them was
afflicted with stran,gury, and had to retire once or twice in
the course of his argument,-  that Lord Mansfield adjourned
the cause till the next morning, thus givillng the young advocate a whole night to arrange his thoughts, and enabling him
to address the court when its faculties were awake and freshened. In alluding to this lucky incident, by which he was
enabled to make what Lord Campbell calls "the most wonderful forensic effort of which we have any account in British annals," Erskine says:  "I have since flourished, but I have
always blessed God for the providential strangury of poor
Hargrave." Rarely has a brilliant start in life -perhaps the
entire success of a life - been owing to so many lucky accidents; but who does not see that all these would have been of
no advantage to the young barrister, had he been unequal to
the occasion; had he not, by previous hard study, self-training,, and self-sacrifice, prepared himself to take advantag,e of
the accidents which brought him into notice?
In the life of the most unlucky person there are always
some occasions when, by prompt and vigorous action, he may
win the thlings he has at heart.  Raleigh flung his laced jacket
into a puddle, and won  a proud queen's favor.   A village
apothecary chanced to visit the state apartments at the Pavilion, when George the Fourth was seized with a fit. He bled
him, brought him back to consciousness, and, by his genial
and quaint humor, made the king laugh. The monarch took
a fancy to him, made him his physician, and made his fortune.
Probably no man ever lives to middle age to whom two or
three such opportunities do not present themselves. "There
is nobody," says a Roman cardinal, "whom  Fortune does not
visit once in his life; but when she finds he is not ready to
receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy, fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone.
The sharp) fellows detect it instantly, andl catch it when on the
00
0 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
wing. It is not enough, however, to seize opportunity when
it comes.  We  must not be content with waiting for "something to turn up "; we must try to make something turn up.
"We must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike
it till it is made hot."
It is a popular idea that great inventions are the result of
what  is called "lucky hits," that chance has  more  to do
with them than head-work. It is true that the very greatest
inventions are the simplest, and that the truths on which they
are founded seem obvious. But familiar and commonplace as
they may appear, we must remember that the veil, flimsy and
transparent as it may now seem when a school-boy's hand can
lift it, was yet sufficient to conceal these truths for centuries.
As Professor Whewell has truly said, "No  man who fairly
considers the real nature of great discoveries, and the intellectual processes which they involve, can seriously hold the opinion of their being the effect of accident. Such accidents never
happen to common men. Thousands of men, even the most
inquiring and speculative, had seen bodies fall; but who, except Newton, ever followed the accident to such consequences l " Buffon, another competent authority, tells us that invention, so far from being accidental, depends on patience.
"Contemplate your subject long. It will gradually unfold
itself, till a sort of electric spark convulses the brain for a moment, and sends a glow of irritation to the heart. Then comes
the luxury of genius."
Cardinal Richelieu was not glaringly wrong, therefore, in
the opinion that an unfortunate and an imprudent person are
synonymous terms. Every man is placed, in some degree,
under the influence of events and of other men; but it is for
himself to decide whether he will rule, or be ruled by them.
They may operate powerfully against him at times; but rarely
so as to overwhelm him, if he bears up manfully, and with a
stout, dogged will. In the battle of life we may be drawn as
conscripts, but our courage or our cowardice, our gentleness or
our cruelty, depends upon ourselves. "The Admiralty," wrote
31 
GETTING ON IN TIlE WORLD.
Nelson, when expecting to command the finest fleet in the
world, "may order me a cock-boat, but I will do my duty."
It is now admitted that the English were not lucky in the
Russian war, simply because they hesitated. A gunboat with
a will behind it, according to high military authority, would at
one time have settled the matter; England had a fleet, but not
a will.  "In one respect," said the French Admiral Coligni,
"I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over
Cesar.  They won great battles, it is true; I have lost four
great battles, and yet I show to the enemy a more formidable
front than ever." The man who shows this spirit will tri umph over fortune in the end.   Like cork, he may  be submerged for a while, but he cannot be kept down. De Quincey justly remarks of Cesar, that the superb character of his
intellect throws a colossal shadow, as of predestination, over
the most trivial incidents of his career. But it was simply
through the perfection of his preparations, arrayed against all
conceivable contingencies, and which make him appear like
some incarnate providence, veiled in a human form, ranging
through the ranks of the legions, that he was enabled to triumph over Pompey, whom Cicero had pronounced "the semper
felix," -always lucky, - when he recommended him to the
Roman Senate as the best man to crush the pirates.
No doubt that, as Byron said, sometimes
"Men are the sport of circumstances, when
The circumstances seem the sport of men."
"Favor, opportunity, the death of others, and occasion fitting
virtue," have often been, as Bacon says, stepping-stones to success.  Sulla thought it better to be lucky than great.   Really
"lucky fellows " there have always been in the world; but in
a great majority of cases they who are called such will be found
on examination to be those keen-silghted men who have surveyed the world with a scrutinizing eye, and who to clear and
exact ideas of what is necessary to be done unite the skill necessary to execute their well-approved plans. If now and then a
crazy-headed man, as in the instance already mentioned, sends
32 
GOOD AND BAD LUCK.
a cargo of warming-pans to the West Indies, which, while
everybody is laughing at his folly, proves a brilliant venture,
the very fact that such a freak of fortune excites remark proves
its infrequency. It is an interesting fact that Wellington, who
never lost a battle, never spoke of luck, though no man guarded
more carefully against all possible accidents, or was prompter
to turn to account the ill-fortune of an adversary.   Napoleon,
on the other hand, believed in his star. He was the Man
of Destiny, the picked, the chosen.  "People talk of my
crimes," said he;  "but  men  of my  mark do not commit
crimes. What I did was a necessity; I was the child of destiny!"  But who can doubt that it was for that very reason,
that, when once the tide of fortune turned against him, a few
years of trouble sufficed to kill him, where such a man as
Wellington would have melted St. Helena rather than have
given up the ghost with a full stomach?
Let no one, then, repine because the fates are sometimes
against him, but, when he trips or falls, let him, like Cesar
when he stumbled on the shore, stumble  forward, and, by
escaping the omen, change its nature and meaning. Remembering that those very circumstances which are apt to be
abused as the palliative of failure are the true test of merit, let
him gird up his loins for whatever in the mysterious economy
of the world may await him. Thus will he gradually rise
superior to ill-fortune, and, becoming daily more and more
impassive to its attacks, will learn to force his way in spite of
it, till at last he will be able to fashion his luck to his will.
"Life is too short," says a shrewd thinker, "for us to waste its
moments in deploring bad luck; we must go after success,
since it will not come to us, and we have no time to spare."
2*
33
a 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER III.
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
It is an uncontroverted truth, that no man ever made an ill-figure who
understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them. - SWIFT.
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit,
which finds him in employment and happiness. - R. W. EMERSON.
Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else,
and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. - SYDNEY SMIITH.
I cannot repeat too often that no man struggles perpetually and victoriously
against his own character; and one of the first principles of success in life is
so to regulate our career as rather to turn our physical constitution and
natural inclinations to good account, than to endeavor to counteract the one
or oppose the other. - SIR H. L. BULWER.
T is almost a truism to say that the first thing to be done by
him who would succeed in life is to make a wise choice of
a profession.   Of the thousands of men who are continually
coming upon the stage of life, there are few who escape the
necessity of adopting some profession or calling; and there are
fewer still who, if they knew the miseries of idleness, tenfold
keener and more numerous than those of the most laborious
profession, would ever desire such an escape. In this age of
intense activity, when hundreds of men in every community are
killing themselves by overwork, it is hardly necessary to show
that there can be no genuine happiness without labor.  All
sensible men admit, and none more readily than those who
have tried the experiment of killing time in a round of amusements, that the happiest life is made up of alternations of toil
and leisure, of work and play. So necessary is labor of some
kind to make existence tolerable, that those men who attempt
to live a life of idleness are forced eventually to make work for
themselves; they turn their very pleasures into toil, and, from
mere lack of something to do, engage in the most arduous and
'0'4 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
exhausting pastimes.   To escape from the miseries of ennui,
they resort to the most pitiful contrivances to cheat themselves
into the illusion that they are busy.   Their very amusements
are encumbered by regulations, and their pleasures, which
are converted into tasks, are made formal and heavy.   The
most trifling acts and occurrences are treated as of the gravest
importance; and the rules of etiquette are enforced by the
severest penalties. The man of leisure is thus transformed into
the most bustling, anxious repository of little paltry cares and
petty crotchets; and when the night comes, it is with a sense
of relief, but very different from that of the worker, that he
reflects that
"Be the day weary, or be the day long,
At length it ringeth to evensong."
It is true that not a few men kill themselves by overwork;
but the proportion of such is small to the number who die from
violating the laws of health; and death from excessive activity
is far preferable to death from rust.   The spirits may  be
exhausted by employment, but they are utterly destroyed by
idleness.   Burton, in his quaint old work, in summing up the
causes of melancholy, reduces them to two, solitariness and idleness. When Charles Lamb was set free from the desk in the
India Office, to which he had been chained for years, he was in
an ecstasy of joy. "I would not go back to my prison," he
exclaimed to a friend, "for ten years longer, for ten thousand
pounds."  "I am free! free as air!" he wrote to Bernard Barton; "I will live another fifty years..... Positively the best
thing a man can do is- nothing; and next to that, perhaps,
good works." Two weary years passed, and Lamb's feelings had
undergone a complete revolution. He had found that leisure,
though a pleasant garment to look at, is a very bad one to
wear. He had found that his humdrum task, the seemingly
dreary drudgery of desk-work,-was a blessing in disguise.  "I
assure you," he again writes to Barton, " no work is worse than
overwork; the mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome of
food. I have ceased to care for almost anything." Persons of
35 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
naturally active minds, whose "quick thoughts like lightning
are alive," are the first to feel the pernicious effects of indolence.
How many such, cursed with too much leisure, take too much
of something else to make their gloom deeper and their misfortunes more! An old divine says truly that the human
heart is like a millstone; if you put wheat under it, it grinds
the wheat into flour; if you put no wheat, it grinds on, but
then't is itself it wears away. Colton observes that ennui has
made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst,
and m       or e suicides than despair.  Muley Ismail,  a famous
tyrant, always employed his troops in some active and useful
wor     k         when not engaged in war, to keep them, he said, "from
being devoured by the worm of indolence." Count de Caylus,
a French nobleman, being born to wealth and princely idleness,
turned his attention to engraving, and made many fine copies
o f ant ique gems.  "I engrave," said he, "that I may not hang
myself."         Old Dumbiedikes wisely charged his son to be "aye
sticking  in a    tree when he had nothing else to do"; and in the
same vein is the advice of an Elizabethan poet:
"Eschew the idle vein,
Flee, flee from doing naught!
For never was there idle brain
But bred an idle thought."
It is not easy, however, for a young man to realize this;
and hence the time when they shall leave their father's house,
and minister with their own hands to their necessities, is
looked forward to by many with dislike and dread. Yet it will
come, and it is highly important that he who would make the
most of life should lose no time in indecision, but promptly
determine to what calling he will give his energies.
The Latin poet, Horace, advises authors, in choosing a subject to write upon, to select one just equal to their strength,
and to ponder long and deeply what their shoulders will bear.
Equally essential is it to worldly success in general, that one
slTJuldl choose a calling to which his abilities are fitted. With
36 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
out going the length of Hazlitt, who affirms  that, if a youth
shows no aptitude for languages, but dances well, it would be
better to give up ideas of scholarship for him, and hand him
over to the dancing-master, we yet deem that profession best
for every man which chords most nearly with the bent of his
mind, and which he can embrace without compromise of his
social standing. To no other cause, perhaps, is failure in life
so frequently to be traced as to a mistaken calling. A youth
who m       ight become a first-rate mechanic chances to have been
born of ambitious parents, who think it more honorable for
their son to handle the lancet than the chisel, and so would
make        him a   doctor.  Accordingly he is sent to college, pitchforked through a course of Latin and Greek, attends lectures,
crams for an examination, gets a diploma, and, with "all his
blushing honors thick upon his vacant head," settles down to
kill        people scientifically, -  to pour, as Voltaire said, drugs of
which        he knows little into bodies of which he knows less,till his incapacity is discovered, when he starves. In another
case, a boy is forced by unwise parents to measure tape and
calico, when writs and replevins are written in every lineament
of his physiognomy, and Nature shows by his intellectual
acumen,- by his skill in hair-splitting, his adroitness at parry
and thrust, his fertility of resources in every exigency, and a
sco re     of oth er-signs,-  that she designed him, not to handle the
yard-stick, but to thunder in the forum. Or, again, a skilful
engineer is spoiled in a shoemaker, or a lad designed for a
shoemaker is trained for the literary profession, reminding you
of Lessing's sarcasm:
"Tompkins forsakes his last and awl
For literary squabbles;
Styles himself poet; but his trade
Remains the same,- he cobbles."
In no other calling is the proportion of failures to successes
so great as in that of trade, the mercantile profession. Persons who have been at pains to collect statistics on this subject in our large towns have found that only three out of a
007 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
hundred  merchants are successful; all the others  becoming
bankrupt, or retiriing in disgust. Why is this? Is it, in
every case, because they are overwhelmed by sudden disaster,
which no sagacity could have anticipated or warded off? be cause they are dishonest, and, after long overreaching others,
are overreached themselves? because, after many brilliant win nings at the gaming-table, they stake all, and lose all? because,
after partial success, they expect greater, and build marble pal aces, drive "two-forty" horses, and make larger investments in
champagne suppers than in bonds and mortgages? Is it be cause Shylock eats them up with his two per cent, or because
of the exploded folly in some new form of investing in eternal
lottery tickets, and drawing eternal blanks? No; these causes
are only the result of a more radical cause, namely, that they
have gone into business without business brains. No father,
as a general thing, educates his son to be a musician, without
first making sure that he has a natural ear for music But
hundreds and thousands of fathers make merchants of their
sons, who have no more actual fitness for trade than has a man
to play at the Academy of Music who cannot distinguish a flat
from a sharp, or the "Heroic Symphony" from the tune of
"Old Hundred."
Above all, the notion that the "three black graces," Law,
Physic, and Divinity, must be worshipped by the candidate
for respectability and honor, has done incalculable damage to
society. It has spoiled many a good carpenter, done injustice
to the sledge and the anvil, cheated the goose and the shears
out of their rights, and committed fraud on the corn and the
potato field. Thousands have died of broken hearts in these
professions, - thousands who might have been happy at the
plough, or opulent behind the counter; thousands, dispirited
and hopeless, look upon the healthful and independent calling
of the farmer with envy and chagrin; and thousands more, by
a worse fate still, are reduced to necessities which degrade
them in their own estimation, rendering the most brilliant
success but a wretched compensation for the humiliation with
,)S
a 
CIIOICE -OF A PIROFESSION.
which it is accompanied, and compelling them to grind out of
the miseries of their fellow-men the livelihood which is denied
to their legitimate exertions. The result of all this is, that
the world is ftll of men who, disgusted with their vocations,
getting their living by their weakness instead of by their
strength, are doomed to hopeless inferiority.  "If you choose
to represent the various parts in life," says Sydney Smith,
"by holes in a table of different shapes,  some circular, some
triangular, some square, some oblong,-  and the persons acting
these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square
hole, the oblong into the triangular, while the square person
has squeezed himself into the round hole." A French writer
on agriculture observes that it is impossible profitably to improve land by trying forcibly to change its natural character,
-as by bringing sand to clay, or clay to sand. The only true
method is to adapt the cultivation to the nature of the soil.
So with the moral or intellectual qualities.  Exhortation, selfdetermination, may do much to stimulate and prick a man on
in a wrong career against his natural bent; but, when the
crisis comes, this artificial character thus laboriously induced will
break down, failing at the very time when it is most wanted.
The sentiment, "Our wishes are presentiments of our capabilities," is a noble maxim, of deep encouragement to all triue
men; and it is not more encouraging than it is true. Can
anything be more reasonable than to suppose that he who, in
attending to the duties of his profession, can gratify the predominant faculty, the reigning passion of the mind, who can
strike
"The master-string
That makes most harmony or discord in him,"
will be, cceteris paribus, the most successful? The very fact that
he has an original bias, a fondness and a predilection for a certain pursuit, is the best possible glaranty that he will follow it
faitlhfully. His love for it, aside from all other motives, will
insure the intensest application to it as a matter of com'se. No
39 
GETTING ON IN THlE WORLD.
need of spurs to the little Handel or the boy Bach to study
music, when one steals midnight interviews with a smuggled
clavichord in a secret attic, and the other copies whole books
of studies by moonlight, for want of a candle, churlishly
denied. No need of whips to the boy-painter, West, when he
begins in a garret, and plunders the family cat for bristles to
make his brushes. On the other hand, to spend years at college, at the work-bench, or in a store, and then find that the
calling is a wrong one, is disheartening to all but men of the
toughest fibre.   The  discovery shipwrecks the feeble,  and
plunges ordinary minds into despair.  Doubly trying is this
discovery when one feels that the mistake was made in defiance
of friendly advice, or to gratify a freak of fancy or an idle whim.
The sorrows that come upon us by the will of God, or through
the mistakes of our parents, we can submit to with comparative
resignation; but the sorrows which we have wrought by our
own hand, the pitfalls into which we have fallen by obstinately going our own way, these are the sore places of memory
which no time and no patience can salve over.
And yet what "trifles, light as air," often decide a young
man's calling, leading one to choose that for which nature
designed him, another to choose the very one for which he has
the least aptitude! It has been said of our race that we are
"not only pleased, but turned by a feather; the history of man
is a calendar of straws."  The force of early impressions in
determining the choice of a profession is often deep and controlling. Thus David Hume, who in his youth was a believer
in Christianity, was appointed in a debating society to advocate the cause of infidelity, and thus familiarizing himself with
the subtle sophisms of scepticism, became a life-long deist.
Voltaire, it is said, at the age of five committed to memory a
sceptical poem, and the impressions made upon his mind were
never obliterated. There was an intimate connection between
the little cannon and the mimic armies with which the boy
Napoleon amused himself, and the martial achievements of the
Emperor; between the miniature ship which Nelson, when a
40 
CIIOICE OF A PROFESSION.
boy, sailed on the pond, and the victories of the Nile and
Trafalg,ar; between the tales and songs about ghosts, fairies,
witches, warlocks, wraiths, apparitions, etc., with which the
mind of Burns was fed in his boyhood by the superstitious old
woman domesticated under the same roof with hniself, and the
tale of Tam O'Shanter; between the old traditions and legends
which formed the staple of Scott's early reading, and the bril liant fictions with which the "Wizard of the North " charmed
the world; between the story of a farmer's son who went
away to seek his fortune, and came home after many years a
rich man, - which George Law, a farmer's boy, found in an
old, stray volume,- and the subsequent career of George Law
the steamboat king and millionnaire.
It is said of the great philanthropist, Thomas Clarkson, that
when he was a competitor for a prize for an essay at Cambridge,
he had never thought upon the subject to be handled, which
was, "May one man lawfully enslave another? "  Chancing one
day to pick up in a friend's house a newspaper advertising a
Hiistory of Guinea, he hastened to London, bought the work,
and there found a picture of cruelties that filled his soul with
horror.  "Coming one day in sight of Wade's mill in Ifertfor(lshire," hlie says, "I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the
roadside, and held my horse.   Here a thought came into my
mind, that, if the contents of this essay were true, it was time
that some person shoutld see those calamities to their end."  It
was but a straw that decided the destiny of Demosthenes,
when, burning with  shame, lie rushed from  the Athenian
assembly, resolved, doubtless, never again to ascend the bema.
He met Satyrus, learned the art of elocution, and when he next
addressed the people, his lip was roughened by no grit of the
pebble. Again, Socrates, meeting Xenophon in a narrow gateway, checks his course by placing a stick across the path, and
addresses to him a question  in morals.  Xenophon  cannot
answer, and the philosopher, bidding him follow, becomes
thenceforward  his master in ethics.  "These incidents were
shadows of leaves on the stream; but they conducted  )emnos
41 
GETTING ON IN TIIE WORLD.
thenes into the temple of eloquence, and placed Xenophon by
the side of Livy."
Let every one, then, who would get on in the world, study
his aptitudes, -for what calling he is naturally fit. We are
aware that some men, and men of sagacity, too, have denied
this doctrine of natural tendencies, and held that any person,
by dint of energy, may become whatever he chooses.  Lord
Chesterfield held this view. Any young man, he declared, if
he will but take the pains, may become as learned, eloquent,
graceful, and agreeable as he pleases. Without the slightest
reference to natural aptitude, he may confidently set about
making himself a courtier, a diplomatist, an orator, in short,
anything bult a poet, and he need not utterly despair of success
in verse. Acting on these principles, his Lordship labored for
years to mould his dull, heavy, loutish son, Stanhope, into a
graceful man of fashion. A more absurd scheme was never
attempted, and the result was what might have been expected,
-utter failure. There are thousands of such cases where a
parent might as well tell a son to be six feet high as to be eloquent, to have a Roman nose as to be graceful, to write like
Hawthorne as to bow like the Duc de Richelieu.  As SainteI:eutve says: "On est toujours l'esclave de son premier talent."
Doubtless the natural bent is sometimes hard to discern; but
as the boy is father of the man, so he generally shows what
sort of a man he is likely to turn out. Talents for special
kinds of work are congenital, and men have often their callings
forecast in the very sockets of their eyeballs and in the bldlgings of their thumbs. Even if we deny the whole doctrine of
inborn aptitudes, and believe that the differences in men's capabilities, tastes, and tendencies are the effects of external circumstances, yet it must be admitted that these differences are
fixed too early to be removed.   Michael Angelo neglected
school to copy drawings which he dared not bring home.   Mlurillo filled the margin of his school-book with drawings. Dryden read Polybius before he was ten years old.  Le Brun, in
childhood, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the
42 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
house.  Pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen.  Pascal coinposed at sixteen a tractate on the Conic Sections. Lawrence
painted beautifully when a mere boy. Madame de Stael was
deep in the philosophy of politics at an age when other girls
were dressing dolls. Nelson had made up his mind to be a
hero before he was old enough to be a midshipman; and Napoleon was already at the head of armies when pelting snow-balls
at Brienne.
Dryden, who was an illustration of his own theory, has
aptly marked the three steps in the career of most men of
genius;
"What the child admired,
The youth endeavored, and the man ACQUIRED."
In many cases so early is the preference manifested, that it
would seem as if the callings, impatient to be chosen, selected
their own agents, and storming heart, hands, and brain, made
them captive to their will. "We are not surprised," says a
writer, "to hear from a schoolfellow of the Chancellor Somers
that he was a weakly boy, who always had a book in his hand,
and never looked up at the play of his companions; to learn
from his affectionate biographer that Hammond at Eton sought
opportunities of stealing away to say his prayers; to read that
Tournefort forsook his college class, that he might search for
plants in the neighboring fields; or that Smeaton, in petticoats,
was discovered on the top of his father's barn, in the act of
fixing the model of a windmill which he had constructed.
These early traits of character are such as we expect to find in
the cultivated lawyer, who turned the eyes of his age upon
MIilton; in the Christian, whose life was one varied strain of
devout praise; in the naturalist, who enriched science by his
discoveries; and in the engineer, who  built the Eddystone
li,ghthouse."
When that prodigy of genius and precocity, Chatterton,
"the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul, that perished in his
pride," was but eight years old, a manufacturer, desiring to present him with a cup, asked him what device should be in
43. 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
scribed on it.  "Paint me an angel," was the reply, "with
wings and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world."
So Ferguson's wooden clock; Davy's laboratory at Penzance;
Faraday's electric machine, made with a bottle; Claude Lorraine's flour and charcoal pictures on the walls of the baker's
shop; John Leyden's secret studies in the country church;
Bacon's exposure of the defects of Aristotle's philosophy, made
at the age of sixteen; Calhoun's subtle disputations in the
class-room, with the President of Yale College; Chantrey's
carving of his schoolmaster's head in a bit of pine wood,were all hints of the future man. It is said that when Rachel,
the actress, threw a tablecloth round her person, she was
draped on the instant with a becomingness which all the
modistes that ever fractured stay-lace, or circuimlocuted crinoline, never imparted to the female figure before.  She had a
genius for it, as Brummell had for tying his cravat. Thousands choked themselves in imitating the Beau's knot, but in
vain; the secret died with him, and is now among the lost
arts.
Everybody knows  what miracles  of success  were once
achieved by the Jesuits in the education of youth. What was
the secret of the astonishing influence they exercised over the
world, but the sagacity they showed in placing each of their
pupils in the sphere for which nature had specially organized
him? Who can doubt that such a system of education, if
adopted among us, would add immensely to the moral power
of the Republic? When the Scotch dominie concluded that
David Wilkie "was much fonder of drawing than of reading,
could paint much better than he could write," did he not
show far more sagacity than if, possessed of the insane idea
that Greek and Latin only can make a man, he had drilled
and flogged until the youthful spirit had become soured and
incapacitated for its themes of humor?  If the boy Carnot,
who cried out his disapprobation of some poor tactics in a military show on the stage, had been sent into a mine, we might
never have known of the man who could direct, at one and the
44 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
same time, the movements of fourteen armies. Hiad Mendels sohn's father discouraged, instead of carefully nurturing, that
musical genius which, at the age of eight, detected, in a con certo of Bach, six of those dread offences against the grammar
of music, consecutive fifths, we should never have believed
that the tricksiness of Puck, the delicate grace of Titania, and
the elvish majesty of Oberon could be so translated into
music as to form a perfect tone-picture of Shakesl)eare's
dream. There is hardly any person who is not qualified to
shine in some profession, and it is far better to be at the head
of an inglorious calling than at the foot of one which the world
calls respectable. Better be the Napoleon of boot-blacks, or
the Alexander of chimney-sweeps, than a briefiess and shallowpated attorney, who, like necessity, "knows no law," watching
vainly for victims in an unswept chamber, where "cobwebs in
dusty magnificence hang," with no companions but the
gaunt spider, a few dog-eared, bilious-looking volumes, and a
stale political newspaper; or become partner with Death, as
the sulky rattles and squeaks on the highway, with barely
acquirement enough in it to pass for doctor. Whatever nature intended you for, that be, if only a counter or tail-piece.
Never desert your true sphere, your own line of talent. If
Providence qualified you only to write couplets for sugar-horns,
or to scribble editorials for the Bunkumville Spread-Eag,le,
stick to the couplets or the editorials; a good couplet for a
sugar-horn is more respectable than a villanous epic poem in
twelve books.
The fact that a youth who fails in one calling and at one
kind of business may be eminently successful in another is
well illustrated by an incident related in Macmillan's Magazine.   A  young man, whose bluntness was such that every
effort to turn him to account in a linen-drapery establishment
was found unavailing, received from his employer the customary note that he would not suit, and must go.  "But I'm good
for something," remonstrated the poor fellow, loath to be turned
out into the street.  "You are good for nothing as a salesman,"
45 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
said the principal, regarding him from his selfish point of view.
"I am sure I can be useful," repeated the young man.   "How 7
tell me how."  "I don't know, sir; I don't know."  "Nor
do I."  And the principal laughed as he saw the eagerness of
the lad displayed.   "-Only don't put me away, sir; don't put
me away. Try me at something besides selling. I cannot sell,
I know I cannot sell." "I know that, too; that is what is
wrong."   "But I can make myself useful somehow; I know I
can." The blunt boy, who could not be turned into a salesman, and whose manner was so little captivating that he was
nearly sent about his business, was accordingly tried at something else.  He was placed in the counting-house, where his
aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and in a few years he
became not only chief cashier in the concern, but eminent as
an accountant throughout the country.
It is true, as we have said before, that the proclivities of men
are not always glaringly manifest in youth. Even the phenixes of the race do not always come into the world under conditions prophetic of their particular and salient gifts.  There
are few millionnaires who were born with "silver spoons in
their mouths "; few warriors who can boast with Owen Glendower, that, at their nativity, "the front of Heaven was full
of fiery shapes";  few jockeys, who, if asked whether they
can ride on horseback, can answer with Mark Meddle, the
dashing gentleman in "London Assurance," that they were
born on horseback. Nor is unfitness for a calling marked, in
all cases, as unmistakably as in that of John Adlams, when his
father, a shoemaker, undertook to teach him that craft. It is
said that his parent one day gave him some "uppers" to cut
out by a pattern that had a three-cornered hole in it, by which
it had hung upon a nail; and it was found that the lad had
followed the pattern exactly, triangular hole and all! It is
true, also, that vanity is apt to fool men here; that young persons are exceedingly apt to overrate their abilities, or to mistake
their quality; and you will, perhaps, cite the scores of prosaic
youths who annually come to town with their carpet-bags burst
46 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
ing with romances or epics in twenty-four books, or will perhaps ask, Did not Liston imagine that he was born to play
"1Macbeth "? and did not Douglas Jerrold project a treatise on
natural pfhilosophy. Did not David, the painter, fancy he was
cut out for a diplomatist? Did not Jonquil, who painted flowers and fruits so exquisitely, begin with enormous cartoons?
And where is the Jones who has spouted in a debating club
that does not imagine himself an embryo Clay, destined to
electrify the United States Senate by his tremendous outbursts
against some future Jackson or Van Buren? Doubtless mistakes are made, even more egregious than these; yet, after all
deductions, the general truth remains that men are designed
for particular callings, and that it is unwise to neglect those
callings for others. Some boys are fitted for mechanical pursuits, others just as evidently for commercial. Scholastic pursuits disgust some, who yawn over every book in spite of the
pedagogue's frown; while others, who have no taste for farming, or trading, or mechanical labor, are all alive when bending
over a volume of history, or following pious 2Eneas in his wanderings, or watching the revelations of the microscope.   Even
where nature's indications are obscure, it is not safe to neglect
them. The proclivities of the mind may be none the less
strong, though latent, and it is the parent's duty to watch long
and patiently till he is certain what they are. With the skill
of a chemist, he must apply all the intellectual tests till they
are exhausted; sometimes watching the mind's unrestrained
seekings, sometimes bringing the world's stores, and laying
them at its feet for a choice. The head of the Caxtons, in
Bulwer's novel, will furnish him a hint here, worthy of a more
practical head than that of a cloistered student. While directing his son's studies, he recollects that he had read, in a certain
Greek writer, how some man, to save his bees a troublesome
flight to Hymettus, cut their wings, and placed before them the
finest flowers he could select.   But the poor  bees made  no
honey; so he determined that his young Pisistratus should
search for his own honey.
47,
a, 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Fortunmately for the world, in men of great genius the bent
of the mind is so strong that it is not in the power of foolish
fathers to resist it.  Long even before manhood, their souls are
haunted by a certain object, which, like the ghost of Miltiades
in the case of the Athenian statesman, will not let them sleep.
They choose a particular pursuit, not because they deem it the
best, because it promises the most glory, money, or happiness,
but because they cannot help it, and for the same reason they
adhere to it while life lasts. All they know is, that they love
what they are about, and they give their whole souls to it ac  cordingly. You may chain down their genius, for a while, to
ungrateful, to menial tasks; but there comes a time at last,
perhaps without any warning of revolt, when it will no longer
consent "to harrow the valleys, or be bound with the band in
the furrow "; when "it laughs at the multitude of the city, and
regards not the crying of the driver"; when, sternly refusing
longer to make ropes out of sand, it carves a statue, or paints a
picture, or "builds the lofty rhyme," and you have an Apollo, a
Madonna, or a Divine Comedy, as fate or inspiration directs.
There was Hogarth, there was Correggio; what enabled these
great artists to gain the perfection, in their several ways, which
afterward surprised and ravished mankind?  "Not a mother's
approving smile, nor a father's frown; not the help of teachers,
nor the world's premature applause; but the vivid, tingling
delight with which the one seized upon a grotesque incident
or expression,'the rapt soul sitting in the eyes' of the
other, as he drew a saint or an angel from the skies."
We cannot close our observations on this topic without
adding a caution touching the importance of adhering to the
profession wich one has deliberately chosen.   In hours of
despondency, or when smarting under some disappointment, a
young man is apt to fancy that in some other calling he would
have been more successful. It is so easy, while regarding it at
a distance, to look at its bright side only, shutting the eyes at
what is ugly and disagreeable,   it is so easy to dream of the
resolution and tenacity of purpose with which he would follow
48 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
it, and to mount up in imagination to its most dazzling honors,
and clutch them ill defiance of every rival,-  that it is not
strange that men abandon their professions for others for which
they are less fitted. But when we reflect that the man remains
the same, whatever his calling,- that a mere change of his
position can make no radical change of his mind, either by
adding to its strength or diminishing its weakness,- we shall
conclude that in many cases what he is in one calling, that he
would be, substantially, in any other, and that he will gain
nothing by the exchange.
Of course, as we have already shown, one may err so egregiously in the choice of his calling that to abandon it and
chooe anew is a necessity.  Again, hundreds find themselves
out of place through accident, early associations, the unwise
choice of parents, a boyish freak or whim. But a young man
should be slow to believe this of himself, especially after he
has acquired much valuable experience, and should try another
calling only after repeated failures in the most desperate attempts to succeed. No man will work with heart and energy
while he is haunted by the idea that in some other vocation he
might do better. It is by no means certain that had you
chosen your calling, instead of your parents choosing it for
you, you would have chosen well.  Iave you never noted the
fact mentioned by a shrewd writer, " In a masquerade, where
people assume what characters they like, how ill they often
play them? " The great weakness of our young men is fickleness; and, where one of them perseveres in a calling which
he ought to abandon, a dozen abandon their callings who ought
to stick to them. The better the profession the more likely
they are to do this; for all those kinds of business which are
surest in the end, which pay best in -the long run, are slowest in
beginning to yield a return. it is natural, too, when one sees
lions in his way, to fancy that all the other roads are clear of
them. But nothing can be achieved without tenacity of purpose; do not, therefore, give up your deliberately chosen calling, unless the arguments for retreating are far weightier than
those for going on.
49 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Finally, we would say to every young man, whatever calling
you feel compelled to pursue do not affect to despise it. Do not
boast of the heights to which your genius might have soared,
had it not been tethered to the earth; of the brilliant things
you might have done, had you not been "cabined, cribbed, and
confined " in a mean and narrow sphere.  Such talk may seem
to you very fine, and you may fancy that those who hear it
will regard it as an index of a high and noble spirit, conscious
of grander powers than it has had an opportunity of exhibiting.
But you can scarcely make a more egregious mistake. What
you say may be true; but the world, which deems success the
only test of merit, and that ninety-nine men out of a hundred
find their just level, will ascribe it to vanity. The popular
opinion will always be, that, wherever extraordinary ability
exists, it will find out some way to make itself known; and
wherever there is not tiis pre-eminent force of genius, the
injustice done to a man's powers will, in the long run, scarcely
be perceptible. Is your calling a humble one? Ennoble it by
the manner, in which you discharge its duties, and you will
challenge the respect of all whose good opinion is worth having.  The day has long gone by when a man needed to hang
down his head because of the humbleness of his vocation,
however useful. Lord Townsend, who introduced the culture
of the turnip into England, was nicknamed "Turnip Townsend" by the wits of a licentious court; but there are few
persons to-day who would not admit that he did more for
his country thereby than was done by all the popinjays that
have spread their butterfly wings in the sunshine of thie British
court from the days of Charles II. to those of Victoria.  Dr.
Johnson said of some one sneeringly, that his conversation
"savored of bullocks"; yet the world could as well have dispensed with a Johnson as with a Colling or a Bakewell. It is
not the calling or station in life that gives dignity or nobility
to the man, but the man that dignifies the station or calling.
It is with real life as with the mimic life of the stage. All the
players cannot have the principal parts, even when all are
50 
CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.
fitted for them; but the play never goes off more finely, nor
elicits more enthusiastic applause, than when the characters,
even down to the most unimportant, have been personated by
men of far greater ability than they have been required to
display.
51 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER IV.
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
To the strong hand and strong head, the capacious lungs and vigorous
frame, fall, and will always fall, the heavy burdens; and where the heavy
burdens fall, the great prizes fall too. - LAWS OF LIFE.
It is said that the Duke of Wellington, when once looking on at the boys
engaged in their sports in the playground at Eton, made the remark, "It was
there that the battle of Waterloo was won! "-SAMUEL SMILES.
No man is in true health who cannot stand in the free air of heaven, with
his feet on God's free turf, and thank his Creator for the simple luxury of
physical existence. - T. W. HIGGINSON.
THE first element of success needed by him who has wisely
chosen his calling is constitutional talent.  By constitutional talent we mean the warmth and vigor imparted to a
man's ideas by superior bodily stamina, by a stout physical
constitution. Till within a recent period, bodiculture, if it may
be so called, has been neglected, and almost despised, in this
country. Our books for the young have been full of praises of
the midnight oil; our oracles of education have urged unsparing study;  aud Nocturnca mane  versate, versate diurna, has
been the favorite motto in all our colleges. It has been truly
said.that all the influences under which the young American,
especially the student, of the last generation lived, taught him
to despise the body, while the mind was goaded to a preternatural activity. They led him to associate muscle with rowdyism, ruddy cheeks with toddies, longwindedness with profane
swearing, and broad shoulders with neglect of the ordinances
of revealed religion. Tallness was the only sign of virtue tolerated. Width and weight were held to indicate a steady tendency toward the State Prison, and the model young man
became pale, lanky, dyspeptic, desiring to be all soul, and re
52 
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
garding his body as the source of all his wretchedness. It is
true the majority of youth protested against this theory, and
refused to be goaded to suicidal study; but not a few responded
to the whip, with the results that are familiar to all. But
within a few years a revolution has taken place in the public
sentiment on this subject. We are beginning to see that the
body, as well as the mind, has rights that must be respected.
WVe are learning by bitter experience that if the mind, which
rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample on its
slave, the slave will not forgive the injury, but will rise and
smite the oppressor. We are discovering that though the pale,
sickly student may win the most prizes in college, it is the
tough, sinewy one who will win the most prizes in life; and
that in every calling, other things being equal, the most successful man will be the one who has slept the soundest and
digested the most dinners with the least difficulty. The doctrine of Pascal, that "disease is the natural state of Christians,"
has now few believers. We cannot believe that the Creator
thinks so; else health would be the exception, and disease
the rule. We rather hbld the opinion of Dr. J. W. Alexander,
who, when asked if he enjoyed the full assurance of faith, replied, "I think I do, except when the wind is from the east."
It is now conceded on all hands that the mind has no right
to build itself up at the expense of the body.; that it is no
more justifiable in abandoning itself without restraint to its
cravings, than the body in yielding itself to sensual indulgence.
The acute stimulants, the mental drams, that produce this unnatural activity or overgrowth of the intellect, are as contrary
to nature, and as hurtful to the man, as the coarser stimulants
that unduly excite the body. The mind, it has been well said,
should be a good, strong, healthy feeder, but not a glutton.
When unduly stimulated, it wears out the mechanism of the
body, like friction upon a machine not lubricated, and the
growing weakness of the physical frame nullifies the power it
encloses.   "It is now generally conceded," says Henry Ward
Beecher, in one of his late admirable lectures to the theological
53 
GETTING ON IN TIIE WORLD.
students of Yale College, "that there is an organization which
we call the nervous system in the human body, to which belong the functions of emotion, intelligence, and sensation, and
that that is connected intimately with the whole circulation of
the blood, with the condition of the blood as affected by the
liver, and by aeration in the lungs; that the manufacture of the
blood is dependent upon the stomach; so a man is what he is,
not in one part or another, but all over; one part is intimately
connected with the other, from the animal stomach to the
throbbing brain; and when a man thinks, he thinks the whole
trunk through.  Man's power comes from the generating forces
that are in him, namely, the digestion of nutritious food into
vitalized blood, made fine by oxygenation; an organization by
which that blood has free course to flow and be glorified; a
neck that will allow the blood to run up and down easily; a
brain properly organized and balanced; the whole system so
compounded as to have susceptibilities and recuperative force;
immense energy to generate resources and facility to give them
out; - all these elements go to determine what a man's working power is."
To do his work cheerfully and well, every professional man
needs a working constitution, and this can be got only by daily
exercise in the open air. The atmosphere we breathe is an exhalation of all the minerals of the globe, the most elaborately
finished of all the Creator's works,- the rock of ages disintegrated and prepared for the life of man.   Draughts of this
are the true stimulants, more potent and healthful than champagne or cognac, "so cheap at the custom-house, so dear at the
hotels." The thorough aeration of the blood by deep inhalations of air, so as to bring it in contact with the whole breathing surface of the lungs, is indispensable to him  who would
maintain that full vital power on which the vigorous workingpower of the brain so largely depends. Sydney Smith tells
public speakers that if they would walk twelve miles before
speaking, they would never break down. The English people
understand this, and hence  at the Universities boat-races,
54. 
PHIIYSICAL CULTURE.
horseback rides, and ten-mile walks are practically a part of
the educational course. English lawyers and members of Parliament acquire vigor of body and clearness of head for their
arduous labors by riding with the hounds, shooting grouse on
the Scottish moors, throwing the fly into the waters of Norway,
or climbing the Alpine cliffs.  Peel, Brougham, Lyndhurst,
Campbell, Bright, Gladstone, -nearly all the great political
and legal leaders, the prodigious workers at the bar and in the
senate,- have been full-chested men, who have been as sedulous to train their bodies as to train their intellects. If our
American leaders accomplish less, and die earlier, it is because
they neglect the care of the body, and put will-force in the
place of physical strength.
It is no exaggeration to say that health is a large ingredient
in what the world calls talent. A man without it may be a
giant in intellect, but his deeds will be the deeds of a dwarf.
On the contrary, let him have a quick circulation, a good digestion, the bulk, thews, and sinews of a man, and the alacrity,
the unthinking confidence inspired by these, and, though having but a thimbleful of brains, he will either blunder upon
success or set failure at defiance. It is true, especially in this
country, that the number of centaurs in every community- of
men in whom heroic intellects are allied with bodily constitutions as tough as those of horses- is small; that, in general,
a man has reason to think himself well off in the lottery of
life, if he draw the prize of a healthy stomach without a mind,
or the prize of a fine intellect with a crazy stomach. But of
the two, a weak mind in a herculean frame is better than a
giant mind in a crazy constitution. A pound of energy with
an ounce of talent will achieve greater results than a pound of
talent with an ounce of energy.   The first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal. In any of the learned
professions a vigorous constitution is equal to at least fifty per
cent more brain. Wit, judgment, imagination, eloquence, all
the qualities of the mind, attain thereby a force and splendor
to which they could never approach without it. But intellect
55 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
in a weak body is "'like gold in a spent swimmer's pocket."
A mechanic may have tools of the sharpest edge and highest
polish; but what are these, without a vigorous arm and hand?
Of what use is it that your mind has become a vast granary
of knowledge, if you have not strength to turn the key 
The effects of the culture of the body are strikingly seen in
the nations of antiquity, with whom gymnastics and calisthenics
were a part of the regular school education. Ancient philosophy, instead of despising the body as a mere husk or vile
outside of human nature, regarded it as a true part of the man,
the contempt or neglect of which would provoke a fearful retaliation upon the whole being. The gymnastics of the Greeks
were not practised by the boxers and wrestlers only, the drillsergeants and corporals of that day, but went on under the
solemn sanction of sages.   The orators, philosophers, poets,
warriors, and statesmen of Greece and Rome gained strength
of mind as well as of muscle by the systematic drill of the
palestra. The brain was filled thereby with a quick-pulsing
and finely oxygenated blood, the nerves made healthy and
strong, the digestion sharp and powerful, and the whole physical man, as the statues of antiquity show, developed into the
fullest health and vigor. It is told of Cicero that he became,
at one period of his life, the victim of that train of maladies
expressed by the word "dyspepsia," -maladies which pursue
the indolent and the overworked man as the shark follows in
the wake of the plague-ship. The orator hastened, not to the
physicians, which might have hastened his death, but to Greece;
flung himself into the gymnasium; submitted to its regimen
for two entire years; and returned to the struggles of the
forum as vigorous as the peasants that tilled his farm. Who
doubts that, by this means, his periods were rounded out to a
more majestic cadence, and his crushing arguments clinched
with a tighter grasp? Had he remained a dyspeptic, he might
have written beautiful essays on old age and friendship, but he
never would have pulverized Catiline, or blasted Antony with
his lightnings.   So the intellectual power of those giants of
56 
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
antiquity, Aristotle and Plato, was owing in a large degree to
that harmonious education in which the body shared as well as
the mind. That the one nruled the world of thought down to
the time of Bacon, and that the other is stimulating and
quickening the mind of the nineteenth century, are owing in
part to the fact that they were not only great geniuses, but, as
one has well said, geniuses most happily set, and that no dyspepsia broke the harmony of their thought, no neuralgia
twinged the system with agony, and no philosopher's ail infected the throat with bad blood or an ulcerated mucous membrane.
The success of men gifted, apparently, with nothing  but
constitutional talent, and the frequency with which men
endowed with the finest intellectual powers, but powers sumpported by a couple of spindle-shanks and a weak body, have disappointed the expectations of their adnmirers, have led some persons almost to regard the stomach as the seat of intellect, and
genius and eupepsy as convertible terms. Ridiculous as this
may seem, it is certain that the brain is often credited with
achievements that belong to the digestion. Everything shows
that the greatness of our great men is as much a bodily affair as
a mental one.   Nature presented our Websters, Clays, and
Calhouns, not only with extraordinary minds, but- what has
quite as much to do with the matter- with wonderful bodies.
Above all, our Grants, Shermans, and Sheridans, what would
they be without nerves of whipcord and frames of iron? Let
Napoleon answer. The tortures of hereditary disease, united
with the pangs of fever, wrung from that great captain, in one
of the most critical days of his history, the exclamation that
the first requisite of good generalship is good health.   The
efficiency of the common soldier, too, he knew depended, first
of all, upon his being in perfect health and splendid condition;
and hence he tried to bring up all his troops to the condition
of pugilists when they fight for the championship. This was
the secret of their prodigious efforts, their endurance of fatigues
that would have killed common  men.  Even in literature,
3*
57 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
a robust frame has become absolutely indispensable to great
and lasting success. Time was when an author wrote onlly
with his head, -with the superior and intellectual part,the essence of his being. But to-day, owing to the enormous
labor which he imposes upon himself, or which society imposes on him at short notice,- owing, also, to the necessity
he is under of striking quick and telling blows,- he has no
time to be so platonic and delicate. A writer's works in this
nineteenth century are the offspring, not merely of his brain,
but of his blood and muscles.  His physiology and hygiene,
his entire organization,- have become an indispensable chapter in every analysis of his talent.
Look, again, at the pulpit. Who can estimate the accession
of energy, of intellectual and moral power, which it would
receive if our clergymen, instead of remaining the pale, ghostly
looking, over-read, over-fed, intellectually blase spectres they so
often are, should spend a part of their time in getting up animal
power to back up their attenuated intellectual power?  John
Knox was not a dwarf nor a dyspeptic. Latimer and Luther
were stalwart men, who could have knocked down an opponent
first, and put him down in argument afterward. Isaac Barrow
was a vigorous pugilist in his youth; Andrew Fuller, when a
farmer's boy, was skilled in boxing; and Adam Clarke, when
a lad, could "roll large stones about" as easily as he could
afterwards roll over a theological adversary in manhood.
The success of the English people- their victories on the
field, in the mart, and in the study -  has been largely owing
to physical training. John Bull is a large feeder, but he is a
hard worker too; he loves the open air, and keeps mind and
body vigorous by constant exercise. The effect of this upon
the efficiency of men is strikingly seen in the achievements of
the British army and navy, whose soldiers and sailors are surpassed in toughness and powers of endurance by no others in
the world. That the splendid empires which England has
founded in every quarter of the globe have had their origin
largely in the football contests at Eton, the boat-races on the
58 
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
Thames, and the cricket-matches on her downs and heaths,
who  can doubt?  The race so widely dominant, -" whose
morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company
with the hours, circles the earth with one continual, unbroken
strain of the martial airs of England," -is dominant because
its institutions cultivate self-reliance, and its breeding develops
endurance, courage, and pluck. There are some croakers who
talk much of England's decline, and predict that she will prove
an easy prey whenever any of the continental vultures choose to
swoop down upon her.  But there is little danger of this while
"the silver-coasted isle" is defended by the stalwart men she yet
produces. In allusion to the fears of some Englishmen on this
subject, a London paper some years ago indulged in the following well-founded boast -   If any of the home-keeping denizens of London are alarmed by the extraordinary naval preparations which Louis Napoleon is said to be making, we would
advise them to go down and take a look at the Imperial yacht
which is now lying at Deptford. As a vessel, she is in every
respect a match for our royal yacht, the Victoria and Albert.
But look at her sailors.  They have been strolling about our
streets for some days past, exciting wonder wherever they
have gone. What pretty little fellows they are! What dandy
shirts they wear!  what natty enamelled hats!   How they
remind us of ballet girls, dressed out for a hornpipe in a nautical pantomime. Pretty, truly; but their slender knees are
not made to cling to a giddy maintop in a gale. Their delicate fingers are not designed to grasp a rough, tarred rope, and
hold on, like grim death, when the fate of the ship and its
crew rests upon the strength, the daring, and the rugged skill
of one man. There they trip along, a batch of French'able
seamen,' looking, at the best, like the apprentices of an English war-ship.   The  big, burly, hard-fisted British tar, who
comes lumbering down the street, looks as if he could eat one
of them with ease. They are like a litter of Italian greyhounds by the side of that huge English mastiff. Our rivals,
then, whoever they may be, may build as many iron-cased
59 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
ships as they please. They cannot build sailors like ours. In
that respect Nature and our insular position will always give
us the advantage, if we only exercise the most ordinary vigilance in keeping the material of our fleet up to the requirements and exigencies of the time."
It is true there have been men who, despite of frail and
miserable health, have done immortal things.   Great and
heroic were the achievements of Paul, "in bodily presence
weak"; of the blind Milton; of Pascal, a confirmed invalid at
eighteen; of Johnson, bravely carrying through life the weight
of a diseased and tortured body; of Nelson, little and lames-;
of Channing, with his frail, clayey tabernacle; of the pale
Lawrence, weighing from day to day the morsels of bread which
alone his dyspeptic stomach could bear. It is true that Julius
Caesar was troubled with epilepsy, and never planned a great
battle without going into fits; that the great Suwarrow stood
but five feet one in his boots; that Pope was a hunchback and
an invalid; and that Aristotle was a pygmy in body, though a
giant in intellect.   But these are brilliant exceptions, which
only prove the rule. The general fact still remains that it is
the man of tough and enduring fibre, of elastic nerve, of comprehensive digestion, who does the great work of life. It is
Scott, with his manly form; it is Brougham, with his superhuman powers of physical endurance. It is Franklin, at the
age of seventy, camping out, on his way to arouse the Canadas,
as our hardiest boys of twenty now camp out in the Adirondacks. It is Napoleon, sleeping four hours, and in the saddle
twenty. Rarely does the world behold such a spectacle as that
presented in 1693 at Neerwinden in the Netherlands, when,
among the one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who
were marshalled under the banners of all Europe, the two
feeblest in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who urged on
the fiery onset of France and the asthmatic skeleton who
covered the slow retreat of England.
Even the greatest poets have been those who, like Burns,
have combined athletic bodies with souls of XEolian tones, who
(50 
PHYSICAI CULTURE.
were blessed with good digestion as well as brains. The
Greek poet, Eschylus, fought nobly for his country at Salamis;
and the trumpet that woke his countrymen to battle that
morning still rings in his verse. Chaucer was a sturdy bard,
as ready to fight as to write; and, when some Londoners had
accused him of untruth, "prepared his body for Mars his doing,
if any contrairied his saws." There is no calling in which men
do not need that sturdy vigor, that bodily strength and agility,
without which all mental culture is but a preparation for disappointment and mortification. But, in the learned professions,
a good constitution is doubly indispensable. There is nothing
else which so taxes, tries, and exhausts the life-force as mental
effort. Instead of being pale, delicate, feeble, and sickly, the
thinker, whether in the law-office, the pulpit, the editorial
room, the counting-room, or the hall of legislation, needs to be
stalwart and hardy. He should have tougher thews, and
stronger sinews, and a more vigorous pulse than the man who
holds the plough or shoves the foreplane. It has been said, with
not a little truth, that a small body has comparatively small
chances of success; "people will yield that to mere physical
largeness which they will refuse to, or at least dispute with,
littleness of body and self-distrust."   No matter how true the
rifle or the aim, a light ball will not carry far; heavy men, like
heavy bullets, do the most execution, and win the battle at
long range. See Palmerston at fourscore still handling the
helm of empire with the firm grasp of thirty! Look at Lord
Brougham! That the King never dies, and that Brougham
never sleeps, used to be the two leading features of English
constitutional doctrine.   One would think from his toughness,
when almost ninety, that he was a son of old McDonald of
Keppoch, the Scotch chieftain of whom it is told that, camping
out on night with a portion of his clan, he went and kicked
the snow from under his son's head,- which the youth had
piled together so as to form a sort of pillow,- declaring that
"the young.rascal, by his degenerate effeminacy, would bring
disgrace on the clan." The life of Brougham was a perpetual
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
series of mental feats and triumphs over the frail physique of
humanity. It is told that he once worked six days on a
stretch, one hundred and forty-four hours, without sleep;
then ran down from London into the country, slept from Saturday night till Monday morning, and returned and buckled
to his work again, as fresh and elastic as ever. Is it not
an immense advantage to have such a working constitution as
this?- to be able, if a professional man, to endure for a whole
week a perpetual strain on your brain, and, amid confinement
and close air, with heaps of confused papers, law books, and
books of reference to get through, to go on daily and nightly
extracting therefrom liquid and transparent results, and find
yourself, when you rise from your task, as elastic as a rubber
ball? Is not a lawyer doubly sure of success who, after a fortnight's laborious attention to a suit, can rise up to address a
jury with all his faculties as vigorous and eager for the contest
as on the first day of the term, while his wilted and exhausted
opponent has hardly more vitality than a bag of sand?
On the other hand, of what avail are brilliant talents and a
splendid education to a young man just entering manhood, who
has a feeble constitution? It is Ulysses' bow in the hands of
the suitors. He brings into the arena of life, to meet its fierce
contests, to bear its hard shocks, to persevere in its long-continued enterprises, and to subdue its impetuous oppositions,
a shrivelled, puny body, limbs trembling with weakness and
palsied with pain. His feeble system is borne down to the bed
of sickness even by the operations of his own over-cultivated
mind. The spirit is too strong for its tenement. The sword
has worn through the scabbard.  He hears the trumpet sound,
and the busy humin of preparation,- his soul is "up in arms and
eager for the fray," - but he cannot arise and equip himself for
the battle. Opportunities of usefulness and of winning an
honorable reputation crowd thick upon him; but he feels a
prostrating weakness, which, like an invisible enemy, creeps
through his veins, and drinks the life-blood from his heart;
and he languishes in pain and wretchedness, like Ivanhoe in
62 
PHYSICAL CULTURE.
the castle of Front de Bceuf, unable to perform a solitary act in
the fray on whose results hanig all his most cherished hopes.
Horace Mann, in a letter of advice to a law-student, justly
remarks that a spendthrift of health is one of the most reprehensible of spendthrifts.  "I am certain," continues he, "I
could have performed twice the labor, both better and with
greater ease to myself, had I known as much of the laws of
health and life at twenty-one as I do now. In college I was
taught all about the motions of the planets, as carefully as
though they would have been in danger of getting off the track
if I had not known how to trace their orbits; but about my
own organization, and the conditions indispensable to the
healthful functions of my own body, I was left in profound
ignorance.  Nothing could be more preposterous.   I ought to
have begun at home, and taken the stars when it should come
their turn. The consequence was, I broke down at the beginning,, of my second college year, and have never had a well day
since. Whatever labor I have since been able to do, I have
done it all on credit instead of capital,-  a most ruinous way,
either in regard to health or money.   For the last twenty-five
years, so far as it regards health, I have been put, from day to
day, on my good behavior; and during the whole of this period, as an Hibernian would say, if I had lived as other folks
do for a month, I should have died in a fortnight."
Let, then, the man who is stripping for the race of life
account no time or money as wasted that contributes in any
way to his physical health,- that gives tone to the stomach,
or development to the muscles. The life of the present day
is lived so often at fever-heat, is so swift and restless, that the
mental wear and tear is enormous. Never before were men
devoured by so insatiable an ambition, or scourged by so merciless an activity, as in this latter half of the nineteenth century.
It is the pace that kills. We need, therefore, all the vigor,
all the "healthy animalism," that can be drawn from sport or
play, to strengthen us for the struggle. It is true the professional or business man needs health rather than strength. He
60
a 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
need not boast the brawn of the gladiator.   He need  not
be a Heenan or a Spartacus   he need not lift a thousand
pounds, nor walk a hundred miles in twenty-four hours. It
is a sound constitution that most men want to do their work,
- in short, that condition of body and that amount of vital
power which shall enable them to pursue their callings with
the greatest amount of comfort to themselves and usefulness
to others.   It is true also that physical ability is required
more in some callings than in others. But in all it is inildispensable to leadership, and he who lacks it, though he may
live a useful and reputable life, -may even become a first-rate
second-rate man,- must not think to command.
64 
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM.
CHAPTER V.
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM.
One science only will one genius fit;
So wide is art, so narrow human wit. - POPE.
"So it comes to pass that now, at last, the measure of a man's learning will
be the amount of his voluntary ignorance; the measure of his practical
effectiveness, the amount of what he is content to leave unattempted.
Be not simply good, - be good for something. - THOREAU.
We should guard against a talent which we cannot hope to practise in perfection. Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit
of the master has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time
and strength devoted to such botching. - GOETHE.
A NOTHER indispensable requisite to success is concentra      tion, or devotion to one object.
The great State of New York, which leads the Union in
commerce, has but one port upon the ocean, and none elsewhere of any importance. The State of New Jersey has several ports, but so poor that all of them, with their shallow
water and narrow limits, are a miserable substitute for a good
one. What is the result. The universal sea is whitened with
the sails of Manhattan, while the voyages of New Jersey are
restricted to a visit to the neighboring emporium, or to the
Hudson, that washes her shores. So with human talent. One,
well cultivated, deepened, and enlarged, is worth a hundred
shallow faculties. The first law of success at this day, when
so many things are clamoring for attention, is concentration,to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that
point, looking neither to the right nor to the left. It has been
justly said that a great deal of the wisdom of a man in this
century is shown in leaving things unknown, and a great deal
of his practical sense in leaving things undone. The day of
universal scholars is past. Life is short, and art is long. The
E
65 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
range of human knowledge has increased so enormously, that
no brain can grapple with it; and the man who would know
one thing well must have the courage to be ignorant of a
thousand other things, however attractive or inviting.   As
with knowledge, so with work. The man who would get
along must single out his specialty, and into that must pour
the whole stream of his activity, - all the energies of his hand,
eye, tongue, heart, and brain. Broad culture, many-sidedness,
are beautiful things to contemplate; but it is the narrowedg,ed men, - the men of single and intense purpose, who steel
their souls against all things else - that accomplish the hard
work of the world, and who are everywhere in demand when
hard work is to be done.
Every beginner in life, therefore, should try early to ascertain the strong faculty of his mind or body, fitting him for
some special pursuit, and direct his utmost energies to bring it
to perfection. A man, says Emerson, is like a bit of Labrador
spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand,
until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep
and beautiful  colors.   There is  no adaptation or universal
applicability in man; but each has his special talent; and
the mastery of successful men consists in adroitly keeping
themselves where and when that turn shall need oftenest to be
practised. The successful man in every calling, whether literary, scientific, or business, is he who is totus i illo, -  who can
say with Paul, "This one thing I do." With the exception
of a few great creative minds, the men whose names are historic are identified with some one achievement, upon which all
their life-force is spent.   You think of Watt, and instantly
the steam-engine is suggested; of Arkwright, and the spinningjenny whirls before you; of Davy, and the safety-lamp lights
up the mine;  of Harvey, and the blood courses the more
quickly in your veins; of Jenner, and you see disease stayed
in its progress by the pricking of a lancet; of Mlorse, and the
electric spark is seen darting from continent to continent, ready,
like Puck, to "put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes."
66 
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIMM.
"Whatever I have tried to do in my life," said Charles Dickens, "I have tried with all my heart to do well.  What I have
devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely.
Never to put one hand to anything on which I would throw
my whole self, and never to affect depreciation of my work,
whatever it was, I find now to have been golden rules."
A man may have the most dazzling talents, but if they are
scattered upon many objects, he will accomplish nothing. Sir
Joshua Reynolds used to say that a painter should sew up his
mouth; that is, he must not shine as a talker, if he would
excel in his art. Strength is like gunpowder,- to be effective,
it needs concentration and aim. The marksman who aims at
the whole target will seldom hit the centre. The literary man
or philosopher may revel among the sweetest and most beautiful flowers of thought, but unless he gathers and condenses
the sweets in the honeycomb of some great thought or work,
his finest conceptions will be lost or useless. When Michael
Angelo was asked why he did not marry, he replied, "Painting
is my wife, and my works are my children."  "Mr. A. often
laughs at me," said a learned American chemist, "because I
have but one idea. Hle talks about everything, -aims to excel
in many things; but I have learned that if I wish ever to
make a breach, I must play my guns continually upon one
point."  His gunnery was successful.   Beginning life as an
obscure schoolmaster, and poring over Silliman's Journal by the
light of a pine-knot in a log-cabin, he was erelong perforlning
experiments in electromagnetism to English earls, and has
since been at the head of one of the chief scientific institutions
of his country.
It was the opinion of William Hazlitt that life is long
enough for many pursuits, provided we set about them properly, and give our minds wholly to them. Let one devote himself to any art or science ever so strenuously, he said, and he
will still have leisure to make considerable progress in half a
dozen acquisitions. "Let a man do all he can in any one
branch of study, he must either exhaust himself and doze over
67 
GETTING ON IN TIHE WORLD.
it, or vary his pursuit, or else lie idle. All our real labor lies
in a nutshell. The mind makes, at some period or other, one
Herculean effort, and the rest is mechanical." All this is true
enough of a few prodigies of genius that have appeared at rare
intervals in the ages. Cicero was master of logic, ethics, astronomy, and natural philosophy, besides being well versed in geometry, music, and all the other fine arts. Bacon took all knowledge
for his province. Dante, skilled in all the learning of his times,
sustained arguments at the University of Paris against fourteen
disputants, and conquered in all. Scipio Africanus was not only
a great warrior, but famed for his learning and eloquence. Salvator Rosa was a lutenist and a satirist. The variety of knowledge
and accomplishment accumulated by Leonardo da Vinci almost
staggers belief. It has been said that if he had stood before
the gates of Macedon, he would have tamed Bucephalus; if
he had been seated on the magic throne of Comus, he would
have broken the wand of the demon; if he had seen the
chariot of the King of Phrygia, he would have unravelled the
Gordian Knot. He was not only a great painter, but a mathematician, metaphysician, musician, poet, sculptor, engineer,
architect, chemist, botanist, anatomist, astronomer, besides
being skilled in mechanics and natural history. But how
many Bacons, Dantes, Salvators, or Da Vincis have there
been in the world's history  - nay, among the men of any
generation, how many are even Hazlitts. The very rarity of
such prodigies is what makes them prodigies. To every such
instance of universal accomplishment may be opposed thotusands of men who have failed in life by dabbling in too many
things. Most men run uncertainly if they have two goals.
Hobbes made himself a laughing-stock as a poet; Milton wrote
but little good prose, and provokes a smile at himself as a
humorist; Bentley's hand forgot its cunning when he laid it
on. Paradise Lost; Boileau failed almost utterly when he attempted to sweep the strings of the lyre, as did Corneille in
comedy and Dryden in tragedy.   "Art, not less eloquently
than literature," says Willmott, "teaches her children to vener
68 
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM.
ate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of
miser-life are breathing.   A  forfeited bond twinkles in the
hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle
has caught a stray tint from his usurer."
Sydney Smith, in an excellent lecture on the conduct of the
understanding, justly censures what he calls the foppery of
universality,-  of knowing all sciences and excelling in all
arts, - chemistry, mathematics, algebra, dancing, history, reasoning,, riding, fencing, Low Dutch, High Dutch, natural
philosophy, and enough Spanish to talk about Lope de Vega.
The modern precept of education, he says, is, very often, Be
ignorant of nothing.   "Now  my advice, on the contrary, is
to have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things,
in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
I would exact of a young man a pledge that he would never
read Lope de Vega; he should pawn to me his honor to abstain
from Bettinelli and his thirty-five original sonneteers; and I
would exact from him the most rigid securities that I was never
to hear anything about that race of penny poets who lived in
the reigns of Cosmo and Lorenzo di Medici."
The world has few Admirable Crichtons, - few universal
geniuses, who are capable of mastering a dozen languages, arts,
or sciences, or driving a dozen callings abreast. Beginners in
life are perpetually complaining of the disadvantages under
which they labor; but it is an indisputable fact that more
persons fail from a multiplicity of pursuits and pretensions
than from an absolute poverty of resources.   Don Quixote
thought that he could have  made  beautiful bird-cages and
toothpicks, if his brain had not been so full of ideas of chivalry; and many other persons would achieve an easy success in
their callings, if they were not distracted by rival ambitions.
"The one prudence in life," says a shrewd American essayist,
"is concentration, the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no
difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine, -property
and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music,
or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one play
69 
GETTING ON IN TIlE WORLD.
thing and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke
of faithful work." The same essayist felicitously compares the
culture of a healthy, vigorous mind to that of a tree. The
gardener does not suffer the sap to be diverted into a thousand
channels, merely to develop a myriad of profitless twigs; he
prunes the offshoots, and leaves the vital juices to be absorbed
by a few vigorous, fruit-bearing branches. Racine, we are told,
might have rivalled Moliere in comedy; but he gave up the
cultivation of his comic talents to devote himself to the tragic
muse.   If, as the French assert, he thereby attained to the perfection of comic writing, was not that better than writing comedies as well as Moliere, and tragedies as well as Crebillon X
It is said that a Yankee can splice a rope in many different
ways; an English sailor knows but one mode, but that mode
is the best. The one thing which an Englishman detests with
his whole soul is a Jack-of-all-trades, the miscellaneous man
who knows a little of everything. England is not a country
for average men; every profession is overstocked, and the only
chance of success is for the man of signal ability and address
to climb to a lofty position over the heads of a hundred others.
America, on the other hand, is full of persons who can do
many things, but who do no one thing well. The secret of
their failure is mental dissipation, - the squandering of the
energies upon a distracting variety of objects, instead of condensing them upon one.   To  do  anything  perfectly, there
should be an exclusiveness, a bigotry, a blindness of attachment
to that one object, which shall make all others for the time
being seem worthless. Just as the general who scatters his
soldiers all about the country insures defeat, so does he whose
attention is forever diffused through so innumerable channels
that it can never gather in force on any one point. The human
mind, in short, resembles a burning-glass, whose rays are intense only as they are concentrated. As the glass burns only
when its light is conveyed to the focal point, so the former
illumines the world of science, literature, or business, only
when it is directed to a solitary object. Or, to take another
70 
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM.
illustration, what is more powerless than the scattered clouds
of steam, as they rise in the sky I They are as impotent as the
dew-drops that fall nightly upon the earth.  But, concentrated
and condensed in a steam-boiler, they are able to cut through
solid rock, to hurl mountains into the sea, and to bring the
antipodes to our doors.
"Be a whole man at everything," was the advice of a celebrated Englishman to his son at school.   It is just the lack of
this wholeness which distinguishes the shabby, half-hearted, and
blundering - the men who make the mob of life - from those
who win victories. In slower times success might have been
won by the man who gave but a corner of his brain to the
work in hand; but in these days of keen competition it demands the intensest application of the entire thinking faculty.
Exclusive dealing, hateful as it is in politics, is yet, in worldly
pursuits, a principle of hundred-headed power.   The  great
linguist of Bologna mastered a hundred languages by attacking
them singly, as the lion did the bulls. On the other hand, by
dividing his time among too many objects, a man of genius
often becomes diamond-dust instead of a diamond. Many men
walk as much idly in Broadway or Pall Mall as in a few years
could carry them around the globe. Many a person misses of
being a great man by splitting into two middling ones. Enough
of irregular, disconnected, and objectless effort is put forth by
amateur artists to secure a commendable, if not an enviable
success, were the effort only systematic and persistent. The
scattered hours wasted in idly drawing the bow by some
dreaming violinist would make, if properly employed, not,
indeed, a Vieuxtemps or a Paganini, but a brilliant performer.
The time spent by many persons in profitless desultory reading,
if concentrated upon a single line of study, would make them
masters of an entire literature or science. The toil expended by
the newspaper hack in writing disconnected essays, dissertations,
and sketches,  to buy his daily bread, would  produce -  if
directed with energy for a year to one absorbing object - a
volume, instead of the two-and-fifty or more crude and ephem
71 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
eral articles which are once read and then forever forgotten.
The highest ability will accomplish but little, if scattered on a
multiplicity of objects; while, on the other hand, if one has
but a thimbleful of brains, and concentrates them all upon the
thing he has in hand, he may achieve miracles. Momentum
in physics, properly directed, will drive a tallow candle through
an inch board Just so will oneness of aim and the direction
of the energies to a single pursuit, while all others are waived
as harlotry, enable the veriest weakling to make his mark
where he strikes.
We are aware that it is fashionable in these days, with small
wits, to ridicule men of one idea. But no man has ever yet
made his mark on the world who was not possessed by some
master passion.  Now and then we meet with a Fearne, who
writes an "Essay on Contingent Remainders," and is at the
same time profoundly versed in medicine, chemistry, and mathematics, obtains a patent for dyeing scarlet, and produces an
acute treatise on the Greek accent; with a Mill, who besides
being an able writer on metaphysics and politics, is a fine pianist, an able archaeologist, philologist, and botanist; or, again,
with a Gladstone, who works double tides and excels in both,
- who, though Chancellor of the Exchequer, receives despatches, makes experiments with Sykes's hydrometer, answers
the letters of financial amateurs, conducts a well-sustained correspondence with half a dozen Greek scholiasts on Homer,
translates some scores of English hymns into Latin verse, and
writes occasional letters of forty pages to a lawyer on some nice
legal point. But the Loyolas and the Luthers, the Cavours
and Blismarcks, of every age, have been men of "one idea,"
which, though their capacious souls have contained many ideas,
have subordinated and directed all the rest.  An acute observer, who knew intimately the celebrated Canning, said of
him that he possessed too many talents; for, betrayed by his
rare powers of declamation and sarcasm, he often produced
more admiration than conviction, and seldom delivered an important speech without making an enemy for life. Pitt said of
72 
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM.
the same brilliant orator and statesman, that he might have
achieved anything had he but gone straight to the mark. What
a contrast between his dazzling but fitful and half-successful
career and that of William Pitt! If there was anything divine
in this man, whom  his contemporaries called a Heaven-born
sta,tesman, it was  the marvellous gift of concentrating his
powers. Whatever he did, he did with all his might. Ever
master of himself, he converged all the rays of his mind, as
into a focus, upon the object in hand, worked like a horse,
and did nothing by halves. Hence with him there was no
half vision, no sleepy eyes, no dawning sense. All his life he
had his wits about him so intensely directed to the point required, that, it is said, he seemed never to learn, but only to
recollect. He gave men an answer before they knew there was
a riddle; he had formed a decision before they had heard of
a difficulty.   His lightning had struck, and done its work,
before they had heard the thunder-clap which announced it.
Is it strange that such a man went straightway from college
into the House of Commons, and in two years to the Prime
itinistership of Great Britain,- reigned, for nearly a quarter
of a century, virtual king, - and carried his measures in spite
of the opposition of some of the greatest men England ever
produced? The simple secret of his success was, that his
whole soul was swallowed up in the one passion for political
power.   So we see him "neglecting everything else,- careless
of friends; careless of expenditures, so that with an income of
fifty thousand dollars yearly, and no family, he died hopelessly
in debt; tearing up by the roots from his heart a love most
deep and tender, because it ran counter to his ambition; totally indifferent to posthumous fame, so that he did not take the
pains to transmit to posterity a single one of his speeches;
utterly insensible to the claims of art, literature, and belles-lettres; living and working terribly for the one sole purpose of
wielding the governing power of the nation."  Again, we all
know of the success of Rufus Choate as a lawyer.  To what
did he owe it but to a similar quality, - his marvellous powers
4
73 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
of concentration,- that entire absorption and identification
with the interests of his client which led him to burn and
freeze with him; which led him, it has been said, to be as
pathetic as the grand lamentations in "Samson  Agonistes"
over the obstructions of fishways, and to rise into the cathedral
music of the universe on the right to manufacture india-rubber
suspenders? His biographer tells us that every important cause
took such possession of him that sound sleep was an impossibility. His mind, as he himself said, became a stream
that took up the cause, like a ship, and bore it on, night and
day, till the verdict or judgment was reached; and days
elapsed before he could enter upon a new case with the full
force of his faculties.
Another argument for concentration is, that it is the only
way of using strength economically, so as to avoid exhaustion.
The man who scatters himself upon many objects soon loses
his energy, and with his energy his enthusiasm; and how is
success possible without enthusiasm? Dr. J. W. Alexander, in
counselling young clergymen, exhorted them above all things
to throw their force into their sermons.   "Many ministers,"
said he, "are enthusiastic about other things, such as art, poetry,
authorship, or politics; but their Sabbath sermon is like a
sponge from which all the moisture is squeezed out. Live for
your sermon,- live in your sermon.  Get some starling to cry
Sermon, sermon, sermon!" Rufus Choate, who was so successful with juries, used to say: "Carry the jury at all hazards;
move heaven and earth to carry the jury, and then fight it
out with the judges on the law questions as best as you can."
It was thus that Macdonough, the hero of Champlain, won his
victories. He pointed all his guns at the "big ship" of the
enemy. No matter how hot the fire from the others; every ball
must be hurled at the "big ship," till her guns were silenced.
Let it not be inferred from all this that by concentration we
mean isolation or self-absorption. In a work of art there may
be great variety of detail with perfect unity of conception; and
so in the conduct of life. There may be a hundred accessories,
74 
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM.
provided they but contribute to the one grand result.  "Stick
to your business, and your business will stick to you," is a
golden rule; but what if I accomplish my main ends more rapidly and surely by leaving my office or shop occasionally, and
dining with an influential friend? A late writer has justly urged
that "social intercourse, of the right kind, is a material aid to
success. Often the gain is palpable to you at once, and you
count your advantage as you take off your dress-coat. But if
not, it will find you out after many days; you have sown, and
in due season you will reap. If you do nothing more than
assert your individuality,   make yourself a living presence
among men, instead of a myth, a star nominis umbra, -you may
be sure that you have done something.   Am  I more or less
likely to read your book, or to buy your picture, or to say a
good word for you, if I have a chance, to some man in authority, for sitting next to you at our friend Riobinson's, and thinking you a pleasant fellow?"
Again, in urging the importance of sticking to one thing, we
do not mean that any man should be a mere lawyer, a mere
doctor, or a mere merchant or mechanic, and nothing more.
We would commend to no man the example of Saint Bernard,
who was so great a saint that he could keep no flesh on his
bones, and knew not the difference between a cake composed
of ashes and one composed of meal. A Daniel Lambert, with
his elephantine proportions, is hardly more a monstrosity than
the intellectually obese Neander, who so far neglects the practical part of his nature that he cannot find the way from his
own house to the university where he has lectured for nearly a
third of a century. Napoleon thought war the sum of all the
arts; a great musician thought the chief value of the Seven
Years' War lay in the opportunity it gave for improving wind
instruments; Parson Adams thought a schoolmaster the
greatest character in the world; Vestris, the French dancingmaster, believed himself and Voltaire to be the two greatest
men in all Europe; and Dr. George, we are told, shrewdly suspected that Frederick the Great, with all his victories, could not
75 
GETTING ON IN TIlE WORLD.
conjugate a Greek verb in mi. It was said of Baron Maseres,
with whom the study of abstract arithmetic was a passion, that
"his leading idea seemed to have been to calculate more decimal
places than any one would want, and to print the works of all
who had done the same thing." Douglas Jerrold once knew a
man with twenty-four languages, and not an idea in any of
them; and it is said that the dying regret of a great German
philologist was, that he had not concentrated his life-labors on
the dative case. Jean Paul says of the Germans that they
determine the course of a zephyr by a sea-compass, and the
heart of a girl by conic sections. To a Lowell cotton manufacturer "the blood of all the lowards" is, doubtless, but so
much crimson fluid, that would make, perhaps, good red ink;
and if you were to show himhn the mummy of Potiphar's wife,
he would declare, oracularly, that the wrapper was flax, not
cotton. But these are cases of one-ideaism pushed too far.
There is no more pitiable wretch than the man in whom one
giant faculty has starved the rest, like the dwarf whose large
feet and hands seem to have devoured his stature. And yet
does not the world abound in such dwarfed specimens of humanity? Has not every profession its peculiar tendencies, that
more or less cripple, mutilate, or warp those that devote themselves to it too exclusively, paralyzing this or that mental
or moral faculty, and preventing them from attaining to a
complete, healthful, and whole-souled manhood? Is not the
weaver, in many cases, but an animated shuttle? -the seamstress a living needle? -  the laborer a spade that eats and
sleeps? Does not the clergyman too often get a white-neckcloth ideal of the world, with some twists of dyspepsia in it  -
and do not his shyness, stiffness, and lack of practicality,
give too much occasion for the jest that the human race is
divided  into three classes, -  men, women,  and ministers?
Does not the lawyer often become a mere bundle of precedents,
a walking digest of real-estate rules and decisions in law or
chancery?  Are not scholars too often Dominie  Sampsons,
-mere bloated encyclopedias of learning?  Is not the time
76 
CONCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM. 
rapidly drawing near when, to find a perfect man, we must
take a brain from one, a heart from another, senses from a
third, and a stomach from a fourth 
Surely, man dwarfs himself, if he pushes too far the doctrine
of the subdivision of labor. Success is purchased too dear, if,
to attain it, one has to become a monster of one-sided development, and transformed into a head, an arm, a finger, or a leg,
instead of a man. Every person ought to be something more
than a factor in some grand formula of social or economical
science,-a cog or puliley in some gTeat machine. Let every one
take care, first of all, to be a man, cultivating and developing,
so far as he can, all his powers on a symmetrical plan, and
then let him expend his chief labors on the one faculty which
Nature, by making it prominent, has given a hint should be
specially cultivated. There is, indeed, no profession upon
which a high degree of knowledge will not continually bear.
Things which at first view seem most remote front it, will often
be brought into close approximation to it; and acquisitions
which the narrow-minded might deem a hindrance, will sooner
or later yield something serviceable.  Nothing is more beautiful than to see a man hold his art, trade, or function in an easy,
disengaged way, - wearing it as a soldier his sword, which,
once laid aside, the accomplished soldier gives you no hint
that lihe has ever worn. How it exalts our estimate of the
genius of Charles James Fox to learn, as VWalpole tells us, that
after his long and exhausting speech on Hiastings's trial, he
was seen handing the ladies into the coaches with all the
gayety and prattle of an idle gallant! Too often the shopkeeper smells of the shop, and the scholar, who should remind
you, unconsciously, that he has been on Parnassus, only by the
odors of the flowers that he has crushed, which cling to his
feet, affronts you with a huge nosegay stuck in his bosom.
It is recorded of Braham, the celebrated vocalist, that his
voice was equally effective in treble, tenor, or bass, but that
his individuality was ever distinguishable throughout.   So
should it be in the conduct of life.  The man who would get
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
on need not always pursue the "grand trunk" line; he may
"switch off" upon other tracks, provided they lead ultimately to the same terminus. With one object ever in view,
he may have many varying activities, conducing to the same
result. Singleness of aim by no means necessitates monotony
of action; but if we would be felt on this stirring planet, if
we would strike the world with lasting force, we must be 
men of one thing. Having found out the thing we have to
do, we must throw into it all the energies of our being, seeking its accomplishment at whatever hazard or sacrifice. What
did Edward Everett accomplish in proportion to his rare gifts?
What great work did he leave,- what monument of his fine
powers? What could be expected of a man who dispersed
himself nearly over the whole field of knowledge and elegant
accomplishment? Or what impress would Crichton have made
upon his age, if, instead of dying in a street brawl, a prodigy
of acquisition at twenty-two, he had continued to scatter his
energies to the age of seventy?   It is not such  men that
confer the highest blessings on mankind, and send their names
ringing down the ages.  No; it is Bishop Butler, giving twenty
years to his "Analogy," and Edward Gibbon twenty years to
the " Decline and Fall "; it is Kant working half a century in
the quicksilver mines of metaphysics; it is Isaac Newton,
rewriting his "Chronology" seventeen times, and Adam Smith
toiling ten years over "The Wealth of Nations," - who do
the work which the world honors. One of the most striking
illustrations of this concentration of mind was Chief Justice
Marshall Read what Wirt says of him, and you cease to
wonder at the success with which he grappled with the toughest problems of the law.  "Here is John Marshall," he writes
in one of his letters, "whose mind seems to be little else than
a mountain of barren and stupendous rocks, - an inexhaustible
quarry from which he draws his materials and builds his fabrics,
rude and Gothic, but of such strength that neither time nor
force can beat them down; a fellow who would not turn off a
single step from the right line of his argument, though a par
73 
CONCENTRATION, OH ONENESS OF AIM.
adise should rise to tempt him."  And so with the giants of
theology and medicine,  it is because they have rigorously
limited themselves to a single subject of thought, instead of
careering over the whole encyclopedia, that they have made
epochs.
The poet Praed, describing a certain vicar, says:
His talk is like a stream which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses;
It slips from politics to puns,
It glides from Mahomet to Moses
Beginning with the laws that keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For skinning eels or shoeing horses."
But persons who thus know a little of everything generally
do not know much of anything. Even of Lord Brougham,
who, of those aspiring intellects that, like Bacon, take all
knowledge to be their province, is the least obnoxious to the
charge of being "superficially omniscient," it has been sarcastically observed that "science was his forte, omniscience his
foible," and that, if His Lordship had only known a little of
law, he would have known a little of everything.
Dr. Adam Clarke used to say: "The old adage about'too
many irons in the fire' conveys an abominable lie. Keep them
all agoing, - poker, tongs, and all!" But all are not Clarkes;
and experience shows that, generally, those who try to heat
half a dozen irons at once, either burn their fingers or find the
irons cooling faster than they can use them. Distraction of
pursuit is the rock on which most unsuccessful persons split
in early life. Nine men out of ten lay out their plans on too
vast a scale; and they who are competent to do almost anything do nothing, because they never make up their minds
distinctly as to what they want, or what they intend to be.
Hence, the mournful failures we see all around us in every walk
of life. Behold a De Quincey, with all his wondrous and weirdlike powers, - his enormous learning and wealth of thought,producing nothing worthy of his rare gifts! See a Coleridge,
79 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
a man of Shakespearian mould, possessing a creative power of
Titanic grasp, and yet, for want of concentration, fathoming
among all his vagrancies no foundation, filling no chasms, and
of all his dazzling and colossal literary schemes not completing
one!  The heir of eternity, scorning to be the slave of time!
Feeling that he has all the ages to work in, he squanders the
precious present; so he lets his dreams go by ungrasped, his
magnificent promises unrealized; and his life may be summed
up in the words of Charles Lamb, who writes to a friend:
"Coleridge is dead, and is said to have left behind him above
forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity, - not
one of them complete!"
There is probably no more frequent cause of failure in life
than that greediness which leads men to grasp at too many of
its prizes. There are some the acquisition of which is incompatible with the acquisition of others, and the sooner this truth
is realized and acted upon the better the chance of success and
happiness. Much material good must be resigned if we would
attain to the highest degree of moral excellence, and many
spiritual joys must be foregone if we resolve at all risks to win
great material advantages. To strive for a hig,h professional
position, and yet expect to have all the delights of leisure;
to labor for vast riches, and yet to ask for freedom from anxiety
and care, and all the happiness which flows from a contented
mind;  to indulge in sensual gratification, and yet demand
health, strength, and vigor; to live for self, and yet to look
for the joys that spring from a virtuous and self-denying life, -
is to ask for impossibilities. The world is a market, where
everything is markled at a settled price; and whatever we buy
with our time, labor, or ingTenuity, -whether riches, ease,
tranquillity, fame, integrity, or knowledge,- we must stand by
our decision, and not, like children, when we have purchased
one thing repine that we do not possess another which we did
not buy. The unreasonableness of many persons in this matter
is well illustrated by a passage in one of Lucian's Dialogues,cited by Mrs. Barbauld in one of her essays,- where Jupiter
80 
COXCENTRATION, OR ONENESS OF AIM.
complains to Cupid that, though he has had so many intrigues,
he was never sincerely beloved. In order to be loved, says
Cupid, you must lay aside your regis and your thunderbolts,
and you must curl and perfume your hair, and place a garland
on your head, and walk with a soft step, and assume a winning,
obsequious deportment. But, replied Jupiter, I am not willing
to resign so much of my dignity.  Then, returns Cupid, leave
off desiring to be loved.  He wanted to be Jupiter and Adonis
at the same time.
In law, in medicine, in trade, in the mechanical professions,
the most successful men have been those who have stuck to one
thing. The advice of Dr. Hugh Blair, on a certain occasion to
Boswell, the biographer, contains a lesson for all. Boswell, in
his youth, imitated, in the pit of the Drury Lane Theatre, the
lowing of a cow so well that there was a general cry in the
gallery, " Fncore the cow!"  As he attempted, with very inferior effect, to vary the performance, Blair, who sat next him,
whispered in his ear, "Stick to the cow, mon!"  There are few
actors in life that would not do better to "stick to the cow"
than to attempt the part of harlequin.  Who  is the favorite
actor at the theatre?  Not he who personates scores of characters, but the Kean, the Booth, the Jefferson, the Warren, who
always discovers the same peculiarities, and secures the applause of the audience by never going out of his individuality.
When Bully Bottom, the weaver, undertook to do all the parts
in the most lamentable comedy of "Pyraimus and Thisbe," he
no doubt set himself down for a universal genius. Not only
would he play Pyramus and Tlisbe, but he put in for the Lion
and the WVall, the Prologue and the Epiloygte; and had there
been an orchestra, he would unquestionably have insisted on
being the first violin. There are thousands of men ill society
who exhibit just so absurd and monopolizing an ambition. As
Sydney Smith said of Lord John RPussell, they are ready to
attempt at a moment's notice the most incongruous things,- to
go up in a balloon, to perform an operation for cataract, or to take
command of the Channel fleet.  So Pope says of Wharton:               4*                                    r
81 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
"Though wondering Senates hung on all he spoke,
The club must hail him master of the joke:
Shall parts so various aim at nothing new?
He'11 shine a Tully, and a Willhuot too."
But in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the old adage
proves true of such, that a Jack-at-all-trades is good at none.
A circus-rider may ride five or six horses at a time, and not
break his neck; but a man who drives five or six trades or
speculations abreast generally tumbles to the ground. Knives
that contain a half-dozen blades, two or three corkscrews, a file,
a small saw, a toothpick, and a pair of tweezers, are wretchedly
adapted to any of these purposes, and are soon thrown away in
disgust.  " Stick to your business," said Rothschild to a beginner, - "stick to your brewery, and you may be the great
brewer of London. Be a brewer and a baker and a merchant
and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette."
82 
SELF-R1ELIANCE.
CHAPTER VI.
SELF-RELIANCE.
What men most covet, wealth, distinction, power,
Are bawbles nothing worth; they only serve
To rouse us up, as children at the school
Are roused up to exertion; our reward
Is in the race we run, not in the prize.
Those few, to whom is given what they ne'er earned,
Having by favor or inheritance
The dangerous gifts placed in their hands,
Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride
That glows in him who on himself relies,
Entering the lists of life. He speeds beyond
Them all, and foremost in the race succeeds.
His joy is not that he has got his crown,
But that the power to#vin the crown is his. - ROGERs.
"Le sentiment de nos forces les augmente."
Every person has two educations, - one which he receives from others, and
one, more important, which he gives himself.- GIBBON.
I remember when Mr. Locke (of Norbury Park) first came over from Italy,
and old Dr. Moore, who had a high opinion of him, was crying up his drawings, and asked me if I did not think he would make a great painter? I said,
"No, never!"  "Why not?"  "Because he has six thousand a year."NORTHCOTE.
"Our motive power is always found in what we lack."
F all the elements of success none is more vital than self     reliance, - a determination to be one's own helper, and not
to look to others for support. It is the secret of all individual 
growth and vigor, the master-key that unlocks all difficulties
in every profession or calling. Aide toi, et le ciel t'aidera, as
the French have it, - help yourself, and Heaven will help you,
-should be the motto of every man who would make himself
useful in the world or carve his way to riches or honor. The
direst curse that can befall a young man is to be the recipient
83 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
of charity; to lean, while his character is forming, on others
for support.  He who begins with crutches will generally end
with crutches. Help from within always strengthens, but help
from without invariably enfeebles, its recipient. It is not in
the sheltered garden or the hot-house, but on the rugged Alpine
cliffs, where the storms beat most violently, that the toughest
plants are reared.  It is not by the use of corks, bladders, and
life-preservers that you can best learn to swim, but by plunging
courageously into the wave and buffeting it, like Cassius and
Caesar, "with lusty sinews."
The man who dares not follow his own independent judgment,
but runs perpetually to others for advice, becomes at last a
moral weakling and an intellectual dwarf. Such a man has no
self within him, and believes in no self within him, but goes
as a suppliant to others, and entreats of them, one after another,
to lend him theirs. He is, in fact, a mere element of a human
being, and is borne about the world an insignificant cipher,
unless he desperately fastens, by accidental cohesion, to some
other floating and supplementary ele'ments, with which he may
form a species of corporation resembling a man.
It is said that a lobster, when left high and dry among the
rocks, has not instinct and energy enough to work his way
back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it
does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the
slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which
are perhaps tossing and tumbling within a yard of him. The
world is full of human lobsters,- men stranded on the rocks
of business, who, instead of putting forth their own energies,
are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them
afloat. There are many young men of vivid imaginations,
who, instead of carrying their own burdens, are always dreaming of some Hercules coming to give them "a lift." The vision
haunts their minds of some benevolent old gentleman,- a
bachelor, with no children, of course, but with a bag full of
money, and a trunk full of mortgages and stocks, who, being
astonishingly quick to detect merit or genius, will give them
84 
SELF-RELIANCE.
a trifle of ten or twenty thousand dollars, with which they
will earn a hundred thousand more.; Or, perhaps they will
have a legacy from some unheard-of relative, who will become
conveniently defunct.  "I'd rather be a kitten, and cry mew,"
than one of these charity-mongers. VWith another, we can say,
that to us "one of the most disgusting sights in this world is
that of a young man with healthy blood, broad shoulders,
presentable calves, and a hundred and fifty pounds, more or
less, of good bone and muscle, standing with his hands in his
pockets, longing for help."  In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, pecuniary help to a beginner is the Devil's blessing,-  to
be deprecated, not coveted. It is the Upas-tree, that paralyzes
and reduces to the last gasp the moral integrity of every man
who inhales its poisonous atmosphere. Under the appearance
of aiding, it weakens its victims, and keeps them in perpetual
slavery and degradation. Cold, consequential, and patronizing,
it freezes the recipient into humiliation, and there leaves him,
as firmly wedged as Sir John Franklin amid the thick-ribbed
ice of the Arctic Ocean. M1oney bestowed in this way, in a
majority of cases, is more truly wasted than if thrown into the
sea.
God never intended that strong, independent beings should
be reared by clinging to others, like the ivy to the oak, for
support. The difficulties, hardships, and trials of life - the
obstacles one encounters on the road to fortune- are positive t
blessings. They knit his muscles more firmly, and teach him
self-reliance, just as by wrestling with an athlete who is superior to us, we increase our own strength and learn the secret ofj
his skill.   All difficulties come to us, as Bunyan says of temptation, like the lion which  met Samson; the first time we
encounter them they roar and gnash their teeth, but, once subdued, we find a nest of honey in them. Peril is the very
element in which power is developed. " Ability and necessity
dwell near each other," said Pythagoras.  "He who has battled,"
says Carlyle, "were it only with poverty and hardl toil, will be
found stronger and more expert than he who  could stay at
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home from the battle, concealed among the provision-wagons,
or even rest unwatchfully'abiding by the stuff.'"  Burke,
repelling the Duke of Bedford's attack upon his pension, says
of himself: "I was not rocked and swaddled and dandled into
a legislator. ANitor il adversum is the motto for a man like
me." Great statesmen in all countries have owed their sagacity, tact, and foresight more to their failures than to their
successes. The diplomatist becomes master of his art by being
baffled, thwarted, defeated, quite as much as by winning his
points. Every time he is checkmated he acquires a profounder
knowledge of the political game, and makes his next combinations with increased skill and increased chances of success.
It is told of Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor of England, that,
on being consulted by a parent as to the best means his son
could adopt to secure success at the bar, he thus replied: "Let
your son spend his own fortune, marry and spend his wife's,
and then go to the bar; there will be little fear of his failure."
Why this recommendation? Plainly, because Thurlow's observation had taught him that the man who has a sure means
of support has not the inducement to put his shoulder to the
wheel which stimulates and urges him who feels the pressure
of the res augustce domi.  Ibit eo quo vis qui zonam perdidit.
It was for this reason that Thurlow withheld from Lord Eldon,
when poor, a commissionership of bankruptcy which he had
promised him, saying it was a favor to Eldon to withhold it.
"What he meant," says Eldon, "was, that he had learnt (a
clear truth) that I was by nature very indolent, and it was
only want that could make me very industrious." Nothing,
indeed, can be more unwise than the anxiety of parents to accumulate property for the support of their children after their
own death. Many a father toils hard and painfully economizes,
that he may leave means enough to give his children "a start
in the world," when, were he their worst enemy, he could
hardly adopt a surer means of keeping them in poverty and
obscurity.
Read the history of the rich and the poor in all ages and
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countries, and you will find, almost invariably, that the "lucky
dogs," as they are called, began life at the foot of the ladder,
without a finger's lift from Hercules; while the "unfortunates,"
who flit along life's paths more like scarecrows than human
beings, attribute the very first declensions in their fortunes to
having been bolstered and propped by others. It is a proverb,
that rich young men, who  begin their fortunes where their
fathers left off, leave off where their fathers began.  The only
money which benefits a manl is that which he has himself earned.
Inherited wealth, instead of prompting to further acquisition,
is "a title-deed to sloth." The ready-made fortune of an ancestor, like his ready-made clothes, rarely fits the man to whom
it falls. But why confine ourselves to those who have won distinction in the marts of commerce 7 Whence come the great
lights of the intellectual firmament, - the stars that shine with
steady radiance through the ages? Have they not, in the vast
majority of cases, emerged to eminence from the chilling depths
of obscurity, destitution, and want'?  Who are they that
"Pluck bright glory from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And drag up drowned honor by the locks? "
The scions of noble blood? The sons of the rich, who were
dandled in the lap of luxury, whose path was smoothed for
them at every step, who were never for an instant compelled
to fight against the armed resistance of misfortune, penury, and
wrong?  No! they are men of humble parentage,- men whose
cradles were rocked in lowly cottages, and who have buffeted
the billows of fate without dependence, save upon the mercy
of God and their own energies,- the gentlemen of nature, who
have trodden under foot the "painted lizards" of society, and
worked out their own distinction with an ardor that could not
be quenched, and a perseverance that considered nothing as
done while anything yet remained to be done.
There are many persons who are always looking to government, to reform societies, to improved educational institutions,
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
to workingmen's or other associations, to anything and everything but their own hands and brains, to better their coIndition and make their life-journey easy. But even the best
institutions can give a man no active help. Laws, wisely administered, will secure to men the fruits of their industry; but
no laws which the wit of man can devise can make the idle
industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.
Nine tenths of the great social evils which our reformers denounce are but the outgrowth of individual life, and no legislation can extirpate them, unless the axe is also laid at their root.
It is said that when Fuseli presided at the Academy of Art in
London, he read while his pupils drew, and rarely opened his
lips. "I believe he was right," says his great pupil, Leslie;
"for those students who are born with powers that will make
them eminent, it is sufficient to place works before them.
Tlhey do not want instruction, and those that do are not worthl
it. Art may be learned, but cannot be taught." What Leslie
affirmed of painting is true of every pursuit under the sun.
The world, though rough, is, after all, the best schoolmaster,better than books, better than study,- for it makes a man his
own teacher, and gives him that practical training which no
schools, academies, or colleges can ever impart. The great art
of education, it has been wisely said, is "to teach others to
teach themselves." Nor is there any contradiction to this
aphorism in the saying so often quoted, that "a self-taught man
had a very ignorant fellow for his master";  for, by  "selftaught," is here meant one who, ignorant of all that others have
accomplished, makes no use of others' labors in any department of art, science, or learning, and is therefore limited to the
results of his own discoveries.  It has been well said that, "in
mind as well as body, we are children first, only that we may
afterwards become men; dependent upon others, in order that
we may learn from them such lessons as may tend eventually to
our edification on an independent basis of our own.... The instruction of others, compared with self-instruction, is like the
law compared with faith, -  a discipline of preparation, beggarly
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elements, a schoolmaster to lead us on to a state of greater
worthiness, and there give up the charge of us."
It cannot be too often repeated that it is not helps, but obstacles, not facilities, but difficulties, that make men. Beethoven said of RPossini, that he had the stuff in him to have
made a good musician, if he had only been well flogged when
a boy; but he was spoiled by the ease with which he composed.
Shelley tells us of certain poets that they
"Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song";
and it would seem that, as flowers need to be crushed before
they will give forth all their perfumes, and as the goldfinch is
said to sing the most sweetly when a hot needle is thrust into
its eye, so pain and anguish are the conditions of some men's
success, without which it is impossible to evoke the most
brilliant displays of their genius. It was a shrewd remark,
therefore, which a great musician once made concerning a promising but passionless cantatrice: "She sings well, but she wants
something, and in that something, everything. If I were single,
I would court her; I would marry her; I would maltreat her;
I would break her heart; and in six months she would be the
greatest singer in Europe."  It may be doubted whether the
thousand helps which men have in this age of steam, electricity, and cheap printing, are not almost as great a disadvantage
as blessing. A great statesman once said that the world is governed too much. In our day it is rather doctored too much, -
takes too many powders, and is treated too much as an invalid.
Society is everywhere overslaughed with institutions. Instead
of being robust and healthy, it is getting into the condition of
a sick man, with limbs bandaged and face poulticed, a nightcap
on its head, and pills in its stomach, always trying some new
quack medicine, always on the eve of being cured by some new
matchless sanative. Like King James I., of England, who was
rendered helpless by the weight of his ponderous armor, men
are crushed by the very coats of mail, shields, and defences by
which they guard themselves against their enemies. The very
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asylums, hospitals, and infirmaries, which are the glory of the
age, unavoidably aggravate the ills they are intended to cure.
Not only are the sense of danger and the fear of penaltythe great checks on transgression -lessened by the helps and
reliefs interposed between the sinner and the natural consequences of his sins, but parents are encouraged to neglect the
care of their children, knowing, as they do beforehand, that
whatever may be their own thriftlessness or neglect of their
children's education or morals, their offspring will find a safe
retreat and abundant discipline in some Refuge of the Homeless, some Orphan Asylum or Reform School.
The moral feebleness of the time is equalled by the intellectual.  Men are gradually ceasing to think; they have their
thinking done for them,- done by machines.  "As the native
in some parts of the world carries the traveller in a chair on
his back over the mountains, so the teacher carries the pupil up
the Alpine peaks of knowledge; as the priest in Siberia puts
his devotions into a mill, and grinds out prayers, so we expect
our preacher to do our praying for us; as the steam-whistle
whisks us, asleep or awake, to the city or capital, so we expect the
book over which we doze or snore to bear us to the metropolis
of science."  Our logarithms are ground out of a box; our calculations manufactured by turning a handle; we learn chemistry
by inhaling laughing-gas; we float on the water with bladders
tied under our arms, and call it swimming; and, from the
cradle to manhood, make use of mental go-carts till we have
lost the use of our legs. Hardly greater than this mental degeneracy of some classes is the physical, which has reached
such a point that in our principal hotels elevators are employed
to lift spider-legged dandies and languid females from the
dinner-table to the rooms above, without the labor of climbing
stairs. It has been suggested that the next contrivance to
this by which the human package of dinner and ennui is borne,
in a few seconds, to the top of the house, will be some machine
for putting lazy folks to bed, and a crank-mill through which
they will be run in the morning, to come out washed, cravated,
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brushed, combed, ready for the breakfast-table, or rather the
breakfast-stuffing machine, which will have taken its place.
The London "Saturday Review," in an article on "Limp
People," draws a vivid picture of the class we have been describing,- men who, lacking the force to hew out a path for
themselves, can travel only in a groove already fashioned  "A
molluscous man," says the writer, "too suddenly ejected from
his long-accustomed groove, where, like a toad imbedded in the
rock, he had made his niche exactly fitting to his own shape,
presents a wretched picture of helplessness and unshiftiness.
In vain his friends suggest this or that independent endeavor;
he shakes his head, and says he can't, - it won't do; what he
wants is a place where he is not obliged to depend on himself,
where he has to do a fixed amount of work for a fixed amount
of salary, and where his fibreless plasticity may find a mould
ready formed, into which it may run without the necessity of
forging shapes for itself. Many a man of respectable intellectual powers has gone down to ruin, and died miserably, because
of his limpness, which made it impossible for him  to break
new ground, or to work at anything whatsoever, with the stimulus of hope only.   He must be bolstered up by certainty,
supported by the walls of his groove, else he can do nothing;
and if he cannot get into his friendly groove, he lets himself
drift into destruction. In no manner are limp people to be
depended on, their very central quality being fluidity, which
is a bad thing to rest on."
It was a saying of the late Sir Thomas  Fowell Buxton,
"that no man ought to be convinced by anything short of assiduous and long-continued labors, issuing in absolute failure,
that he is not meant to do much for the honor of God and
the good of mankind." This is a noble saying, which all men,
especially all young men, should take deeply to heart. While
it is true that all men cannot become Raphaels or Shakespeares,
and while it is true that the number of "mute, inglorious Miltons" and Newtons, who have Paradise Losts and Principias
packed away in their brains, is far smaller than is generally
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supposed,   it is equally true that every individual mind may
contain some germ, some seed, or latent principle, the development of which may sooner or later exert an important influence
over the whole widespread world. Do you complain of your
feeble abilities?  We answer that neither power nor capacity
is to be measured by the capacity of the recipient. What!
were not the oak forests of the earth once contained in a single
acorn? Was it not a camel-driver that founded a new religion,
and changed the face of empires'? Was not Pope Gregory VII.
a carpeniter's son, Sixtus V. a shepherd, and Adrian VI. a
barg,eman I  Was not Copernicus the son of a baker, and
Kepler the son of a puLblican?  Was it not an obscure monk
who split in twain the Catholic Church, and a still obscurer
countryman of his, who, by the invention of the priniting-press,
revolutionized the whole intellectual aspect of society I Have
you never heard of Clarkson, a man originally of no mark or
promise, who, by the accidental reading of a pamphlet, when
the slave-trade was at the zenith of its popularity, was led to
see its horrors, solemnly dedicated himself to its extinction,
and, amid scorn and obloquy, lived to accomnplish a purpose
which, at its annunciation, was ridiculed as an enthusiast's
dream? Have you not seen Cobden, a manufacturer with no
brilliancy of parts, by his stubborn perseverance overthrow, in
a few years, the long-established and deeply rooted commercial
system of the British Empire? Have you never read the story
of Arkwright, the barber's apprentice, who received little more
than a barber's education, the splendid achievements of whose
mechanical genius bore the English nation triumphantly through
the wars of the French Revolution, and are now declared to be
of greater value than all her colonies from Hindostan to Labrador? History teems with such examples, showing that giant
deeds may be performed by apparent pygmies, and that, if
engaged in a noble cause, there is no social dwarf who may
not become a moral Hercules.
There are some men who, instead of making the best use of
the facilities they have for achievement, are always telling of
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what they itnight do "under happier circumstances."   Under
happier circumstances!- as if the very seal and sign of great ness were not precisely the regal superiority to circumstances
which makes them aids and ministers to success, instead of
becoming their slave; as if it were not the masterful will which'
subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp;
that concentrates twenty years of tireless but unappreciated
labor on a great invention; that forces a life-thought into a
pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages!
The truth is, the "circumstances" upon which so many fainthearted men dwell with lugubrious eloquence should be regarded as the very tools with which one is to work,- the
stepping-stones he is to mount by. As Lewes says in his
"Life of Goethe," instead of saying that man is the creature
of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man
is the architect of circumstances. "Our strength is measured
by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds
palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks
and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect makes
them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in
the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while
his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid
ruins: the block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of
the resolute."   The difficulties which utterly dishearten one
man only stiffen the sinews of another, who looks on them as
simply things to be vanquished,- or rather as a sort of mental springing-board by which to vault across the gulf of failure
on to the sure, solid ground of full success.
Archimedes said, "Give me  a standing-place, and I will
move the world." Goethe has changed the postulate into the
precept, "Mlake good thy standing-place, and move the world."
A  reviewer, speaking of the poems of Arthur Clough, says,
that he "was one of the prospectuses which never become
works,- one of that class whose unwritten poems, undemonstrated discoveries, or untested powers are confidently announced
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as certain to carry everything before them, when they appear.
Onl0y they never do appear." The world is full of such men,
who are always very "promising" because they never do more
than promise.
It is said that when John C. Calhoun was in Yale College
he was ridiculed by his fellow-students for his intense application to study.   "Why, sir," he replied,  "I am forced to
make the most of my time, that I mnay acquit myself creditably
when in Congress." A laugh followed, when he exclaimed, "Do
you doubt it? I assure you, if I were not convinced of my
ability to reach the national capital as a representative within
the next three years, I would leave college this very day!"
Let every young man thus have faith in himself, and take
earnestly hold of life, scorning all props and buttresses, all
crutches and life-preservers. Let him believe, with Pestalozzi,
that no man in God's earth is either willing or able to help
any other man. Let him strive to be a creator, rather than an
inheritor, -to bequeath, rather than to borrow.  Instead of
wielding the rusted sword of valorous forefathers, let him forge
his own weapons, and, conscious of the God in him and the
Providence over him, let him fight his own battles with his
own good lance. Instead of sighing for an education, capital,
or friends, and declaring that, "if he only had these, he would
be somebody," let him remember that, as Horace Greeley says,
he is looking through the wrong end of the telescope; that, if
he only were somebody, he would speedily have all the boons
whose absence he is bewailing. Instead of being one of the
foiled potentialities, of which the world is so full,- one of the
subjunctive heroes, who always might, could, would, or should
do great things, but whose not doing great things is what
nobody can understand,- let him be in the imperative mood,
and do that of which his talents are indicative. This lesson
of self-reliance once learned and acted on, and every man will
discover within himself, under God, the elements and capacities
of usefulness and honor.
We  have dwelt at some length on the virtue whichi is the
9.4 
SELF-PELIANCE.
subject of this chapter, because it is one which, though nowhere easy to practise, is especially difficult to attain in communities like our own, where there is much social tyranny.
Americans boast fondly of their independence; yet nowhere, perhaps, is "Mrs. Grundy" more feared than here.  Both meii andl
women are, to a great extent, the moral slaves of the set or
circle to which they belong; and it is only the heroic few who
dare to step out into the air of freedom, where they may speak
"their ain thought" instead of another's.   In almost every
section except the extreme West, there is an unconscious conspiracy among the members of society against each other's individuality. Custom dictates our amusements, the furniture of our
hlouses, our modes of living, the style of our garments, and the
education of our children. It tells us what we shall eat, drink,
wear, when we shall go to bed and get up, what we shall give
to benevolent objects, where we shall spend the summer months,
and almost what we shall think. James PRussell Lowell observes, not more wittily than truly, that the code of society
is stronger with most persons than that of Sinai, and many a
man who would not scruple to thrust his fingers in his neighbor's pocket, would forego green peas rather than use his knife
as a shovel. Doubtless this state of things has its compensations. Nowhere else are men combined so easily for good
purposes, - nowhere built so easily into. social structures, lasting or temporary, and thousands made to act as one man; yet
is it not evident that we gain these advantages at a fearful cost,
-by too great sacrifices of individual power and individual
character 7 Are we not too often chipped and chiselled into a
dreary uniformity of thought and speech I Are we not apt to
become like bricks in a wall, or marbles in a bag?   In the
watch-factories at Elgin and Waltham watches are made intercha(ngeably, so that a hundred may be taken into pieces and
thrown into a heap, and the parts put together again at random.
This is a good thing in watches, but who likes to see the same
dull monotony in men and women I
We pity the Chinese who cramp their feet, and the Indians
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who flatten their heads, in obedience to custom; but are these
checks upon physical growth half so contemptible as those put
in civilized countries upon intellectual by the despotism of
public opinion? Are we entitled to contemn the South-Sea
Islander, who tattoos his face, while we bow slavishly to customs in dress that not only disfigure the person, but are destructive to health and comfort, and do every act with mental reference to " Irs. Grundy," saying of her, as Cob did of Bobadil,
"I do honor the very flea of her dog".  Mr. J. S. Mill, in his
work on "Liberty," says, truly, that in this age the man who
dares to think for himself and to act independently, does a
service to the race.  "Precisely because the tyranny of opinion
is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in
order to break through that tyranny, that people should be
eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where
strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has always been proportioned to the amount
of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained.
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger
of the time."
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ORIGINALITY IN AIMS AND METHODS.
CHAPTER VII.
ORIGINALITY IN AIMS AND METHODS.
"' The powers of man have not been exhausted. Nothing has been done
by him that cannot be better done. There is no effort of science or art that
may not be exceeded; no depth of philosophy that cannot be deeper sounded;
no flight of imagination that may not be passed by strong and soaring wing."
Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too
much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that
of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of
Moses or Dante, but different from all these. - R. W. EMERSON.
LOSELY  connected with self-reliance is another prereq     uisite to success, namely, originality in one's aims and
methods, or the avoidance of imitation. For this purpose, it
is well to cultivate some specialty.  Find some new want of
society,-  some fertile source of profit or honor,- some terra
incognita of business, whose virgin soil is yet unbroken, and
there stick and grow. Specialties are the open sesame to wealth;
therefore, whatever you deal in, whether groceries or speeches,
bricks or law arguments, must be, or seem to be, phenomenal
WVhether above or below mediocrity, they should be unique
and exceptional. Byron satirizes certain namby-pamby rhymes
as "so middling, bad were better"; and the sarcasm applies
to all things that are "tolerable, and therefore not to be
endured." That many-headed monster, the public, like the
dervishes who replenished Aladdin's exchequer, requires, in
this sensational age, to be forcibly struck before it will part
with its silver. To get rid of your wares, whether material,
or immaterial, - dry goods or professional advice,- silks and
calicoes or "mouthfuls of spoken wind," - you must get your
name into everybody's ears, and into everybody's mouth; and
to do this, there's nothing like a specialty.
G
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Alexandre, of Paris, made "kid" gloves his specialty, and
now his trade-mark imparts to manufactured ratskins a value
incommunicable by any other talisman. William and Robert
Chambers devoted their energies to the production of cheap
books and periodicals, and their wealth is counted by millions.
Faber has fabricated pencils till he has literally made his mark
in every land, and proved the truth of the aphorism, "Quisque
sue fortune faber."  The genius of the great Dr. Brandreth
ran to pills and internal improvements, and now his name and
fame are as intimately and immortally connected with the
alimentary canal as Clinton's with the Erie. Mason gave his
whole soul to the invention of good blacking, and now his
name shines like a pair of boots to which it has been applied.
Herring has salamandered himself into celebrity, and Tobias has
ticked his way to fame and fortune. Stewart has made bales
of dry-goods his stepping-stones to the proud position of a millionnaire, - becoming at once the Crcesus and the Colossus of
the trade; and Bonner, advertising by the acre, and tracking
genius where Ever-ett goes, has discovered a new way of reaping golden harvests from the overworked soil of journalism.
The extent to which originality-a little thinking-may
enable one who has a specialty to coin money in his business,
was strikingly illustrated some years ago in the brass-clock
business. One of the oldest and most noted manufacturers,
wishing to keep his name perpetually before the public, contrived to do so by a succession of improvements, - many of
them exceedingly slight, - which lie invariably made known
through the newspapers. Sometimes he added a new cog, or
wheel or two, or altered the arrangement of the old ones;
sometimes the case was slightly remodelled. Now, the face
was painted in a very striking manner; and, next, an added
hammer was made to strike. This month his clocks were
made to run eight days; the next, fifteen; then, thirty-one, or
only four-and-twenty hours. No matter how trifling the change,
it was invariably blazoned in all the leading public prints.  By
this artifice he created a ready market for all his manufactures,
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ORIGINALITY IN AIMS AND METHODS.
and became the most celebrated clock-maker in the land, though
all the while scarcely a step was taken in the invention of a
new principle or even in the improvement of an old one.
Mix brains, then, with your business, if you would succeed,
as Opie, the painter, did with his colors. Throw open the windows of your mind to new ideas, and keep, at least, abreast of
the times,- if possible, ahead of them.  Nothing is more fatal 
to self-advancement than a stupid conservatism, or servile imitation.   In these days of intense competition, if you would
achieve a high success you must think for yourself, and, above
all, cultivate pliableness and versatility. The days when a man
could get rich by plodding on, without enterprise and without
taxing his brains, have gone by. Mere industry and economy
are not enough; there must be intelligence and original thought
Quick-witted Jacks always get ahead of the slow-witted giants.
Whatever your calling, inventiveness, adaptability, promptness
of decision, must direct and utilize your force; and if you
cannot find markets, you must make them. In business, you
need not know many books, but you must know your trade
and men; you may be slow at logic, but you must dart at a
chance like a robin at a worm. You may stick to your groove
in politics and religion; but in your business you must switch
into new tracks, and shape yourself to every exigency. We
emphasize this matter, because in no country is the red-tapist
so out of place as here. Every calling is filled with bold, keen,
subtle-witted men, fertile in expedients and devices, who are perpetually inventing new ways of buying cheaply, underselling,
or attracting custom; and the man who sticks doggedly to the
old-fashioned methods- who runs in a perpetual rut - will
find himself outstripped in the race of life, if he is not stranded
on the sands of popular indifference. Keep, then, your eyes
open and your wits about you, and you may distance all competitors; but ignore all new methods, and you will find yourself like a lugger contending with an ocean racer.
Although the Americans are famous the world over for their
inventiveness, yet there is no people on whose cranium the
99
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.1. 
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organ of imitation is so prominent as on ours.  We are not the
only people who  "run everything into the ground"; but we
certaiinly do it more generally, and with greater rapidity, than
any other nation on the globe. No matter what branch of business is started, - from the manufacture of pills or matches to
that of sewing-machines or watches, from the ice-trade to the
traffic in guano or Japanese goods,- the moment any business
is discovered to be profitable, it is rushed into by thousands
and tens of thousands, till a reaction follows, and it is ruined.
How many times have we seen the lumbering business, both
East and West, from a state of ordinary activity, which yielded
a handsome profit to those engaged in it, swelled to enormous
proportions, - prices raised, - lands changing owners at fast
rising rates, — thousands plunging into it who hardly knew hemlock from pine,-  new sawmills going up on every mill-site,
and old ones running day and night,  the market glutted,when suddenly the bubble burst, bankrupting all concerned!
How many times have we seen the ship-building business swell
and collapse with the same suddenness and disaster! Men
who did not know halyards from shrouds, or a jibboom from a
tiller, have again and again taken up  their investments in
stocks and mortgages, even borrowed money on accommodation paper, in their mad haste to share in the fabulous profits
made by navigation. So with other branches of business; at
one time the tide sets toward the raising of mores multicaulis,
-at another, the heads of the entire community are turned by
reports of gold-mines,-  and, at another, by the fortunes made
out of wool or oil.  To-day some shrewd Yankee starts a "gift"
bookstore, and immediately all the newspapers in the land are
flooded with advertisements of gift enterprises. To-morrow
another sharp Yankee conceives the idea of a "dollar store";
and, the hit proving a lucky one, there is instantly a stampede
from all the other branches of trade to the "dollar-store" business, till it is so overdone as to be worthless.
The same tendency to avail ourselves of other men's wits is
seen in the names of our hotels, of which some, as Tremont,
100
I
I'.  -.
'k. - 11.: 
ORIGINALITY IN AIMS AND METHODS.
Revere, St. Nicholas, etc., are repeated ad nauseam.  It is a
poor kind of enterprise which thus depends upon the judgment of others, strikes out no new paths, and follows blindly
every man who says, "I have made money."  Nothing is more
certain than that when a business pays very large profits its
race is nearly run. Those who are already in it may get rich,
but the late-comers, who strike in only after its profitableness
has leaked out and become known to the whole community, will
not only be ruined, but will cut down the profits to a point so
fine as to render them merely nominal or worse. Let every
man stick to the business he knows, constantly studying new
plans to make it more productive, to lessen his expenses and to
increase his profits. The man who knows all about a ship from
the keel up will make a living profit, while the amateur, who
only knows what others tell him, will lose. The foreign trader,
who knows precisely the wants of the market to which he
sends his goods, will get rich, while his neighbor, who gets his
information at second-hand from prices current and general information accessible to everybody, will almost inevitably fail.
Above all, in literature it is imperatively essential to success
that one should be phenomenal. To make a name which will
live beyond the hour, you must do something or say something
worth being done or said, and which has not been done or said
before. Authors often speak feelingly of the difficulty of being
original, - of saying anything worth saying which has not
been said, and better said, by some one of their billions of
predecessors; and the dearth of books which are not a mere
rehash of old ones - which are not got up as an apothecary
prepares a prescription, by pouring out of many big bottles
into a little one-  proves the truth of the complaint.   A
proof yet more striking is afforded by the host of imitations
which almost every successful book provokes. No sooner does
a writer make a "hit," or produce a work which makes a decided sensation, than scores of other works upon similar
themes and in a similar vein are forthwith extemporized,
rushed through the press, and crowded in quick succession
10l 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
upon the public. The success of Mr. Butler's exquisite satire,
"Nothing to Wear," provoked a flood of imitations; "Ecce
Homo" was followed by "Ecce Deus," "Ecce Deus Homo,"
and other pale and spiritless copies of the great original; "The
Gates Ajar" was followed by "The Gates Wide Open," and
we had "Gates" of every kind slammed in our faces for
months afterward.  Being imitations, all of these books that
are written from no inward impulse or inspiration, but, like
Pindar's razors, to sell, are of course inferior to their originals,
as an echo is fainter than the sounds it mocks,- for, as Quilntilian pithily says, "he  who  follows must necessarily come
after or behind another." When will our writers have done
with this folly? When will they abjure this jackdaw vanity
of strutting in borrowed plumage. When will they be content to "gang their ain gait," instead of mimicking the step
and pace of another? When will they learn that a good book
is a cistern into which a man has poured the thoughts and
feelings of years,- the net result of a lifetime of experiences,
-and can no more be  "rushed up"  in a few weeks or
months than a man can by taking thought add a cubit to his
stature I When will they leave a man who has electrified the
community by an original work to enjoy the sensation he has
created, instead of rushing in to steal his honors, and disgusting the public by a senseless imitation of his thoughts and
style I
The harshest verdict that can be pronounced upon any literary performance is to say that it is an imitation. It is wholly
damnatory. Better be able to say of your production, as
Touchstone said of his wife, "It is an ill-favored thing, but
mine own," than that it is brilliant, but borrowed from or
modelled after another. If you feel the gad-fly stinging you,
as the Greeks used to say, and must write, choose a theme of
your own, and handle it in your own way, - giving to the
world the hived honey of your mind, your "thrice winnowed"
ideas, - and never trouble yourself with the thought how this
or that literary magnate or big-wig would treat the subject.
102 
ORIGINALITY IN AIMS AND METHODS.
Tell the world clearly what is passing within your own soul;
if it be a poor, needy, begging, borrowing soul, with no native
ideas, such a process will, no doubt, annihilate you as an author; but so much the better, -  you will have ended at once,
in an honest and courageous attempt, an abortive literary life,
and restored to your country a useful cobbler, carpenter, or
hatter. But if you have within you any native pith and substance, any of the stuff out of which authors are made, it is
thus, and thus only, that you will bring your hidden ores,
your gems of thought, to the light, and give them splendor
and polish. It has been truly said that what are called flashes
of mind in a writer are ignited by the rapid pen, and that one
flash of a man's own mind is more profitable to himself, and
will do him more credit with the public, than a myriad of
second-hand ones. We do not, of course, advocate an impossible originality. Thorwalsden's Mercury was suggested by a
lad whom he had seen sitting at rest; but that does not lessen
our admiration of the sculptor's genius. Hazlitt tells us that
when Kean was so much praised for the action of Richard III.,
in his last struggle with his triumphant antagonist, where he
stands, after his sword is wrested from him, with his hands
stretched out, "as if his will could not be disarmed, and the
very phantoms of his despair had a withering power," he said
that he borrowed the idea from seeing the last effort of Painter
in his fight with Oliver.  But this, surely, does not detract
from Kean's merit. No doubt the most original writer, like
the bee, will have drawn his capital stock of ideas, his funded
store, from a variety of sources; but as the bee, though it
rifles all the flowers of the field of their sweets, lets not the
honey betray the prevailing flavor of any single nectary, so
will it be with him who makes the honey of Hymettus. He
will lay all literature under contribution to supply his stores,
but every foreign thought will be passed through the alembic
of his own brain, and its elements recombined, before it is
given again to the public. Like old coin, it will be melted
and reminted, before it is again put in circulation. A writer
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
who is worth reading cannot servilely imitate; he has that
within him which not only places him above so doing, but
which would render such a process the severest and most un natural task to which he could subject his powers. His style,
as well as his thoughts, is the natural outgrowth of himself,
and he can no more ape another man's style than he can ape
his gait or wear his clothes.
Let the writer, then, who pants for notoriety or covets true
fame, follow Pat's advice to a bad orator,- come out from be hind his nose, and speak in his own natural voice.   The
heaven of popular approbation is only to be taken by storm.
Emerson has startled the world by his Emersonisms, and not
by echoes of Carlyle, as many imagine, for he is like Carlyle
only in being original. Edgar A. Poe, with all his personal
faults, eternized his name on the scroll of American authors
simply by being Edgar A. Poe; but who reads the legion
parodies of The Raven?  Cooper has won a great name as a
novelist, though his writings are stuck as full of faults as the
firmament with stars; while thousands of romancers of equal
ability have gone to the "tomb of the Capulets," because they
have tried to be unlike themselves. Who can forget how,
when Sir Walter Scott first kindled the torch of his genius at
the fires of feudal poesy, working out new scenes of interest
from the warblings of scalds and troubadors and minnesingers,
his thrilling cadences were mimicked by a whole forest of
mocking-birds, who made the heavens vocal with the glories
of moss-trooper and marauder, baron bold and gay ladye,
hound in leash and hawk in hood, bastion huge and gray
chapelle, henchmen and servitors, slashed sleeves and Spanish
boots, "guns, trumpets, blunderbusses, drums, and thunder"?
No sooner had the Wizard of the North gracefully resigned
his wand to a mightier Prospero, whose star of popularity had
shot with a burst to the zenith, than, presto! down went
Rhoderick Dhu and Wat  of Buccleuch before Hassan and
Selim; the ptans to Rosabelle were exchanged for the praises
of Medora; the plaid and the bonnet for the white turban
104 
ORIGINALITY IN AIMS AND METHODS.
and the baggy trousers; and over the whole realm of song
arose the Oriental dynasty under the prime viziership of Byron.
Ten thousand puny rhymsters called the moon "Phingari,"
daggers "Ataghans," drummers "Tambourgis,"  and women
"Houris"; became lovers of gin and haters of pork; discarded their neck-cloths, and put on sack-cloth; strove perseveringly in turn-down collars to look Conrad-like and misanthropic; swore by the beard of the Prophet, and raved in
Spenserian stanzas about their "burning brows," or mourned
over their "dark imaginings"; dreamed by night of gazelleeyed beauties, by day of Giaours, Jereed-men, and Janizaries;
and, whether baker's, butcher's, or barber's apprentices, became
the oracles of impassioned wretchedness, and - when they
could raise money enough- adventured, in hacks hired by the
hour, imitations of Mazeppa at a hand-gallop along the highway.  Where are they all now?  Alas! the whole swarm of
romances in six cantos with historical notes, alike with the
ten thousand echoes of Byron, have long since gone to the
land of forgetfulness; or, if they live in an accommodated
sense of the term, owe it to the tender mercies of the pastrycook and the trunkmaker.
What can be more absurd than for a man to hope to rank as
a thundering Jupiter, when he borrows all his thunder? HIow
can you expect the world to honor you, when you despise
yourself? The great I is the first element of an Idol. Be true
to yourself, if you would have the world true to you. Your
own gift you can exhibit every moment with the cumulative
force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the borrowed talent of
another you have only a temporary half-possession. Do not be
frightened because your idiosyncrasies stick out, and provoke
criticism; it is only by these that you can be identified. If
you are knock-kneed and hump-backed; if you are squint-eyed,
and look two ways at once,- so much the better; you can't
be confounded with the commonplace, stereotyped. bipeds who
make up that "numerous piece of monstrosity," the public.
If your hair is red, let it be red; to be called red-headed
5*
105 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Smith or Brown will distinguish you from other Smniths or
Browns.
If a writer is conscious of inward emptiness, let him be
dumb, remembering that "ex nihilo nihil fit"; but if he has
any native pith and substance, - any of the genuine stuff of
thought, - within him, he can hardly be too fearless in thrusting himself before the public.  It is not your herd of imitators,
the servile pects, who are always looking abroad for models,
who are forever trying to catch the tone, air, gait, or periwig
of this or that great original, - that gain celebrity as authors.
A man's nature can only squeak out, when subjected to such
discipline.  "Shakespeare," says Emerson, "never will be made
by the study of Shakespeare. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow." Let the young author
be what Andrew Jackson Allen, the eccentric New York costumer, used to proclaim himself in his advertisements, "himself
alone"; let him grapple firmly and fearlessly with his own
ideas, and wreak his own thoughts upon expression in his own
way, if he would win the praise of immortality.  "To know
his own aims," as Goethe recommends, "in the first place, and
then manfully to follow them, looking neither to the right nor
left, forward or backward," is the great secret of authorship.
Such a writer legislates from the independent throne of a
separate existence, and his are the words to command the respect due to oracular authority, and to win the meed due to
undisputed fame. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said that in
all her extended travels she had found but two classes of human
beings, -men and women; but strong as may be the generic
resemblance between different minds, the fact is nevertheless
obvious, that no man lives who has not his mental peculiarities
and idiosyncrasies,- who differs not in many respects, in soul
as in body, from every other man; and if a writer fails to excite a sympathetic thrill in the public mind, it is because he
lacks self-reliance,- because, parrot-like, he repeats the sayings
of others, instead of giving us the coinage of his own brain,
because, in short, he does not stamp his writings with his own
individuality.
106. 
ATTENTION TO DETAILS.
CHAPTER VIII.
ATTENTION TO DETAILS.
My man who is to succeed must not only be industrious, but, to use an
expression of a learned friend of mine, he must have "an almost ignominious
love of details."- ARTHUR HELPS.
On the first publication of his (Wellington's) "Despatches," one of his
friends said to him, on reading the records of his Indian campaigns: "It
seems to me, Duke, that your chief business in India was to procure rice and
bullocks."  "And so it was," replied Wellington, "for if I had rice and
bullocks, I had men; and if I had men, I knew I could beat the enemy." -
CHARACTER, BY SAMUEL SMILES.
NOTHER  indispensable element of success is attention
to details.  Some years ago an Eastern merchant, who
had amassed a large fortune, was asked to what he attributed
his success. Was it to mere chance? No; for other men
had even better luck, yet did not get rich.   Was it to industry? INot wholly; for many persons as indefatigable as
himself had remained poor. Was it to energy? Only in part;
for he had observed that even the most energetic men sometimes failed.  But, if there was any one thing to which, more
than to others, he could attribute his wealth, it was that he had
made it a point never to neglect the details of his business.
Many business men, he added, content themselves with planiling; regarding comprehensive views as incompatible with
scrupulous attention to small matters, they leave the execution
of their schemes to subordinates; and the result is that, in the
majority of cases, their plans fall through in consequence of
the neglect of some clerk or other employee, and they remain
forever at the foot of the ladder.
Does not every day's experience prove the sagacity of these
observations I  In the case of gifted men, especially,  what
l07 
GETTING ON IN THIE WORLD.
cause of failure do we find more fruitful or frequent than that
here indicated, the contempt of details I Their souls fire
with lofty conceptions of some work to be achieved; their
minds warm with enthusiasm as they contemplate the object
already attained; but, when they begin to put the  scheme
into execution, they turn away in disgust from the dry minutie and vulgar drudgery which are required for its perfection. Hence the world is full of mute, inglorious Miltons, who
languish, not from lack of talents, but because, in spite of
their many brilliant parts, they lack something which  the
famous possess. Some little defect mars all their excellences,
and they hang fire. They are like Swift's dancing-master,
who had every qualification except that he was lame. The
watch is nearly complete; it only lacks hands. The cannon
is perfect, except it has no touch-hole. The mouse-trap is just
the thing, but they have forgotten the cheese.   Such men
bewail their fate, and so would addled eggs, if they could
speak, which are so like the rest, but so dishonorably inferior.
Failing to do the small tasks of life well, they have no calls to
higher ones, and so they complain of neglect; as if the skipper of a schooner, on which every rope was sagging, and every
sail rotting, through his negligence, should complain of the injustice done him in not making him commander of a seventyfour!  The truth is, to be successful in any profession, one
must have what has been called "an almost ignominious love
of details." It is an element of effectiveness with which no
reach of plan, no loftiness of design, no enthusiasm of purpose,
can dispense. It is this which makes the difference between
the practical man, who pushes his thought to a useful result,
and the mere dreamer; between the Stephenson, who created
a working locomotive-engine, and his predecessors, who  conceived the idea of it, but could not put their thought into
execution. In literature it is the conscientious and laborious
attention to details- nicety in the selection and arrangement
of words, even particles-  that distinguishes a masterpiece of
composition from a merely clever performance. So, too, in
108. 
ATTENTION TO DETAILS.
art. Whoever has looked over the collections of drawings of
the old masters must have been most deeply impressed by the
slow growth of their works, owing to their conscientious nicety
about little things. In nothing do they differ more from common painters than in their almost endless dwelling upon some
small detail,-  a foot, or a hand, or a face,- fashioning and
refashioning it, but never once losing sight of the original idea.
It has often been said that, if a man conceives the idea of
becoming eminent in learning, and cannot toil through the
million little drudgeries necessary to carry him on, his learning
will soon be told. Or, if he undertakes to become rich, but
despises the small and gradual advances by which wealth is
ordinarily accumulated, his expectations will, of course, be the
sum of his riches. Let a lawyer neglect the apparently petty
circumstances of his case, and he will be almost sure to lose it;
for some vital fact, perhaps the keystone of the whole, will be
likely to escape his attention. Let the conveyancer omit the
details of a deed,- the little words that seem like surplusage,
- and he will continually involve his clients in litigation, and
often subject them to the loss of their property. The difference between first and second class work in every department
of labor lies chiefly in the degrees of care with which the
minutiae are executed.
All successful men have been remarkable, not only for general scope and vigor, but for their minute attention to details.
Like the elephant, they can move colossal masses or pick up a
pin.  When Daniel Cady, the celebrated  New  York lawyer,
had a case to argue, his labor on the details was enormous.  He
took it to his bed and board; had inspirations concerning it
in his sleep; repeatedly arose at night to secure these by memoranda; and never ceased to mine and chamber in a great case,
till it was actually called on the calendar. Then were to be
seen the equipment and power of a great lawyer. When
Brunelleschi elaborated the design of that cathedral in Florence which is one of the wonders of Italy, he did not content
himself with leaving the execution of it to others, but per
109 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
tonally superintended the laying of every brick of the dome,
and even, it is thought, ascertained its specific gravity before
laying it in its place.
It is said of Turner, the great English landscape painter,
who sucked into the vortex of his own marvellous genius each
past faculty of each past landscape painter, and re-created the
art, that, though he began poor, and did a deal of drudgery
for a small pittance, he never slighted even the humblest piece
of work. Whether washing in skies in India ink upon other
people's drawings at so much a night, or drawing cheap frontispieces for almanacs, he did everything conscientiously, never
slobbering over his task, and making each day a step in advance upon  his previous work.   So in war.  The general
whose name rings in every ear, and thrills a nation with pride,
does not become a hero by lofty conceptions alone, but by the
patient acquisition of military details, and incessant, businesslike care for the food, dress, and health of his men.   Ten
thousand tedious trifles attended to-ten  thousand orders
given and disappointments borne- go to the making up of a
triumph.   "See, the conquering hero comes!" is an excellent tune; but before this he has had to march in the mud,
pore over crumpled maps, and work vulgar sums after midnight, by a flickering lantern, in a gusty tenlt.  While you
were snoring in a feather-bed, he has slept on the ground in
wet clothes, stung by mosquitoes, without a supper, and with a
headache. He has had to taste rations, economize hard-tack,
order executions, disarm jealousy, hire mules, eat mouldy biscuit, swallow chagrins, and digest opposition.  He has brooded
with ceaseless interest over military problems during the piping times of peace; he has read, like Havelock, every military
memoir, and familiarized himself with every memorable battle
and siege of ancient and modern times; he has kept his soul
"up in arms" and his wits at his fingers' ends, year after
year; and now, but not until now, has the steady fire of his
life burned up into a national triumph, and the people split
their throats with the name of Sherman or Grant.
iio - 
ATTENTION TO DETAILS.
Napoleon was a striking illustration of what we have stated.
What was the secret of his brilliant victories I Was it not his
habits of personal observation and minute attention to details I
Two qualities he had in a pre-eminent degree,- strict economy
of time, and the habit of mastering the whole of every subject
which he needed to be acquainted with. To a vivid imagination,
which enabled him to look along extended lines of action, he
united the ability to deal with the smallest matters essential to
success with almost unerring judgment and rapidity. While
other generals trusted to subordinates, he gave his personal attentionI to the marching of his troops, the commissariat, and other
laborious and small affairs. His vast and daring plans, it has
been truly said, would have been visionary in any other man;
but out of his brain every vision flew a chariot of iron, because it
was filled up in all the details of execution, to be a solid and compact framework in every part. No miserly merchant ever showed
more exact attention to the pence and farthings, or exhibited a
more thorough knowledge of the state of his ledger, than did
the hero of Austerlitz concerning his men, horses, equipments,
and the minute details, as well as the totality, of his force.
We find him directing where horses were to be obtained,
arranging for an adequate supply of saddles, ordering shoes for
the soldiers, and specifying the number of rations of bread, biscuit, and spirits that were to be brought to camp, or stored in
magazines for the use of his troops. In one letter he asks Ney
if he has received the muskets sent to him; in another he
gives directions to Jerome about the shirts, great-coats, clothes,
shoes, shakos, and arms to be served out to the Wurtemberg
regiments; then he informs Darn that the army wants shirts,
and that they don't come to hand. Again, to the Grand Duc
de Berg he sends a complaint that the men want sabres; "send
an officer to obtain them at Posen. It is said that they also
want helmets; order that they be made at Ebling." Again he
writes: "The return which you sent me is not clear. I do
not see the position of Gen. Gardanne's division, nor his force.
.... I see companies that do not properly belong to the army of
ill 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Naples.  This carelessness will at last derange the administra
tion of the army and destroy its discipline.  Send me perfectly
accurate returns."  "The returns of my armies," says he, in a
letter written in 1806, "form the most agreeable portion of
my library." Again, speaking of these monthly reports, which
filled twenty thick volumes, he says: "When  they are sent
to me, I give up every occupation in order to read them in detail, and to observe the difference between one monthly return
and another. No young girl enjoys her novel so much as I do
these returns." Lord Brougham, in noticing this extraordinary
attention to details, says: "The captain who conveyed Napoleon to Elba expressed to me his astonishment at his precise
and, as it were, familiar knowledge of all the minute details
connected with the ship.  I heard from one connected with
the great Helvetic mediation, in 1802, that, though the deputies
soon found how hopeless they were of succeeding with the
First Consul, yet they felt themselves defeated in the long discussion by one more thoroughly master of all the details of
the complicated question than they could have believed it possible for any foreigner to become."
It was this practice which enabled him to concentrate his
forces in so overwhelming numbers on a given point; for his
close scrutiny into details-his almost preternatural knowledge of the place where a corps, or even a company, of his vast
armies was to be found at any time- produced exactness and
punctuality among his sub-officers, and hence the various detachments of his army were always where he wished at the
very hour. His armies, in short, were, together, "only one
great engine of desolation, of which he was the head or brain.
Numbers, spaces, times, were all distinct in his eye. The
wheeling of every legion, however remote, was mentally present
to him; the tramp of every foot, the beat of every drum, the
rumbling of every carriage-wheel, sounded in his ear." The
success of his plans, therefore, being left to no contingency, so
far as contingencies could be guarded against, was as absolutely
certain as human wit or wisdom could make it. A striking
112 
ATTENTION TO DETAILS.
illustration of this is furnished by the campaign of 1805, as
described by an English writer. In that year Napoleon broke up
thie great camp he had formed on the shores of the Channel, and
gave orders for that mighty host to defile toward the Danube.
Vast and various, however, as were the projects fermenting in
his brain, he did not simply content himself with giving the
orders, and leaving the elaboration of its details to his lieutenants. To details and minutiae, which inferior captains would
have deemed too microscopic for their notice, he gave such
exhaustive attention that, before the bugle had sounded for
the march, he had planned the exact route which every
regiment was to follow, the exact day it was to arrive at each
station on the road, the exact day and hour it was to leave
that station, as well as the precise moment when it was to
reach its place of destination.   These details, so thoroughly
premeditated, were carried out to the letter, and the result
the fruit of  that  memorable  march- was  the victory of
Austerlitz, which sealed for ten long years the fate of Europe.
It was to the same business qualities, not less than to his
military genius, that Napoleon's great opponent, the Duke of
Wellington, owed his successes. He left nothing to chance,
but carefully provided for every contingency.    He gave his
attention, not only to the great matters, but to the pettiest
details of the service; and was wont to concentrate all his
energies, at times, on things apparently so ignominious as the
manner in which the soldiers were to cook their provisions,
their shoes, camp-kettles, biscuits, horse-fodder, and the exact
speed at which bullocks were to be driven. It was owing, in
a large measure, to this practical talent and constant watchfulness of small matters that he not only won brilliant victories
amid the greatest discouragements, but had the rare distinction
of never losing a battle.
So with our own generals, Sherman and Thomas.   The
correspondence of the former during the late war, published
by the government, shows that for months and months before
his "great march " through the South, he was studying the
II
'113 
GETTING ON IN TIIE WORLD.
country through which he was about to go, its resources, its
power of sustaining armies, its populousness, the habits of the
people,   in short everything that could throw light upon the
probable success of his expedition. He had, in fact, literally
gone over the entire country in advance. Of General Thomas,
his comrade, General Steadman tells us that "he was careful
in all the details of a battle, but once in the fight, was as furious
and impetuous as Jackson. He lacked nothing to make a perfect man. No man ever imparted so much enthusiasm to his
troops, and I never saw a commander who could hurl at any
enemy the entire force of his army with such violence as
General Thomas."
Is it not strange that, in the face of these facts, men will
neglect details? that many even consider them beneath their
notice, and, when they hear of the success of a business man
who is, perhaps, more solid than brilliant, sneeringly say that
he is "great in little things "?  Is it not the "little things"
that, in the aggregate, make up whatever is great? Is it not
the countless grains of sand that make the beach; the trees
that form the forest; the successive strata of rock that compose
the mountains; the myriads of almost imperceptible stars that
whiten the heavens with the milky-way?  And of what is
human happiness made up, but of little things I  "One principal reason," says Jeremy Bentham, "why our existence has
so much less of happiness crowded into it than is accessible to
us, is that we neglect to gather up those minute particles of
pleasure which every moment offers to our acceptance.   In
striving after a sum total, we forget the ciphers of which it
is composed; struggling against inevitable results, which he
cannot control, too often man is heedless of those accessible
pleasures whose amount is by no means inconsiderable when
collected together.  Stretching out his hand to catch the stars,
man forgets the flowers at his feet, so beautiful, so fragrant, so
multitudinous, and so various."
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PRACTICAL TALENT.
CHAPTER IX.
PRACTICAL TALENT.
"Every fish has its fly; but even the right fly is not enough; you must
play it nicely at the right spot."
The man who sees too widely is nearly sure to be indecisive, or to appear
so.  Hence, also, comes an appearance, sometimes of shuffling, and sometimes of over-subtlety, which is very harmful to a man. - ARTiIUR HELPS.
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with a pale cast of thought. - SHAKESPEARE.
Ni Bacon, ni Shakespeare, ni Moliere, ni Pascal, ni Tasse, ni Dante n'auraient fait grande figure dans une revolution. Ils auraient trop vu, trop compris, trop doute, trop craint, trop souffert, trop pressenti, et trop dedaigne.
PHILERETE CHASLES.
" At a gathering in Australia, not long since, four persons met, three of
whom were shepherds on a sheep-farm. One of these had taken a degree at
Oxford, another at Cambridge, the third ait a German university. The fourth
was their employer, a squatter, rich in flocks and herds, but scarcely able to
read and write, much less to keep accounts."
NOTHER  vital element of success is practical talent, or
that indescribable quality which results from a union of
worldly knowledge with shrewdness and tact.
An English writer, in describing a thoroughly practical man,
says that "he knows the world as a mite knows cheese.  The
mite is born in cheese, - lives in cheese, - beholds cheese.
If he thinks at all, his thoughts (which, of course, are mitey
thoughts) are of cheese. The cheese-press, curds, and whey,
the frothy pail, the milkmaid, cow, and pasture, enter not the
mite's imagination at all. If any one were to ask him,' IVhy
cheese.' he would certainly answer,'Because cheese'; and
when he is eaten by mistake, he tastes so thoroughly of the
cheese that the event remains unnoticed, and his infinitesimal
identity becomes absorbed in the general digestion of caseine
matter, without comment of the consumer."
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
These remarks, though a seeming jest, only burlesque an important truth; namely, the thorough identification with his
business, and comparative indifference to all things else, which
are necessary to every man who would succeed in any art,
trade, or profession. Of all the causes of failure, there is none
more frequent or fruitful than the lack of practical talent.
The fact that to give good advice implies no capacity of following it has often been illustrated in the world's history. The
mere theorist rarely evinces practical wisdom; and, conversely,
the practical man rarely displays a high degree of speculative
ability. The possession of brilliant intellectual qualities, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, proves a bar rather than a
help to worldly advancement. If you try to cut a stone with
a razor, the razor will lose its edge, and the stone remain uncut.
A very high education, again, unless it is practical as well as
classical and scientific, too often unfits a man for contest with
his fellows. You have rifled the cannon till the strength of
the metal is gone. Intellectual culture, if carried beyond a certain point, is too often purchased at the expense of moral vigor.
It gives edge and splendor to a man, but draws out all his
temper. There is reason to fear that in the case of not a few
persons the mind is so rounded and polished by education, so
well balanced, as not to be energetic in any one faculty. They
become so symmetrical as to have no point; while in other
men, not thus trained, the sense of deficiency and of the sharp,
jagged corners of their knowledge lead to efforts to fill up the
chasms, that render them at last far more learned and better
educated men than the smooth, polished, easy-going graduate
who has just knowledge enough to prevent the consciousness
of his ignorance. In youth it is not desirable that the mind
should be too evenly balanced. While all its faculties should
be cultivated, it is yet desirable that it should have two or
three rough-hewn features of massive strength. Young men
who spend many years at school are too apt to forget the great
end of life, which is to be and do, not to read and brood over what
other men have been and done. Emerson tells us that England
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PRACTICAL TALENT.
is filled with "a great, silent crowd of thoroughbred Grecians,"
who prune the orations and point the pens of its orators and
writers, but who, "unless of. impulsive nature, are indisposed
from writing or speaking by the fulness of their minds and the
severity of their tastes."   Is such culture a blessing?  Can
any one doubt that a training which thus paralyzes the energies,
which converts the powers of the mind that should be creative  into  qualities  purely  negative  and  critical, is a bar
rather than a help' to worldly success? Do we not see daily,
in all the walks of life, half-educated men rush in with eagerness, and, by their daring, their outspoken sympathies, their
fulness and earnestness of utterance, sway multitudes of their
fellow-beings, while the over-educated, "silent Greeks," with
their doubts, their misgivings, their critical fastidiousness, their
half-utterances, and, above all, that spirit of self-depreciation
which comes from high culture, suffer their native hue of resolution to be "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought "?  It
has been justly said that the creative age in every literature
has preceded the critical, and that so must it be in every man's
life. A little blindness, a little self-confidence, a little ignorance of his own weaknesses and defects, are imperatively necessary, if one woulid strive with hope and pluck to win the
world's prizes. Many a young man is so exquisitely cultivated
as to be good for nothing but to be kept in a show-case as a
specimen of what the most approved system of education can
do. With the exception of the few comet-like geniuses that, at
rare intervals, flash through the firmament of humanity, it is
the slow-headed, dull, unimaginative man, with colossal powers
of labor, and the patience to abide results, and to profit by the
mistakes of his more gifted fellow-mortals, that is most likely
to come out ahead in the race of life. At cricket-playing it is
hard hitting and quick running that win the game. Good
fielding, elegant wicket-keeping, fast bowling, are all well in
their way; but only notches score. So the game of life is won
less by brilliant strokes than by energetic, yet cautious play,
and never missing an easy hazard.
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Do not misunderstand this. We do not decry culture. No
doubt intellectual trainling is to be prized.    But practical
knowledge is necessary to make it available. The experience
gained from books, however valuable, is of the nature of leaniing; but the experience gained from actual life is wisdom;
and an ounce of the latter is worth a pound of the former.
All history shows that the rough work of the world is not
done by men of fine culture. Courage is not developed by the
study of Greek accents. Creative power is not increased by
logic.  Insight is an  instinct, -not a product of education
The greatest men in the world have not been elegant and
polished scholars. There were wise men in Europe before there
were printed books.   The men who wrested Magna Charta
could not write their own names. Bolingbroke, the scholarstatesman, fled an exile from England; while Walpole, who
scorned literature, held power for thirty years.  "In general,"
says his son, "he loved neither reading nor writing."  Lord
Mahon justly observes that Walpole's splendid success in life,
notwithstanding his want of learning, may tend to show what
is too commonly forgotten in modern plans of education,
that it is of far more importance to have the mind well
disciplined  than  richly stored, -strong  rather  than  full.
Brindley and Stephenson did not learn to read and write till
they were twenty years old; yet the one gave Britain her
railways and the other her canals. It has been remarked that
Disraeli, whose speeches are often a literary luxury, has never
laid down a single principle of policy, foreign or domestic, nor
brought forward a great measure which was not ignominiously
scouted.  On the other hand, Sir Robert Peel, whose speeches
were often the heaviest of platitudes, and whose quotations
were usually from the Eton grammar, reversed his country's
financial policy, regenerated Ireland, and died with the blessings
of all Englishmen on his head. What practical good have the
lettered politicians of France achieved for their country?  or
what nation is more misgoverned than that which makes literary culture the sole criterion of fitness for office,-  the Chinese.
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PRACTICAL TALENT.
Did not Napoleon complain of Laplace, that as Minister of
the Interior he was always searching after subtleties, that all
his ideas were problems, and that he carried the spirit of the
infinitesimal calculus into the management of business I Where
shall we find men of finer culture than the professors who
filled the Frankfort Diet in 1848! Yet, with all their scholarship, they made themselves the laughing-stock of Europe, and,
with sixty millions of brave men at their back, were snuffed
out without a struggle.  Life teems with such illustrations.
Every day we see men of high culture distanced in the race of
life by the upstart who cannot spell, - the practical dunce outstripping the theorizing genius.   "Men have ruled well," says
Sir Thomas Browne, "who could not perhaps define a commonwealth; and they who understand not the globe of the earth
command a great part of it." Charlemagne could barely sign
his own  name;  Cromwell  was  "inarticulate";  Macaulay's
asthmatic hero scarcely possessed a book; and Frederick the
Great could not spell in any of the three languages which he
habitually mispronounced. Many of our greatest men were born
in the backwoods; and the strongest hand that has held the
helm of our government, - a hand that would have throttled
secession in its cradle,   belonged to one whom his biographer
pronounces "the most ignorant man in the world."
All experience shows that for worldly success it is far more
important to have the mind well trained than rich in the
spoils of learning. Books, Bacon has well observed, can never
teach the use of books. It is comparatively easy to be a good
biographer, but very difficult to live a life worth writing.
Some of the world's most useful work is done by men who
cannot tell the chemical composition of the air they breathe or
the water they drink, and who, like M. Jourdain, daily talk
nouns, verbs, and adverbs without knowing it. They know
nothing of agricultural chemistry, but they can produce sixty
bushels of corn to the acre. They cannot give a philosophical
account of the lever, but they know, as well as George Stephenson, that the shorter the "bite" of a crowbar the greater
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is the power gained. Like Sir John Hunter, they may be
ignorant of the dead languages, but they may be able to teach
those who sneer at their ignorance "that which they never
knew in any language, dead or living."  Like. Andrea Ferrara,
of Scotland, who, in the fourth century, turned out so delicately
tempered blades from his dark cellar in the Highlands, they
may lack all the tools and appliances of modern skilled labor,
yet surpass in their manufactures all competitors. On the
other hand, there are many persons in whose intellectual and
moral character, as Macaulay says of the Duke of Monmouth,
the natural son of Charles II., there is an abundance of those
fine qualities which may be called luxuries, and a lamentable
deficiency of those solid qualities which are of the first necessity.   "He  had brilliant wit and ready invention without
common-sense, and chivalrous generosity and delicacy without
common honesty."
Even the highest genius will not enable a man to achieve
worldly success without practical knowledge. It is no doubt
the peculiar privilege of genius to anticipate the tardy conclusions of experience, and to see as by a flash what others
learn by years of observation. The eagle swoops down upon
the prey which the cat must cautiously approach, and secure
after patient watching. But no genius, however exalted, can
dispense with experience in the practical affairs of life. A
mineralogist is not necessarily a good miner. Astronomy is
not navigation, and even Bowditch or Bond must give place to
a pilot in getting a ship out of the harbor of New York.
In short, the crown of all faculties is common-sense. It is
not the men of thought, but the men of action, who are best
fitted to push their way to wealth and honor. The secret of
all success lies in being alive to what is going on around one;
in adjusting one's self to his conditions; in being sympathetic
and receptive; in knowing the wants of the time; in saying
to one's fellows what they want to hear, or what they need to
hear, at the right moment; in being the sum, the concretion,
the result, of the influences of the present time.  It is not
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enough to do the right thing per se; it must be done at the
right time and place. Frederick the Great said of Joseph II.,
Emperor of Germany, that he always wanted to take the
second step before he had taken the first.  The world is full
of such unpractical people, who fail because they refuse to
recognize the thousand conditions which fence a man in, and
are impatient to reach the goal without passing over the inter mediate ground.   It is not so often talents which the unsuc cessful man lacks as tact. "Talent," says a writer, "knows
what to do, tact knows how to do it; talent makes a man
respectable, tact will make him respected; talent is wealth,
tact is ready money. For all the practical purposes of life,
tact carries it against talent ten to one. Talent has many a
compliment from the bench, but tact touches fees from attorneys and clients. Talent speaks learnedly and logically, tact
triumphantly. Talent makes the world wonder that it gets on
no faster, tact excites astonishment that it gets on so fast. And
the secret is, that it has no weight to carry; it makes no false
steps; it loses no time; it takes all hints; and by keeping its
eye on the weathercock, is able to take advantage of every
wind that blows."
As Emerson sings,
"Tact clinches the bargain;
Sails out of the bay;
Gets the vote in the Senate
Spite of Webster or Clay."
There are some men who, with heads little better than a
pin's, are apparently successful in everything they undertake.
If wealth is their aim, they seem to stumble by mere good luck
upon the philosopher's stone; they have Midas's ears, but everything they touch turns to gold. Men, on the other hand, who
have shown the profoundest ability in their writings, have
proved feeble and inefficient in active life,- incapable of acting upon their own conclusions. They are acute and sagacious
enough as observers, but the moment they descend from their
solitary elevation, and mingle with the crowd of their fellow               6
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creatures, their wisdom evaporates in words. With broad
views and a capacity for deep reasoning on human affairs, they
feel themselves bewildered in every actual emergency; keen
and close observers of the talents and accomplishments, and
even the weaknesses, of their fellow-men, they cannot actualize
their own ideal of wise conduct. Giants in the closet, they
prove but children in the world.
Lord Bacon, who was one of the wisest of human beings,
was a striking illustration of this truth. He stood on the high
vantage-ground of genius and learning; had an amazing insight into human  nature;  and traced, "as in a map  the
voyager his course," the long, devious march of the human
intellect, its elevations and depressions, its windings and its
errors. Yet even this mighty genius, in whom reason worked
as an instinct, though he was the most sagacious of men in his
study, nevertheless, when he stepped from its "calm, still air"
into the noisy arena of life, stooped sometimes to actions of
which he could strikingly have shown the impropriety in a
moral essay. Addison, it is well known, rose by the force of
his own genius to be Secretary of State; but, though he had
every opportunity for qualifying himself for his post, he found
himself incompetent, and was forced to solicit his dismission
with a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. The fine
intellect of Cowper could trace with subtlety and truth all the
crooks and windings of human nature ~ yet when he came to
act for himself, he was a sorry bungler, and showed no tact in
turning his sense and knowledge to practical account. Such
were his timidity and shyness that he declared any public ex hibition of himself to be mortal poison to his feelings. Dean
Swift, the pride of his master at school, was buried in a country
parsonage  at eightscore pounds a year; while Stafford, his
schoolmate, an impenetrable blockhead, acquired half a million
of dollars. Dante, boiling with indignation against his enemies,
could curse better than he could conspire. Machiavelli, con summate master of all the tricks and stratagems of politics,
could not invent one to get his bread. Corneille did not re
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serve a crown for his old age, and was so miserably poor as to
have his stockings mended at the street-corner. Beethoven was
so ignorant of finance that he did not know enough to cut the
coupon from a bond to raise a little money, instead of selling
the entire instrument. Hle was so unpractical that, when thirty seven years old, he sent a friend three hundred florins to buy
him linen for some shirts and a half-dozen pocket-handkerchiefs;
and about the same time, when he had a little more money
than usual, he paid his tailor three hundred florins in advance.
Often he was compelled to write music to meet his daily necessities; and one of the passages of his diary is entitled "Four
Evil Days," during which he dined on a simple roll of bread
and a glass of water. Need we add to all these the case of
Adam Smith, who taught the nations economy, but could not
manage the economy of his own house? or that of Goldsmith,
whose essays teem with the shrewdest and most exquisite sense,
but who never knew the value of a dollar; who, though receiving the largest sums for his writings, had always his daily bread
to earn; who, when he sought to take orders, attempted to
dazzle his bishop by a pair of scarlet breeches; and of whom
Johnson said that no man was wiser when he had a pen in his
hand, or more foolish when he had not 7
This tact, or worldly knowledge, the importance of which we
have so emphasized, is rather a negative than a positive quality;
why, then, it may be asked, should it be deemed so vital? We
answer, simply because its influence, though negative, is felt at
every turn and in every sphere of life. It is like the indispensable oil of machinery, which is a very small thing per se,
but without which the engine ceases to work smoothly, if it
works at all. Practical knowledge will not, of itself, raise a
man to the Presidency; but, for want of it, many a man  has
failed of that and other elevations.  Without it, the best runner, straining for the prize, finds himself suddenly tripped up,
and lying on his back in the midst of the race. Without it,
the shrewdest merchant will find his goods lying in unsold
piles upon his shelves. Without it, the acutest theologian will
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live and die in an obscure village, and the subtlest legal acumen
will never adorn the bench. The man who lacks it may be a
great thinker, or a great worker. He may be an acute reasoner,
and an eloquent speaker. He may be capable of writing a profound treatise on the origin of evil, and may be able in metaphysics to distinguish between the "me" and the "non-me"
with more than Hermaic subtlety. He may be able to out-dive
Heyne in Latin, and in Greek to excite to jealousy the shades
of Porson and Parr. And yet, for all this, he fails to get on.
"There is a hitch, a stand-still, a mysterious want somewhere.
Little impalpable trifles weave themselves into a web which
holds him back. The fact is, he is not sufficiently in accord
with his surroundings. He has never fairly broken the crust
of individuality in which he is encased. He has never seen
the importance of adjusting his scale of weights and measures
to imperial standards.   In a word, he is not a man of the
world."
But, it may be asked, what is this practical wisdom, which is
so vital to success,- the want of which makes all other qualities, even the most brilliant, comparatively useless 7 In what
does it consist. We answer, that it is more easy to describe
it by negatives than by positives,- to tell what it is not than
to tell precisely what it is. An English writer s truly says
that "at one end it runs up into the art of governing; at the
other it descends to that of merely pleasing.  It is as indispensable to the Premier in Parliament as to the Foreign-office
clerk in the salons. But between these poles - between aims
the loftiest and most trivial - is the proper and legitimate
sphere for the exercise of knowledge of the world.  A man may
be said to possess it, when he exhibits practical wisdom in all
the minor relations of social life. As a guest, as a host, as a national creditor, as an income-tax payer, as a railway passenger, as
the vendor or purchaser of a horse, he has functions and duties
to perform. The way in which these are discharged makes the
difference between the social simpleton and the worldling. The
* The Saturday Review.
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PRACTICAL TALENT.
former will be perpetually coming to grief in one or the other
of them. If he is entertaining, he will abuse the grandmother
of the most influential man at his table. If he dines out, he
will ask for fish twice in spite of the waning proportions of
the cod, and the indignant glances of the lady of the house.
As a contributor to the revenue, he will be always in arrears
and incurring the terrors of the Somerset House. At a railway station, he will disturb the equanimity of the porters by
a fussiness arising from a vague but awful regard of steampower. In all dealings with horse-flesh he will be guided by
the simple rule of buying in the dearest market, and selling in
the cheapest. As a letter-writer, he shows characteristic naivete.
There is a curious infelicity in his style. To a subordinate he
will write with undue familiarity, or an air of ridiculous assumption, -to an equal, with a smack of arrogance.   The
oddest rays of comfort will gleam across his letters of condolence, while his congratulations will partake of a somewhat
funereal character. In addressing members of those worldwide families, he will not be particular as to the'y' in Smyth,
or the'p'in Thompson."
The sum of the matter is, that life is action. Thoughts and
schemes, while they remain such, will avail you nothing, unless
you are a Buddhist, bent on amalgamating yourself by meditation with the ineffable and divine essence. A Boston gentleman, who takes a business view of things, did not untruly
characterize the whole race of poetic impracticables in a single
felicitous sentence.   Being asked the character of a certain
transcendentalist, -" 0," said he, "he is one of those men
who have soarings after the infinite, and divings after the unfathomable, but who never pay cash!"
The want of practical talent in men of fine intellectual
powers has often excited the wonder of the crowd. They are
astonished that one whose genius has grasped, perhaps, the
mightiest themes, and shed a flood of light on the path to be
pursued by others, should be unable to manage his own affairs
with dexterity. But this is not strange. Deep thinking and
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
practical talents require habits of mind almost entirely dissimilar. A man who sees limitedly and clearly is both more sure
of himself, and is more direct in dealing with circumstances
and with others, than a man with a large horizon of thought,
whose many-sided capacity embraces an immense extent of objects and objections,- just as a horse with blinkers chooses
his path more surely and is less likely to shy. Besides, it
must be remembered that energy and self-possession alone,
without superiority of intellect, suffice to give a man practical
talent. There is no force in intellectual ability,- mere intellectual ability, standing, to use a phrase of Burke, "in all the
nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction."   It is
passion which is the moving, vitalizing power; and a minimum
of brains will often achieve more, when fired by a strong will,
than a vastly larger portion with no energy to set it in motion.
Practical men cut the knots which they cannot untie, and, overleaping all logical preliminaries, come at once to a conclusion.
Men of genius, on the other hand, are tempted to waste time in
meditating and comparing, when they should act instantaneously
and with power. They are apt, too, to give unbridled license
to their imaginations, and, desiring harmonious impossibilities,
to foresee the difficulties so clearly that action is foregone.
They have put microscopes to their eyes, and cannot drink for
fear of the animalcules. In short, they theorize too much. A
loaf baked is better than a harvest contemplated. An acre in
Cook County is better than a principality in Utopia. Genius,
to be practically useful, says the author of Lacon, "must be
endowed, not only with wings whereby to fly, but with legs
whereon to stand."   Both practical and speculative ability,
are, no doubt, modifications of mental power; but one, on that
account, by no means implies the other, any more than dexterity in performing a juggler's feats involves the art of reefing a
sail, though they are both instances of physical skill.
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DECISION.
CHAPTER X.
DECISION.
"Lose this day loitering, -'t will be the same story
To-morrow, and the next more dilatory;
The indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting over days.
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute,
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated,           Begin, and then the work will be completed."
He (the upright student) keeps his purpose,- and whatever he has
resolved to do, that he does, were it only because he has resolved to do it. -
FICHTE.
But so it is with many men: "We long for the merchandise, yet would
fain keep the price," and so stand chaffering with fate in vexatious altercation till the night conmes and our fair is over. - CARLYLE.
"There is nothing so imprudent as excessive prudence."
T is but a truism to say that there can be no success in life
without decision of character. In spite of De Quincey's
protest, we believe that John Foster, in his celebrated essay,
did not exaggerate the importance of that quality, though we
admit that it is not strictly a moral power, and that the most
inexorable decision is much more closely connected with physical differences of temperament than with any superiority of
mind. Indeed, Foster himself expresses the opinion that, could
the histories of all the persons remarkable for decisive character be known, it would be found that the majority of them
have possessed great constitutional firmness.   By this is not
meant an exemption from disease and pain, nor any certain
measure  of mechanical strength,  but a tone of vigor,  the
opposite to lassitude, and adapted to great exertion and endurance. Decision of mind, like vigor of body, is a gift of God.
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
It cannot be created by human effort. It can only be cultivated. It has been truly said that, as resolution, or strength
of will, is a primary power in man, there is no higher power
which can give birth to it, for this higher power would necessarily involve the existence of the lower that was to be produced.   But every man has the germ of this quality, which
can be cultivated by favorable circumstances and motives presented to the mind; and, by method and order in the prosecution of his duties or tasks, he may by habit greatly augment
his will-power, or beget a frame of mind so nearly resembling
resolution that it would be difficult to distinguish between the
two. Let no one despair because he has often broken his resolutions. Fichte has well observed that nothing is more destructive of character than for a man to lose all faith in his own
resolutions, because he has so often determined, and again determined, to do that which, nevertheless, he has never done. Here,
as elsewhere, "the stature of the perfect man " is attained only
by slow gradations of travail, study, effort, and patience. The
whole armor cannot be put on at once. The first victory will
render the succeeding one easier, until the very combat will be
desired for the luxury of certain conquest.   "The angel of
martyrdom is brother to the angel of victory."
But, whether inborn or acquired, decision is a quality vitally
important to him who would get on in the world. Even brains
are secondary in importance to will. The intellect is but the
half of a man; the will is the driving-wheel, the spring of
motive power. A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities,
is invariably pushed aside in the race of life by the man of
determined will. It is he who resolves to succeed, and who at
every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that reaches the goal.
The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded wrecks of
men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith,
and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more
resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making
port. Hundreds of men go to their graves in obscurity, who
have been obscure only because they lacked the pluck to make
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DECISION.
a first effort; and who, could they only have resolved to begin,
would have astonished the world by their achievements and
successes.  The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, "that,
in order to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we
must not stand shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold
and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as
we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating and adjusting nice chances; it did all very well before the Flood,
when a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for a hundred and fifty years, and then live to see its
success for six or seven centuries afterwards; but at present a
man waits, and doubts, and hesitates, and consults his brother,
and his uncle, and his first-cousins, and his particular friends,
till one day he finds that he is sixty-five years of age, - that
he has lost so much time in consulting first-cousins and particular friends, that he has no more time left to follow their
advice." The world was not made for slow, squeamish, fastidious men, but for those who act instantaneously and with power.
Obstacles and perplexities every man must meet, and he must
either promptly conquer them, or they will conquer htim.  It is
rarely that the comparative good and evil of different modes of
action are equally balanced; and he who would do anything to
the purpose in this world should perceive the slightest inclination of the beam with an eagle's glance. It is better to decide
wrong occasionally, than to be forever wavering and hesitating,
now veering to this side and then to that, with all the misery
and disaster that follow from continual doubt.
It has been truly said that the great moral victories and
defeats of the world often turn on minutes. Fortune is proverbially a fickle jade, and there is nothing like promptness of
action,- the timing of things at the lucky moment, - to force
her to surrender her favors. Crises come, the seizing of which
is triumph, the neglect of which is ruin. This is particularly
true on the field of battle. Nearly every battle turns on one or
two rapid movements executed amid the whirl of smoke and
thunder of guns that jar the solid globe. It was at such mo
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6.
I 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
merits that the genius of Napoleon shone forth with the highest
lustre. His mind acted like the lightning, and never with
more promptness and precision than in moments of the greatest
eonfusion and danger. What confounded others only stimulated him. He used to say that one of the principal requisites
of a general is an accurate calculation of time; for, if your adversary can bring a powerful force to attack a certain post ten
minutes sooner than you can bring up a sufficient supporting
force, you are beaten, even though all the rest of your plans be
the most perfect that can be devised. At Arcola he saw that
the battle was going against him, and at once called up twentyfive horsemen, gave them each a trumpet, and made a dashing
charge that won the victory. So at Montebello he computed
the distance of the Austrian cavalry, saw that it would require
a quarter of an hour for them to come up, and in those fifteen
minutes executed a manceuvre that saved the day. The reason,
he said, why he beat the Austrians, was that they did not
know the value of five minutes. At the celebrated battle of
Rivoli the day seemed on the point of being decided against
him.  He saw the critical state of affairs, and instantly formed
his resolution. He despatched a flag to the Austrian headquarters, with proposals for an armistice. Napoleon seized the
precious moments, and, while amusing the enemy with mock
negotiations, rearranged his line of battle, changed his front,
and, in a few moments, was ready to renounce the farce of discussion for the stern arbitrament of arms. The splendid victory of Rivoli was the result.
Another signal example of this promptness of decision occurs
at an earlier date in Napoleon's career. He had made his wondrous burst into Northern Italy, and had driven the Austrian
troops before him like sheep. Hardly anything was wanting
to the conquest of Lombardy but the taking of Mantua, to
which he devoted 10,000 of his troops. At this juncture he
heard of the coming of a new Austrian army, consisting of
60,000 men, while he had in all but 40,000. By marching
quickly along the banks of the Lake of Garda they cut off his
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DECISION.
retreat to Milan, and thus greatly endangered his position;
but, as the Austrians came on both sides of the lake, 20,000
on the one and 40,000 on the other, Napoleon determined to
take a position at the end of the lake, so as to be between the
two parties when they should attempt to unite.  "By rapidly
forming a main mass," says the historian, M.  Thiers, "the
French might overpower the 20,000 who had turned the lake,
and immediately after return to the 40,000 who had defiled
between the lake and the Adige. But, to occupy the extremity of the lake, it was necessary to call in all the troops from
the Lower Adige and the Lower Mincio; Angerau must be
withdrawn from Legnago, and Serrurier from Mantua, for so
extensive a line was no longer tenable. This involved a great
sacrifice, for Mantua had been besieged during two months, a
considerable battering-train had been transported before it, the
fortress was on the point of capitulating, and by allowing it to
be revictualled, the fruits of these vigorous efforts, an almost
assured prey, would escape his grasp. Napoleon, however, did
not hesitate. Between two important objects he had the sagacity to seize the most important and sacrifice to it the other,
a simple resolution in itself, but one which displays not only
the great captain, but the great man. It is not in war merely;
it occurs in politics, and in all the situations of life, that men
encounter two objects, and, aiming to compass both, fail in
each. Bonaparte possessed that rare and decisive vigor which
prompts at once the choice and the sacrifice. Had he persisted
in guarding the whole course of the Mincio, from the extremity
of the Lake of Garda to Mantua, he would have been pierced.
By concentrating on Mantua to cover it, he would have had
70,000 men to cope with at the same time,- 60,000 in front
and 10,000 in the rear. He sacrificed Mantua, and concentratedcl at the point of the Lake of Garda." The results of this
rapid decision were a brilliant reward of the masterly genius he
had displayed. Meeting first the corps of 20,000 under Quasdanovich, he drove back its vanguard; whereupon the Austrian
general, surprised to find everywhere imposing masses of the
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French, was alarmed, and resolved to halt till he should hear
of the other corps under his commander, Wurmser. Guessing
what was passing in Quasdanovich's mind, Napoleon contented
himself with having checked his march, and turned to meet
the other body. Of this corps a large portion had passed on
with Wurmser to Mantua, leaving 20,000 behind, under Bayalitsch. This army advanced with widespread wings to envelop the French; but Napoleon pierced its weakened centre,
and compelled it to retreat. The French pursued, greatly damaging it; other battles followed; and in six days from the beginning of hostilities the Austrian generals were again flying
back to the Tyrol, having lost the kingdom of Lombardy and
20,000 men.
At the close of his career the hero of Austerlitz and 1Varengo was guilty of the same mistake of which he used to
accuse the Austrians; he ceased to recognize the value of minutes. Waterloo was lost to him, mainly because the swiftness
of decision and promptness of action which had characterized
his previous career were wanting,- because he wasted precious
hours before, on, and after the day of Ligny, and on the morning of Waterloo, when he should have fallen on the enemy like
a thunderbolt. Wellington, on the other hand, who never lost
a battle, manifested the same decisiveness and promptitude in
the field to the very end of his military life.  Just before
the great battle in which he won his most brilliant-laurels, Sir
Sydney Smith, being told that the Duke had decided to keep his
position at all hazards, exclaimed, "O, if the Duke has said
that, of course t' other fellow must give way." An amusing illus tration of the Duke's characteristic qualities is the reply which
he is said to have made when in danger of shipwreck. It was
bedtime, when the captain of the vessel, in great affright, came
to him and said, "It will soon be all over with us."  "Very
well,"' was the reply, "then I shall not take off my boots."
The superiority which decision combined with pluck gives
to a few men over a great number was vividly illustrated by
an incident that occurred a few years ago in the town of Lynn,
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DECISION.
Massachusetts.  During a public disturbance, twenty of the
Boston police cowed and kept in subjection a crowd of nearly
three thousand persons. The mob was led by reckless men,
who appeared determined to do violence, particularly to the
policemen. With loud outcries, and armed with bricks, clubs,
and other weapons, the rioters advanced to the attack, expecting to overwhelm the little squad of their opponents at the
first onset. Instead of making them quail, however, the only
effect upon the latter was to make them more determined to
maintain the public peace, which they had been sworn in and
delegated to perform. They passed fearlessly into the heat and
centre of the riotous demonstration, faced the thickest of the
shower of missiles, and seized the ringleaders with a grip and
valor that sent a shock of trepidation into the rebellious throng.
The whole thing was accomplished in the briefest time, and
for the reason that the police went straight to the point,- took
the citadel at the start. It was a triumph of promptness and
pluck over numbers, - of a few determined men over a halfhesitating rabble.
Of course, there are occasions when caution and delay are
necessary, - when to act without long and anxious deliberation
would be madness. All wisdom is a system of balances. It
is well enough to be careful and wary up to a certain point;
but beyond that a hesitating policy is as ruinous as downright
rashness. Thousands of men owe their failures in life simply
to procrastination. Brobdingnag in words, and Lilliput in acts,
they scrupulously follow Fox's advice, " Never do to-day what,
by any possibility, can be put off till to-morrow." They never
know their own minds, but, like Coleridge, debate with themselves the whole journey which side of the road they will take,
and meanwhile keep winding from one to the other.  Many a
business man has made his fortune by promptly deciding at
some nice juncture to expose himself to a considerable risk.
To know when to sacrifice a little to win a great deal, when
to abandon important minor objects to accomplish a great end,
exacts the soundest judgment, and the decision  has some
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times to be made in a moment's thought. There are two
moments, says Browning, in a diver's life (and the same applies to every man's career): -
"One when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge;
One when, a prilce, he rises with his pearl."
There are crises in almost every man's life, when the Rubicon,
must be passed, when the Welling,ton of the mart or forum
must not wait for Blucher to come up, but must himself arise
and charge. The battle of life is constantly presenting new
phases, and he only can expect to be victorious who is ready
to show a new front as often as the situation shows a new
peril. A sword that breaks in the very crisis of a duel, a horse
killed by a flash of lightning in the moment of collision with
the enemy, a bridge carried away by a freshet at the instant
of a commencing retreat, are events which are paralleled in
every man's business career, and call for instant decision. They
confound and paralyze the feeble mind, but rouse a terrific
reaction of haughty self-assertion in that order of spirits which
matches and measures itself against difficulty and danger. It
is told of Pellissier, the hero of the Crimea, that, getting angry
one morning with a sub-officer of a cavalry regiment, he cut
him across the face with a whip. The man drew a pistol and
attempted to explode it in the face of his chief; but it missed
fire.  Uttering a fearful oath, but otherwise calm, "Fellow!"
said the grim chief of the Zouaves, "I order you a three days'
arrest, for not having your arms in better order."
There is hardly any calling in which promptness, decision, or
presence of mind is not sometimes imperiously needed. A
lawyer often needs to have all his wits about him; a sudden
turn in a case, the introduction of unexpected testimony, an
unlooked-for ruling by the judge, an unsuspected line of argument taken by the opposing counsel, may necessitate a complete "change of base," and demand an instant decision as to
the policy to be adopted. The physician, too, must have his
mind at his fingers' ends. Hie must grow cooler in the degree
that his patient gets scared. It matters not with how much
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DECISION.
medical learning his head is crammed; it is useless unless in a
critical moment it is instantly available. Presence of mind is
especially needed by all men who have occasion to face sudden
danger. Dr. John Brown, in speaking of this quality, well
observes: "It is a curious condition of mind that this requires.
It is like sleeping with your pistol under your pillow, and the
pistol on full cock; a moment lost, and all may be lost. There
is the very nick of time. Men, when they have done some
signal feat of presence of mind, if asked how they did it, do
not very well know,-  they just did it.  It was in fact done,
and then thought of; not thought of and then done, in which
case it wouldlikely never have been done at all. It is one of
the highest powers of mind thus to act; it is done by an
acquired instict."
It is the lack of this promptness so characteristic of the
gladiatorial intellect-of this readiness to meet every attack
of ill-fortune with counter resources of evasion -which causes
so many defeats in life. There is a race of narrow wits that
never get rich for want of courage. Their understanding is of
that halting, balancing kind, which gives a man just enough
light to see difficulties and start doubts, but not enough to
surmount the one or to remove the other. They do not know
what force of character means. They seem to have no backbone, but only the mockery of a vertebral column, made of
india-rubber, equally pliant in all directions. They come and
go like shadows, speak like women, sandwich their sentences
with apologies, are overtaken by events while still irresolute,
and let the tide ebb before they feebly push off. Always
brooding over their plans, but never executing them, they
remind one of Voltaire's sarcasm upon La Harpe, whom he
called an oven that was always heating up, but which never
cooked anything. They never get ahead an inch, because they
are always hugging some coward maxim, which they can only
interpret literally.  "Never change a certainty for an uncertainty," "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," are
their favorite saws; and very good ones they are, too, but not
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
to be followed too slavishly.  Of what use is it "to be sawing
about a set of maxims to which there is a complete set of
antagonist maxims "? Proverbs, it has been well said, should
be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half-truth.
It is hardly possible to conceive of a more unhappy man
than one afflicted with. this infirmity. It has been remarked
that there are persons who lack decision to such a degree that
they seem never to have made up their minds which leg to
stand upon, -  who deliberate in an agony of choice, when not a
grain's weight depends on the decision, on the question what
road to walk on, what chair to sit down upon, what bundle of
hay to munch first.  "A  man without decision," says John
Foster, "can never be said to belong to himself; since, if he
dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about
as powerful, you would have supposed, as a spider, may make
a seizure of the unhappy boaster the very next moment, and
contemptuously exhibit the futility of the determinations by
which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and will He belongs to whatever can make capture
of him; and one thing after another vindicates its right to
him, by arresting him while he is trying to go on; as twigs
and chips, floating near the edge of a river, are intercepted by
every weed and whirled in every little eddy. Having concluded on a design, he may pledge himself to accomplish it.if the hundred diversities of feeling which may come within
the week will let him. His character precluding all foresight
of his conduct, he may sit and wonder what form and direction
his views and actions are destined to take to-morrow; as a
farmer has often to acknowledge that next day's proceedings
are at the disposal of its winds and clouds."
One of the great defects in the character of Charles V., Emperor of Germany, was his slowness of decision in the cabinet
and in the field. Had he been prompt and decisive, he might
have crushed the Reformation in the bud. Coligni, one of the
champions of Protestantism in France, who perished in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew, had a similar defect. A braver 
DECISION.
man never drew the sword; but in critical moments he failed
to reap the natural fruits of his valor by his hesitation and
delay.
Literary men are more apt to lack decision than men who
have to deal with practical matters. A melancholy example of
this is furnished by the life of Sir James Mackintosh, whom
Sir Henry  Lytton Bulwer, in his "Historical Characters,"
terms "The Man of Promise."  The career of Sir James was a
perpetual struggle between that which he desired to be and
that for which his talents fitted him.  At the University of
Aberdeen he was alike remarkable for his zeal in politics and
his love for metaphysics,- that is, for his alternate coquetry
between an active and a meditative life. At Edinburgh, also,
where he went to study medicine, it was the same thing.
Spending his mornings in poetical lucubrations, his evenings in
making speeches at a "spouting" club, he gave little attention
to the study of medicine till absolute necessity compelled him.
He then applied himself with a start to that which he was
obliged to know; but his diligence was not of that resolute
and steady kind which insures success as the consequence of
a certain period of application;  and, after rushing into the
novelties of " The Brunonian System," which promised a
knowledge of medicine with little labor, and then rushing back
again, he tried to establish himself as a medical practitioner at
Salisbury and at Weymouth  in England, but,  getting no
patients, retired, disgusted and wearied, to Brussels. He next
dabbled in politics; wrote the famous pamphlet, "Vindicise
Gallic,e," in reply to Burke; delivered soon after at Lincoln's
Inn a course of learned and eloquent lectures on Public Law,
which were received with great enthusiasm; defended  M.
Peltier in a speech at the bar, which was read with admiration
not only in England, but on the Continent, and, though he
lost his cause, led him to be considered no less promising as a
pleader than, after the " Vindicie Gallicse," he had been considered as a pamphleteer; became Recorder of Bombay; returned to England, and, feeling that "it was time to be some
137 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
thing decided," resolved "to exert himself to the utmost" if
he could get a seat in Parliament; entered the House of Commons, and made several remarkable speeches; accepted a professorship at the same time in Haileybury College, unable
"either to commit himself to the great stream of public life, or
to avoid lingering on its shores"; planned a great historical
work, which, like his projected work on Morals, was "always
to be projected"; and, at length, within a few yards of the
grave, galled by the thought that the season for action was
almost passed, and he had accomplished nothing worthy of his
great powers, made a start, and crowded into the last few years
of his life the most ambitious of his works,- works all, however, of a third-rate character, neither worthy of his abilities
nor justifying even in a moderate degree the expectations of
his friends. The fatal defect in his character was lack of
decision, of concentration, of power to choose some one
object to be accomplished, and to sacrifice to its attainment all
interfering inclinations.  " No man," says Sir Henry L. Bulwer,
"doing so little, ever went through a long life continually
creating the belief that he would ultimately do so much." He
passed from Burke to Fox in half an hour, and remained weeks
in determining whether he should employ  "usefulness" or
"utility" in some particular composition.  From the beginning
of his life to its close he ever remained the man of pronmise;
until, amidst hopes which his vast and various information, his
wonderful memory, his copious elocution, and his transitory
fits of energy still nourished, he died, in the sixty-seventh
year of his age, universally admired and regretted, though
without a high reputation for any one thing, or the ardent
attachment of any particular set of persons.
Let every man who would avoid a life so abortive as this
decide early what he wishes, and for what his talents fit him;
and having fixed upon an object to be attained, let him give
his whole soul to its attainment, without swerving to the right
or the left.  "I respect the man," says Goethe, "who knows
distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief
138 
DECISION.
in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently
understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a
tower, and spend no mnore labor on the foundation than would
be necessary to erect a hut."
Not only is decision necessary, but promptness also, without
which decision loses half its value.   "Is Philip at Paris?"
asked Charles V., after his son, the King of Spain, had gained
the decisive victory over the French at Quentin. He estimated
Philip's temper by his own. When Ledyard was asked by the
African Association when he would be ready to start for Africa,
he replied, "To-morrow  morning."   A  similar answer was
made by Sir Colin Campbelli when asked when he would set
out to lead the British army to India. It was the promptness
of Blucher that won for him the cognomen of "Marshal Forward" throughout the Prussian army.  Again, besides promptness, tenacity of decision is indispensable to him who would
make his mark in the world, or achieve any rare success.  All
the men whose names have been blazoned on the scroll of
fame have been distinguished by their firm adherence to their
purposes, by the nescit vox missa reverti, which has made their
spoken word like an oath. When a certain commissary-general
complained to the Duke of Wellington that Sir Thomas Picton
had declared that he would hang him if the rations for that
general's division were not forthcoming at a certain hour, the
Duke replied, "Ah! did he go so far as that? Did he say he'd
hang you?I"  "Yes, my lord."  "Well, if General Picton said
so, I have no doubt he will keep his word; you'd better get up
the rations in time." When a man of iron will is thus known
to be so tenacious in his adherence to his resolution that, once
declared, it is like a decree of fate, there is no limit to the good
or bad results he may accomplish. Such a will draws men and
things after it as a boat does the drift in its wake. Men feel
that to oppose its possessor would be as futile as
"To wound the loud winds, or, with bemocked-at stabs,
To kill the still closing waters."
Some forty years ago murder was so rife in Havana that it
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
seemed literally to be cultivated as one of the fine arts, to use
De  Quincey's phrase; and the city, if less libidinous, was
probably more blood-stained than Sodom or Gomorrah. Yet,
in a short time, by the vigor and decision of one man, this
hideous state of things was entirely changed; and through
Havana then, as through England under Alfred, or through
Geneva now, the most gently nurtured woman could walk at
midnight with a female attendant, unscared and unharmed.
One night a murder was committed, and Tacon, the Chief of
Police, heard in the morning that the perpetrator was still at
large. He summoned the prefect of the department in which
the crime was committed. "How is this, sir s a man murdered
at midnight, and the murderer not yet arrested? "  "May it
please your Excellency, it is impossible.   We do not even
know who it is."  Tacon saw the officer was lying.   "Hark
you, sir. Bring me this murderer before night, or I'll garrote
you to-morrow morning."  The officer knew his man, and the
assassin was forthcoming.
140 
MANNER.
CHAPTER XI.
MANNER.
Manners makyth man. - WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.
Prepare yourselves for the world as the athlete used to do for their
exercises; oil your mind and your manners to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do. - CHESTERFIELD.
"The churl in spirit, howe'er he veil
His want in forms, for fashion's sake,
Will let his coltish nature break
At seasons through the gilded pale."
The courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike
deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart. It is the picayune compliments which are the most appreciated; far more than the double ones which
we sometimes pay.- HENRY CLAY.
A MONG the qualities of mind and heart which conduce to
worldly success, there is no one the importance of which
is more real, yet which is so generally underrated at this day by
the young, as courtesy,-  that feeling of kindness, of love for
our fellows, which expresses itself in pleasing manners. Owing
to that spirit of self-reliance and self-assertion, and that contempt for the forms and conventionalities of life, which our
young men are trained to cherish, they are too apt to despise
those delicate attentions, those nameless and exquisite tendernesses of thought and manner, that mark the true gentleman. Yet history is crowded with examples showing that, as
in literature, it is the delicate, indefinable charm of style, not
the thought, which makes a work immortal,- as'a dull actor
makes Shakespeare's grandest passages fiat and unprofitable,
while a Kean'enables you to read them "by flashes of lightning," -so it is the bearing of a man toward his fellows
which oftentimes, more than any other circumstance, promotes
or obstructs his advancement in life. We may complain, if
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
we will, that our fellow-men care more for form than substance,
for the superficies than the solid contents of a man; but the
fact remains, and it is the clew to many of the seeming anomalies and freaks of fortune which surprise us in the matter of
worldly prosperity.
No doubt there are a few men who can look beyond the
husk or shell of a fellow-being- his angularities, awkwardness,
or eccentricity-to the hidden qualities within; who can discern
the diamond, however incrusted; but the majority are neither
so sharp-eyed nor so tolerant, and judge a person by his appearance and demeanor more than by his substantial character.
Daily experience shows that civility is not only one of the
essentials of high success, but that it is almost a fortune of itself,
and that he who has this quality in perfection, though a blockhead, is almost sure to get on where, without it, even men of
high ability fail.  "Give a boy address and accomplishments,"
says Emerson, "and you give him the mastery of palaces and
fortunes wherever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning
or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess."
Among strangers a good manner is the best letter of recommendation; for a great deal depends upon first impressions,
and these are favorable or unfavorable according to a man's
bearing, as he is polite or awkward, shy or self-possessed.
While coarseness and gruffness lock doors and close hearts,
courtesy, refinement, and gentleness are an "open sesame" at
which bolts fly back and doors swing open. The rude, boorish
man, even though well meaning, is avoided by all. [Even
virtue itself is offensive when coupled with an offensive manner.  Hawthorne, himself a shy man, used to say: "God may
forgive sins, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or
earth."  Manners, in fact, are minor morals, and a rude man
is generally assumed to be a bad man. "You had better,"
wrote Chesterfield to his son, "return a dropped fan genteelly
than give a thousand pounds awkwardly; and you had better
refuse a favor gracefully than grant it clumsily....  All your
Greek can never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from
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*MANNER.
envoy to ambassador; but your address, your air, your manner,
if good, may."
What a man says or does is often an uncertain test of what
he is.  It is the way in which he says or does it that furnishes
the best index of his character. It is by the incidental expression given to his thoughts and feelings by his looks, tones,
and gestures, rather than.by his deeds or words, that we prefer
to judge him, for the simple reason that the former are involuntary. One may do certain deeds from design, or repeat certain professions by rote; honeyed words may mask feelings of
hate, and kindly acts may be performed expressly to veil sinister
ends; but the "manner of the man" is not so easily controlled.
The mode in which a kindness is done often affects us more
than the deed itself. The act itself may have been prompted
by one of many questionable motives, as vanity, pride, or interest; the warmth or coldness with which the person who has done
it asks you how you do, or grasps your hand, is less likely to
deceive. The manner of doing anything, it has been truly
said, is "that which marks the degree and force of our internal
impression; it emanates most directly from our immediate or
habitual feelings; it is that which stamps its life and character
on any action; the rest may be performed by an automaton."
A favor may be conferred so grudgingly as to prevent any feeling of obligation, or it may be refused so courteously as to
awaken more kindly feelings than if it had been ungracious]y
granted.
Hazlitt observes truly that an author's style is not less a criterion of his understanding than his sentiments. "The same
story told by two different persons shall, from the difference
of the manner, either set the table in a roar, or not relax a feature in the whole company.... One of the most pleasant and
least tiresome of our acquaintance is a humorist, who has three
or four quaint witticisms and proverbial phrases, which he
always repeats over and over, so that you feel the same amusement with less effort than if he had startled his hearers with a
succession of original conceits. Another friend of ours, who
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
never fails to give vent to one or two real jeux-desprit every
time you meet him, from the pain with which he is delivered
of them, and the uneasiness he seems to suffer all the rest of
the time, makes a much more interesting than comfortable companion. If you see a person in pain for himself, it naturally
puts you in pain for him. The art of pleasing consists in being
pleased. To be amiable is to be satisfied with one's self and
others."
The same principle is vividly illustrated by an anecdote told
by Henry Ward Beecher in a recent lecture.   In the early
Abolition days two men went out preaching, one an old Quaker
and another a young man full of fire. When the Quaker lectured, everything ran along very smoothly, and he carried the
audience with him. When the young man lectured, there was
a row, and stones, and eggs. It became so noticeable, that the
young man spoke to the Quaker about it.  He said, "Friend,
you and I are on the same mission, and preach the same things;
and how is it that while you are received cordially, I get nothing but abuse."  The Quaker replied, "I will tell thee.  Thee
says,' If you do so and so, you shall be punished,' and I say,
' My friends, if you will not do so and so, you shall not be punished.'"   They both said the same  thing, but  there was a
great deal of difference in the way they said it.
Politeness has been defined as benevolence in small things.
A true gentleman is recognized by his regard for the rights and
feelings of others, even in matters the most trivial. He respects the individuality of others, just as he wishes others to
respect his own.   In society he is quiet, easy, unobtrusive;
putting on no airs, nor hinting by word or manner that he
deems himself better, wiser, or richer than any one about him
lie is never "stuck up," nor looks down upon others because
they have not titles, honors, or social position equal to his own.
He never boasts of his achievements, or angles for compliments
by affecting to underrate what he has done. He prefers to act,
rather than to talk; to be, rather than to seem; and, above all
things, is distinguished by his deep insight and sympathy,
144 
MANNER.
his quick perception of, and prompt attention to, those little
and apparently insignificant things that may cause pleasure or
pain to others. In giving his opinions he does not dogmatize;
he listens patiently and respectfully to other men, and, if compelled to dissent from their opinions, acknowledges his fallibility and asserts his own views in such a manner as to
command the respect of all who hear him.   Frankness and
cordiality mark all his intercourse with his fellows, and, however high his station, the humblest man feels instantly at ease
in his presence.
Wordsworth has well expressed one of the cardinal laws of
politeness in the admonition,
"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow to the meanest thing that feels."
One of the ways in which this rule is most frequently violated
is by saying witty things at others' expense. Many a man
sacrifices his worldly success to his love of jesting. There are
persons who would rather lose a life-long friend than their
joke. But friends are not so plentiful that any man can afford
to lose one for a moment's gratification, nor even for a whole
day of conversational triumphs. It has been wisely said that
spite and ill-nature are among the most expensive luxuries in
life. Dr. Johnson - who, unfortunately, violated his own precept, and to whom one is tempted to say, with Sir Thomas
Browne, "Since thou so hotly disclaimest the Devil, be not
thyself guilty of diabolism " - said on a certain occasion:
" Sir, a man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to
act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than
to knock him down." One of the redeeming points in Sheridan's character was that, though thriftless and intemperate,
he            wounded no man's feelings by his jests:
"His wit in the combat, as gentle as bright,
Never carried a heart-stain away on its blade."
It is easy to depreciate these gentlemanly qualities as trifles;
but trifles, it must be remembered, make up the aggregate of
7;
145 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
human life. It is not so often the great acts of others that
we treasure up and remember, as the petty incivilities, slight
neglects, microscopic rudenesses, of which men are guilty
without thought, or from lack of insight or sympathy.   "A
beautiful form," says the shrewdest of American essayists, "is
better than a beautiful face, and a beautiful behavior is better
than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues
or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts."  There is no
society where smiles, pleasant looks, animal spirits, are not
welcomed; where they are not of more importance than sallies
of wit or refinements of understanding. The little courtesies
which form the small change of life may appear, separately, of
little moment, but, like the spare minutes, or the penny a day,
which amountr to so enormous sums in a lifetime, they owe
their importance to repetition and accumulation.  The man
who thrives in any calling is not always the shrewdest or most
laborious man, but he is almost invariably one who has shown
a willingness to please and to be pleased, who has responded
to the advances of others, not now and then, with conscious
effort, but heartily, through nature and habit, while his rival
has sniffed and frowned and snubbed away every helping
hand.
It is said of the Duke of Marlborough that his charming
manners often changed an enemy into a friend, and that to be
denied a favor by him was more pleasing than to receive one
from another man. It was these personal graces that made
him both rich and great, for, though he had nothing shining
in his genius, and, according to Chesterfield, was eminently
illiterate, -  "wrote bad English, and spelt it worse," -yet
his figure was beautiful, and his manner irresistible by man or
woman. It was this which, when he was Ensign of the Guards,
charmed the Duchess of Cleveland, the favorite of Charles II.,
who gave him five thousand pounds, with which he laid the
foundation of his subsequent fortune. His address was so
exquisitely fascinating as to dissolve fierce jealousies and animosities, lull suspicion, and beguile the subtlest diplomacy of
146 
MANNER.
its arti His fascinating smile and winning tongue, equally
with his sharp sword, swayed the destinies of empires. Be fore the bland, soft-spoken commander, "grim-visaged war,"
in the person of Charles XII. of Sweden,  "smoothed  his
wrinkled front"; and the fiery warrior-king, at his appeal,
bade adieu to the grand and importunate suitor for his alliance,
Louis XIV., whom it was his great mission to defeat and
humble. It was by the same charm of manner that he was
able so long to keep together the members of the grand alli ance against France, and direct them, in spite of their clashing
interests, their jealousies, and their perpetual dissensions, to
the main objects of the war.
It is said that bees will not sting a person whose skin is
smeared with honey. The gracious manners of Charles James
Fox preserved him from personal dislike even when he had
gambled away his last dollar, and, politically, was the most
unpopular man in England. A charming manner not only
enhances personal beauty, but hides ugliness and makes even
plainness agreeable. There is hardly any career in which an
ill-favored countenance is not a stumbling-block at the outset,
that may never be surmounted.  There are people called "unpresentable," who have giants to contend with at their first
start in life. Yet who does not know how much a happy
manner often does to neutralize the ill effects of forbidding
looks   The fascination of the demagogue Wilkes's manner
triumphed over both physical and moral deformity, rendering
even ugliness agreeable; and he boasted to Lord Townsend,
the handsomest manl in Great Britain, that, with half an hour's
start, he would get ahead of his lordship in the affections of
any woman in the kingdom. The ugliest Frenchman, perhaps,
that ever lived was Mirabeau; yet such was the witchery of
his manner that the belt of no gay Lothario of his day was
hung with a greater number of bleeding female hearts than
that of this thunderer of the Tribune, who shook from his
locks "pestilence and war," and whose looks were so hideous
that he was compared to "a tiger pitted by the small-pox."
147 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
The success which Aaron Burr achieved, up to the hour when
he betrayed his party in 1801, arose not more from his political
skill and knowledge than from his inimitable address and his
infinite tact in conversation.
Is any one ignorant of the charm which a fine manner gives
to oratory? Demosthenes, in reiterating the importance of
"action," is supposed to have meant manner only.   How
many able discourses have been emasculated by a false or
tasteless delivery! How many shallow ones have passed for
deep, how many commonplace ones for eloquent and original,
on account of a charming intonation!   Chesterfield tells us
that the Duke of Argyle, though the weakest reasoner, was
the most impressive speaker he ever heard in his life. He
ravished his audience, "not by his matter, but by his manner
of delivering it. I was captivated, like others," continues
Chesterfield; "but when I went home and coolly considered
what he had said, stripped of all those ornaments with which he
had dressed it, I often found the manner flimsy, the argument
weak, and I was convinced of the power of those adventitious
concurring circumstances which it is ignorance of mankind to
call trifling." D'Aguessau says of Fenelon, that the charm of
his manner, and a certain indescribable expression, made his
hearers fancy that, instead of mastering the sciences he discoursed upon, he had invented them. Lord Chatham was a
wonderfully eloquent man, but his manner added to his eloquence. The delivery of Lord Mansfield, the silver-tongued
Murray, had such ease, grace, and suavity that his bare narrative of a case was said to be worth any other man's argument.
The  student of  English history, as he reads Wilberforce's
speeches, wonders at his reputation; but, had he heard them
from the lips of the orator, delivered in tones full, liquid, and
penetrating, with the matchless accompaniments of attitude,
gesture, and expression, he would have found that a dramatic
delivery can convert even commonplace into brilliant rhetoric.
Napoleon thought so much of manner that he studied it under
Talma, the actor, and thought, with the Romans, that youth
148 
MANNER.
should early be brought into contact with the posture-master
and the orator.
Of the necromantic effects which manner may work in legislative bodies, Lord Chesterfield has given a striking account.
Being asked to procure the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar
by England, he introduced into Parliament a bill for that purpose.  "But then," he adds, "my difficulty began.   I was to
bring in this bill, which was necessarily composed of law jargon
and astronomical calculations, to both of which I am an utter
stranger. However, it was absolutely necessary to make the
House of Lords think that I knew something of the matter,
and also make them believe that they knew something of it
themselves, which they did not. For my own part, I could
just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them as
astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well;
so I resolved to do better than speak to the purpose, and to
please instead of informing them..... I was particularly attentive to the choice of my words, to the harmony and roundness of my periods, to my elocution, to my action.   This succeeded, and ever will succeed; they thought I informed,
because I pleased them; and many of them said that I had
made the whole very clear to them, when, God knows, I had
not even attempted it. Lord Macclesfield, who had the greatest share in forming the bill, and who is one of the greatest
mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, spoke afterwards
with infinite knowledge and all the clearness that so intricate
a matter would admit of; but as his words, his periods, and
his utterance were not nearly so good as mine, the preference
was most unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me."
Almost every man can recall scores of cases within his knowledge where pleasing manners have made the fortunes of lawyers, doctors, divines, merchants, and, in short, men in every
walk of life.  Raleigh, as we have already remarked, flung
down his laced coat into the mud for Elizabeth to walk on,
and got for his reward a proud queen's favor. The politician
who has this advantage easily distances all rival candidates, for
1l49 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
every voter he speaks with becomes instantly his friend. The
very tones in which he asks for a pinch of snuff are often more
potent than the logic of a Webster or a Clay. Polished manners have often made scoundrels successful, while the best of
men by their hardness and coldness have done themselves
incalculable injury,- the shell being so rough that the world
could not believe there was a precious kernel within. Civility
is to a man what beauty is to a woman. It creates an instantaneous impression in his behalf, while the opposite quality excites
as quick a prejudice against him. It is a real ornament,- the
most beautiful dress that man or woman can wear, - and worth
more as a means of winning favor than the finest clothes and
jewels ever worn. The gruffest man loves to be appreciated;
and it is oftener the sweet smilnie of a woman, which we think
intended for us alone, than a pair of Juno-like eyes, or "lips
that seem on roses fed," that bewitches our heart, and lays us
low at the feet of her whom we afterwards marry.
It is a common mistake to suppose that persons who are distinguished by their sweetness and tenderness of disposition
must lack force.   Some of the examples of courtesy we have
already given sufficiently refute this, and Faraday, the great
]English physicist, was another striking proof of the contrary.
He was one of the gentlest of men, yet underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. Naturally he
was excitable and fiery; but "through Sligh self-discipline,"
says Tyndall, "he had converted his fire into a central glow and
motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in
useless passion." It is such men that form the motive forces
of the world,- persons who, though they quickly flame, and
burn to a white heat when angry, yet rule their own spirits,
and utilize all their fire by directing it into professional chalnnels. On the other hand, satirical writers and talkers are not
half so clever as they think themselves, or as they are thought
to be.  "They do winnow the corn,'t is true, but't is to feed
upon the chaff. It requires some talent and some generosity
to find out talent and generosity in others; though nothing but
150 
MANNER.
self-conceit and malice are needed to discover or to imagine
faults."
One of the greatest foes to politeness is that shyness which
is so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race. The Anglo-Saxon,
wherever found, is naturally stiff, reserved, and uncommunicative, and carries with him a stock of faide britannique which,
as George Sand says, renders him impassive under all circumstances, and as impervious to the atmosphere of the regions he
traverses as a mouse in the centre of an exhausted receiver.
Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh, is. reported to have observed in a
recent address: "Ask a person at Rome to show you the road,
and he will always give a civil and polite answer; but ask any
person a question for that purpose in this country (Scotland),
and he will say,' Follow your nose, and you will find it.' But
the blame in this country is not with the lower classes. The
blame is with the upper classes; and the reason why, in this
country, the lower classes are not polite, is because the upper
classes are not polite. I remember how astonished I was the
first time I was in Paris.  I spent the first night with a banker,
who took me to a pension, or, as we call it, a boarding-house.
When we got there, a servant-girl came to the door, and the
banker took off his hat, and bowed to the servant-girl, and
called her mademoiselle, as if she was a lady. Now the reason
why the lower classes there are so polite is because the upper
classes are polite and civil to them."
Americans are not generally supposed to be timid or bashful;
but Hawthorne, the essayist and novelist, who shunned so
studiously the society of his fellow-beings, showed himself by
his morbid shyness t: be of genuine English descent.   He
makes record in his diary of a day when he resolved to speak
to no human soul. He went to the village, got his mail at the
post-office, returned, and triumphantly records the fact that he
spoke to no man. Is it strange that, with all his genius, the
author of "The Marble Faun" was a melancholy and essentially an unhappy man? Or is it strange that he lived so long
in obscurity before his exquisite endowments were recognized
by the public!
151 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
It is true that it costs some men a much greater effort to be
polite than others. It was said with bitter spleen of an English statesman, "Canning can never be a gentleman for more
than three hours at a time." It is true, too, that there are
times in every man's life when to be even coldly courteous
makes an exhausting draught on one's patience; but silently to
devour the many chagrins of life, and to maintain a respectful
bearing towards others, even under circumstances of vexation
and trial, is not only a Christian duty, but worldly policy. Dr.
Valentine Mott said wisely to a graduating class: "Young gentlemen, have two pockets made, - a large one to hold the
insults, and a small one to hold the fees." Hundreds of men
have owed their start in life wholly to their winning address.
"Thank you, my dear," said Lundy Foote to the little beggargirl who bought a pennyworth of snuff.  "Thank you, my dear,
please call again," made Lundy Foote a millionnaire. Some
years ago a dry-goods salesman in a London shop had acquired
such a reputation for courtesy and exhaustless patience that it
was said to be impossible to provoke from him any expression
of irritability or the smallest symptom of vexation. A lady
of rank, hearing of his wondrous equanimity, determined to
put it to the test by all the annoyances with which a veteran
shop-visitor knows how to tease a shopman. She failed in the
attempt, and thereupon set him up in business. He rose to
eminence in the haberdashery trade, and the mainspring of his
later as of his early career was politeness. It is related of the
late Mr. Butler, of Providence, Rhode Island, that he was so
obliging as to reopen his store one night solely to supply a
little girl with a spool of thread which she wanted. The incident took wind, brought him a large run of custom, and he
died a millionnaire, after subscribing $ 40,000 toward founding
a hospital for the insane,- a sum which he was persuaded to
give by Miss Dix, whom he was too polite to shake off, though
almost as penurious as she was persevering.
Chesterfield does not exaggerate in saying that the art of
pleasing is, in truth, the art of rising, of distinguishing one's
152 
MANNER.
self, of making a figure and a fortune in the world. It is said
that some years ago in England a curate of narrow income but
kindly disposition perceived two elderly spinsters, in old-fashioned costume, beset with jeers and jibes by a mob of men and
boys lounging round the church porch while the bell was ringing for service. Forcing his way through the crowd, he gave
one lady his right arm and the other his left, led them both
into church, and escorted them politely up the middle aisle to a
convenient pew, regardless of the stares and titters of the congregation. Some years afterwards the needy curate was agreeably surprised by the announcement that the two old ladies,
having lately died, had bequeathed him a handsome fortune in
recognition of his well-timed courtesy.
A striking illustration of the pecuniary value of obligingness
is found in the success of the late Mr. Ingram, publisher of the
London "Illustrated News," who perished in Lake Michigan
when the "Lady Elgin" was wrecked. He began life at Nottingham, England, as printer and newsdealer; and, having among
his customers a gentleman who wanted his paper very early, he
was so anxious to save him from disappointment that one day
he walked ten miles to supply a single paper. On another
occasion he rose from bed at two in the morning, and travelled all the way to London to get some copies of a newspaper,
because there was no post to bring them, being determined that
his customers should have their journal. There is no man so
"hard-shelled" that his soul cannot be reached by kindness.
It is said that the celebrated miser, Jack Elwes, to save butchers'
bills, made a point of eating his own sheep from head to tail,
even though the mutton almost crawled off the plate before it
was consumed. And yet the same sordid being gave hundreds
to advance the interests of an officer whose manners had
pleased him in a few casual interviews; thus showing that,
when all else had failed, the oiled key of courtesy could force
back the rusty wards even of the miser's double-locked heart.
It was through his civility to a couple of strangers, one of
them a foreigner, that Mr. Winans, of Philadelphia, is said to
7*
153 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
have obtained, some years ago, his invitation to go to St. Petersburg and manufacture locomotives for the Russian czar. The
gentlemen had been shown with indifference through the larger
establishments of Philadelphia, but, on their coming to Mr. Winans's, a third or fourth rate factory, he took so much pains to
show all its parts and workings, and was so patient in his explanations and answers to their inquiries, that, within a year, he
was surprised by an invitation to transfer his labors to Russia.
He went, accumulated a large fortune, and ultimately received
from his Russian workshops a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Investing his money in real estate, he laid the foundation of
one of the largest private fortunes in Philadelphia; and all this
was the result of civility to strangers.
Few men have influenced more powerfully the persons with
whom they have come in contact than Bishop F6ne'lon.  The
secret of his sway over hearts was his uniform courtesy, a
politeness springing from a profound love for his fellow-beings,
of whatever rank or class. Lord Peterborough, the distinguished English general, said of him, that he was "a delicious
man," -  that "he had to run away from him to prevent his
making him a Christian." Military men, as a class, are courteous the world over, attention to manner being a part of their
training.   Canon Kingsley observes that the love and admiration which that truly brave and loving man, Sir Sidney Smith,
won from every one, rich and poor, with whom he came in
contact, seems to have arisen from the one fact, that, without,
perhaps, having any such conscious intention, he treated rich
and poor, his own servants and the noblemen, his guests, alike,
and alike courteously, cheerfully, considerately, affectionately,so leaving a blessing and reaping a blessing wherever he went."
True courage and courtesy go hand in hand. The bravest
men are the most forgiving, and the most anxious to avoid
quarrels. It was said of Sir John Franklin that he was a man
"who never turned his back upon a danger, yet of that tenderness that he would not brush away a mosquito." At a late
period in life the Duke of Wellington wrote to a friend: "I
154 
MANNER.
am not in the habit of deciding upon such matters hastily or
in anger; and the proof of this is, that I never had a quarrel
with any man in my life!"  Considering the long and varied
career, civil and military, of "The Iron Duke," and that, too,
in different parts of the globe; the countless persons, of the
most opposite qualities, with whom he had to deal; his con stant vexations in the Peninsula with Spanish pride and sus picion, and red-tapism at home; the habits of his army at that
time; and his trials in political life,   it is truly wonderful
that the great captain, whose truthfulness was extreme, could at
the age of sixty have thus spoken of himself. It is evident
that he could never have said it, had he not learned, before
commanding others, to command himself, watching and gov erning his own feelings with the same coolness and self-posses sion with which he handled his troops on the battle-field.
If manner has such consequences, is it not folly to despise
or neglect it?   On the contrary, should not the cultivation of
it be an important part of every man's education? We have
dwelt at length upon it, because upon no other point are young
men so apt to make a serious mistake as upon this. They
think that if they only have the substance, the form is of little
moment.   But manners are more than mere form;  they are
"a compound of form and spirit, -spirit acted into form."
With business tact and energy, with learning and professional
skill, the neophyte flatters himself he is sure to succeed. He
can push his way through by main force. And no doubt a
man may have abilities and a force of character so extraordinary as to compel all obstacles to give way before him. But
advancement so gained is gained by a great waste of power.
The same abilities accompanied with prepossessing manners
would have achieved far more brilliant results. No doubt, by
the use of mere brute force one may make a certain amount
of impression; and so, too, may a soldier hew down his foes
with an old-fashioned battle-axe or with a scythe, but would
he be wise in preferring such a weapon to the keen Damascus
blade 
-155 
MANNER.
or in ball-rooms. That neither morality, nor genius, nor
both combined, will insure its manifestation, is evident from
the examples of Dr. Johnson and Carlyle. The former, the
despot of the "Literary Club," was so rude and gruff in manner as to acquire the nickname of "Ursa Major"; and though
Goldsmith pleaded with truth in his behalf, " No man alive
has a more tender heart, he has nothing of the bear about
him but his skin," yet we cannot call a man polite who ate
like an  Esquimau, and with whom "You don't understand
the question, sir," and "You lie, sir," were the extremes of
his method in arguing with scholars on his own level.
Johnson had an abundance of nobleness, courage, and kindness of heart; but neither of these without kindness of manner is politeness.   Nor  can Carlyle, with his many noble
qualities, be deemed polite, if, as a leading London journal
asserts, his supreme contempt for the persons who disagree
with him exasperates even those who have the highest respect
for his integrity and insight. Washington, on the other hand,
was polite when he promptly returned the salute of a colored
man; Arnold was polite when the poor woman felt that he
treated her as if she were a lady; Chalmers was polite when
every old woman in Morningside was elated and delighted
with his courteous salute; and so was Robert Burns when he
recognized an honest farmer in the street of Edinburgh, declaring to one who rebuked him that it was "not the great-coat,
the scone bonnet, and the Saunders boot-hose" that he spoke
to, "but the man that was in them."
Such politeness can never be acquired by studying artificial
rules in books of "Etiquette."  The effect of all such efforts is
to make one think of himself rather than of others; whereas
thinking of others, rather than of one's self, is the very essence of all courtesy.   "Few young people," it has been
truthfully said, "can lay themselves out to please after the
Chesterfieldian method, without making themselves offensive
or ridiculous to persons of any discernment; but a frank committal of one's self into benevolent hands, a trust in good
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
intentions, a graceful self-adaptation, some remains of that confiding temper of infancy which opens its mouth and shuts its
eyes, confident that something sweet, some untried good, will
reward the trust,- such a disposition, allied to ordinary talent
and discretion, is a fortune in itself. Society does not, in fact,
want the abstract best man,- which means somebody who
would be'best if many things in him were different from and
opposite to what they are,- but the man who can work best
with others, who can bring out and be brought out, and with
whom it can most pleasantly get along."
It has been well remarked that whoever imagines legitimate
manners can be taken up and laid aside, put on and off for the
moment, has missed their deepest law.   "A noble and attractive every-day bearing comes of goodness, of sincerity, of refinement. And these are bred in years, not moments. The
principle that rules your life is the sure posture-master. Sir
Philip Sidney was the pattern to all England of a perfect
gentleman; but then he was the hero that, on the field of
Zutphen, pushed away the cup of cold water from his own
fevered and parching lips, and held it out to the dying soldier
at his side!" *  Such civility implies self-sacrifice, and it has
reached maturity after many struggles and conflicts. It is an
art and a tact, rather than an instinct or an inspiration. It is
the last touch, the crowning perfection, of a noble character; it
has been truly described as the gold on the spire, the sunlight
on the cornfield, the smile on the lip of the noble knight
lowering his sword-point to his lady-love; and it results only
from the truest balance and harmony of soul.
* Rev. F. D. Huntington, D.D.
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
intentions, a graceful self-adaptation, some remains of that confiding temper of infancy which opens its mouth and shuts its
eyes, confident that something sweet, some untried good, will
reward the trust,- such a disposition, allied to ordinary talent
and discretion, is a fortune in itself. Society does not, in fact,
want the abstract best man, -which means somebody who
would be'best if many things in him were different from and
opposite to what they are,- but the man who can work best
with others, who can bring out and be brought out, and with
whom it can most pleasantly get along."
It has been well remarked that whoever imagines legitimate
manners can be taken up and laid aside, put on and off for the
moment, has missed their deepest law.  "A noble and attractive every-day bearing comes of goodness, of sincerity, of refinement. And these are bred in years, not moments. The
principle that rules your life is the sure posture-master. Sir
Philip Sidney was the pattern to all England of a perfect
gentleman; but then he was the hero that, on the field of
Zutphen, pushed away the cup of cold water from his own
fevered and parching lips, and held it out to the dying soldier
at his side!" *  Such civility implies self-sacrifice, and it has
reached maturity after many struggles and conflicts. It is an
art and a tact, rather than an instinct or an inspiration. It is
the last touch, the crowning perfection, of a noble character; it
has been truly described as the gold on the spire, the sunlight
on the cornfield, the smile on the lip of the noble knight
lowering his sword-point to his lady-love; and it results only
from the truest balance and harmony of soul.
* Rev. F. D. Huntington, D.D.
158 
BUSINESS HABITS.
CHAPTER XII.
BUSINESS HABITS.
Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister.  PLINY.
"Habit at first is but a silken thread,
Fine as the light-winged gossamers that sway
In the warm sunbeams of a summer's day;
A shallow streamlet, rippling o'er its bed;
A tiny sapling, ere its roots are spread;
A yet unhardened thorn upon the spray;
A lion's whelp that hath not scented prey;
A little smiling child obedient led.
Beware! that thread may bind thee as a chain;
That streamlet gather to a fatal sea;
That sapling spread into a gnarled tree;
That thorn, grown hard, may wound and give thee pain; 
That playful whelp his murderous fangs reveal;
That child, a giant, crush thee'neath his heel."
"A man is not physically perfect who has lost his little finger. It is no
answer to say that such a man can do many things as well as before his mutilation. Can he do every thing as well? So every bad habit cripples in kind,
though not in degree."
Custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by
this gentle and humble beginning, with the aid of time, fixed and established
it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we
have no more the courage nor the power so much as to lift up our eyes. -
MONTAIGNE.
N some of our large mechanical establishments may be seen
a machine invented to operate upon cold iron. With all
the ease and quiet of a common printing-press, it exerts a force
equal to a thousand tons, whilst at every pressure of the "cam"
large cubes are pressed out of the solid bar as easily as one can
break earthenware or mould clay. It will push its hard steel
finger through iron two inches thick, without the slightest jarring or failure in the regularity of its action. What is the
secret of this prodigious and constant power? It is found in
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the accumulated force of the balance-wheel, which, revolving
one hundred and thirty times a minute, bears with overwhelming force upon the steel punch, and must either break the whole
machine into fragments, or pierce through every obstacle.
In this ingenious piece of mechanism we have a striking illustration of the power of habit. Who has not seen, in hundreds
of instances, a moral force accumulated by it as resistless as
that of the balance-wheel? There are times of pressure in
every man's life when he would utterly fail but for the help
thus afforded; but, fortunately, at the crisis, by the force of
principles that have gathered energy by long and persevering
habit, he is carried over the dead-point, and then is able to
rally his strength for new trials. The vast reserve power that
lies in habit has often been noticed by moralists. Man, says
Paley, is a bundle of habits; and habit, according to the proverb, is a second nature, which, we all know, is sometimes so
poweful as to exterminate the first.  Metastasio held so strong
an opinion as to the power of repetition in thought and act,
that he said: "All is habit in mankind, even virtue itself."
Beginning with single acts, habit is formed slowly at first, and
it is not till its spider's threads are woven into a thick cable
that its existence is suspected. Then it is found that, beginning with cobwebs, it ends in chains. Gulliver was bound as
fast by the Liliputians with multiplied threads as if they had
used ropes.   "Like flakes of snow that fall unperceived upon
the earth," says Jeremy Bentham, "the seemingly unimportant
events of life succeed one another.   As  the snow gathers
together, so are our habits formed; no single flake that is added
to the pile produces a sensible change; no single action creates,
however it may exhibit, a man's character; but as the tempest
hurls the avalanche down the mountain, and overwhelms the
inhabitant and his habitation, so passion, acting upon the
elements of mischief which pernicious habits have brought
together by imperceptible accumulation, may overthrow the
edifice of truth and virtue."
The force of this principle is strikingly illustrated in the
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fact that it renders pleasant things which at first were intensely
disagreeable or even painful. Walking upon the quarter-deck
of a vessel, though felt at first to be intolerably confined, becomes by custom so agreeable to a sailor, that in his walk on
shore he often hems himself within the same bounds. Lord
Kames tells of a man who, having relinquished the sea for a
country life, reared in the corner of his garden an artificial
mount, with a level summit, resembling most accurately a quarter-deck, not only in shape, but in size, where he generally
walked. When Franklin was superintending the erection of
some forts on the frontier, as a defence against the Indians, he
slept at night in a blanket on the hard floor, and, on his first
return to civilized life, could hardly sleep in a bed. Captain Ross
and his crew, having been accustomed during their polar wanderings to lie on the frozen snow or the bare rock, afterwards
found the accommodations of a whaler too luxurious for them,
and he was obliged to exchange his hammock for a chair. The
same principle, in another form, is illustrated in the case of
persons born blind, or deprived of sight, who, acquiring a habit
of nice observation through the sense of feeling, astonish us
by their accurate descriptions of things which they have examined by means of their exquisitely delicate touch. So powerful is this effect of the constant repetition of actions, that men
whose habits are fixed may be almost said to have lost their free
agency. Their acts become of the nature of fate, and they are so
bound by the chains which they have woven for themselves, that
they do that which they have been accustomed to do, even when
they know it can yield neither pleasure nor profit. Fielding has
strikingly illustrated this in a scene in the "Life of Jonathan
Wild," where that person is represented as playing at cards
with the Count, a professed gambler: "Such was the power
of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr.
Wild could not keep his hands out of the Count's pockets,
though he knew they were empty; nor could the Count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware Mr. Wild
had no money to pay him."
x
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It has been truly said that even happiness itself may become
habitual.   One may acquire the habit of looking upon the
sunny side of things, and he may also acquire the habit of
looking upon the gloomy side. He may accustom himself by
a happy alchemy to transmute the darkest events into materials
for hope, or he may indulge in the practice of croaking till,
like the malevolent being of the poet,
Vix tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit.
Hume, the historian, said that the habit of looking at the
bright side of things was better than an income of a thousand
a year. It was said of Cromwell that hope shone like a fiery
pillar in him when it had gone out in all others.
Such being the power of habit, can any one doubt that upon
the early formation of good habits hinges the question of success in life? Above all, can we doubt that habits of patient
and accurate observation, such as we have said the blind man
evinces, would be of incalculable value, if brought to bear upon
the thousand and one details of business life?  Or is there a
question that the opposite habits of negligence and inattention
must lead to disaster or ruin?
Hazlitt seems to have regarded a business life as so much a
matter of habit, of mere routine, as to be adapted only to plodders.  In one of his brilliant essays he represents business men
as mere machines. They are put in a go-cart, and are harnessed
to a profession, - yoked to fortune's wheel. All they have to
do, he says, is to let things take their course, and not go out of
the beaten road.  "The great requisite for the prosperous management of business is the want of imagination, or of any ideas
but those of custom and interest on the narrowest scale." Take
what you can get, he adds, and keep what you have got; seize
eagerly every opportunity that offers for promoting your own
interest, and make the most of the advantages you have already
obtained, and by plodding, persevering industry, you will become a first-class merchant.
This is a favorite doctrine of some literary men, but nothing
162 
BUSINESS HABITS.
can be more untrue. No doubt there are narrow-minded men
of business, who measure everything by yard or tape-measure;
who believe in nothing which, as Burke says, "they cannot
measure with a two-foot rule,- which they cannot count with
their ten fingers"; and whose lives run in a groove from which
they never escape. But are there no lawyers, doctors, or theo logians who are plodders; and do literary men never echo the
old commonplaces, instead of delighting us by their breadth
and originality of thought?  Great men in every profession
must necessarily be few. The legal boasts but few Marshalls,
Pinckneys, and Websters; the medical but few Coopers, Brodies, Yelpeaus, and Warrens; the clerical but few Barrows,
Edwardses, Masons, and Channings. The names of our great
statesmen may almost be counted on the fingers. A small business demands but a small mind; but that business when conducted on a large scale does not give scope for the display of
the very highest powers of the mind, it is not easy to believe.
In past ages, before the invention of the steam-engine and the
electric telegraph, when commerce had a narrow range, but few
faculties of the mind were called into play by business; but
to-day, when submarine cables are making of the whole world
a whispering gallery, and the fluctuations of one market are
felt in every other, when so varied a knowledge and so constant a watchfulness are necessary to success, it cannot be
doubted that application to work, absorption in affairs, contact
with men, and all the stress which business imposes, give a
most efficient training to the intellect, and the highest scope for
the discipline of character. When we consider what mental
powers are demanded to conduct a colossal trade, or to push
through any great commercial scheme,- that it demands sound
judgment, precise adaptation of means to ends, great energy,
promptness of decision and action in emergencies, skill in organizing and tact in managing men in large numbers, as well as
many minor qualities,-  we shall conclude that consummate
men of business are as rare almost as great poets, orators, or
painters.
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A writer in the London Pall Mall Gazette says, justly,
that "it is an utterly low view of business which regards it as
only a means of getting a living. A man's business is his part
of the world's work, his share of the great activities which
render society possible. He may like it or dislike it, but it is
work, and as such requires application, self-denial, discipline.
It is his drill, and he cannot be thorough in his occupation
without putting himself into it, checking his fancies, restraining
his impulses, and holding himself to the perpetual round of
small details,- without, in fact, submitting to his drill. But
the perpetual call on a man's readiness, self-control, and vigor,
which business makes, the constant appeal to the intellect, the
stress upon the will, the necessity for rapid and responsible exercise of judgment,     all these constitute a high culture, though
not the highest. It is a culture which strengthens and invigorates, if it does not refine; which gives force, if not polish,the fortiter in re, if not the suaviter in modo. It makes strong
men, and ready men, and men of vast capacity for affairs,
though it does not necessarily make refined men or gentlemen."
Among the habits required for the efficient prosecution of
business of any kind, the most important are those of a.pplication, observation, method, accuracy, punctuality, and despatch.
There are persons who will sneer at these virtues as little
things, trifles unworthy of their notice. But it must be remembered that human life is made up of trifles; and that, as
the pence make the pounds and the minutes the hours, so it is
the repetition of things severally insignificant that make up
human character. In nine cases out of ten where men have
failed of success, it has been owing  to the neglect of little
things deemed too microscopic to need attention.
Upon the importance of assiduity, or unremitting application to business, it is needless to dwell. All the men who
have made their own fortunes have been pre-eminently distinguished for their intense and steady industry, the habit of
which was early formed. If you would succeed, you must
give your whole mind, heart, and soul to your work. To do
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BUSINESS HABITS.
this, you must love your work; in no other way can you be
diligent; the very word, in its etymology, implies it. It is
not talents or acquirements, but enthusiasm and energy, that
win the battle of life. It is ardor and earnestness that make
a man's blows tell; a sharp stroke from a whip will do more
execution than a deliberate swing of a bar of iron. It was
well remarked by a Wall Street capitalist, that a bank never
becomes very successful until it has a president who takes it to
bed with him. Next to the youth who has no calling, he is
most to be pitied who toils without heart, and is therefore forever dawdliny, -loitering and lingering, instead of striking
with all his might.   Laziness, fickleness, impatience, may be
cured; but the habit of dawdling, once formed, is ineradicable.
Its consequences are the more disastrous because it is never
found alone, but always in company with other bad habits,
such as procrastination, fickleness, lack of punctuality, and
often with untruthfulness. One of the qualities which early
distinguished John C. Calhoun was his power of attention. A
gentleman who in his youth was wont to accompany Mr. Calhoun
in his strolls states that the latter endeavored to impress upon
his friend the importance of cultivating this faculty; "and to
encourage me in my efforts," says the writer, "he stated that
to this end he had early subjected his mind to such a rigid
course of discipline, and had persisted without faltering until
he had early acquired a perfect control over it; that he could
now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased, without
wandering even for a moment; that it was his uniform habit,
when he set out alone to walk or ride, to select a subject for
reflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander
from it until he was satisfied with its examination."
It has been remarked by Sir William Hamilton  that "the
difference between an ordinary mind and the mind of Newton
consists principally in this, that the one is capable of a more
continuous attention than the other, - that a Newton is able,
without fatigue, to connect inference with inference in one
long series toward a determined end; while the man of in
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ferior capacity is soon obliged to break or let fall the thread
which he has begun to spin..... Nay, genius itself has
been analyzed by the shrewdest observers into a higher capacity
of attention.' Genius,' says Helvetius,' is nothing but a continued attention.''Genius,' says Buffon,' is only a protracted
patience.''In the exact sciences, at least,' says Cuvier,'it is
the patience of sound intellect, when invincible, which truly
constitutes genius.' And Chesterfield has also observed that
' the power of applying an attention, steady and undissipated,
to a single object, is the sure mark of superior genius."'
Cultivate, then, this habit, if you would succeed in business.
Make it a second nature.  Have a work for every moment, and
mind the moment's work. Whatever your calling, master all
its bearings and details, all its principles, instruments, and applications. Let nothing about it escape your notice; sound it
"from its lowest note to the top of its compass."
The habit of method is essential to all who have much work
to do, if they would get through it easily and with economy
of time.   Fuller, the old divine, says to those who would remember what they read: "Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and
packed up in bundles, than when it lies untowardly flapping
and hanging about his shoulders." Cecil, who was a prodigious
worker, has a similar hint.  "Method," he says, "is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much
again as a bad one." The biographer of Noah Webster tells us
that "method was the presiding principle of his life"; and it
is evident that without it he never could have got through with
the herculean task of compiling his great dictionary. Coleridge,
though himself one of the most immethodical of men, yet
thought so highly of method that he wrote a treatise on it for
the Encyclopsedia Metropolitana. It is said that Whitefield
could not go to sleep at night, if, after retiring, he remembered
that his gloves and riding-whip were not in their usual place,
where he could lay'his hands upon them in the dark or any
emergency.    Napoleon, who  astonished  the sovereigns  of 
BUSINESS HABITS.
Europe at the Congress of Erfurt by the minuteness of his
knowledge of historic dates, was an eminently systematic man.
He used to say that his knowledge was all deposited in drawers,
and he had only to open a particular drawer, and all that he
had learned on a subject was ready to his hand.
There is no business which does not demand system.  The
meanest trade exacts it, and will go to ruin without it. But in
a complicated business it is indispensable. It is this that binds
all its parts together, and gives unity to all its details. Without it the vast energies of the great merchant who gathers and
distributes the products of every clime, linking the four quarters of the globe by his far-reaching agencies, would be an impossibility.   Commissioners of insolvency say that the books
of nine bankrupts out of ten are found to be in a muddle,kept without plan or method.   Let every young man, therefore, see to it that his work is systematized,- arranged according to a carefully studied method, which takes up everything
at the right time and applies to it adequate resources. It is
easy, of course, to sneer at "red tape."  In the sense of a mere
dead and meaningless routine, it merits all the contempt poured
upon it. The mere formalist, with his cast-iron rules that never
bend to circumstances, is a poor creature. Method without
flexibility, which ceases to be a means, and becomes an end,
proves a hindrance rather than a help; and he who, forgetting
its inner meaning, becomes its slave, shows a narrowness of
mind which is unfitted for great and comprehensive enterprises.
But an intelligent method, which surveys the whole work before it, and assigns the several parts to distinct times and
agents, which adapts itself to exigencies, and keeps ever in
its eye the object to be attained, is one of the most powerful
instruments of human labor. The professional or business man
who despises it will never do anything well.  It matters not
how clever or brilliant he is, or how fertile in expedients, if he
work without system, catching up whatever is nearest at hand,
or trying to do half a dozen things at once, he will sooner or later
come to grief. Not only in the less intellectual callings, but in
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the learned professions, the mere plodder who " pegs away"
with steady, methodical industry, will outstrip him in the end.
The importance of system in the discharge of daily duties
was strikingly illustrated in the experience of Dr. Kane when
he was locked up among the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, with
the prospect of months of dreary imprisonment.   With his
men enfeebled by disease and privations, and when all but
eight of his company had left him to search for a way of
escape, he sustained the drooping spirits of the handful who
clung to him, and kept up their energies, by systematic performance of duties and moral discipline.  "It is," he observes,
"the experience of every man who has either combated difficulties himself or attempted to guide others through them,
that the controlling law shall be systematic action. Nothing
depresses and demoralizes so much as a surrender of the
approved and habitual forms of life. I resolved that everything should go on as it had done. The arrangement of hours,
the distribution and details of duty, the religious exercises, the
ceremonials of the table,. the fires, the lights, the watch, the
labors of the observatory, and the notation of the tides and the
sky, - nothing should be intermitted that had contributed to
make up the day."
The necessity of accuracy to success in any calling is so
obvious as hardly to need remark. Vital in scholarship, of
the utmost importance to the professional man, it is scarcely
less indispensable to success in trade or the mechanical callings. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
It is better to do a few things carefully, precisely as they
should be done, than to do ten times as many in a loose, slovenly way. Evident as all this is, yet hardly any quality is
more rare than that of which we speak. Lawyers, in questioning witnesses, have painful experience of this fact. They
find nothing harder than to get the exact truth without subtraction or addition, coloring or qualification. Always there is
a more or less, and this, too, when the witness is conscientious,
and anxious "a round, unvarnished tale" to deliver.   Scien
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tific men, also, have complained bitterly of the difficulty of getting men to define a fact accurately.  "I do not know that there
is anything, except it be humility," says Arthur Helps, "which
is so valuable as an incident of education as accuracy. And
accuracy can be taught. Direct lies told to the world are as
dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoods of inaccuracy. These are the fatal things; and they are all-pervading. I scarcely care what is taught to the young, if it will but
implant in them the habit of accuracy."
It matters little what virtues a man has, if he is habitually
inexact. Be he a lawyer, an architect, an accountant, or an
artisan, his work is done so poorly that it has to be done over
again, causing infinite trouble and perplexity. The author of
Self-Help observes that it was one of the characteristic qualities
of Charles James Fox, that he was thoroughly pains-taking in
all that he did. "When appointed Secretary of State, being
piqued at some observation as to his bad writing, he actually
took a writing-master, and wrote copies like a school-boy until
he had sufficiently improved himself.   Though  a corpulent
man, he was wonderfully active in picking up cut tennis balls,
and when asked how he contrived to do so, he playfully replied,
' Because I am a very painstaking man.' The same accuracy in
trifling matters was displayed by him in things of greater importance; and he acquired his reputation, like the painter, by
' neglecting nothing."'
Punctuality is another virtue which must be cultivated by
all who would succeed in any calling, whether lofty or humble.
It is emphatically the virtue of a mercantile and busy community. Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner
than this quality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps his
reputation than that of being always behind time. Thousands
have failed in life from this cause alone. Unpunctuality is
not only a serious vice in itself, but it is also the parent of a
large progeny of other vices, so that he who becomes its victim
becomes involved in toils from which it is almost impossible to
escape. He who needlessly breaks his appointment shows that
8
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he is as reckless of the waste of others' time as of his own.
His acquaintances readily conclude that the man who is not
conscientious about his appointments will be equally careless
about his other engagements, and they will refuse to trust him
with matters of importance. To the busy man time is money,
and he who robs him of it does him as great an injury, so far
as loss of property is concerned, as if he had picked his pocket,
or paid him with a forged check or counterfeit bills.
Whether a man steals from me a dollar, or the half-hour in
which I can earn that sum, is to me a matter of indifference.
The former crime may be the more demoralizing to the offender; but my loss is as great in one case as in the other. It
has been justly said that there is as much injustice and cruelty
in destroying a man's comfort during the five minutes you
keep him waiting, as in giving him an actual blow.  But suppose ten or twenty men are kept waiting for one man, and
that, too, in the business part of the day, when every moment
is precious; what shall we say of such conduct? The robbery
is as great as that of a quarter or half of a day to one man.
By an utterly inexcusable negligence he causes an utter perdition of capital and labor to that amount,- more, perhaps, than
by his own industry he can replace in a month, -to say
nothing of the vexation he has caused, unfitting twenty men
for their duties for all the rest of the day.
It is a familiar truth that punctuality is the life of the universe. The planets keep exact time in their revolutions, each,
as it circles round the sun, coming to its place yearly at the
very moment when it is due. So, in business, punctuality is
the soul of industry, without which all its wheels come to a
dead stand. If the time of a business man is properly occupied, every hour will have its appropriate work. If the work
of one hour is postponed to another, it must encroach upon the
time of some other duty, or remain undone; and thus the
whole business of the day is thrown into disorder. "When a
regiment is under march," writes Sir Walter Scott to a young
man who had asked his advice, "the rear is often thrown inito
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confusion because the front do not move steadily and without
interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that
which is first in hand be not instantly, steadily, and regularly
despatched, other things accumulate behind, till affairs begin
to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion."
Let every business man, then, keep a watch, and let him
carefully regulate it, so that it may never be ahead or behind
the stroke of the bell. Captain Cuttle had a watch of which
he said that "if he could only remember to set it ahead half an
hour in the forenoon, and back a quarter of an hour in the
afternoon, it would keep time with anybody's watch." Too
many business men have similar timekeepers, which they forget
to set ahead; the result of which is that they are late at the
counting-room, late at the office, or late on'change.   True,
they are often tardy but five or ten minutes, but it is just
enough to break their engagement, damage their reputation,
and lose a bargain.   Punctuality should be made not only a
point of courtesy, but a point of conscience. The beginner
in business should make this virtue one of the first objects of
professional acquisition. Let him not delude himself with the
idea that it is easy of attainment, or that he can practise it by
and by, when the necessity of it shall be more cogent. It is
not easy to be punctual, no, not even in youth; but in afterlife, when the character is fixed, when the mental and moral
faculties have acquired a cast-iron rigidity, to unlearn the
habit of tardiness is almost an impossibility.   It sticks to the
man, though the reason be fully convinced of its criminality
and inconvenience.
The successful men in every calling have had a keen sense of
the value of time. They have been misers of minutes. Nelson
attributed all his success in life to having been a quarter of an
hour before his time. Napoleon studied his watch as closely
as he studied the maps of the battle-field. His victories were
not won by consummate strategy merely, but by impressing
his subordinates with the necessity of punctuality to the min
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ute. Manceuvring over large spaces of country, so that the
enemy was puzzled to decide where the blow would fall, he
would suddenly concentrate his forces and fall with resistless
might on some weak point in the extended lines of the foe, -
a plan the successful execution of which demanded that every
division of his army should be at the place named at the very
hour. It is related that on one occasion his marshals, who had
been invited to dine with him, were ten minutes late. Rising
to meet them, the Emperor, who began his dinner as the clock
struck and had finished, said: "Gentlemen, it is now past
dinner, and we will immediately proceed to business"; whereupon the marshals were obliged to spend the afternoon in planning a campaign on an empty stomach. Later in life, Napoleon
was less prompt; and it was his loss of precious hours on the
morning of Ligny, and his inexplicable dawdling on the day
after the defeat of Blucher, which contributed more than any
other cause to the fatal overthrow at Waterloo. On the other
hand, it was the promptness and punctuality of "Marshal
Forward" (as Blucher was nicknamed by his troops) which
enabled Wellington to convert what otherwise would have
probably been a drawn battle into a brilliant victory. The
Napoleon of Austerlitz and Jena would have made history tell
a different story. It is said that Colonel Rahl, the Hessian
commander who in the American Revolution was routed and
taken prisoner at Trenton, lost the battle through procrastination. Engrossed in a game of cards, he postponed the reading
of a letter which reached him, informing him that Washington was about to cross the Delaware, and thus lost the opportunity of thwarting the design of the American general, and
perhaps giving a different direction to the War of Independence. Washington, on the other hand, was so rigidly punctual, that when Hamilton, his secretary, pleaded a slow watch
as an excuse for being five minutes tardy, he replied: "Then,
sir, either you must get a new watch, or I must get a new
secretary."
In the business world punctuality is as important as in the
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military.  "Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take
care of themselves," is the secret of getting rich; and so in
the time-currency, minutes are the precious pence that, saved
or lost, make the millionnaire or the bankrupt. How many
persons have been ruined by neglecting for a day, or even an
hour, to renew an insurance policy! How many merchants
are made bankrupts by delays of their customers in paying
their notes or accounts! Often the failure of one man to
meet his obligations promptly causes the ruin of a score of
other men, just as in a line of bricks the toppling down of the
master brick necessitates the fall of all the rest.
John Quincy Adams, who filled a greater number of important offices, political and civil, than has any other American,
was pre-eminently punctual.   He was an economist of moments, and was never known to be behind time. His reputation in this respect was such that when in his old age he was a
member of the House of Representatives at Washington, and
a gentleman observed that it was time to call the House to
order, another replied, "No, Mr. Adams is not in his seat."
The clock, it was found, was actually three minutes too fast;
and, before three minutes had elapsed, Mr. Adams was at his
post.
While the business man should be especially punctual to
his express engagements with other persons, he should also
keep all his implied engagements, and therefore should be
always at his shop or office at the regular hour. There are
some kinds of work which men are comparatively excusable
for doing irregularly. Literary labor, which depends so much
upon the condition of the mind and body, is of this kind.
Milton was in the vein only in the springtime; and many
lesser writers can realize their ideals only when they are
inspired by circumstances beyond their control. Yet not a
few writers have schooled themselves to write at set hours;
and Dr. Johnson went so far as to say that a man could write
at any hour and in any mood, if he would but set himself
doggedly about it. But mercantile men and business men
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generally have no excuse for irregularity. They have not to
wait for moods and impulses,- for the afflatus or inspiration
which is so capricious with men whose business is all of the
brain and none of the hand.  They are therefore expected,
and justly expected, to be promptly at their posts, ready always to attend to the business of buying and selling, giving
professional advice, or whatever other duties belong to their
calling; and it is evident that of two such men of equal talents, the one who is always at his desk or shop at the striking
of the clock cannot fail to secure the greater number of customers.
To all the habits we have named should be added, lastly,
that of despatch. The other qualities upon which we have insisted are of more vital importance; but when this is added, it
puts the keystone to the arch of a business character. Many
professional men, traders, and artisans do their work thoroughly,
accurately, and punctually, who fail just here. They have
never caught the knack of doing it quickly. Hardly anything
is more characteristic of a first-class workman than the brisk,
expeditious way in which he executes any job intrusted to
him.   Of  course, quickness should always be secondary to
thoroughness. Nothing can atone for the lack of completeness and accuracy. True despatch is not a smart and facile
activity, which skims over a subject lightly, or dashes off a job
perfunctorily, satisfied with imperfect work provided it is done
speedily.   It is a quickness  which  follows from thorough
knowledge and the highest skill,- from the perfection of a
method which takes everything at the right time, and applies
to it the needed resources.  It is the triumph of experience
and system. To the energetic, systematic man it matters not
how complex a business is. The more it tasks his faculties,
the more does it evoke his latent powers, so that to do increases
the capacity of doing, and a large amount of work is done
with greater ease than a small amount by a slow man.
It is an inestimable advantage when to a habit of despatch
is added the gift of readiness,- the ability to use all one's
1'1'4 
BUSINESS HIIABITS.
resources instantly and at the right moment. We say " gift,"
because the ready man is born, not made. No amount of cultivation will enable a man to say and do the best things on
the spur of the moment, to dash off a masterly newspaper or
review article on some memorable event immediately after it
occurs, or to take instant advantage of an enemy's blunder,
like Napoleon or Marlborough. Readiness is a natural tact or
intuition, an inspiration, a kind of presence of mind which
enables one to meet a crisis, parry a thrust, strike a blow, or
say the right word, in the very "nick of time," without reflection or delay.   In war, politics, journalism, at the bar
and in the Senate, in social intercourse, it is a great power.
In all kinds of tongue-fence-  the close hand-to-hand encounter
of intellects, where the home thrust is often so suddenly
given-  it is indispensable.   It is not the amount of knowledge, the number of facts or statistics which a man has in his
cranium, that makes him a dangerous antagonist, but his ability
to marshal them and bring them to bear instantly upon any
point.   So, too, in business pursuits, the ready man, other
things being equal, is pre-eminently the successful man.
The Americans, as a people, have no lack of readiness.
Collectively considered, we do not want dash and ela)s. Our
intellectual resources, such as they are, are usually at our command, and we can concentrate them with wonderful quickness
in any exigency. Still, there are not a few of us who find
ourselves at times in the condition of Artemus Ward in respect
to oratory: "I have the gift of oratory," said  the Maine
Yankee, "but I have n't it about me."  How often an opportunity occurs to a young lawyer, or other professional man, to
make a reputation by a single speech or other intellectual
effort, if he were only ready!  If he could have a little time
for preparation, - a day or a few hours only, -- he would acquit
himself brilliantly. But time never is given; and because he
cannot act now, at the very crisis, he loses the golden opportunity forever. To achieve any rare success in this world, we
must be sem,1er parati, with our wits always about us.  We
must think and act as quickly and wisely in an emergency as
175 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
did Baron Munchausen, who, being once threatened at the same
moment by a crocodile and a tiger, disposed of both his assailants by stepping aside and allowing the tiger to jump down
the crocodile's throat. It is not enough, after the game has
flown, that we migyt have brought it down, if our guns had
been cocked and loaded.   "'What a scathing reply I might
have made to Smith about Darwinism!' is the regretful reflection of Jones, as he retires heated and discomfited from a
contest with Smith on the subject of natural selection. What
capital things we might say and don't!.... When  we are
alone, we invent the happiest of retorts; the most unanswerable arguments flash upon us without an effort on our part;
we feel that we have more weapons in our mental armory than
Brown ever dreamed of; yet, somehow, when Brown attacks
us suddenly, we cannot bring our twelve-pounder to bear upon
him before he has shot us through and through with his ready
little revolver. We of the superior metal find ourselves spiked,
so to speak. The fact is, we lack readiness."
It was so, if we may credit Fuller, with Ben Jonson in his
"wit-combats" with Shakespeare.   The  two were  "like a
Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. MIaster
Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning;
solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the
English man-of-war, lesser in bulk but lighter in sailing, could
turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantages of all
winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."
A powerful encouragement to the formation of business
habits is found in the fact that, once formed, they operate spontaneously.  The wonderful accuracy of the forest-bred Indian
in detecting and describing the number  and character of a
party who have preceded him through the woods, and the certainty with which hie will determine the time since they left
any particular spot, have often astonished white men, who
could perceive no signs upon which to found an opinion. Yet
the red man rarely blunders, for he has schooled his senses
into unerring habits of nice and accurate observation. But,
because it is a habit, he is not obliged to force his mind; it is
176 
BUSINESS HABITS.
his pleasure, and forms one of the charms of forest life, to
watch every indented leaf, every faint footprint, every minute
and barely perceptible sign that some one has gone before him.
So when a merchant has acquired the habit of watching the
markets, studying the laws of demand and supply, ascertaining
the probability of a financial crisis, and looking after all the
other details of his business, it becomes a pleasurable excitement instead of a wearisome effort. Indeed, the very habits
of nice order and observation which require the most painstaking care to form them, often become a hobby, at last, which
one delights to ride as much as a child his rocking-horse. It
is notorious that those persons who have reached the highest
eminence in the law were disgusted with it at first. Lord
Somers told Addison that, having been obliged to search
among old musty records, the task which was inexpressibly
irksome at first became at last so very pleasant that he preferred it to reading Virgil or Cicero, though classical literature
had been his constant delight.
To sum up all, what is business but habit, the soul of which
is regularity? Like the fly-wheel upon a steam-engine, it is
this principle which keeps the motion of life steady and unbroken, distributing the force equally over all the work to
be performed. But such habits as we have commended are
not to be formed in a day, nor by a few faint resolutions.
Not by accident, not by fits and starts,- being one moment
in a paroxysm of attention, and the next falling into the sleep
of indifference,- are they to be attained, but by steady, persistent effort.  Above all, it is necessary that they should be
acquired in youth; for then do they cost the least effort.
Like letters cut in the bark of a tree, they grow and widen
with age. Once attained, they are a fortune of themselves;
for their possessor has- disposed thereby of the heavy end of
the load of life; all that remains he can carry easily and pleasantly. On the other hand, bad habits, once formed, will hang
forever on the wheels of enterprise, and in the end will assert
their supremacy, to the ruin and shame of their victim.
8*                                     L
II
II
177 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER XIII.
SELF-ADVERTISING.
The pious and just honoring of ourselves may be thought the radical moisture and fountain-head from whence every laudable and worthy enterprise
issues forth. - MILTON.
I know that I am censured of some conceit of my ability or worth; but I
pray your Majesty impute it to my desire, -possunt quia posse vtdenticr.LORD BACON to JAMES I.
Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of. - SWIFT.
On ne vaut que ce qu'on vent valoir. - LA BRUYERE.
HALL a man be his own trumpeter? or, relying on his
merits, shall he aim to be rather than to seem qualified for
his business, and leave the world to find out the fact for itself?
This is a question which confronts every man at the very out set of his career. How the world has answered it we need
not say. The mythologists tell us that Minerva threw away
the flute when she found that it puffed up her cheeks; but if
in this age men cast away the flute, it is to use a more potent
instrument of puffing, by blowing their own trumpets. This
instrument, it is almost universally agreed, should be of brass.
Not only in trade, but in all the professions, self-trumpeting is
now acknowledged to be the great talisman of success, and the
man who can blow his horn the longest and loudest is regarded
as the most likely to reach the pinnacle of riches and respectability, if not of honor.
The old-fashioned modes of securing patronage or custom,
by strict integrity and quiet attention to one's business, are
scouted on all hands.  Merit is voted "a slow coach," and
modesty a humbug. A writer in one of our most popular
magazines goes so far as to assert that a tinge of charlatanism
I
178 
SELF-ADVERTISING.
seems, indeed, almost necessary to a career, whether in business, literature, art, or science.  "A little unscrupulousness,"
he adds, "generally flavors the finest achievements. Nature
insists, apparently, that the best of us shall use some contrivance, and will permit nobody to neglect it entirely, without
suffering penalties."  Acting upon this doctrine, an enterprising tradesman, whose business chances to be hat-making, never
dreams of setting himself diligently to make better hats than
another, that so the heads of the human race may be more
honorably covered; but he sets up an enormous lath-anldplaster hat on wheels, and sends it circulating through the
streets with the speculative hope of persuading us into a conviction of his superiority, and thereby gaining an influx of
custom. He outbids the world for its patronage by the boldness of his proclamations, and expects to succeed by the very
extravagance of his pretensions.   A  man who  has  music
neither in his soul nor in his larynx, and whose voice, when
he attempts to sing, reminds you of Milton's infernal gates,
"grating harsh thunder," would have you believe him  a fine
vocalist; and so, instead of ravishing your ears with
"Many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,"
he resorts to the " dodge" of paying six hundred dollars for a
seat at Jenny Lind's first concert in America. Gullibility, in
short, is deemed the surest avenue to success, and hence human ingenuity is evermore racked and tortured for new means
of attracting and securing attention, the results of which
everywhere confront us,- on the walls of buildings, in endless circulars, in newspaper advertisements, in boys at streetcorners thrusting mysterious slips of paper into our hands, in
huge placards borne on men's shoulders, and in the lumbering
caravans - with ear-stunning bands of music which obstruct
the thoroughfares of our large cities. Blow your own trumpet
is the advice of every one, if you do not wish to be trampled
under foot in the rush of competitive strife, and die in o
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
scurity. Sound your charge, and ride over somebody, or somebody will sound his charge, and ride over you.
Now and then you meet with a simple-minded man who
gives all his soul to doing his work well.   But this, the
worldly wise will tell you, is an egregious mistake. Such a
mode of procedure might do in Mars or Saturn, but is totally
out of place in this puffing, advertising, bill-sticking part of
creation. The art of self-advancement is not so much to do a
thing well, as to get a thing which has been moderately well
done largely talked about. The works of a De Quincey, with,
out newspaper puffing, would find purchasers only among
pastry-cooks and barbers; while the sensational novel of the
Monk Lewis or Ainsworth school, whose name stares out upon
you in Gothic capitals from newspapers and posters, sells as
well as Jayne's Expectorant, and the platitudes of Martin F.
Tupper are as popular as Mustang Liniment.
Now that this policy, however sharply it may be censured
by the moralist, is more conducive to success than its opposite,
cannot, we think, be doubted. Travellers in Oriental countries
tell us that to him who would be respected there a certain air
of conscious importance is indispensable. The Orientals, they
say, have no notion that it can "pay" to respect a man who
does not respect himself; and therefore if a Pacha of two tails
does you the honor of a visit, you must demean yourself as if
you were a Pacha of three. But does not the same rule hold
good all the world over?
How often do we see families taking a high rank in the
social scale, without any adventitious circumstances to back
their pretensions, simply because they set a high value upon
themselves, and discourage all intimacies except from aristocratic quarters!  How often, too, do we see the reverse exemplified in families that have every factitious advantage, but
which never rige in the social scale, because they never stickle
onl the score of dignity, and are ready to receive advances from
all persons, even the humblest and most plebeian! So the
modest maiden links herself to some shallow coxcomb, who is
180
I 
SELF-ADVERTISING.,
every way unworthy of her, but whose whole demeanor and
conversation show that he deems her honored by his addresses.
Indeed, it has been a standing complaint against the sex that
they yield too readily to brazen-faced assurance, recognizing
those virtues only that are played off like the ring on the
finger; that "are written as a scroll on the bold front, or
triumph in the laughing eye." So do we often determine our
position in less important relations,- at the festive board, or
in the social intercourse of man with man. What is more
common than to see the indifferent jests of a professed wag
echoed with loud laughter, because his own lungs have begun
to crow like chanticleer before he has uttered them, while the
timid, self-distrusting, nervous humorist stammers out the
wittiest conceits that are damned in the doubtful delivery, and
excite more pity than merriment? Does not the empty, noisy
debater, who puts forth the weakest arguments "with a confident brow, and a throng of words that come with more than
impudent sauciness from him," too often carry off the palm
with the multitude in preference to the logical reasoner, who,
by his less positive  and assured manner, his qualifications
and hair-splittings, awakens a doubt of the strength of his
convictions?
Look, again, at the literary world: is it not true here also,
that, as La Bruyere says, on ne vaut que ce qu'on veut valoir?
For a respectable niche in the temple of fame, it is not enough
to have real abilities alone; one must add that self-assurance
which will lead him to aim at high ends, and to assert his
claims before the public. "If you wish to pass for a great
author," says Hazlitt, "you ought not to look as if you were
ignorant that you had ever written a sentence or discovered a
single truth. If you keep your own secret, be assured the
world will keep it for you."  The same writer tells an amusing
story of a literary man, who, after having written upwards of
sixty columns of original matter for a leading London paper on
politics, criticism, belles-lettres, etc., was told, at the end of six
months, on applying to the editor for a renewal of his engage
181 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
ment, that " he might give in a specimen of what he could do'!"
The trouble was, says Hazlitt, he had, while thinking of his
literary matters, neglected "to point the toe," to hold up his
head higher than usual (having acquired a habit of poring
over books when young), and to get a new velvet collar to an
old-fashioned great-coat.   These are the graceful ornaments to
the columns of a newspaper, the Corinthian capitals of a polished style!  "Don't you remember," says Gray, in one of his
letters, "Lord C       and Lord M, who are  now  great
statesmen, little dirty boys playing at cricket 7 For my own
part, I don't feel myself a bit taller or older or wiser than I did
then." It is no wonder that a poet who thought in this manlner of himself was hunted from college to college; that he left
so few precious specimens of his fine powers, and shrunk from
his reputation into a silent grave.
Take, again, the learned professions. Paul Louis Courier
tells us that the greatest Greek scholar of his time, from his
lack of worldly tact, failed to obtain any of the appointments
destined for scholars; while his successful rival- Greek professor, Greek librarian, Greek academician- saw that study
led to nothing, and preferred having ten scholars' situations to
qualifying himself for one that he had not. The time and
toil which the one student devoted to books the other devoted
to ingratiating himself with the dispensers of patronage, and
in rendering them good offices which had no connection withb
the Greek tongue. Such is too often the result; the scholar
gets learning, the office-seeker position and patronage. Those
of our readers who are familiar with the brilliant comedies of
Sheridan will not forget his great statesman who gained his
honors simply by a shake of the head.  The gentleman passed
through life universally feared and respected simply on the
strength of this ominous speech:  "Ah! I could say something; but I won't." This thunderbolt he kept always in
reserve; he walked through life with a loaded pistol in his
hand, which he never discharged. At length, on his deathbed, he was entreated by his mourning friends not to leave the
182 
SELF-ADVERTISING.
world without disclosing to them the true nature of the terrible
sarcasm which he had so long kept in store. Vainly striving
to shake his head for the last time, as the pallor of death was
stealing over his countenance, he feebly murmured, " Ah! I
could say it, but I won't," and the oracle was forever dumb.
Is not success sometimes achieved by this oracular demeanor?
Again, there are two rival doctors in town, equal in learning
and skill, and who have just begun their professional careers.
Dr. Easy puts his card on his door and in the newspapers, and
then sits down in his office and waits patiently for patients. If,
fortunately, somebody is good enough to break a leg or to be
seized with the cholera at his very door, he secures a customer;
otherwise he may spend years in putting knowledge into his
head by study before he will put any money into his purse.
Not so with Dr. Push. IHe has a mean opinion of the passive
system, and not only puts up a stunning brass plate on his
door, but gets himself puffed in the newspapers, salaams to all
the "big wigs" of the town, dresses in the height of the fashion, talks learnedly of borborygmus and asphyxia, looks wise
as an owl, and keeps a splendid turnout, or "two forty" horse
and carriage, before he has a visit to make. He hires persons
to startle his neighbors at midnight with the peals of his bell;
is continually called out of church; and, more than once, has
had his name shouted, as being instantly wanted, while attending a concert or lecture at the Academy of Music.   Instead
of sitting down in his office and dozing over Brodie and Magendie, he scours the streets and the whole adjoining country
with his carriage, driving from morning till night at a killing
pace, as if life and death hung on his steps; and, neglecting no
form of advertisement, is probably charging two thousand dollars a year before Dr. Easy has heard the rap of his first patient.
Now, of the two men, Dr. Push may be the humbug; but he
certainly is not the fool.
Let us not be misunderstood. While we would say to the aspirant, "Be not too fastidious or over-sensitive," we do not mean,
"Be unscrupulous." Better sink into the abyssmal depths of
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
failure than give your conscience a single pang. But is there no
medium between the two extremes,- between the noisy, blatant pretension, that is forever stunning us with proclamations of
its own ability, and the excessive humility which "strips itself
to a buff-jerkin, to the doublet and hose" of its real merits, and
shrinks into a corner, frightened at the smallest shadow of its own
fame? Assuredly, such a medium there is, difficult to describe
exactly in words, but not impossible to realize in practice; and
at this every one who would succeed in life by honorable means
should aim. Because there is danger of invoicing yourself above
your real value, it does not follow that you should always underrate your own worth. Because to be successful, conspicuous,
known, you should not retire upon the centre of your conscious
resources, you need not necessarily be always at the circumference of appearances. But, of the two, an excess of modesty
is worse than an excess of pride; for it is, in fact, an excess
of pride in another form, only it is more hurtful to the individual, and less advantageous to society, than the grossest and
most unblushing vanity.
It is true we all patronize humility in the abstract, or, when
enshrined in another, it worships ourselves. We love to meet
a lowly man, who never piques our vanity, or thrusts himself
between us and the object of our pretensions. There is no one
who, if questioned, would not be found in the depths of his
heart secretly to prefer the modest man, proportionally despising the swaggerer who "goes unbidden to the head of the
feast." But, while such is our deliberate verdict when taken
to task in the matter, it is not the one we practically give.
The man who entertains a stout good opinion of himself always
contrives, somehow, to cheat us out of a corresponding one, to
a considerable extent; and we are too apt to acquiesce in his
assumptions, even though they may strike us unpleasantly.
Nor is there anything strange in this. It is but natural that
we should yield more readily to an active than to a passive claim
upon us.  "Admiration," it has been said, "like mocking, is
catching, and the good opinion which gets abroad of us begins
184 
SELF-ADVERTISING.
at home." The great mass of men have no time to examine
the merits of others. They are busy about their own affairs,
which claim all their attention.  They cannot go about hunting for modest worth in every nook and corner; those who
would get their good opinion must come forward with their
claims, and at least show their own confidence in them by backing them with vigorous assertion. If, therefore, a man of tolerably fair talents arrays his pretensions before us, if he duns
and pesters us for an admission of his merits, obtruding them
upon us incessantly, we are forced, at last, to notice them; and,
unless he fairly disgusts us by the extravagance of his claims,
shocking all sense of decency, we are inclined to admit them,
even in preference to superior merits which their possessor,
by never pressing them upon our notice, seems to undervalue.
From all this, it will not appear strange that a degree of
assurance is so essential to success in the world. The difficulty
is not that we do not decide fairly between the modest and the
pretending, when we actually weigh their claims; but we are
constantly apt to forget the true merits, from their unobtrusiveness. Unless something peculiar rouses us, we fail to notice
them, and they are in as bad a predicament as if they had
never existed. The self-esteeming, on the contrary, are always
on the alert, pushing their claims wherever and whenever they
can obtain an advantage.  Believing that, as lawyers say, "continual claim keeps alive the title to an estate," they omit no
opportunity to enforce their pretensions, but keep them ever
before us. By dint of continual assertion, they worry the arbiters of fame or favor out of that which their cool, unbiassed
judgment would assign to the more humble. Besides, one
hates to be always setting a high value upon those who set no
value upon themselves, and who sneak away into the obscurest
seats on all occasions. Great deeds they may have done, possibly, evincing brilliant abilities; but who can believe the fact,
while they themselves never speak of them, except perhaps to
underrate them?  It is the opinion we appear to cherish of
ourselves, from which (deeming we must be the best judges of
185 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
our own merits) others take, in a great measure, their opinion
of us on trust. It is taken for granted, in an age like the
present, that every man pretends to the utmost he can do, and
he who pretends to little is apt to be thought capable of nothing.
In short, lowliness and "unobtrusive worth" are very pretty
in theory, and pleasant to read of in moral disquisitions: but
he who relies on them; who is always crouching in a corner,
and cannot ask for his due; or who goes about, as Robert
Hall said, "with an air of perpetual apology for the unpardonable presumption of being in the world;" who never puts
himself forward, or, if he does, does so with the forlorn hope
with which Snug, the joiner, begs the audience to take him
for a lion; who cannot ssay that he wants anything, or cannot say it with sufficient loudness and pertinacity; who cannot make himself prominent at the right time, though he
knows it to be the right time,- may be a beautiful object of
creation, very lovable, and very much to be admired, but
must expect to be not only outstripped, but knocked, crushed,
and trampled underfoot, in the rush and roar of this nineteenth century.
It is a common trick of persons who have failed to get on
in the world to put on an air of injured innocence, and to
complain of the world's injustice in conferring its honors and
patronage on merely pushing men, while they, whose claims
are solid, are neglected. Indeed, no old saw is oftener repeated than the threadbare one about modest  merit being
neglected, while pretentious demerit is loaded with riches and
applause. Of this stereotyped talk WVrashington Irving justly
says that "it is too often a cant by which indolent and irresolute men seek to lay their want of success at the door of the
public.   Modest merit, however, is too apt to be inactive or
negligent or uninstructed merit.   Well-matured and well-disciplined talent is always sure of a market, provided it exerts
itself; but it must not cower at home and expect to be sought
for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success of
forward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are
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SELF-ADVERTISING.
passed over with neglect. But it usually happens that those
forward men have that valuable quality of promptness and activity without which w6rth is a mere inoperative property. A
barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion."
The last sentence contains the whole truth in a nutshell.
Wisely did Pythagoras enjoin his pupil to "reverence himself." To think meanly of one's self, it has been truly said,
"is to sink in one's own estimation as well as in that of others.
As the thoughts are, so will the acts be. Man cannot aspire,
if he look down; if he will rise, he must look up." The
poor Scotch weaver was therefore not very far out of the way,
in praying daily that he might have a better opinion of himself. The sum of the whole matter is, self-confidence makes
ability available. More than this, it frequently leads to the
very possession of the qualities only at first assumed. A man
of the most ordinary powers, inspired and strengthened by
this principle, will often perform a giant's labors, while without it the noblest intellect will expend itself in the triflinlgs
of a dwarf, and be eclipsed by inferior talent, endowed with
little merit beyond that of mere assurance. Do not, then, expect the world's attention or patronage while you sit in solemn
dignity, with folded arms, in the chimney-corner. As well
might you wait, like the rustic, for the stream to run by. In
the closet you should undoubtedly act on the assumption that
your intellectual attainments fall far short of what is required
by the necessities of your station. But in the world's busy
hum, an unshaken confidence in your own resources should be
the firm conviction of the understanding, and the genuine feelin,, of the heart. Put yourself forward, then, if you would be
known. Blow some kind of a trumpet, or a least a penny
whistle, to draw the world's eye upon you; but be sure that
you are what you pretend to be, before you blow; then, having entered the arena, if you fail in the athletic games, - if, to
use Webster's language to Hayne, "the vigor and spirit of the
attack fall short of the lofty and sounding phrase of the manifesto "- woe be unto you! But if you triumph, your fortune
is made.
187 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
"There are men whose cant is simply can't."'
Nous avons plus de force que de volonte; et c'est souvent pour nous excuser a nous-memes que nous nous imaginons que les choses sont impossibles. - ROCHEFOUCAULD.
Success in most things depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
-MONTESQUIEU.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
-CONFUCIUS.
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul. He
that falls obstinate in his courage, si succederit de genupugnat; if his legs
fail him, fights upon his knees. - MONTAImGNS.
MONG  the oft-quoted maxims in our language there is
none finer, or more replete with sterling truth, than that
which often falls so lightly from men's lips: Where there is a
will, there is a way.   No doubt there  are limits to human
capability in all human affairs; in every sphere of activity
men may meet with obstacles which even the utmost energy
cannot overcome. Almost every man is more or less the victim of circumstances, which sometimes operate so powerfully
that it is impossible to crush his way through them. But the
frequency with which such occasions occur is greatly overestimated; and the fact that mountains so often dwindle into
molehills when we once resolutely determine to cross them,
shows that, after every allowance for extraordinary cases, the
old Saxon saw is still true generally, and that he.who intensely
wills to do a thing will find a way. An intense desire itself
transforms possibility into reality. Our wishes are but prophecies of the things we are capable of performing; while, on
the other hand, the timid, feeble-willed man finds everything
impossible because he believes it to be so. As Virgil says of
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THE WILL AND THE WAY.
his boatmen, men are able because they think they are able,possunt qzuia posse videntur; to resolve upon attainment is
often attainment itself. We are all aware of the fact that the
roads which we incline not to travel are all sadly beset by
specimens of the feline tribe; and, when a gentleman is asked
for money by a neighbor often in need of it, he is extremely
apt to have a large and exhausting payment to make at the
end of the week. But when one is really determined to push
his way along the road, opposing lions have usually little terror
for him; and, if he is anxious to oblige his friend, he will
almost certainly be able to do so without breaking any of his
own engagements.
It is, indeed, wonderful, at times, to see what marvels are
accomplished by men acting under the impulse of a powerful
will. A remarkable example of this is furnished by the captured Texans of the Santa Fe Expedition, who, after having
marched until they were nearly dead with fatigue and exhaustion, yet, being told that any who should prove unable to
walk would be shot, contrived to pluck up, and set off at a
round pace, which they kept up all day. So Quintin Matsys,
the famous Dutch painter, in his youth, despaired of being
ever able to paint, till his master told him that only by producing a picture of merit within six months could he have his
daughter's hand; and then he set vigorously to work and
brought forth "The Misers," a masterpiece of art, which connoisseurs have admired for ages. It is related of a young
French officer that he used to walk about his apartment exclaming, "I will be marshal of France and a great general"
and his burning desire proved a presentiment of his success.
Smiles, in his Self-Help, tells of an English carpenter who
was observed one day planing a magistrate's bench, which he
was repairing, with more than usual carefulness; and, when
asked the reason, replied, "Because I wish to make it easy
against the time when I come to sit upon it myself."   Singularly enough, the man actually lived to sit upon that very
bench as a magistrate
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Nearly all great men - those who have towered high above
their fellows-  have been remarkable above all things else for
their energy of will. Of Julius Cesar it was said by a contemporary, "Quicquid vult, valde vult";  it was his activity
and giant determination, rather than his military skill, that
won his victories. A glance at Hannibal's life will show that
a resolute will was the leading quality of that commander,
though less conspicuous, perhaps, in him than in others, because of the exact proportion in which all the military qualities were united in him, rendering him, by the common consent
of soldiers as well as historians, the greatest captain the world
has seen. His resolution to brave the whole power of Rome
by provoking a war; the invasion of Italy by a route which
was a march of discovery as much as a military operation; his
passage of the Rhone and the Alps; his long continuance in
Italy, though unsupported by Carthage; and, when at last defeated and driven from the country, the zeal with which he
sought throughout the world to raise up enemies against Rome,
at an age when time and toil would have chilled most men's
ardor,   are examples of the rarest determination.   His stubbornness of will is only rivalled by that of his enemies, the
Romans, of whom he learned, by a captive,-  after he had defeated every army they had sent against him, had arrived
within three miles of the city, and was momentarily expecting
an offer of surrender, -that the very ground on which his
army was encamped had just been sold in the Forum at as
high a price as in times of peace.
So with the great captains of modern times; the strength of
Suwarrow's character lay in his power of willing, and he
"preached it up as a system."  "You can only half will," he
would say to persons who failed. It was one of Napoleon's
principal characteristics to regard nothing as impossible. His
marvellous successes were due not more to his vast military
genius than to his almost superhuman strength of will. He
toiled terribly, half killing his secretaries, and threw his whole
force of brain and hand upon his work.   "Impossible," said he,
190 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
"is a word only to be found in the dictionaries of fools." When
told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies, "There shall
be no Alps," he replied, and the road across the Simplon was
the result. His great adversary, Wellington, was distinguished
by a similar inflexibility of purpose.  The entire Peninsular
campaign was but one long-continued display of an iron will,
resolute to conquer difficulties by wearing them out. In the
life-and-death struggle between England and France, of which
that campaign was a part, and which lasted nearly a quarter of
a century, it was the stubborn will of the former which triumphed in the end; for though Napoleon defeated the British
coalitions again and again, yet new ones were constantly formed,
until at last the French people, if not their Emperor, were completely worn out. And, finally, the battle of Waterloo, which
was the climax of this stupendous struggle, was another illustration of the enormous energy, the exhaustless patience, the
bull-dog will, of the English.  In that fearful contest, French
impetuosity and prowess proved an unequal match for English
pluck and resolution. For eight long hours the British army
stood up against the murderous fire of the enemy; column after
column fell, and the entire side of one square was literally
blown away by a volley of grape. One sullen word of command
ran along the line as thousands fell, "File up! file up!" and
the troops silently obeyed. At length the crisis came; the order to charge was given; and the men who had stood like
statues before the "iron hail" of the French artillery swept
like a whirlwind upon the foe.
Among the many causes of failure in life, none is more frequent than that feebleness of the will which is indicated by
spasmodic action,- by fitful effort, or lack of persistence. Dr.
Arnold, whose long experience with youth at Rugby gave
weight to his opinion, declared that "the difference between one
boy and another consists not so much in talent as in energy."
"The longer I live," says another competent judge, Sir Thomas
Fowell Buxton, "the more I am certain that the great difference between men, between the great and the insignificant,
191
f 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
is energy, invincible determination, an honest purpose once
fixed, and then death or victory. This quality will do anything
in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, will make a
two-legged creature a man without it." The very reputation
of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable, is of priceless
value. It often cows enemies and dispels at the start opposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable.
The world sometimes yields to a man a coveted prize from pure
admiration of his persistence in contending for it. Marcus
Morton ran sixteen times in vain for governor of Massachusetts, when some of his opponents, admiring his pluck, voted
for him in 1840, and he was chosen by one majority. Men
feel that it is useless to struggle against one who will never
yield. If such a one does encounter opposition, it becomes a
help, rather than a hindrance, to his general success. The difficulties he conquers are his stimulus and aliment; they are his
gymnasium and palestra, by which his muscles are strengthened.
It has been justly said of the poet Wordsworth, who was
scoffed at by the critics on his first appearance, and seemingly
was born too soon, that he came not a day too early. He had
the difficult task of shaping the culture of a nation, and creating his audience among those who ridiculed himn; but he conquered recognition at last, and it was the very struggle with a
world reluctant to hear him that gave him power and renown.
When William Lloyd Garrison commenced the publication of
the Liberator, he began with these memorable words, "I am in
earnest,-  I will not equivocate, -  I will not excuse,-  I will
not retreat a single inch, - and I will be heard." He has been
heard,- with what result the country knows. It has been
said that you may put a Yankee on a desolate island in the
Pacific, and only leave with him a jack-knife, and he will get
home as soon as, if not sooner than, the ship that left him there.
"Put him in anywhere, and he will get out if he wants to;
put him out anywhere, and he will get in, if he wishes to."
This is the spirit that guarantees success in every calling and
profession.   Men  moan  over difficulties;  but the earnest,
192 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
manly spirit looks upon them as opportunities for distinction.
There is no obstacle that may not be converted into a stepping stone to success by an heroic spirit. An almost total blindness
compelled Euler to work those calculations in his mind which
others put upon paper, and to retain in his brain thoseformulo
for which others trust chiefly to books.  What was the result?
The extent, the readiness, and exactness of his mathematical
memory grew by this means to be so prodigious, that D'Alembert declared that even when one had witnessed it, it almost
staggered belief. It has been well observed by a writer in the
Quarterly Review, that the instances in which there is a strong
motive to attain an end show the unsuspected triumphs of
which the understanding is capable. The reason why they are
so rare is, that men ordinarily relax their efforts when the imperative demands of life have been satisfied. There would be
hardly any limit to improvement, if the same pains which
they were compelled to take to gain their resting-place were
afterwards employed in rising to fresh heights.
It is difficult to see any advantage in mere stupidity; yet,
according to Sergeant Talfourd, it is no inconsiderable power in
a lawyer. If accompanied, as it usually is, with fluency, it
enables its possessor to protract a contest long after he is beaten,
because he neither understands his own case nor the arguments
by which he has been answered. Even physical defects may
have their compensating advantages.   During the late civil
war, a Wisconsin newspaper advertised for a journeyman
printer; "a cripple," said the editor, "will be preferred, as he
won't go off to the war." A volunteer from the same State,
writing to his father from the field, expressed his thankfulness
that he had bow-legs; for, on the day before, he had narrowly
escaped losing both of these limbs, a cannon-ball having passed
harmlessly through the space occasioned by  "the  natural
crook." A popular essayist observes that a squinting eye is a
treasure to a boxer; a left-handed batter is a prize in a cricketilg eleven; and one of the best gymnasts in Chicago is a person with a.wooden leg, which he takes off at the beginning of
9
193 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
operations, thus economizing weight and stowage, and perform.
ing feats impossible except to unipeds. It was the lameness of
Scott and Talleyrand that made the one a poet and novelist, and
the other a statesman and diplomatist; and no one can doubt
that the bitterness and morbid irritability caused by Byron's
club-foot drove him into verse.
It is remarkable how many of the world's great men have
been little men. It would be a curious inquiry how far the
distinctions attained by celebrated men have been owing to
personal disadvantages, to an uneasy sense of personal insignificance. It is remarked by greyhound fanciers that a
well-formed, compact-shaped puppy never makes a fleet dog;
and it is certain that many a loose-jointed, awkward, and clumsy
man, as well as many a humpbacked and ugly-looking one, has
found in his deformity, as Bacon long ago remarked, "a perpetual spur to rescue and deliver him from scorn." History is
full of examples of pygmies, who, tormented by a mortifying
consciousness of their physical inferiority, have been provoked
thereby to show that their lack of flesh and blood has been
more than made up to them in brains. Many a Liliputian in
body has proved himself a Brobdingnagian in intellect. When
Lord Nelson was passing over the quay at Yarmouth to take
possession of the ship to which he had been appointed, the
people exclaimed, "Why make that little fellow a captain?"
The sneer of disparagement was but a "foregone conclusion"
in his own mind, and he thought of it when he fought the
battles of the Nile and Trafalgar. Had Bonaparte been six
inches higher, says Hazlitt, it is doubtful whether he would
have gone on that disastrous Russian expedition, or whether he
would even have been First Consul or Emperor. It was the
nickname of "Little Corporal" that probably first pricked the
sides of his ambition, and stung him into that terrible activity
which made all Europe tremble.
Nearly all of the poets, and many of the greatest prose writers
of ancient and modern times, have been little men. One of
the great poets of Athens was so small that his friends fastened
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THE WILL AND THE WAY. 
lead to his sandals to prevent his being toppled over or blown
away. Aristotle, as we have already remarked, was a pygmy in
person, though a giant in intellect. Of Pope, who was so small
and crooked as to be compared to an interrogation point, Hazlitt asks, "Do we owe nothing to his deformity 7 He doubtless soliloquized,'Though my person be crooked, my verses
shall be straight.'" It was owing, doubtless, in some degree,
to the fact that he could boast of but four feet and six inches
in stature, that that phenomenon of the eighteenth century, the
Abbe Galiani, owed the vast and solid erudition which Grimm
says he joined to a luminous and profound coup d'eil. Personally, says Marmontel, the Abbe was the prettiest little harlequin that Italy ever produced; but upon the shoulders of
that harlequin was the head of Machiavelli.  Moore, the Irish
poet, was so small that George IV. once threatened to clap
him into a wine-cooler.
It is true that many persons have to begin the voyage of
life against both wind and tide; and it seems at times as if
they were doomed to "wage with fortune an eternal war."
But who ever heard of a man's failing to succeed at last in any
business which he had stuck to faithfully for ten years together?
Look at Bulwer. His whole life has been a series of temporary
failures, crowned with ultimate triumphs. His first novel was
a failure; his first drama was a failure; his first poems were
failures; and so were his first speeches. But he fought his
way to eminence, - fought it through defeat and ridicule, till
now he has his own enchanted circle, where "none durst walk
but he," and stands on one of the summits of the three-peaked
hill, the compeer of Dickens and Thackeray. Look at Disraeli.
From his birth the odds were against him. The child of a
hated and branded race, he made himself a power in the most
conventional country in the world. Without a liberal education, he won the honors of literary skill and scholarship; with out aristocratic connections, he became a star of fashion in the
most exclusive society in Europe. Coughed and hissed down
on his first essay in Parliament, he told the House that the
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time would come when they would hear him, and he perse vered until they under whose laughter he had writhed were
made to writhe in their turn under his terrible sarcasm.   Look
at Brougham.   Panging during sixty years over the fields, not
only of law and politics, but of science and literature, he
triumphed in all; and such was his love of excellence, so
indefatigable his perseverance, that it has been said that,
if he had  begun life as a shoeblack, he would never have
rested content till he had become the best shoeblack in
En,gland.
In further illustration of the same point, we might cite the
case of Savonarola, who broke down in his first sermon, and
was humiliated beyond  expression.   Resolved, however,  to
succeed, he kept on, preaching to peasants and children, and in
the solitude of his own chamber, till at last he acquired a
facility of utterance and a command of striking language
which made him the prophet of his age and the first orator in
Italy.   Robespierre, contending with the disadvantages of a
harsh voice, an ugly face, and a hesitating tongue, failed in his
first essays at speaking so egregiously that not one man in a
thousand, under the circumstances, could have helped being
disheartened; yet by ceaseless effort he succeeded in leading
the National Assembly of France.  Mr. Cobden's first speech
was a humiliating failure. HIe was nervous, confused, and
finally broke down; yet he did not retire to a corner, and
mope and whine, but persevered, till at last he became one of
the most powerful speakers of the Anti-Corn-Law League, and
extorted the praise of the accomplished Rlobert Peel.
When Daniel Webster attended an academy in his boyhood,
though he was proficient in the other branches of education,
there was one thing, he tells us, he could not do,-he could
not declaim before the school.   "The  kind and excellent
Buckminster especially sought to persuade me to perform the
exercise of declamation like the other boys, but I could not do it.
Many a piece did I commit to umemory, and rehearse it in my own
room over and over again; but when the day came, when the
196 
THiE WILL AND THE WAY.
school collected, when my name was called, and I saw all eyes
turned upon my seat, I could not raise myself from it. Sometimes the masters frowned, sometimes they smiled.  MIr. Buckminster always pressed and entreated with the most winning
kindness that I would only venture once; but I could not
command sufficient resolution, and when the occasion was over
I went home and wept bitter tears of mortification."
Francis Wayland began his ministerial career under many
discouragements.  They would have crushed a feeble man, but
only stimulated him to greater efforts.   Son of an Eng,lishl
currier who had abandoned a profitable trade to become a
Baptist preacher, he gave up the profession for which he
had partially prepared himself, and followed the example of
his father. A single year at Andover, where he was so poor
that he had once to choose between a coat and a copy of
Schleusner's lexicon, summed up his study of theology; yet
he had so faithfully improved this slender opportunity, that he
was called to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church in
Boston. On a cold, rainy night in October, 1823, he preached
before the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society a sermon on
Missions.   There were about fifty persons present; the discourse kindled no enthusiasm; and with keen chagrin the
preacher next morning flung himself upon a lounge in the study
of a friend, exclaiming, "It was a complete failure; it fell
perfectly dead."  Luckily, among the hearers was a shrewd
printer, a deacon in the church, who insisted that the sermon
should be published. Against his own will, the author consented.
The discourse-  the memorable one on "The Moral Dignity
of the Missionary Enterprise "- ran through several editions
both in this country and in England, called forth the warmest
encomiums of the press without distinction of sect, and
kindled a new enthusiasm in behalf of missions throughout
the Christian world. PRobert Hall, on reading it, predicted a
still greater distinction for the preacher; and only three years
later the author; hitherto an obscure man, was elected to the
Presidency of Brown University alnost by acclamation.
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To these examples might be added those of Talma, the
greatest of French actors; Sheridan, the orator, who broke down
in his first speech; and many others who failed at first as
public speakers, and who finally succeeded only because they
knew the eloquence was in them, and determined that it
"should come out." Thomas Erskine, whom Lord Campbell
pronounces the greatest advocate and most consummate forensic
orator that ever lived, began his legal career under many discouragements. Though he had a sublime self-confidence, which
was itself almost a sure prophecy of success, yet he fought the
battle of life for many years up hill and against many obstacles.
His father's means having been exhausted in educating his two
elder brothers, he was obliged to start in life with but little
training and a scanty stock of classical learning. While pursuing his law studies he found it hard, even with the strictest
economy, to keep the wolf from the door. For several years
he lived on cow beef, because he could not afford to buy better,
and was  declared by Jeremy Bentham to be "so shabbily
dressed as was quite remarkable."   Conscious, all the time,
of powers that fitted him to adorn a larger sphere, he chafed
against the iron circumstances that hemmed him in, like an
eagle against the bars of his cage. A chance conversation led
to his being employed as counsel in an important case. The
effect produced by his speech was prodigious.   He  won a
verdict for his client, and by a single giant bound, overleaping
all barriers, passed from want to abundance, from the castle of
Giant Despair to the Delectable Mountains. Entering Westminster Hall that morning a pauper, he left it a rich man. As
he marched along the hall after the judges had risen, the
attorneys flocked around him with their briefs, and retainer
fees rained upon him. From this time his business rapidly
increased, until his annual income amounted to ~ 12,000.
Even the most successful poets, who are born, not muade, have
failed more or less in their early productions. Byron's first
effort was severely censured by the critics.   Keats's first poem
was a failure; but, though damned by the critics, he did not
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THE WILL AND THE WAY.
feel disheartened, for he felt that the genius of poetry must
work out its own salvation, and that by leaping headlong, into
the sea, as he did in Endymion, he had become better acquainlted with the soundings, the rocks, and the quicksands,
than if he had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly
pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.   "I was never
afraid of failure," said he, "for I would sooner fail than not be
among the greatest."
It is this pluck, this bull-dog tenacity of purpose and stubbornness of perseverance, that wins the battles of life, whether
fought in the field, in the mart, or in the forum.  "It is the
half a neck nearer that shows the blood and wins the race; the
one march more that wins the campaign; the five minutes more
of unyielding courage that wins the fight." History abounds
with instances of doubtful battles or unexpected reverses transformed by one man's stubbornness into eleventh-hour triumphs.
It is opinion, as De Maistre truly says, that wins battles, and
it is opinion that loses them.   The battle of Marengo went
against the French during the first half of the day, and they
were expecting an order to retreat, when Dessaix, consulted by
Napoleon, looked at his watch, and said, "The battle is coinmpletely lost; but it is only two o'clock, and we shall have time
to gain another." He then made his famous cavalry charge,
and won the field. Blucher, the famous Prussian general, was
by no means a lucky leader.   He was beaten in nine battles
out of ten; but in a marvellously brief time he had rallied
his routed army, and was as formidable as ever. He had his
disappointments, but turned them, as the oyster does the sand
which annoys it, into a pearl.
Washington lost more battles than he won, but he organized
victory out of defeat, and triumphed in the end. It was because they appreciated this quality of pluck, that, when the
battle of Cannm was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by
bushels the rings of RPoman knights who had perished in the
strife, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to the defeated general, Consul Terentius Varro, for not having despaired of the
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republic. In the vocabulary of such men there is no such
word as "fail." Impossibilities, so called, they laugh to scorn.
"Impossible!"  exclaimed  Mirabeau on  a certain occasion;
"talk not to me of that blockhead of a word!" "Impossible!"
echoed the elder Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, in reply to a
colleague in office who told him that a certain thing could not
be done;  "I trample upon impossibilities! "  Before such
men mountains dwindle into molehills, and obstacles that seem
unconquerable are not only triumphed over, but converted into
helps and instruments of success by their overwhelming will.
There was never, probably, a time in the world's history
when high success in any profession demanded harder or more
incessant labor than now. Men can no longer go at one leap
into eminent position.   The world, as Emerson says, is no
longer clay, but rather iron, in the hands of its workers, and
men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady
and rugged blows.  Above all, a deep and burning enthusiasm
is wanted in every one who would achieve great ends.  No
great thing is, or can be, done without it. It is a quality that
is seen wherever there are earnest and determined workers, - in
the silence of the study, and amid the roar of cannon; in the
painting of a picture, and in the carving of a statue. Ability,
learning, accomplishment, opportunity, are all well; but they
do Tiot, of themselves, insure success. Thousands have all
these, and live and die without benefiting themselves or others.
MIen, on the other hand, of mediocre talents, often scale the
dizzy steeps of excellence and fame because they have firm faith
and high resolve.  It is this solid faith in one's mission,- the
rooted belief that it is the one thing to which he has been
called,- this enthusiasm, attracting an Agassiz to the Alps or
the Amazon, impelling a Pliny to explore the volcano in which
lie is to lose his life, and nerving a Vernet, when tossing in a
fierce tempest, to sketch the waste of waters, and even the wave
that is leaping up to devour him,- that marks the heroic spirit;
and, wherever it is found, success, sooner or later, is almost
inevitable.
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TIHE WILL AND THE WAY.
The lack of this stimulating and ennobling quality will explain a large proportion of the bankruptcies and breakdowns
in every calling of life.  Men do not succeed because they do
not put heart into their work. Too many novices are disheartened by their first failure, and are impatient to run before they
have learned to walk. What the elder Kean said of the stage
is applicable to every profession and art in life: "Acting does
not, like Dogberry's reading and writing,'come by nature';
with all the high qualities which go to the formation of a great
exponent of the book of life (for so the stage may justly be
called), it is impossible, totally impossible, to leap at once to
fame.' What wound did ever heal but by slow degrees?' says
our immortal author; and what man, say I, ever became an
'actor' without a long and sedulous apprenticeship.  I know
that many think to step from behind a counter or jump from
the high stool of an office to the boards, and take the town by
storm in Richard or Othello, is'as easy as lying.' O the born
idiots! they remind me of the halfpenny candles stuck in the
windows on illumination nights: they flicker and flutter their
brief minute, and go out unheeded.   Barn-storming, my lads,
barn-storming, - that's the touchstone; by that I won my
spurs; so did Garrick, Henderson, and Kemble; and so, on
the other side of the water, did my almost namesake, Lekain,
and Talma."
It cannot be too often repeated that it is not the so-called
blessings of life, its sunshine and calm and pleasant experiences, that make men, but its rugged experiences, its storms,
tempests, and trials.   Early adversity, especially, is often a
blessing in disguise.  It has been observed that perhaps Madame Maintenon would never have mounted a throne had not
her cradle been rocked in a prison. It is the rough Atlantic
seas, the cold, dark, winter nights, and the fierce "northers,"
that make the British and the American sailors the toughest
and most skilful in the world. The school of adversity graduates the ablest pupils, and the hill of difficulty is the best of all
"constitutionals" for the strengthening of mental backbones.
9*
.201 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
"C'est des difficultes que naissent les miracles."
It is the misfortune of many young persons to-day that they
begin life with too many advantages. Every possible want of
their many-sided nature is supplied before it is consciously felt.
Books, teachers, mental and religious training, lectures, amusements, clothes, and food, all of the best quality and without
stint in quantity, -in short, the pick of the world's good
things, and helps of every kind,- are lavished upon them, till
satiety results, and all ambition is extinguished. WVhat motive
has a young man, for whom life is thus "thrice winnowed," to
exert himself.  Having supped full of life's sweets, he finds
them palling on his taste; having done nothing to earn its
good things, he cannot appreciate their value.  "Like a hothouse plant, grown weak and spindling through too much shel
ter and watching, he needs nothing so much as to be set in the
open air of the world, and to grow strong with struggling for
existence."
AMere hardship, of course, will not make a man strong, but
it is an important aid in the development of greatness. Want,
confinement, opposition, roughness alternating with smoothness, difficulty with ease, storm with sunshine, sorrow with joy,
- these constitute the discipline of life, the education which
makes a man of a being who would otherwise be little better
than an animal. It has been justly said that in deprivation
alone there is untold might. Imprison a gill of water in a
solid rock, and deprive it of heat, and it will burst its flinty
bonds as did Samson the cords of the Philistines. Apply a
match to a pound of powder in the open air, and it explodes
with a harmless flash; but confine it in a rifle-barrel, and tease
it with the minutest spark, and it carries doom to a distant life.
Great men can no more be made without trials, than bricks can
be made without fire. Indeed, the freiyAtaye of a great mind
can be estimated only by the amount of displacement it creates.
Thousands of men are bemoaning their poverty or obscurity,
who might have won riches or honor, had they only been com
pelled by early hardships to cry, with Burns,
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THE WILL AND THE WAY.
"Come, firmn Resolve, take thou the van,
Thou stalk of earle-hemp in man!
and to task to the uttermost all their faculties.
In past ages men believed in the existence of ghosts,- a
belief which has disappeared before the light of intelligence;
but the truth is, they really exist, only in a different form from
that with which the popular imagination has invested them.
A ghost is popularly supposed to be a soul without a body,
fond of darkness and graveyards, and wearing a thin white
drapery, which you can see, but not touch. Tom Hyer might
strike through it without hitting or hurting it. A character
i    n o    ne of Dickens's novels knew a ghost "because he could see
straight through the body to the buttons on the back of the
coat."     But  th e real ghost is the man who has no pluck; no
perseverance, firmness, or energy; no backbone of determination; in short, the pigeon-livered thing, for it is not worthy
to be called a man, that has a body without a soul. Well has
Shakespeare  said that
"In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth,
How many shallow bawble boats dare sail
Upon her patient breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the sruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentle Thetis, and, anon, behold
The strong-ril)bbed bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus' horse; where's then the saucy boat,
Whose weak, untimber'd sides but even now
Co-rival'd greatness? "
After all, there is but one true way in which to meet the
troubles and trials of life, and that is, to encounter them unflinchingly. It is doubtless very pleasant to sit in some snug
loophole of retreat, and now and then, oyster-like, cautiously
open one's bivalves, and thank God he is not buffeting the
billows like his fellows. Those who risk nothing can, of course,
lose nothing; sowing no hopes, they cannot suffer from the
blight of disappointment. But let him who is enlisted for the
203 
GETTING ON IN TIIE WORLD.
war expect to meet the foe.  Either accept the advice of the
tawny Philip to his hesitating warrior,- "Go away with the
children and the squaws," - or be prepared, not only for the
contest, but for its consequences.   Fortunately, adversity is
often like a panther; look it boldly in the face, and it turns
cowering away from you. It is with life's troubles as with the
risks of the battle-field; there is always less of aggregate danger to the party that stands firm than to that which gives way,
-the cowards being always cut down ingloriously in the fight.
No doubt it is easier to moralize on "the uses of adversity"
than to bear it. We are aware that it is hard to begin life
without a dollar, hard to be poor, and harder to seem poor ill
the eyes of others.  No  young, man, especially no young man
in our cities, likes to make his e)ntree in life with his boots
patched; to wear an antediluvian hat, and clean gloves smelling of camphene and economy; nor to carry a cotton umbrella;
nor to ask a girl to marry him and live in the "sky-parlor" of
a cheap boardinghouse. We all like to drive along smoothly,
to have a fine turnout, to have the hinges of life oiled, the
backs padded, and the seats cushioned. But such is not the
road to success in any profession or calling; and if you are
poor, and feel that you cannot climb the steeps of life unassisted, -that you must be carried in a vehicle, instead of
trudging on foot along the dusty highway,- then confess your
weakness, and seek your Hercules in the first heiress who is as
wanting in judgment as you in nerve and resolution. 31arry
$ 5,000 a year, if you can, and be a stall-fed ox for the remainder of your days.   But do not, while thus "boosted "into,
boast of your success. Do not, while rising in the world like
a balloon, by pressure from without instead of from within,
fancy you have any claim to triumph. The world will touch
its hat to you, and give you plenty of ceremonious respect; but
its real regard, its loftiest esteem, it will reserve for the moral
hero who has the nerve to throw his hat into the ring, and
fight out the battle of life in a manly and creditable way.
There are some persons who deny that men owe their posi
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THIE WILL AND THE WAY.
tions in life mainly to themselves.  They explain all the differences in worldly success by the magic word "fortune."  Others
attribute all great or rare success to that indefinable quality
which they call genius; and, no doubt, there are native differences in the intellectual stature of men, but not to the extremes
imagined. There are no giants like those of Brobdingnag, nor
pygmies like those of Liliput. It matters not what are a man's
natural gifts; he can never attain in any profession to high
success, without going through with a vast deal of work which,
taken by itself, would rightly be called drudgery; and hence
some one has defined genius as "an immense capacity for taking trouble."
What is the difference that distinguishes the musician or the
painter from the mere amateur? What is it, as one has wisely
said, "but the long-continued discipline of hand, of ear, of eye,
which has made all the faculties of body and of mind subservient to the purposes of the art?  The man who has no such
training may have, to begin with, the same natural faculties,
the same genius, the same inspiration; but they are not cultivated, and they have no command over the only means by
which their fine conceptions can be expressed. And what is
the cultivation which such genius always needs? It needs unwearied labor at what to another man would seem the drudgery
of the art; what only ceases to be drudgery because the light
of genius is always present in every trifling act. Nothing can
be a greater mistake than to suppose that genius dispenses with
labor. What genius does is to inspire the soul with a power to
persevere in the labor that is needed; but the greatest geniuses
in every art invariably labor at their art far more than all others,
because their genius shows them the value of such patient labor,
and aids them to persist in it....  It is the loving labor at
his own tasks which makes a man a thorough scholar. It is incessant practice which makes a man skilful at a game. And
why is all this? Apparently because our nature is so framed
that in this way only can any knowledge or skill or art or faculty, or whatever else we may call that which enables us to do
205 
GETTING ON IN TiHE WORLD.
what we wish to -do really well, be so worked into us as to be
completely ours. To see how to do a thing is not enough.
The power of really doing it implies that the needful science
or skill shall have penetrated us through and through until we
do instinctively, almost mechanically, all that is needed for the
purpose; until the little trifles which are so hard always to
attend to, and which are so absolutely necessary to true success,
cease to demand attention, because, indeed, it would require
an effort not to do them; until in all trivial matters we do the
right thing as unconsciously, as instantaneously, as we put out
our hands to break our fall whenever our foot slips under us
as we walk." 1
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the wonders that may
be wrought in a brief lifetime by intense and persistent labor
urged on by an iron will. The enormous labor and preparatory training which men undergo for comparatively low and
trivial accomplishments should shame the indolent and the
supine who are engaged in noble pursuits. You will see one
man toiling for years to draw sweet strains from a fiddlestring, or to bring down a pigeon on the wing; another tasking his inventive powers, and torturing verbs and substantives
like a Spanish inquisitor, to become a punster; a third devoting half his life to acquiring the art of balancing himself on
a rope, or of standing on his head on the top of a pole; a
fourth spending time enough in getting a mastery of chess to
go through the entire circle of the sciences, and learn half a
dozen languages. A Taglioni, to insure the agility and bounds
of the evening, rehearses her pirouettes again and again, for
hours together, till she falls down exhausted, and has to be
undressed, sponged, and resuscitated ere she is conscious.
You listen to a Jaell, a Strakosch, or other great pianist, whose
touch seems miraculous, and, as his fingers glide rapidly over
the keys, you almost imagine that they are instinct with
thought and feeling oozing from their tips, as if the soul had
left its inner seat to descend into his hands. But, on inquiry,
* Dr. Temple's Rugby Sermons.  Third Series.
2 0-6"' 
THE, WILL AND THIE WAY.
you learn that from the age of six or eight to manhood he sat
on the piano-stool from morning till night, practising almost
without interruption, except for meals and elementary instruction, and that incessant toil was the price of the skill which
affects us like magic.
Handel, the composer, had a harpsichord, every  key of
which, by incessant practice, was hollowed like the bowl of a
spoon. When an East-Indian is learning archery, he is compelled by his master to exercise the attitude and drawing the
string to his ear, secundum artem, for three months together,
before he is suffered to set an arrow.   Half the intellectual
and physical efforts which, put forth by some persons for
petty or worthless, perhaps shameful objects, would suffice,
in many cases, if directed to noble ends, to place them on a
level with the great lights of the age, - the superior intelligences of art, literature, and science, - and to lay the foundation of a glory which might vie hereafter with that of "the
mighty dead." And yet the cry of most dullards, and of
many who are not, is, "I am too low in the scale; it is of no
use for me to try to rise; I am not, and never shall be, anybody." But does a prisoner cling to his captivity and hug
his fetters because his dungeon is low and dark and noisome?
No; he pants for the "upper air" all the more aspiringly.
The very consciousness of his prostration should be a spur
stimulating one to raise himself by all possible efforts.
No man should be discouraged because he does not get on
rapidly in his calling from the start. In the more intellectual
professions especially, it should be remembered that a solid
character is not the growth of a day, that the mental faculties are not matured except by long and laborious culture. To
refine the taste, to fortify the reasoning faculty with its appropriate discipline, to store the cells of the memory with varied
and useful learning, to train all the powers of the mind symmetrically, is the work of calm and studious years. A young
man's education has been of little use to him if it has not
taught him to check the fretful impatience, the eager haste to
207 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
drink the cup of life, the desire to exhaust the intoxicating
draughts of ambition, which is characteristic of Young America. The motto of Gideon's fatigued but determined troop -
Faint, yet pursuing -  should be that of every earnest man
when baffled by hindrances and discouragements. Let him
patiently bide his time, steadily and conscientiously doing his
daily work, that, when a great occasion comes, he may be equal
to it.  "To know how to wait," said De Maistre, "is the great
secret of success."
It is now well known that the Duke of Wellington, when a
subaltern, was anxious to retire from the army, where he despaired of advancement, and actually applied to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for a commissionership of customs. Yet he
conquered success at. last, as did the immortal Havelock, who
lived in comparative obscurity till he was far advanced in
life, and who, ten years before his death, could not have anticipated that he would ever gain a name in history. But
when the auspicious moment came, a few months only sufficed
to build up that edifice of success and fame for which his
whole previous life had been a training. Ten years ago Moltke
was unknown to the world, though he had already reached the
mature age of sixty-one. Yet he had no less genius then than
when by his masterly combinations he was humbling Austria,
or winning more brilliant triumphs in the late campaign against
France.
Some of the most successful lawyers have passed many years
in obscurity before their abilities were recognized. When the
late Mr. Chitty was consulted by an anxious father about the
qualifications of the bar, he asked,  "Can your son eat sawdust without butter." Sir Samuel Romilly, one of the most
distinguished chancery lawyers of England, had made no
progress in his legal career at the end of his sixth or seventh
circuit.  "When a man first makes his appearance in court,"
says he, "no attorney is disposed to try the experiment whether
he has any talents; and when a man's face has become familiar
by his long having been a silent spectator of the business done
208 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
by others, his not being employed is supposed to proceed from
his incapacity, and is alone considered as sufficient evidence
that he must have been tried and rejected." In spite of this
inauspicious beginning, Romilly attained at last to a success
which his wildest and most sanguine dreams had never painted
to him, gaining an income of ~8,000 or ~9,000 a year.
John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, rose at first slowly to
distinction. While studying law at London, he rose at four
every morning and studied till late at night, binding a wet
towel round his head to keep himself awake. Too poor to
study under a special pleader, he copied out three folio volumes
from a manuscript  collection of precedents.   When  finally
called to the bar, he hung long about the courts without
employment. His prospects were so gloomy that he meditated
leaving the metropolis and settling down as a provincial barrister in Newcastle, where a comfortable house in High Street
was his castle in air. It was agreed between him and his wife
that whatever he got during the first eleven months should be
his, and whatever he got in the twelfth month should be hers.
"What a stingy dog," he says, "I must have been to have
made such a bargain! I would not have done so afterwards.
But, however, so it was; and how do you think it turned out?
In the twelfth month I received half a guinea; eighteen
pence went for fees, and Bessy got nine shillings; in the other
eleven months I got not one shilling."
In the second year of his profession, "business," wrote the
elder brother, William, to the second, Henry, "is very dull
with poor Jack,- very dull indeed; and, of consequence, he
is not very lively. I heartily wish that business may brisken
a little, or he will be heartily sick of his profession. I do all
I can to keep up his spirits, but he is very gloomy." Early in
the third year occurred a case which laid the foundation of his
fame.  As he left Westminster  Hall, a respectable solicitor
touched him on the shoulder, and said, "Young man, your
bread and butter is cut for life."  In about eight years from
his call to the bar he was on the high road to its highest honors.
.w
20-9, 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
During the six years he was attorney-general, his annual emoluments varied from ~ 10,000 to ~ 12,000.
After he had become Lord Chancellor, an application was
made to him one day for an order to allow a young man an
income of two hundred a year out of an estate in dispute.
"Young gentleman," said Lord Eldon, seeing the applicant ill
court, "I hope that you will reflect that this is a very critical
order I am making in your favor. This sum may furnish
opportunity to talent, or it may paralyze all exertions. If I
had had a certain two hundred a year at your age, I should
not now be sitting where I am." When Wilberforce asked the
Chancellor's advice about the best mode of study for the young
Grants, to fit them for the bar, - "I have no rule to give
them," was the reply, "but that they must make up their minds
to live like a hermit and work like a horse." Happily, it has
been said, the hermit-and-horse life need not be long, or it
would be better to turn galley-slave.
Lord Kenyon and Lord Thurlow began their legal careers
under circumstances similar to those of Eldon. The two used
to dine together, in vacation, at a small eating-house near
Chancery Lane, London, where their meal was supplied to
them at sevenpence-halfpenny a head. Lord Camden, though
a judge's son, went the Western Circuit for ten or twelve years
without success, and at last resolved on trying one circuit more,
and then retiring upon his fellowship. A legal friend, hearing
of this resolution, contrived to get him retained as his own
junior in a cause of some importance, and then absented himself on the plea of illness. Camden won the cause, and thenceforth was on the high road to prosperity and fame.
Lord Ellenborough's early experience at the bar was yet
more painful than that of any of the great men we have named.
The son of a bishop, and a wrangler at Cambridge, he was an
eminently proud man, perfectly conscious of his superiority;
yet, as a student, he resolutely submitted to all that drudgery
without which no man can become a great lawyer, however he
may distinguish himself as an advocate. Writing from the
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THE WILL AND THE WAY.
Inner Temple at this time to a college friend, Archdeacon Coxe,
he says: "Let us cheerfully push our way in our different
lines: the path of neither of us is strewed with roses, but they
will terminate in happiness and honor. I cannot, however,
now and then help sighing, when I think how inglorious an
apprenticeship we both of us serve to ambition, while you
teach a child his rudiments, and I drudge the pen for attorneys.
But if knowledge and a respectable situation are to be purchased
only on these terms, I, for my part, can readily say, Hac mercede
placet. Do not commend my industry too soon; application
wears for me, at present, the charm of novelty; upon a longer
acquaintance, I may grow tired of it." He did not tire of it,
however, for he possessed, to a degree that is rarely exhibited
even by the resolute, an indomitable will; and when distaste,
disinclination, or weariness crept over him, as they will, at
times, over the most determined men, he would write and set
before his aching eyes, " Read or starve! " three monosyllables
which have achieved as many miracles as even the magic word
"Failure!"  For many years he found little to do as a legal
practitioner, till, through a family connection, he was employed
in the defence of Warren Hastings, when he was repaid for
years of toil and privation by rising at once to distinction.
Lord Campbell, late Lord Chancellor of England, rose slowly
and after many struggles to his high position, having been
compelled by poverty to report for the press while qualifying
himself for the practice of the law. At the beginning of his
career, he used to walk from county town to county town when
on circuit, being unable to afford the luxury of riding. Lord
Mansfield came to the bar with a brilliant reputation for scholarship and eloquence, yet even he did not scale the rugged
steeps of fame and honor at once.  He used to say that he
knew no interval between no income and three thousand pounds
a year. Not a few years had elapsed since his call to the bar,
and he had found no opportunity of displaying his abilities,
when his senior in a case, Sergeant Eyre, as the tradition goes,
was seized with a fit, and the conduct of the case devolved on
211 
GETTING ON IN THE WOPRLD.
Murray.  Obtaining, by the favor of the presiding judge, a short
adjournment, he made so admirable a speech that clients rushed
to him in crowds.
The experience of medical practitioners is not unlike that
of lawyers. Men of the highest ability have read and observed
for years in poverty and obscurity before they have gained a
respectable practice. In 1788 a medical student at Edinburgh
University lived in the third story of a house in Bristol Street,
in a room which cost him six shillings and sixpence a week.
In after life, when swayinig the surgical sceptre of England as
Sir Astley Cooper, his professional income in a single year
amounted to ~ 23,000; and yet, during the first twelve months
after he had settled down in London, his private practice
yielded but five guineas. It is much the same in all professions
and callings. It costs many a hard struggle to earn one's bare
expenses, at first; but when the tide is turned, the dollars
come rolling in like an avalanche, "not in single spies, but
in battalions." Nothing, said Talleyrand, is so successful as
success.
Nearly all of the world's great scholars, artists, authors, and
philosophers, as well as the men who have become famous by
the invention of new processes, or the improvement of old
sciences, have forced their way to distinction against many
trials and discouragements. Dr. Adam Clarke, the well-known
Wesleyan commentator, was the son of a poor Irish schoolmaster. When at the age of twenty he sought in England
employment as a preacher, his slender pecuniary outfit was
soon reduced to three halfpence; yet, with this sum in his
pocket, he was able to say to Wesley, "I wish to do and be
what God pleases," and was sent at once to his work. The
labor he did for many years was of the humblest and most
laborious kind; yet he adhered resolutely to the advice given
him by Wesley, "to cultivate his mind so far as his circumstances would allow, and never to forget anything he had ever
learned." Having acquired some knowledge of Oriental tongues,
he began to wish  earnestly for a polyglot Bible; but three
212 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
pounds per quarter and his food, which was the whole of his
income as a preacher, could ill supply any sum for the purchase
of books.   Unexpectedly  he received  a bank-note for ten
pounds from a friend, and exclaiming, "Here is the polyglot,"
wrote to London for a copy, which he obtained for exactly ten
pounds, from which time his progress in his favorite studies
was extremely rapid.  He denied the possibility of having too
many irons in the fire, and, writing to a friend, playfully said
"I think it strange that you are of the opinion that we cannot
carry on consentaneously two or three languages at a time. If
I could not do so, I think I should be tempted to run out into
the street, and dash the place where the brains should be against
the first post I met."
It is related of Dr. Adam, the distinguished rector of the
High School of Edinburgh, that when at college he had to be
content with a penny roll for his dinner. Similar to those of
Dr. Adam and Dr. Clarke, though more severe, were the early
trials of Samuel Drew. At the age of ten he was apprenticed
to a shoemaker, a calling which he continued to follow long
after he had become celebrated as an author. For days and
days together in his early life he was too poor to spend even a
penny for his dinner; and he was accustomed, when dinner-tiinme
came, to tie his apron-string tighter to lessen the pang of hunger, and go on with his work till evening. Through years of
hardship and drudgery his courage never forsook him; amidst
ceaseless labor he strove unremittingly to improve his mind,
studying astronomy, history, and metaphysics; and finally,
from the humblest circumstances, he rose to occupy a conspicuous place in England as an author, a philosopher, and a metaphysician. The notice of a metaphysician brings to mind the
history of the late Sir William Hamilton, who, notwithstanding his great ability and encyclopedic erudition, did not find,
till his forty-eighth year, the position for which he was so preeminently qualified, and to which he may be said to have had
a natural right, namely, a university chair. For six and
twenty years he competed unsuccessfully for poorly paid chairs
213 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
in Scotland, and though at forty recognized as the most learned
scholar of his day in the history of philosophy, was elected finally
only by a majority of four votes over a competitor far inferior.
The history of authorship is a history of struggles, privations,
and trials rarely equalled in any other calling. Many of the
books which have sold most rapidly, or won the highest reputation for their authors, went a long time begging for publishers.
The life of Balzac, the French author, whose brilliant abilities
won for him at last such wealth, fame, and influence in France,
is a type of many a literary career. At the age of twenty his
wealthy parents wished to make him a notary. He announced
his determination to become an author.  "But," urged the
father, "do you not know to what state the occupation of a
writer will lead you? In literature a man must be either king
or a hodman."   " Very well," replied Balzac, "I will be king  "
The family left town; the youth was left to his fate in a garret,
with the magnificent allowance of twenty-five francs a month.
The first ten years he fought with poverty and all its evils; the
second decade made him his own master. These ten years,
says a writer in a British magazine from which we gather these
facts, were years of glory, wealth, and luxury.  He had really
won the literary crown, as in youth he predicted. But it was
won by dint of labor such as ordinary men can scarcely conceive; and, in his passage to his goal of success, he went
through all the terrible vicissitudes of poverty, debt, and contention. His later residences were palaces, richly decorated
with the choicest furniture that could be procured; full of
beautiful and rare pictures, statuary, and valuable curiosities.
During his career he had seven different residences. The first
was the bare garret in the Rue Lesdiguieres, where in silence,
in hunger, and in the deepest poverty, his genius consolidated
itself.
The most successful men in America, both in early and in
later times, have nearly all fought their way to wealth or
distinction against formidable obstacles. Rumford, Franklin,
Rittenhouse, Patrick Henry, Bowditch, Clay, Webster, Jack
214 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
son, Douglas, Lincoln, Grant, were all the sons of poor parents.
Senator Wilson, who was for a long time a shoemaker, said
recently, in addressing the people of Great Falls, N. H.: "I
was born here in your county. I was born in poverty. Want
sat by my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread
when she has none to give. I left my home at ten years of
age, and served an apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a
month's schooling each year, and, at the end of eleven years'
hard work, a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which brought me
eighty-four dollars. A dollar would cover every penny I spent
from the time I was born until I was twenty-one years of age.
I know what it is to travel weary miles and ask my fellow-men
to give me leave to toil. I remember that in September, 1833,
I walked into your village from my native town, and went
through your mills seeking employment.   If anybody had
offered me eight or nine dollars a month, I should have accepted
it gladly. I went down to Salmon Falls, I went to Dover, I
went to Newmarket, and tried to get work; without success;
and I returned home weary, but not discouraged, and put my
pack on my back, and walked to the town where I now live,
and learned a mechanic's trade.   The first month I worked
after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the woods,
drove team, cut mill-logs, and chopped wood; and though I rose
in the morning before daylight, and worked hard until after
dark at night, I received for it the magnificent sum of two
dollars. And when I got, the money, those dollars looked to
me as large as the moon looks to-night."
Thurlow Weed, for a long time one of the most influential
editors and politicians of the country, published recently a
sketch of his early life, in which he thus speaks of his efforts
at self-culture.  "Many a farmer's son has found the best
opportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure
while tending'sap bush.' Such, at any rate, was my own
experience. At nights you had only to feed the kettles and
keep up the fires, the sap having been gathered and the wood
cut' before dark.' During the day we would always lay in a
215  
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
good stock of' fat pine,' by the light of which, blazing bright
before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was con demned to assume as a penalty for tempting our great first
grandmother, I passed many and many a delightful night in
reading. I remember in this way to have read a history of
the French RPevolution, and to have obtained from it a better
and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors, and
of the actors in that great national tragedy, than I have re ceived from all subsequent reading. I remember also how
happy I was in being able to borrow the book of a Mr. Keyes,
after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet
swaddled in remnants of a rag-carpet."
Henry Ward Beecher, the most eloquent and popular
preacher in the world, began preaching in an obscure town
in Indiana to a church of nineteen members. The building in
which he delivered his sermons would not hold over a hundred
and fifty people; it had no lamps, and no hymn-books; and
the whole congregation could hardly raise from two hundred to
two hundred and fifty dollars salary.  "There was nobody in
the church to light the lamps," he says in a late lecture at New
Haven, "and they could not afford to get a sexton.  Such a
thing was unknown in the primitive simplicity of that Hoosier
time. Well, I unanimously elected myself to be the sexton.
I swept out the church, trimmed the lamps and lighted them.
I was, literally, the light of that church. I did n't stop to
groan about it or moan about it, but I did it."
The most successful editors in this country have graduated,
not from a college, but from a printing-office. The history of
Horace Greeley, the editor-in-chief of the most powerful and
widely circulated political journal in America, is familiar to
all. He began life at the bottom of the ladder, and reached
the top by his own efforts, without asking help from friends
or relatives. The early life of James Brooks, the editor and
proprietor of the New York Daily Express, as detailed by a
leading religious journal,'* is a type of the triumphant conten
* The New York Independent.
216 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
tion with obstacles by which many a poor boy has found his
way to the editorial chair or to a seat in Congress. Mr. Brooks
began his career as a clerk in the village of Androscoggin,
Me., where he was to remain till twenty-one years of age,
when, by contract, he was to receive as capital from his employer a hogshead of New England rum. Unfortunately for
his employer and the hogshead of rum, the town library was
kept in the "store," of which the clerk made a liberal use.
His first venture in business enabled him to save money
enough to pay one dollar a week for his board, while a kind
gentleman assisted him to go to school. As soon as he knew
enough to teach school, he began as a pedagogue on the liberal
salary of ten dollars per month and his board.   In a year he
was rich enough to enter Waterville College. Studying and
teaching by turns, he graduated at the end of two years, carrying his trunk to the stage-office, as he did when he entered, to
save a few of his hard-earned and scanty shillings. From this
hour he provided a home for his mother and her two younger
children, his father having died in his childhood.
Mr. Brooks next studied law with the noted John Neal, of
Portland, taught school, and at the same time wrote a series
of anonymous letters for the Portland Advertiser, a daily Whig
paper, which were so popular that its proprietor made him an
offer of five hundred dollars per year to write constantly for
his journal. At this time, though only twenty years old, he
had become one of the most popular and eloquent orators of
his State. After serving in the Legislature of Maine, in connection with his editorial duties on the Portland Advertiser
he went to Washington in 1832, and began the series of
letters which for the first time caught ulp and reflected in clear
and brilliant light the multiform life of the American capital.
The letters became immediately popular, and were copied by
the press from Maine to Louisiana. One of the most signal
proofs of their brilliancy and power is to be found in the words
of Senator Wilson: "I shall never forget what those letters
were to me. The first I had ever read, they came to me in my
10
217 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
obscurity and poverty as the revelation of an unknown and wonderful life. They made me want to go to Washington. They
made me feel that I must go there, and see the men and
witness the national scenes which I read about in these
letters."
Subsequently Mr. Brooks wrote a series of letters from the
Southern States; then visited Europe, and, travelling on foot
through the principal countries, sent home to the Portland
Advertiser letters depicting almost every phase of life, from
that seen in the palace of the nobleman to the cottage of the
peasant. Next he started the New York Express, carrying it
alone for years under a heavy load of debt and discouragement,
- acting as leading editor, reporter, day editor, night editor, and
even type-setter, - and in 1849 was elected to Congress as a
representative of New York City, a place which, with the exception of a single term, he has held ever since. In that place he
has distinguished himself by his eloquence and high legislative
qualities, representing in the House, it is said, the type of culture and oratory of which Mr. Sumner is the exemplar in the
Senate.
Even those successful men who have begun their professional
careers in America under favorable circumstances have not
gone through the battle of life unscathed. They all bear in
their faces and bodies the scars of the fighting-man,- the
signs of desperate conflict.  Such was emphatically the case
with Rufus Choate, as his haggard face and trembling, nervous
frame too plainly showed; and such, if we may trust a reporter
of a New York paper, is the case with one of the most brilliant
lawyers of that city: "In that pale and almost emaciated face,"
says the writer, "that fragile enwrapment of body which seems
shaken with the earnestness of its own talk under the picture
of Humboldt at the mantel-piece, is packed that library of
knowledge and that fiery concentration of eloquent speech
which, collectively, make up the product among men called
William M. Evarts. He looks like a man whom his soul has
burned up with its own intensity till all that was inflammable
218 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
has exhaled,- leaving a thin asbestos body, and a face lit up
with great, weird, far-seeing eyes.  He seldom laughs, but he
is not ungenial, - only so immeasurably in earnest that he has
no time to laugh."
It is true that in every calling one meets sometimes with
obstacles that seem utterly insurmountable, - obstacles which
baffle for a time the sagacity and energy of the most determined
men, and almost compel them to give up in despair.  But nil
desperandumn; do not give up, reader, while you have health
and strength, however dark your present prospects. The circumstances which now obstruct and hem you in (circumstances
are made of india-rubber for strong men, of iron for weak men,)
may give way, if you keep on. "Go ahead," - keep pushing, -and a passage will by and by open, as if by magic,
before you, and your little bark of hope and adventure will
pass through unharmed, as did Dr. Kane's boats more than
once through horrible cliffs of ice on either side, which threatened to crush them in a moment. It has been observed that
in going through the Notch of the White Mountains the road
seems frequently to the traveller to be shut in by frowning precipices, so as to render further progress impossible; but, as he
nears the obstacles, he finds the path curving gracefully and
safely along the terrace cut for it through the gorge. So the
fearful obstructions that bid defiance to our progress in life are
generally only apparent, and will vanish as soon as we confront
them.
Even if battling with inward disease, as well as with outward
foes, you may, with a heroic spirit, triumph in the end. Men
have cured themselves of painful diseases by a herculean effort of
the volition, and physicians always count upon a cheerful, hopeful frame of mind in their patients as one of the most important
agencies in effecting a restoration to health. Aaron Burr laid
aside a wasting fever like a garment, to join the expedition
against Quebec.   One of the greatest generals of the Thirty
Years' War was Torstenson. On account of his sufferings from
the gout, he was usually carried about in a litter; yet the
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
rapidity of his movements was the astonishment of the world.
When Douglas Jerrold, being very sick, was told by his physician that he must  die, "What!" he said, "and  leave  a
family of helpless children. I won't die!" and die he did
not for several years. When were the prospects of any man
gloomier than those of Wolfe just before he captured Quebec?
From his early youth he had suffered severely from a fatal
disease, and the seeds of others were deep laid in his constitution. He had been severely repulsed in an attack on Montcalmn's
intrenchments south of Quebec; his troops were dispirited;
the promised auxiliaries under Amherst and Johnson had failed
to arrive; and he himself, through the fatigue and anxiety
preying on his delicate frame, fell violently ill of a fever. Partially recovering his health, he writes to the government at
home, as if to prepare the public mind in England for his
failure or retreat, a letter full of gloom, concluding thus: "I
am so far recovered as to do business, but my constitution is
entirely ruined, without the consolation of having done any
considerable service to the state, or without the prospect of it."
Within five days only from the date of that letter, the Heights
of Abraham had been scaled, Montcalm defeated, the seemingly
impregnable fortress surrendered, and the name of Wolfe had
become immortal to all ages!
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TIlTHE WILL AND THE WAY.
CHAPTER XV.
THE WILL AND THE WAY (continued).
Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,
So shall thou humble and magnanimous be.
Sink not in spirit; who aimeth at the sky
Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.
GEORGE HERBERT.
Kites rise against, not with, the wind.....  No man ever worked his
passage anywhere in a dead calm.-JOHN NEAL.
No man can end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior. - SYDNEY SMITH.
"Les existences foibles vivent dans les douleurs au lieu de les changer en
apothegmes d'experience.   Elles s'en saturent et s'usent en retrogradant
chaque jour dans les malheurs consommes. Oublier, c'est le grand secret des
existences fortes et creatrices, - oublier ai la maniere de la Nature, qui ne se
connait point de passe6, qui recommence & toute heure les mysteres de ses
indefatigables enfantements."
A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician
tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. - E. P. WHIPPLE.
NOT only perseverance is necessary to worldly success, but
patience also, or a willingness to bide one's time.   Indeed, of all the lessons that humanity has to learn in this school
of the world, the hardest is to wait.  Not to wait with folded
hands that claim life's prizes without previous effort, but,
having toiled and struggled, and crowded the slow years with
trial, to see then no results, or perhaps disastrous results, and
yet to stand firm, to preserve one's poise, and relax no effort,this, it has been truly said, is greatness, whether achieved by
man or woman.   The world cannot be circumnavigated by one
wind. The grandest results cannot be achieved in a day; the
fruits that are best worth plucking usually ripen the most
slowly; and therefore every one who would gain a solid success
must learn "to labor, and to wait." It is said that a tran
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scendentalist, after years of profound speculation, came to the
conclusion "to accept the universe," -  an  example  which
commoIL natures would do well to imitate.
As "temper is nine tenths of Christianity," so cheerfulness
and steady labor are nine tenths of practical wisdom. A sunny
disposition is the very soul of success, enabling a man to do
double the labor that he could without it, and to do it with
half the physical and  mental exhaustion.    Yet nothing is
more common than for men to be dissatisfied with their callings, and grumble because they are chained to them by the
necessity of getting a living. Losing all interest in their work,
they go shifting about from this business to that, following
nothing long enough to make it pay, but just long enough to
see that it, too, has its thorns, perplexities, and vexations, and
finally landing in the grave or the poor-house. While it is
true that the round man sometimes gets into the square hole,
yet, after having spent years in getting used to it, it is often
better to remain there than to try to better himself. Generally
there cannot be a greater error than to be constantly changing
one's calling or business. As capital tends always to an equilibrium in profits, one kind of business pays in the long run just
as well as another.
Look around you, reader, among your acquaintances, and
you will find that nearly all the successful men have stuck
resolutely to one pursuit. Two lawyers, for example, begin to
practise at the same time. One gives all his energies to his
profession, lays in day by day a stock of legal learning, labors
conscientiously upon the few cases he has, and waits patiently
for years before he finds an opportunity to demonstrate his
skill and erudition.    The other, impatient of neglect  and
despairing of clients, plunges into politics, becomes an insurance
agent, or engages in speculation.  At  the end of twenty years
the latter will be without property and in debt, while the
former will have a profitable and growing practice, and will
count his thousands in bank stocks, government bonds, or
mortgages. So in the mechanical professions. The same rest 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
less, uneasy, discontented spirit which sends a mechanic from
tie East to the South, the Rocky Mountains, or California,
renders continuous application anywhere irksome to him; and
so he goes wandering about the world, a half-civilized Arab,
getting the confidence of nobody, and almost sure to die
insolvent.
Every man who would get on should try to put heart into
everything that he does. Macaulay tells us that the political
party to which Halifax belonged was the party which at that
moment he liked least, because it was the party of which at
that moment he had the nearest view; and so every calling
has its peculiar cares, anxieties, and vexations, which seem
more numerous and trying than those of any other. To fly
from them is only to exchange them for a different and perhaps
more teasing class.   Troubles in some form are incident to
man's imperfection.   It is therefore the very wantonness of
folly to search them out, and brood over and magnify them.
"Worry kills more men than work." The petty trials of life,
if suffered to wear upon a man, often weaken more than great
afflictions, as the ship that will survive a hard thump may be
sunk by tiny insects boring through her timbers. There is
nothing, it has been well said, like heart-varnish to cover up the
innumerable evils and defects of life. Cultivate cheerfulness,
then; the spectres of neglect, unkindness, and despair will fly
before it as fogs before the sun. Is your situation uncongenial?
Do as Sydney Smith did when laboring as a poor parish priest
at Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire.  "I am resolved," he said, "to
like it, and reconcile myself to it, which is more manly than to
feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post
of being thrown away, and such like trash." There is no profession so forbidding, no work so crabbed, that a man who
strives to extract the utmost happiness from it may not twine
about it the roses of fancy, and hide the most of its thorns.
"There is always hope," says Carlyle, "in a man that actually
and earnestly works. In idleness alone is there perpetual
despair."
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History and biography  abound with examples of signal
patience shown by great men under trying circumstances.
The Chinese tell of one of their countrymen, a student, who,
disheartened by the difficulties in his way, threw down his book
in despair; when, seeing a woman rubbing a crowbar on a stone,
he inquired the reason, and was told that she wanted a needle,
and thought she would rub down the crowbar till she got it
small enough.  Provoked by this example of patience to "try
again," he resluned his studies, and became one of the three
foremost scholars in the empire. The gentle words of Sir Isaac
Newton to his dog Diamond, when it upset a lighted taper on
his desk, by which the laborious calculations lof years were destroyed, are familiar to all. A like mischance befell Thomas
Carlyle, when he had finished the first volume of his French
Revolution. He lent the manuscript to a friend for perusal,
and it having been left, by some carelessness, on the parlor
floor, the maid-of-all-work, finding what she supposed to be a
bundle of waste paper, used it to light the kitchen and parlor
fires. The first composition of the book had been a labor of
love; the drudgery of rewriting it, with no help but memory,
was contemplated by the author with a degree of anguish which
it is not easy to conceive. Yet, without wasting time in plaints,
he set resolutely to work, and at last triumphantly reproduced
the book in the form in which it now appears. A similar
anecdote is told of Robert Ainsworth, a celebrated writer and
antiquary of the eighteenth century.  He had toiled for years
in compiling a voluminous dictionary of the Latin language,
during which time he gave so little of his society to his wife,
that, before he had quite completed the work, she committed it
to the flames. Instead of abandoning himself to despair, he
began at once to rewrite the book, which, with almost incredible
labor, he finally accomplished.
The patience of two of our own countrymen was put to an
equally severe test. When Edward Livingston had finished
his great code of Louisianian law, he had the anguish of beholding the labor of long years perish instantly in the flames; 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
yet he was not disheartened, but patiently recommenced and
reperformed his herculean task. After Audubon had wandered
and toiled for years to get accurate representations of American
birds, he found that two Norwegian rats had in a night destroyed
two hundred of his original drawings, containing the forms of
more than a thousand of the inhabitants of the air. All were
gone but a few bits of gnawed paper, upon which the thieving
rascals had reared a family of their young.   "The burning
heat," says the noble-hearted sufferer, "which instantly rished
through my brain was too great to be endured without affecting the whole of my nervous system. I slept not for several
nights, and the days passed like days of oblivion, until the
animal powers being called into action, through the strength
of my constitution, I took up my gun, my note-book, and my
pencils, and went forward to the woods as gayly as if nothing
had happened." He set to work again, pleased that he might
now make better drawings than before, and in three years, by
his indomitable energy, his portfolio was refilled.
There are some professions and some places in which patience
is peculiarly requisite to success. It is said that in London the
faculty of sitting still on a chair is largely rewarded. Men obtain great emoluments because they are forty years of age and
upwards. Medical men, we know, get trusted, simply because
their names have appeared for twenty years on the same brass
plates on the same weather-beaten doors. A young attorney's
most brilliant speech stands but little chance by the side of a
graybeard's prosy argument. Even this faculty of sitting still,
however, -often the hardest thing to do, -  can be educed only
by culture; and, in general, the old adage is tre, that there is
no excellence or rare success without great labor.  "Pigeons
ready roasted," said the author of that exquisite musical composition, Midsummer Night's Dream, to a friend, "do not fly
into the mouths of the most talented artists. As a rule, you
must first catch, pluck, and roast them." Even the gold of
Colorado exacts hard work. It cannot be picked up like the
stones in the streets, nor is it to be coaxed out with kid gloves.
lo*0 o
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Men of genius have seldom revealed to us how much of their
fame was due to hard digging. There were many headaches
before the polished verses that fall so harmoniously on your ear
were tortured into shape; many a trial before Michael Angelo
hewed out in marble or personated in fresco the awful conceptions of Dante. " Not even the Sybarite was at ease on his
rosebed. Even he had some labor to perform; no hand save
his own could uncrumniple the rose-leaf that chafed him."
Ninety per cent of what men call genius is a talent for hard
work; only the remaining tenth is the fancied ability of doing
things without work. The mere drudgery which some men
are said to have gone through with in executing their plans almost staggers belief. To acquire a polished style, Lord Chesterfield for many years wrote down every brilliant passage he met
with in his reading, and either translated it into French, or, if
it was in a foreign language, into English. A certain eloquence
became at last, he says, habitual to him, and it would have
given him more trouble to express himselfinelegantly than
ever he had taken to avoid the defect. To gain a mastery of
language, Lord Chatham not only used to translate Demosthenes
into English, but also read Bailey's folio dictionary twice through
with discriminating attention. For the same purpose, his son,
William Pitt, before he was twenty years old, had read the works
of nearly all the ancient classic authors, many of them aloud,
dwelling sometimes for hours on striking passages of an orator
or historian, noticing their turns of expression, and trying to
discover the secret of their charm or power.  The  " silvertongued" Mansfield not only translated all of Cicero's orations
into English, but also retranslated the English orations into
Latin.
Butler, who exhibits in his Hudibras an amount of wit,
comic illustration, and curious and out-of-the-way learning that
is absolutely portentous, kept a commonplace-book, in which,
according to Dr. Johnson, he had deposited for many years, not
such events or precepts as are gathered by reading, but such
remarks, similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or inferences, as
226 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
occasion prompted or inclination produced,- those thoughts
which were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully
applied to some future purpose.  "Such," adds Johnson, "is
the labor of those who write for immortality." Before the
great essayist himself began the Rambler, he had collected
in a commonplace-book a great variety of hints for essays on
different subjects. Addison amassed three folios of manuscript
materials before he began the Spectator. The papers in that
periodical, like most essays which have survived the changes of
time and the caprice of fashion, were simply the form which
their author chose to impart to the world thoughts which, for
the most part, had long been shaping and clothing themselves
with words in his own mind.
Jean Paul Richter did the same thing. For years he went
on reading, studying, and observing, making great books of extracts for future use, which he called his quarries. These notebooks contained a kind of repertory of all the sciences; and he
also carefully noted down his daily observations of living nature.
The great Catholic writer, De Maistre, for more than thirty
years noted down whatever he met with of striking interest in
his reading, accompanying his extracts with comments; and he
also placed in the same "immense volumes" those "thoughts
of the moment, those sudden illuminations, which are extinguished without result, if the flash is not made permanent by
writing." Hume toiled thirteen hours a day while preparing his
History of England. Lord Bacon, notwithstanding the fertility
of his mind, economized his thoughts, as the many manuscripts
he left, entitled "Sudden Thoughts set down for Use," abundantly testify. Erskine made numerous extracts from Burke, of
whom he was an intense admirer; and Lord Eldon copied Coke
upon Littleton twice, re-reading that crabbed work till his whole
mind was saturated with its lore and spirit. Southey was unwearied in his efforts to prepare himself to write. Not content
with a mere reference in a table-book, whenever he met with
anything available in his reading he marked the passage with
his pencil, and it was transcribed, docketed, and deposited ill
227 
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an array of pigeon-holes. Nothing short of this exhausting
industry could have produced the Commonplace Book or The
Doctor.
When we look at the prodigious acquisitions of some men
and the colossal performances of others, we are apt to think
that such persons enjoy an immunity from the general law,that the formner class know intuitively without the trouble of
learning, and that the latter execute great works without any
real toil. We are apt to fancy that men of transcendent abilities are endowed with some special faculty,- with one sense
more than belongs to common  men.   In contemplating the
wondrous  creations of  Shakespeare or the masterpieces of
Milton and Dante, in thinking of Newton discovering the
mechanism of the heavens, of Watt constructing the steamengine, or of Morse inventing the electric telegraph, we are
so utterly baffled in attempting to trace the process by which
they reach these results, that we are tempted to ascribe them
to a species of second-sight, rather than to the normal workings
of the human mind. Even such histories as those of Gibbon,
Guizot, and Buckle imply a capacity of acquiring knowledge
and a tenacity of memory so immeasurably beyond those of
common men, that we are apt to think these faculties in them
to be different in kind as well as in degree. But a peep into
the biographies of these and other great men dissipates these
illusions. We find that, almost without exception, the men
of brilliant genius, whether poets, orators, statesmen, historians, generals, or teachers, have been the hardest kind of
workers, toiling more laboriously than smiths or carpenters;
and that the reason why they have surpassed other men is
simply that they have taken more pains than other men.
Few of the great works of genius have been thrown off amid
luxuries and abundant leisure. Generally they have been
elaborated in the intervals of less congenial toils, amidst
neglect, anxiety, and privation. The men who have spread
light through the world, it has been truly said, had often
scarcely oil for the lamp by which they worked; they that
228 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
have left imperishable records of their minds had often little
to support the body, and gave forth the incense in which their
knowledge is embalmed "in self-consuming flames."   But poor
or independent in circumstances, the great men of the world
have worked. Hleyne, the great German classicist, shelled the
peas for his dinner with one hand, while he annotated Tibullus
with the other. Matthew Hale, while a student of law, studied
sixteen hours a day. Sir Thomas More, and Bishops Jewell
and Burnett, began studying every morning at four o'clock.
Paley rose at five; Gibbon was hard at work, the year round,
at six. Burke was the most laborious and indefatigable of
human beings; Pascal killed himself by study, or rather by
study without exercise; Cicero narrowly escaped death from
the same cause; Hooker, Barrow, and Jeremy Taylor were
industrious scholars; MTilton kept to his books as regularly as
a merchant or an attorney.   "My morning haunts," proudly
says the latter, in one of the few passages in which he gives
us a peep into his private life, "are where they should be, at
home; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular
feast, but up and stirring; in winter, often ere the sound of
any bell awakens men to labor or devotion; in summer, as oft
with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read
good authors, or cause them to be read, till attention be weary
or memory have its full freight; then with useful and generous
labors preserving the body's health and hardiness."
The old idea of a genius, once so popular with lazy men, as
one who never studies, or who studies nobody can tell when, -
at midnight, or at odd times and intervals, when the fit chances
to be upon him,    and who scorns to be shackled by methods
or rules, is now pretty nearly exploded. It is acknowledged
by all sensible men, that, as Dr. Dewey says, "genius will study;
it is that in the mind that does study; that is the very nature
of it." There is but one method of attaining to excellence,
says Sydney Smith, "and that is hard labor; and a man who
will not pay that price for distinction had better at once
dedicate himself to the pursuit of the fox, or sport with the
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tangles of Nemra's hair, or talk of bullocks and glory in the
goad! There are many modes of being frivolous, and not a
few of being useful; there is but one mode of being intellect ually great."
We hear a great deal about the extempore productions of
men of genius,- great works dashed off at a heat; but could
we learn the secrets of the literary workshop, we should find that
most of these marvellous improvisations, like the cut-and-dry,
elaborate impromptus of conversation, which have been kept
in pickle for weeks, have been the result of years of anxious
thought and care. Sheridan is said to have written "Pizarro" at
Drury Lane Theatre, over port wine and sandwiches; but every
one familiar with his life knows that he was a literary trickster,
who polished and repolished the brilliant off-hand sayings
with which he used to dazzle the House of Commons with the
greatest care, - that they were, in fact, the results of previous
reflection, kept ready for use in a memorandum-book. The
brunt of the labor upon "Pizarro" had probably been done
before he set pen to paper.
No man appears to write with more ease than Dickens; yet
a published letter of his shows that when he was brooding
over a new book his whole soul was "possessed," haunted,
spirit-driven by one idea; and he used to go wandering
about at night into the strangest places, seeking rest, and finding none till he was delivered. When that little Christmas
book, The Chimes, was about to rise from the ocean depths
of his thought, he shut himself up for a month  close and
tight, till all his affections and passions got twined and knotted
up in it, and, long ere he reached the end, he became "haggard
as a murderer." It is said that on being requested to read at
his public recitations a new selection from his writings, he
replied that he had not the time to prepare himself, as he was
in the habit of reading a piece once a day for six months
before reciting it in public. That the author of David Copperfield had little faith in improvisations is evident from the
following golden words" The one serviceable, safe, certain,
230 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
remunerative, attainable quality in every study and every pursuit is the quality of attention. My own invention or imagination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would
never have served me as it has but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention." This
is the way the most fertile, imaginative, vivacious writer of
modern fiction does his work.
RPousseau, who wrote with so seeming ease, as he cast
"O'er erring thoughts and sentences a hue
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzlbig while they past
The eyes that o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast,"
tells us that it was only "by ceaseless inquietude," by endless
blotches and erasures, that he attained the magic beauty of his
style. Moliere, whose verse has all the easy flow of conversation, would pass whole days in fixing upon the freest and most
vernacular mode of turning his couplets. Petrarch, in writing
his      impassioned amatory sonnets to Laura,           "Watering the tree which bears his lady's name
With his melodious tears, — "
seems to have suffered more keenly from the pangs of rhyming
than from the loss of his mistress, if we may judge by the operose corrections in his manuscripts. No one would dream that
Beranger's light, chirping verse, which seems as spontaneous
as the twittering of a sparrow, is the result of intense labor;
yet the author bestowed weeks and months even upon a single
song, in order to give it that appearance of ease and simplicity
at which he constantly aimed. Cardinal Bembo had a desk
with thirty divisions, or pigeon-holes; and whenever he completed a sonnet, he put it into the first of them, whence he
took it, after a certain interval, and, having read and corrected
it, put it into the next department. In a little time he would
take it out, give it some more touches here and there, and
promote it to another pigeon-hole. In this way he used to
make his sonnet run the gauntlet through all the crypts' till
he took it from the last of them, a pure and perfect chrysolite,
- as complete a piece of literature as his persevering taste
2'0'1 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
could make it. Buffon, who used to say of style that it was,
in fact, the man, was slow with the pen, and asserted that
genius was nothing but patience.  Rochefoucault so castigated
his Maxims by revision, that he left them the hard literary
muscle which we find them.
Addison wore out the patience of his printer.   He would
often stop the press to insert a new preposition. Gibbon wrote
out his autobiography, a model of its kind, nine times before
he could satisfy himself. Hazlitt tells us that he was assured
by one who knew, that Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, the
most rapid, impetuous, glancing, and sportive of all his works,
was returned to the printing-office so completely blotted over
with alterations that the compositors refused to correct it as
it was, took the whole matter to pieces, and reset the copy.
Hazlitt himself spent so many weary years before he could
wreak his thoughts upon expression, that he almost despaired
of ever succeeding as an author. John Foster was a most painfully laborious writer. He tells us that in revising one of his
essays, his principle was to treat no page, sentence, or word
with the smallest ceremony, but "to hack, split, twist, prune,
pull up by the roots, or practise any other severity on whatever
he did not like." The consequence was " alterations to the
amount, very likely, of several thousands." When Chalmers,
after a visit to London, was asked what Foster was about,
he replied, "Hard at it, at the rate of a line a week."
Even the light, facile verse of Tom Moore was the efflorescenlce of deep strata of erudition; a quaint piece of learning
often blossomed into a song, and knowledge gathered out of
scores of folios bloomed into whole wildernesses of beauty.
Washington Irving tells us that Moore used to compose his
poetry while walking up and down a gravel walk in his garden,
and when he had a line, a couplet, or a stanza polished to his
mind, he would go to a little summer-house near by, and write
it down. Ten lines a day he thought good work, and would
keep the little poem by him for weeks, waiting for a single
word. Some of his broadest squibs cost him whole weeks of
inquiry.
2 "") 2 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
The ductility of language in the hands of Hawthorne surprises and delights every cultivated reader. But for his lately
published Note-Books, which betray the secret of his art,reveal the laws by which his genius wrought, - we might
fancy him an exception to the rule that intense labor is the
price of all high excellence. We find him in these not trusts
ing to inspirations, but day by day, through every month and
every year, patiently jotting down every random thought that
chanced to stray into his mind, pinioning every hint in ink,
securing every fact or fancy that may possibly serve as material
for or adornment of some future work. Not one of his books
was flung off from the top of his mind at a white heat. We
find, on the contrary, that it was by condensing into a chapter,
and sometimes into a sentence, the fruits of months of waiting
and watching, hints by the wayside and stray suggestions
followed up and wrought out, moonlight meditations, and
flashes of illumination from electric converse with congenial
minds, that he wove his spells, so weird, so dark, and so
potent.
It is said that a rival playwright once jeered at Euripides,
because he had taken three days to compose five lines, whilst
he had dashed off five hundred in the same time.  "Yes," was
the just retort, "but your five hundred lines in three days will
be dead and forgotten, whilst my five will live forever."   The
number of hours spent in the manual labor of writing a book
is no measure of the brain-labor expended in composing it.
Thoughts, to flow easily, must overflow from a full mind.
Alonzo Cano, the Spanish sculptor, completed a beautiful
statue in twenty-five days. When the sordid merchant who
had employed him wished to pay him by the day, he cried out,
indignantly, "Wretch! I have been at work twenty-five years,
learning to make this statue in twenty-five days." So, as an
English reviewer thoughtfully suggests, great painters may
finish off great pictures with wonderful speed, as if hurried
along by a whirlwind of inspiration; so also great writers, like
Sir Walter Scott (though even in his case with very doubtful
2 ID) 3 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
advantage), may be able to dictate wo;ks of enduring interest 
and give them to the world without revising or retouching
them at all; but the reason in all these cases is the same.
Long years of study and practice and meditation have so
arranged and fitted, and, as it were, lubricated, the delicate
mental instruments which the matter in hand requires, that
when the motive power is applied, when the steam is up,
they work with the precision and regularity of a machine.
As in literature, so in art,- the works that have challenged
the world's admiration for ages have been the result of unwearied
toil. Michael Angelo, who, if any man, had a right to rely
on genius only, said of himself that all was due to study. He
went sometimes a week without taking off his clothes.  "During
the nine years that I was his wife," said the widow of the great
painter, Opie, "I never saw him satisfied with one of his productions; and often, very often have I seen him enter my
sitting-room, and, throwing himself in an agony of despondence
on the sofa, exclaim,' I never, never shall be a painter as long
as I live!"' It was this noble despair, which is never felt by
vulgar artists, this pursuit of an ideal which, like the horizon,
ever flew before him, that spurred on Opie to higher and yet
higher efforts, till he filled one of the highest niches in the
artistic temple of his country. When a lady once asked Turner
what his secret was, he replied, "I have no secret, madam, but
hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they
don't succeed because they don't learn it. Labor is the genius
that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great
curse to a great blessing."
Of oratory it has been said that there never was a good
speaker who did not acquire his proficiency at the expense of
his hearers.  If ever any man was born an orator, it was
Charles James Fox, who, as Wilberforce said, could begin at
full speed, and roll on for hours without fatiguing himself or
his audience; yet even his talents were gradually developed
by practice, for he made a point of speaking as often as he
could, - once every night, if an opportunity offered, - ex
234 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
pressly with a view to his own improvement.   Sir Robert Peel
began when a boy to cultivate those abilities which, though
only mediocre, made him one of the weightiest speakers in the
House of Commons. When he was quite a child, his father
used frequently to set him upon the table, and say, "Now,
Robin, make a speech, and I will give you this cherry." What
few words the little fellow produced were applauded, and
applause, stimulating exertion, produced such effects that before he was ten years old he could really address the company
with some degree of eloquence. As he grew up, his father
constantly took him every Sunday into his private room, and
made him repeat as much as he could of the sermon he had
heard.   Little progress was made at first; but by steady perseverance the habit of attention grew powerful, and the sermon
was repeated at last almnost verbatim. When many years afterwards he replied in succession to the arguments of his parliamentary opponents, stating each with extraordinary fulness
and accuracy, it was little suspected that the power to do so had
been acquired, under his father's training, in Drayton church.
America has probably produced no greater orator than Henry
Clay. Though endowed with great natural gifts, he was no
exception to the rule that orator fit. He attributed his success
to the one single fact that at the age of twenty-seven he began,
and continued for years, the practice of daily reading and
speaking upon the contents of some historical and scientific
book.   "These off-hand efforts," he says, "were made sometimes in a cornfield, at others in the forest, and not unfrequently in some distant barn, with the horse and ox for my
auditors. It is to this early practice in the great art of all
arts that I am indebted for the primary and leading impulses
that stimulated me forward, and shaped and moulded my subsequent entire destiny.   Improve, then, young gentlemen, the
superior advantages you here enjoy.   Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like
that of oratory. Coesar controlled men by exciting their fears;
Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their pas
2'0'5 
GETTING ON IN TIHE WORLD.
sions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that
of the other continues to this day." Henry Ward Beecher,
when a theological student, was drilled incessantly by a skilful
elocutionist in posturing, gesture, and voice-culture. There
was a large grove between the seminary and his father's house,
and it was the habit, he tells us, of his brother Charles and
himself, and one or two others, to make the night, and even
the day, hideous with their voices, as they passed backward
and forward through the wood, exploding all the vowels from
the bottom to the very top of their voices.   It is said that the
greatest sermon ever preached by Dr. Lyman Beecher, the
father of Henry,- one of the most powerful pulpit orators in
America, -was one on "The Government of God."  When
asked, as he descended the pulpit steps, how long it took him
to prepare that sermon, he replied, "About forty years, sir."
It cannot be too often repeated that all extraordinary skill is
the result of vast preparatory training. Facility of every kind
comes by labor. Nothing is easy, not even walking or reading,
that was not difficult at first.  Emerson tersely says:  "All the
great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through
England for seven years made Cobden a consummate debater.
Stumping it through New England for twice seven years
trained Wendell Phillips. The way to learn German is to read
the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you
know every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and
repeat them by heart. No genius can recite a ballad at first
reading so well as mediocrity can at the fifteenth or twentieth
reading.  The rule for hospitality and Irish'help' is, to have
the same dinner every day throughout the year.   At last Mrs.
O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it to a nicety, the host learns
to carve it, and the guests are well served.  A humorous friend
of mine thinks that the reason why Nature is so perfect in her
art, and gets up such inconceivably fine sunsets, is that she
has learned how, at last, by dint of doing the same thing so
very often. Cannot one converse better on a topic in which
he has experience than on one which is new   Mien whose
2 00 6 
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
opinion is valued on'Change are only such as have a special experience, and off that ground their opinion is not valuable."
But little reflection is needed to satisfy us that it is for wise
purposes that Providence has established the inexorable decree
that intense toil shall be the price of all rare excellence or success. Men are so constituted as to think lightly of, and even
despise, that which it has cost them but a slight effort to win.
When the maiden is too forward, her lover deems it time to
draw back. Besides, there would be no exclusiveness in excellence, nothing to distinguish it, or make it peculiarly desirable, if it could be too cheaply purchased. It is told of two
highwaymen, that, chancing once to pass a gibbet, one of them,
with an ill-boding sign, exclaimed, "What  a fine profession
ours would be if there were no gibbets!"  "Tut! you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for,
if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman."
Just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties
that scare and keep out unworthy competitors. What Jean
Paul Richter said of poverty, writing to a friend at the very
time when he was in the clutches of a remorseless creditor, is
true of many a trial in life.   "What is poverty," said he,
"that a man should whine under it?  It is but the pain of
piercing the ears of the maiden, and you hang precious jewels
in the wound."   Even the dreariest tasks, like the ugly toad
with the jewel in its head, have some redeeming circumstances
that cheat them of their repulsiveness.   "The ugliest trades,"
says Douglas Jerrold, "have their moments of pleasure.   Now
if I were a grave-digger, or a hangman, there are some people
I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment."
In conclusion, we would say to every man who wishes to
get      on in the world, in the words of the poet Holmes,           Be firm; one constant element of luck
Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck.
Stick to your aim: the mongrel's hold will slip,
But only crowbars loose the bull-dog's grip;
Small though he looks, the jaw that never yields
Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields!
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER XVI.
RESERVED POWER.
A man so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and
does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of, -
whose intellect is a clear, cold logic-engine, with all its parts of equal strength
and in smooth working order, ready like a steam-engine to be turned to any
kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the
mind. - HUXLEY.
Every person represents something, stands for something. At least, he
represents a value antecedently created in his own character. As was said of
Bias, the wise Greek, himself is the treasure that a whole life has gathered.
He stands for the wealth of being that a thousand struggles have contributed
to form.- REV. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D. D.
It is told of Hercules, god of real force, that "whether he stood, or walked,
or sat, or whatever thing he did, he conquered." -IB.
N the great international boat-race which occurred some years
ago on the Thames between the clubs of Harvard and Oxford, the boat manned by the former took the lead almost from
the start. Rowing forty-six strokes to the minute, while their
adversaries rowed but forty-two, the Harvard men were soon
half a length, next a whole length ahead, and, to a superficial
observer, seemed likely to win the race. But presently the
pace sinks to forty and thirty-nine; foot by foot, and inch by
inch, the men of the dark-blue colors, with the slow, steady,
ponderous swing of their oars, creep up on their adversaries;
the men of the crimson colors strain every sinew to its tension,
fighting every inch of the way; but lo! suddenly their stroke,
hitherto so impetuous, begins to slacken and look distressed;
their opponents are steadily pulling forty strokes a minute to
their thirty-nine or less; a few minutes more, and Oxford
moves victoriously ahead, and, in spite of the last desperate
"spurts" of Harvard, maintains her superiority to the goal, and
the race is won.
238 
RESERVED POWER.
A great many explanations have been given of Harvard's
defeat, but is it not evident that the main cause was a lack of
that vital element in all contests and struggles, that element
which Americans are so apt to despise or neglect, namely,
reserved power? Is it not true that, not only in boat-races, but
everywhere,- in all the intellectual and moral contests of life,
- in the commercial mart, in the senate, in the pulpit, and in
the forum,-  men fail of success from early exhaustion, from
a lack of that accumulated force, whether physical, mental, or
spiritual, which only can qualify them to meet any unexpected
draught upon their powers? In the composition of an army,
one of the first essentials of effective action is a well-constituted,
powerful reserved force. It consists of picked men, trained
veterans, with a cool, sagacious commander, who can be thrown
at any moment into the very thick of the fight, to sustain a
faltering legion, or to turn a doubtful combat into a decisive
victory. The lack of such a force, or its lack of numbers and
discipline, has often made the difference between a battle won
and a battle lost. Who that is familiar with the campaigns of
Napoleon does not remember how often the trembling scale was
turned, and the exultant legions of the enemy were rolled back,
just as victory was about " to sit eagle-winged on their crests,"
by the resistless charge of the Imperial Guard. And at Waterloo, when his star went down in darkness, to what mainly was
the disaster owing, but to the fact that this reserved force had
been diminished and enfeebled by the necessity of repelling
the attack on his right flank, so that when he partially broke
the British line at La Haye Sainte, he could not follow up his
success with a deadly blow?
Life is a warfare: it, too, has its decisive moments, when 
success or failure, victory or defeat, must hinge upon our reserved power.  At the bar, in the senate, in the pulpit, in the
fields of business, in every sphere of human activity, he only
organizes victory and commands success behind whose van and
corps of battle is heard the steady tramp of the army of the
reserve. It is not enough that the rank and file of our forces
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
will suffice for ordinary occasions; that, if the campaign takes
just the direction which we had expected, and there are no unforeseen obstacles to surmount, no attacks by the enemy in
overwhelming numbers, no strategy for which we had not
provided, we shall then be victorious. We must be prepared for
unexpected crises, -for incredible emergencies, remembering
that, as the French proverb has it, nothing is sure to happen
but the unforeseen. Above all, we must not cheat ourselves
with the delusion that, if we have failed to organize a sufficient force at the outset, we can impress men on the line of
march, or forage for supplies as we go along. Much less can
we extemporize in the battle-field evolutions which we have
never practised on the parade-ground.
Do  we appreciate this truth?  Is it one which "Young
America" emphasizes and acts upon? Do we, as professional
men, in planning life's campaign, see to it that our spiritual
forces are made up of picked men, sound in wind and limb, all
the maimed, halt, and blind being rigorously excluded from our
muster-rolls; and, above all, do we keep our recruiting-offices
constantly open, remembering that the war ends only with life?
Do our young men, in preparing for this war, spend years in patient and severe training, drilling and exercising their intellectual forces by all the approved and some non-approved methods
of discipline; testing them by mock fights, concentrating them
now upon this point and now upon that, now bidding them
storm some fortress of error, and anon to sap and mine, till
every raw recruit is a prompt and obedient soldier, so loyal, so
trained to action, that he will rally and form into line at the
first tap of the drum? Or, on the contrary, is it not a mnelancholy fact that nine tenths of our professional men despise, or
at least underrate the necessity of, thorough training; and with
raw levies, troops hastily conscripted, not for a life campaign,
but for each particular battle,.rush forward confidently to meet
the enemy, only to encounter a Bull Run rout and overthrow?
In other words, do we as professional men lay in abundant
stores of knowledge before we begin our professional life, add
240 
RESERVED POWER.
ing daily to their sum, or do we intellectually live from hand
to mouth.   Do we not, at least too many of us, cram for each
occasion, like a turkey stuffed for Thanksgiving and starved all
the rest of the year? Do we not invest all our physical, men tal, and moral capital in our business, instead of keeping a part
in bank? While economizing our gold and greenbacks,
while " alting down" our hard cash for a rainy day,    accu mulating for future use lands, houses, mortgages, and stocks, do we cultivate intellectual thrift?
Not that the material stores are unnecessary; by no means.
No army can do without a base of supplies. Our late civil
war has taught us that other things are necessary to victory besides men, discipline, and valor. We have learned that the long
purse tells more powerfully upon the issue of a contest than longranged cannon; that often, as Louis XIV. said of his struggle
with the allies, it is the last crown that wins; that a base of
supplies is just as essential to military success as well-armed
battalions; that often it is not so much the regiments thrown
forward into the field as the reserved forces intrenched in productive industry at home, and supporting the advancing column by their contributions and moral influence, that decide a
campaign. Wellington won Waterloo, indeed, by his veterans;
but, back of this, it was the steam-engine, giving to England a
working-power equal to fifty millions of men, - of men who
fed upon coal and water, instead of on meat and bread,-  that
overturned the First Empire, and set down Napoleon in midocean to meditate upon the might and majesty of that reserved
force which he had not calculated upon in his scheme of personal aggrandizement. Granting all this, however, it is nevertheless true that our chief lack is that of spiritual force and
discipline; and that as here lies our weakness, this fact should
furnish a hint as to where we should direct our efforts.
Let us now proceed to consider some of the reasons why we
should collect and train this reserved force.
We answer, first, because it is the easiest and most economical way of carrying on, not only a military campaign, but the
11                                   P
241 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
campaign of life.  To serve a long and weary apprenticeship
to any calling, to spend years in gymnazing and training the
faculties till one has become an athlete, costs, we know,
patience and self-denial; but we appeal to every wrestler in
the world's arena if it is not the cheapest in the end I Does
not all experience show that in the long run it is easier to be
than to seem, - to acquire power than to hide the lack of it?
Was there ever a lazy boy at school, or student in college, who
did not take infinitely more pains to dodge recitations and to
mask his ignorance than would have been necessary to master
his lessons, however dry or crabbed. Is there a mechanic who
scrimps his work, that does not cheat himself in the end I
Depend upon it, reader, nothing is more exhausting than the
shifts to cover up ignorance, the endless contrivances to
make nothing pass for something, tinsel for gold, shallowness
for depth, emptiness for fulness, cunning for wisdom, sham
for reality. Add to this the perpetual fear of detection,- the
constant trembling lest some blunder should expose one's
emptiness, lest some shaft should penetrate a weak joint in the
harness, lest a protruding ear should reveal the ass in the lion's
skin,- and it will be seen that no other possible procedure is
half so labor-saving as thorough knowledge, exact training, profound and varied culture, the careful composition and constant
renewal of our spiritual reserves. The true way to treat a difficulty is to face it boldly, and cut through or remove it. Go
round it, and, unlike S(r. Micawber's "something," it will be
forever "turning up again," growing more and more formidable
every time you dodge it.
It is true that this is not the popular doctrine. We live in
an age of "fast" men,- of steam and electricity,-  and now
that people travel by "lightning lines," going from New York
to Chicago in twenty-nine hours, the cry on all sides is for
"short cuts" to the professions, and science-made-easy methods
of intellectual culture. Instead of toiling painfully on foot up
the rugged steeps of learning, the student of to-day flies with
lightning-like speed along a railway track, finding every cliff
2.42 
RESERVED POWER.
cut through, every valley bridged.   Even the Mt. Washingtons
have railways leading to their tops, and every Hoosac is tunnelled. Perhaps the new methods of intellectual culture are
best, but there are some "old fogies " left who will doubt it.
They will doubt the value of royal roads. They will question
the expediency of making education very easy, if it is to prepare one for a world where labor is the eternal condition on
which the rich man gains an appetite for his dinner, and the
poor man  a  dinner  for his  appetite.   They  will inquire
whether to simplify every study, to lead the mind along a
planked road or railway to knowledge, so that no efforts on its
own part, no long, distressing discipline of thought and research, no grappling with difficulties, is required, be not to
defeat the chief end of study. If you wish to toughen the
body, do you make  the exercises of the gymnasium-the
climbing of ladders, the jerking of dumb-bells, the swinging on
parallel bars - light and unfatiguing? Is it not in the very
hardness of the thing done that its value consists. The savage believes that every time he slays an enemy the spirit of
that enemy enters into him, and becomes added to his own,
accumulating a warrior's strength for the day of battle. So,
when you conquer a difficulty, the spirit of that difficulty
passes into you, transformed into power; it adds to the mnind's
reserved force, just as the resisting of one temptation tends to
disarm the next of its power. Every intricate problem solved
by the pupil unaided is a true victory over himself, and
inspires confidence for new conquests. On the other hand,
the student of cyclopaedias and notes and handbooks and keys
never knows anything positively, and, thrown upon his own
resources, is utterly helpless. He can never go without his
crutches.
The lack of reserved power will explain many failures which
otherwise would seem unaccountable.  Why  is an author's
second book so often unreadable I Is it not because, instead of
drawing from a living spring, he exhausts himself, pumps himself
dry, in his first effort I For years he has dreamed over one pro
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
jected composition to which all his experience has stood related,
all his thought has converged. It is the net result of his experience up to a certain time; it is the cistern into which he
has poured his accumulated life. Elated by success, he mistakes the cistern for a fountain, taps his brain again, and the
result is, we get but the dregs and lees of his thought. The first
book he wrote because he had something to say, the second
because he wanted to say something; and the one is but the
echo of the other.
Secondly, reserved power gives yet greater force and effect to
power in action. Indeed, power exerted, however great, never
impresses us in the profoundest degree, unless we feel that behind
it there is a power greater than itself, by which it can be at
any moment augmented. The force that is exhausted in a
single jet inspires but a limited degree of admiration or awe.
For its highest effect we must feel that it is a Niagara fed by
vast inland seas, the vanguard of a coming host, the shower
that foreruns a coming tempest,
The baby finger
Of the giant mass of things to come
At large.
Nobody is thrilled to his being's core by an exhibition of power
that is evidently draining itself to the very dregs. The racehorse that, panting and gasping, just reaches the goal;  the
locomotive that tugs at its load; the bank that is drained by
a day's run; the philosopher with one idea; the hen cackling
over its one egg; the student who just escapes "plucking"; the
"Single-speech Hamilton," who never opens his mouth a
second time in Parliament; the Sir Egerton Brydges, who
writes but one fine sonnet, though it rivals Milton's; the
governor elected by one vote,- provokes our sympathy, rather
than our respect.   Our last term of contempt is "played out."
Who are the men that impress us most in history? Are they
not those that are felt to be greater than their deeds,    who by
their acts only beget an expectation that outruns all their performance? The large part of their power is latent, a reserved
244 
RESERVED POWER.
force which acts directly by presence, and without means.
Their victories are won by demonstration of superiority, not
by crossing of bayonets. It has been often remarked that a
speech never seems truly great unless there is a man behind it
who is greater than the speech. A brilliant but shallow, heartless orator never yet stole the secret of a sincere conviction.
As it was not the Prussian needle-gun, destructive as it is,
which won the late Prussian victories, but the intelligence and
discipline of the Prussian soldier,- the man behind the gun,
educated in the best common schools in the world,- so it is
the latent heat of character, the man behind the words, that
gives them momentum and projectile force.  It was this which
gave so prodigious a power to the words of Chatham, and made
them sminite his adversaries like an electric battery. Men who
listened to his oratory felt that he "put forth not half his
strength," - that the man was far greater than anything he
said.   It was  the  magnetism of his person, the haughty
assumption of superiority, the scowl of his imperial brow, the
ominous growl of his voice, "like thunder heard remote," and,
above all, the evidence which these furnished of an imperious
and overwhelming will, that abashed the proudest peers in
the House of Lords, and made his words perform the office of
stabs and blows.
The impression which every speaker, whether on the platform or in conversation, makes on his fellows, is the moral
resultant, not of what he says, but of all that he has grown up
to be; of his manhood, weak or strong, sterling or counterfeit;  of a funded but unreckoned influence, accumulated unconsciously, and spending itself, as the man is deep or shallow,
like a reservoir, or like a spouit or an April shower.
In reading the great masters of English thought, we are
constantly impressed by this reserved force. We feel, as we
slake our thirst at these "wells of English undefiled," that we
can never drain them dry; that they are not cisterns, but
living fountains, whose depths are fathomless. Read a page
of Mlacaulay, and you exhaust the thought at a single perusal.
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Read a page of Bacon twenty times, and at each reading you
will discover new meanings, unobserved before. That haze
which the naked eye could not penetrate is found by the telescope to be a nebula, composed of innumerable distinct stars.
The one writer informs, the other stimulates, the mind. The
one enlightens, the other inspires. The first communicates
facts and opinions; the second floods and shrcharges you with
mental life.  So in Barrow,-of whom Charles I. said that
he was an unfair preacher, because he left nothing for others to
say,   it is not the Amazonian fulness of the thought that
impresses you so much as the air of conscious facility with
which he discusses every theme. Be the subject mathematical,
metaphysical, or moral, he brings always to it a mind superior
to the occasion, and holds it with a giant grasp. He handles
the most ponderous problems of theology with an heroic ease,
like that of Homer's champions, hurling stones which nine
degenerate men of modern times would have failed to lift.
And so with him whom we call "oceanic," "the myriadminded," "the  thousand-souled," -the great master of the
human heart, who swept all its strings, or, rather, whose soul
was a mighty organ through which Nature gave utterance to
the full diapason of her notes, -the dramatist whose exhaustless fertility of thought is such that in the whole range of his
characters he never once repeats himself, the "suggestive sorcery" of whose language affects us like the spell of a mighty
enchanter, - what is the distinguishing characteristic of his
genius but that reserved power which makes his greatest efforts
seem  "like the play, the sport of his mighty spirit, waves
borne to our feet from a deep sea which oar has never vexed
nor plummet sounded ".
The biographer of the German metaphysician, Fichte, contrasting his wealth of thought with the formalism of a contemporary, observes that "all the truth that the latter has written
is not worth a tithe of the false which Fichte may have written.
The one gives me a small number of known truths; the other
gives me perhaps one truth, but, in so doing, opens before me
246 
RESERVED POWER.
the prospect of an infinity of unknown truths." Who does
not recognize here the portraits of two classes of thinkers that
are to be found in every department of philosophy, science,
and literature, - the one consisting of poverty-stricken thinkers,
who instruct but do not rouse, who enlighten but do not electrify; the other, of those mighty and sustained spirits that
open up new paths with every step they take; that wrestle
with their subjects only to grind them to powder; that struggle
with language in order to wrest from it words enough for their
wealth of thought; that do not so much lead as seize and
hurry us along; who seem to say all that they do say only that
we may conjecture how much more they could say; and who
move about in the intellectual world with an ease and confidence which proclaim that they not only dwell but rule
there X
It has been truly said that the great orator is not he who
exhausts his subject and himself'at every effort, but he whose
expressions suggest a region of thought, a dim vista of imagery,
an oceanic depth of feeling, beyond what is compassed by his
sentences. He affects you hardly less by what he leaves out
than by what he puts in. The thoughts he so eloquently utters
only apprise you of the nearness of a world whose thoughts
are more eloquently unuttered.
Nature has her reserved forces, the knowledge of which impresses us more than her grandest displays of material power.
Her mightiest operations are performed in silence, and the
effect is deepened and intensified by the sense of a greater
power behind that which we see or feel. Art, too, touches us
by its reserved power. There are paintings whose meaning lies
on the surface and is exhausted by a single look; and there
are others which disappoint at first, yet, reverently studied,
gradually glow with beauty, disclosing new marvels of skill,
hidden depths of meaning, at each examination, till at last the
genius of the artist stands confessed, and you gaze transfixed
as by a mighty enchanter.
Perhaps the highest proof of this reserved power in the
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artist is the ease with which, however hard he may have
labored, he willfseem to perform his marvels.   When Michael
Angelo proposed to fortify his native city, Florence, and was
desired to keep to his painting and sculpture, he observed that
these were his recreations,- what he really understood was
architecture. This is what Sir Joshua Reynolds considered as
the praise of Rubens, that he seemed to make a plaything of
the art. "A picture must not only be done well," he said, "it
must seem to have been done easily." Northcote, the painter,
speaking of the labored and timid productions of the modern
French and Italian schools, remarks that "they are the result
of such a tedious, petty, mechanical process, that it is as diffi cult for you to admire as it was for the artist to execute them;
whereas, when a work seems stamped on the canvas by a blow,
you are taken by surprise, and your admiration is as instantaneous and electrical as the impulse of genius which has caused
it. I have seen pictures with such a power that it thrilled
through your whole frame, and you felt as if you could take up
your brush and do anything."
Another advantage of reserved power is that, when it cannot
prevent defeat, it will at least save us from rout and despair.
The military leader who brings all his troops to the front has
no resource when beaten; every defeat is a Waterloo. Not so
with the man who has always battalions in reserve; he fights
more and more valiantly after each overthrow. Like Blucher
at Ligny, he may be forced back from his position; but he
will retreat in good order, and in two days more the thunder
of his guns will be heard at Waterloo, sending death and dismay into the ranks of his late victors. Like Washington, he
may lose more battles than he wins; but he will organize victory out of defeat, and triumph in the end. Napoleon said of
Massena that he was not himself until the battle began to go
against him; then -when the dead began to fall in windrows
around him -awoke his marvellous powers of combination,
and he put on terror and victory as a robe.
We all remember the conduct of Phil. Sheridan on a certain
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RESERVED POWER.
occasion when he found his army retreating before the victorious Early.  "0 sir," said the general in command, "we are
beaten!" "1 No, sir," was the reply; "you are beaten, but this
army is not beaten"; and then, seizing his army as Jupiter his
thunderbolt, he hurled it upon the enemy. We all remember,
too, the case of Curran. He had a defect in his speech, from
which he was nicknamed  "stuttering  Jack  Curran"; and
when he essayed his first speech, the features of his audience
swam before his eyes, the candles seemed to glare unmercifully
upon him, his words stuck in his throat, and he sank into his
seat filled with mortification and shame.' But he knew his
reserved strength, and when on a second trial he was ridiculed
as Orator Mum, the very sarcasm stung him into eloquence;
he replied with a triumphant speech, and was able at last to
charm the fastidious ear of the House of Commons, and to
make a corrupt bench tremble.
Disraeli's first effort was a failure. It would have killed an
ordinary man. All the wiseacres shook their double chins at
him; but he simply replied, "The day will come when you
will be glad to hear me," a prophecy which his sneering critics
have seen abundantly fulfilled. Robert Hall failed even more
ignominiously.  In his first sermon he "stuck" almost at the
beginning. Covering his face with his hands, he sobbed aloud,
"0, I have lost all my ideas!" and burst into a flood of
tears. A second trial ended in a more agonizing failure; but
the man who at the age of eight had made Butler's Analogy
and Edwards on the Will his intellectual recreations was not
to be silenced by two failures. A third trial was made, and
from that hour he took rank as the most brilliant pulpit orator
of England. When Thoreau published that unrivalled New
England pastoral, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers," only three hundred copies were sold or given away, and
the other seven hundred were returned to him by the publisher.
How does he notice the fact in his diary. "I have now," he
writes in grim triumph," a library of some nine hundred volumes, seven hundred of which I wrote myself. Nevertheless, in
11*
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spite of this result, sitting beside the inert mass of my works, I
take up my pen to record what thought or experience I may
have had with as much satisfaction as ever."
A striking illustration of the advantage which a reserved
power gives to the man of letters, especially when contending
on the battle-fields of thought, is furnished by the famous
Phalaris controversy which raged in England about two centuries ago. The dispute had its origin in France, where Fontenelle and Perrault claimed for the moderns a general superiority over the writings of antiquity. A reply to these arguments
was published by Sir William Temple, who, in his Essay on
Ancient and Modern Learning, declaring for the ancients, maintained with more elegance of manner than weight of matter
that the oldest books extant were still the best of their kind,
and, in proof of this assertion, cited the Fables of Esop, and
the Epistles of Phalaris. This led to the publication of a new
edition of the Epistles by the scholars of Christ Church, Oxford,
the nominal editor being  Hon. Charles Boyle.   Meanwhile
.William Wotton, a Cambridge scholar of marvellous precocity,
who had taken his degree at the age of thirteen, had published a
very able and impartial estimate of the controversy in his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning; and at his earnest request, Richard Bentley, the Master of Trinity College,
and the greatest Hellenist of his age, had added to the second
edition of that work a dissertation in the form of letters to his
friend, in which he proved that the author of the Epistles of
Phalaris was not the tyrant of Sicily, but some sophist of a
later day.
Sir William Temple was greatly incensed at this publication,
in which his own quackery and sciolism, as well as that of the
Oxford wits, had been so mercilessly exposed; and, at his request, Dean Swift entered the lists, and made an onslaught upon
Bentley in "The Battle of the Books"; but the rage of the knight
was mild to that of the Christ Church men, who considered
Bentley's attack an affront to the whole college, and resolved
by joining their forces to crush the audacious assailant at once
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RESERVED POWER.
and forever. In a brilliant and skilfully written work, to
which half a dozen of their best scholars contributed, and into
which they poured all the stores of wit, sarcasm, acumen, and
erudition which they could muster, they attacked Bentley in
turn, and, in the estimation of the public, gained a complete
victory. A shout of triumph went up from their ranks, which
was echoed by all the spectators of the combat; a second edition of the book, which was deemed absolutely unanswerable,
was called for; and Bentley was supposed, even by his own
friends, to be silenced forever. Nobody dreamed that he
would ever dare to reply, still less that he could ever again
hold up his head in the republic of learning; the cup of his
adversaries' joy was full, and their exultation knew no bounds.
At Cambridge a caricature was exhibited of Phalaris putting the
unfortunate critic into his brazen bull; and as it was thought
that a member of St. John's College, where Bentley was educated, could not properly make his exit without a pun, he was
represented as saying, "I had rather be roasted than Boyled."
Now was to be seen the signal advantage of reserved power.
In the midst of all this outcry the literary lion remained unmoved.   " Hushed in grim repose," he lay couchant, and,
with his eyes upon the gambols of his victims, was settling himself at leisure for his fatal spring. Conscious of his own learning, compared with whose boundless stores the entire jointstock of the confederacy was but that of school-boys,- all that
he had previously disclosed in the controversy being but the
sprinklings of his treasures, - Bentley resolved to prepare an
answer which should not only annihilate his opponents at one
fell swoop, but establish his reputation as one of the profoundest scholars the world had seen.  At length, when Achilles
was armed for the field, the signal was given; and with the
fullest benefit of final revision, which left no room for friend
or foe to point out a flaw, "that immortal dissertation," as
Porson calls it, which was to make an epoch, not only in the
life of the great Grecian, but in the history of literature, descended like a thunderbolt upon the enemy,
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"And in one night
The trumpet silenced, and the plumes laid low."
Never was there a more crushing defeat. Every position of
the enemy was carried; they were routed, horse, foot, and dragoons. After this Waterloo, they never took the field again;
it was felt to be madness. The victory over his adversaries,
immortal as it was, forms but a small part of Bentley's achievement. So profound is his learning, and such is his skill,
that, while every page is controversial, he has embodied a
mass of accurate information relative to history, chronology,
antiquities, philology, and criticism, which has never, perhaps,
been matched in any other volume; while all is so luminously
arranged and presented that the elementary student of classical
literature may read with profit and pleasure, and the most
veteran scholar find the circle of his knowledge enlarged.
A yet more memorable illustration of the value of reserved
power is furnished by the debate in the United States Senate
in 1830, concerning the sale of the public lands.  "The occasion," says a thoughtful writer, "was not a great one; the debate upon it for some days dragged heavily. The vast reserve
power of one man made it the event of our history for a generation. The second speech of Mr. Hayne, to which Mr. Webster was called upon to reply, was able and brilliant, its constitutional argument specious, its attack upon New England and
upon Mr. Webster sharp even to bitterness.   But Mr. Hayne
did not understand this matter of reserved power. He had
seen Mr. Webster's van and corps of battle, but had not heard
the firm and measured tread behind. It was a decisive moment in Mr. WVebster's career. He had no time to impress
new forces, scarcely time to burnish his armor. All eyes
were turned to him. Some of his best friends were depressed
and anxious.  He was calm as a summer's morning; calm, his
friends thought, even to inldifference. But his calmnness was
the repose of conscious power, the hush of nature before the
storm. He had measured his strength. He was in possession
of himself. He knew the composition of his'army of the re
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RESERVED POWER.
serve.' He had the eye of a great commander, and he took in
the whole field at a glance. He had the prophetic eye of logic,
and he saw the end from the beginning. The exordium itself
was the prophecy, the assurance of victory.  Men saw the sun
of Austerlitz, and felt that the Imperial Guard was moving on to
the conflict. He came out of the conflict with the immortal
name of the Defender of the Constitution. Of this speech, and
of the mode of its delivery, one of the greatest of our orators has
said,' It has been my fortune to hear some of the ablest speeches
of the greatest living orators on both sides of the water;
but I must confess I never heard of anything which so completely realized my conception of what Demosthenes was when
he delivered the Oration for the Crown.' I venture to add
that, taking into view the circumstances under which the
speech was delivered, and especially the brief time for preparation, the importance of the subject, the breadth of its views,
the strength and clearness of its reasoning, the force and beauty
of its style, its keen wit, its repressed but subduing passion,
its lofty strains of eloquence, the audience to which it was
addressed (a more than Roman audience), its effect upon that
audience and the larger audience of a grateful and admiring
country, history has no nobler example of reserved power
brought at once and effectively into action. The wretched
sophistries of nullification and secession were swept before his
burning eloquence as the dry grass is swept by the fire of the
prairies.",
Here, did space permit, we might speak of the self-confidence, the dignity of mannner, which reserved power gives
to him who knows that he is equal, and more than equal, to
the occasion. In describing his feelings while making the
speech we have just noticed, Mr. Webster is reported to have
said to a friend: "I felt as if everything I had ever seen or
read or heard was floating before me in one grand panorama,
and I had little else to do than to reach up and cull a thunder
bolt and hurl it at him!"
* Hon. B. F. Thomas, LL.D.
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But the reader may ask, How is this reserved force to be got'
How is it to be gathered and trained?
We answer, first, by hard study. Capital, in whatever
shape it may be accumulated, pecuniary or intellectual, is
hoarded labor. If we wish our drafts to be honored in a crisis,
there must be daily deposits in the savings-bank.  Tell me
how much has been your patient toil in obscurity, and I will
tell you how far you will triumph in an emergency. It has
been well said that the mental balance never lets us overdraw.
In life's school-room "each day recites a lesson for which all
preceding days were a preparation.  Our real rank is determined, not by lucky answers or some brilliant impromptu, but
by the uniform diligence. For the exhibition-days of Providence there is no preconcerted colloquy,-  no hasty retrieving
of a wasted term by a stealthy study on the eve of the examination. Bonnivard, Huss, Wyckliffe, Alfred, Washington,
Madame  Roland, Catherine of Genoa, - these valiant souls
were not inoculated for their apostleship extempore. The roots
of all their towering greatness, so brave to the top, ran back
under the soil of years."
The best extempore efforts, the most brilliant impromptus,
come from those who have acquired the ability to make them
by years of toil. Chief Justice Parsons, when an attorney,
once astonished Alexander Hamilton, his opponent, by the
promptness with which he demolished one of his strongest
points.  But when beginning practice he had access to the
best law-library in New England, and had literally mastered it, making briefs of the most important cases, among
which were several involving the very point in question. The
truth is, the ready man- the man full of resources, armed
cap-d pie for every emergency- is the man who has toiled
long and hard to be ready, and to acquire that strength and
flexibility which will prepare him for whatever he may have
to do.
It is true there are men at the bar, in the pulpit, and in the
senate, whose instantaneous and imperial command of ideas
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RESERVED POWER.
and words seems like an instinct. They have all their faculties
and knowledges so completely at call,- they are able to bring
all their powers to bear at once with such energy and earnestness on any given point, and to keep them so fastened on that
point, that we ascribe the result, not to training, but to that
mysterious something which we call genius. And geniuses, no
doubt, there are in the world; but, depend upon it, there are
no geniuses in this nineteenth century that reap without sowing; none that are idlers till the moment a demand is made
upon their mind, and then answer it by intuition. All such
have disappeared from the world with ghosts. The geniuses of
our day are distinguished by their power of intense application,
- application not always spread over a great lapse of time,
but which hits the nail on the head, which has a fine aim for
the heart of a subject or the hinge of a difficulty.  If in professional life they astonish us by their readiness and fertility, it
is because we forget that their minds have been previously so
exercised on similar subjects, that not only the necessary words,
but the necessary arguments and combinations of thought,
have become by long practice as intuitive as those motions of
the body by which we walk, talk, or do any habitual act.
If one man scowls and agonizes over a difficulty in theology,
law, or medicine, straining his brain almnost to lesion, and
another sees at a glance where lies the difficulty and what is
the solution, does this prove inevitably that the latter has more
natural ability than the other? By no means. It simply
shows that his faculties have been edged and sharpened by
years of familiarity with such topics; and the ease with which
he now does his work, so far from proving that he has always
worked with ease, is, on the contrary, but the measure of the
labor by which he has prepared himself to do it. The thorough
mastery of even one subject can be the fruit only of hard
thinking. It demands the element of time. It can be won
by no power of cramming.    "How easily he writes!" exclaimed a young lady as she laid down one of Irving's charming volumes.   Had she said, "How  easy it is to read his
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books!" they who know something of the agonies of "easy
writing" might readily sympathize with her. The locomotive
slips easily along the railway track; but ten thousand men
toiled in quarries of iron and coal, in the bowels of. mountains,
in forests, and in machine and cabinet shops, before you could
fly on the wings of steam at the rate of forty miles an hour.
The steamboat, to use an illustration we have somewhere seen,
glides gracefully and swiftly over the waters; but it is no easy
power that gives to the water-traveller her steady and rapid
motion. It is true she is tastefully decorated and gilded; her
cabins are luxurious, and her prow is decorated with specimens
of the sculptor's art. But descend with us to the engineer's
fiery domain, and swelter there in the burning pit; see the
sweating firemen, and listen to the bursting steam; behold the
tremendous power of fire and water combined, until the strained
and groaning boiler threatens to burst asunder and deluge her
decks with the imprisoned fluid, - and you will confess that
Ease, though a mild and pleasant damsel, has a terribly rough
old father. It is slow and hard thinking that makes rapid and
easy reading. The freedom and facility of the writer and
speaker spring from the same source as the painter's, which,
Sir Joshua Reynolds tells us, "are attained only by intense
study and industry at first, though the pictures thus wrought
with such pains now appear like the effect of enchantment,
and as if some mighty genius had struck them off at a blow."
And here let us add that this labor must not be confined to
the period of youth, but continued through life.  The nucleus
of the reserve force must be gathered and trained in the beginning of the war, but it must be enlarged and strengthened by
fresh recruits through the entire campaign. Professional culture must begin at the Law, Medical, or Divinity School, but
it must not end there. A public speaker is inexhaustible only
in proportion as he nourishes his mind by study; and in mind,
as in body, when  nourishment ceases vitality ends.  The
preacher who shuts his books when he puts on his white choker,
the lawyer who tosses aside his Coke upon Littleton the
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RESERVED POWER.
moment he is in the full tide of practice, does so at his peril.
We know the excuses that may be given for this. We know
the ten thousand distractions to which each is exposed, -the
moths that eat into his time, -  especially when the one is pastor of a city congregation, and the other is beset by a swarm of
clients. But we know that the world cares nothing about these
excuses, and that the lawyer whose plea is shallow, the preacher
who, instead of pruning off all divergent activities, fritters his
time into shreds by making and receiving calls, going on picnics,
talking up reading-rooms and art-institutes, acting as secretary
of a dozen societies, serving on committees, delivering temperance
lectures, listening to the twaddle of bores and the complaints
of grumblers, and neglects severe and continuous study, will
speak, the one to yawning juries and the other to empty pews.
Do you say that the writing of two sermons a week consumes
so much time that the young preacher has none left for general
culture? We answer that it is the very absence of this culture
that makes sermon-writing so laborious and so consumptive of
time. Ex nihilo nihltil fit,- it is hard, and always will be hard,
to draw water from an empty cistern, even by means of a forcepump. The fatal flaw in nine tenths of the sermons one hears is
that they lack body of thought, vitalized knowledge, intellectual
power. The preacher who would permanently and powerfully
impress his hearers should have large reserves of knowledge;
he must be like Bishop Brownrig, of whom Fuller tells us that
he not only "carried learning enough in n?merato about him
in his pockets for any discourse," but "had much more at
home in his chests for any serious dispute."  It has been well
observed by the editor of one of our ablest religious journals,"'
that "the merchant is in a dangerous position whose means are
in goods trusted out all over the country on long credits, and
who in an emergency has no moneys in bank upon which to
draw. A heavy deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only
position of strength.  And he only is intellectually strong, who
has made heavy deposits in the bank of memory, and
* Rev. W. W. Patton, D.D., in the Advance.
q
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can draw upon his faculties at any time, according to the
necessity of the case." Give two of the three days which you
now spend in grinding out sermons to hard study, reading the
ablest books, even some that are called heretical, mastering the
greatest themes, and filling the cells of the brain with the fruits
of the most varied culture, and you need not trouble yourself
about the sermon; it will write itself, as the water from the
lake gushes up in the fountain. The combustibles will be
gathered; you will have only to apply the match.
Again, we must reserve time for meditation. We live in an
age of bustle and excitement; the click of the telegraph, the
whistle of the locomotive, the whir of machinery, is ever in our
ears. The tendency of the times is to force every man of ability
into great outward activity, and thereby in many cases to dam
up and divert to the turning of this mill or that the stream
which, if left unbroken, would have gathered volume enough
to fertilize a vast tract of thought. Besides this, in our large
towns every cultivated man is beset with a multiplicity of social
enjoyments and excitements, the very waste-pipes of spiritual
power; and the energies of the brain, instead of forming a fund
that is continually deepening by influx from secret sources, are
diffused and wasted on trivialities. Add to this the fact that
the Americans are the most impatient people under the sun,
that we are not content to wait through long and weary years
for the fruits of our toil, but, in the stockjobber's phrase, are
anxious "to realize" at once, - and can we wonder that so few
of us accumulate the reserve power which is indispensable
if we would do anything worthy of our faculties? Is it strange
that our intellectual work is so poor, when our lives are so full
of disquiet, and we have hardly a grain of that patience of nature which slowly and with the forethought of a century of
gTowth builds up and elaborates a forest tree? Need we to be
told that while knowledge is acquired by labor, "wisdom
cometh by opportunity of leisure," and that the ripest thought
comes from a mind which is not always on the stretch, but fed
at times "by a wise passiveness " I
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RESERVED POWER.
The literary worker, above all men, should remember that
leisure, and oftentimes protracted leisure, is an absolute necessity of his intellectual life. The electric eel cannot be always
giving off shocks. No field, however rich its soil, will bear continual cropping. It has been justly said that Aaron's beard
would not have come down to us in history, if he had but
shown the Israelites what he could shave from his chin day by
day; and even an Emerson would be unrecognizably diluted,
if he were trickled through a daily editorial. There is no mental
reservoir of such capacity that it will not be empty at last, if
we perpetually draw from it and never pour into it. Besides,we
must remember that, as the Country Parson has told us, the
mind can be emptied in much shorter time than it is possible
to fill it.  "It fills through an infinity of little tubes, many so
small as to act by capillary attraction; but in writing a book,
an article, or a sermon, it empties itself through a twelve-inch
pipe."  When old Dr. Bellamy was asked by a young clergyman for advice about the composition of his sermons, he replied:  "Fill up the cask! fil up the cask! fill up the cask!
and then if you tap it anywhere you will get a good stream.
But if you put in but little, it will dribble, dribble, dribble,
and you must tap, tap, tap, and then you get but a small
stream, after all."
Thirdly, to acquire reserved power, we must concentrate our
energies upon some one thing, yet be careful at the same time
to avoid mental narrowness.
The mind, as well as the body, demands variety of discipline
as well as generosity of diet. It will not grow to its full stature,
nor be rounded into just proportions, nor acquire that blended
litheness, toughness, and elasticity which it needs, if fed upon
one aliment. There is no profession or calling which, if exclusively followed, will not warp and contract the mind.   Just as
in the body, if I resolve to be a rower and only a rower, the
chances are that I shall have, indeed, strong arms, but weak
legs, and perhaps lose my eyesight by the glare of the water;
or as, if I become a pugilist, I shall be all muscle, with uo
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brains,- so, in the mind, if I exercise but one set of faculties,
and neglect the rest, I may become a subtle theologian, able to
discriminate between the Homoousion and the Homoiousian, or
between "efficacious" and "sufficient" grace, with more than
Aquinas's subtlety; or a sharp, hair-splitting lawyer, with the
eye of a lynx and the scent of a hound to detect a legal flaw;
or a profound classical scholar who, like Hudibras,
"Can speak Greek
As easily as pigs squeak,"
and to whom Latin
"Is no more difficile
Than to a blackbird't is to whistle," -
but, as a man, I may be below contempt. The clergyman, especially, is apt, without broad and generous culture, to get a
mental twist, a narrowness and one-sidedness, which greatly
lessens his power.  Reading and thinking of nothing but theology, he gets into a rut,-  a rut which deepens every year, but
never widens. Travel with him in his narrow groove a twelvemonth, and you cease ever afterwards to see or hear anything
new. He may not literally turn the barrel over, but he
preaches substantially the same sermons.   The texts may be
new, but you recognize the same old thunder. There is a continual iteration of old thoughts, the thrashing of the same
straw without wheat, the same barrel-organ tunes, the turning of the wheel upon its own axis, the jogging on the same
old'Toads with the "one-hoss shay."
For these reasons we would say to every man, Strive for excellence in your calling, but, as subsidiary to this, do not fail
to enrich your whole capital as man. To be a giant, and not
a dwarf, in your profession, you must be always growing. A
town that is finished has already begun to decay. The man
that has ceased to go up intellectually has begun to go down.
The more various your mental diet, the more inexhaustible will
be your mental resources; the wider your range of thought,
the greater will be your chance of original combinations.
Read the best non-professional works in science, history, and
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literature, and select for friends and associates some whose pursuits are unlike your own, and you will be astonished, when
you write or speak, at the freshness of your thoughts and the
multitude and variety of illustrations that will come trooping
to the tip of your tongue or pen. Nothing conduces more to
breadth of intellect than intercourse with various minds.
"The commerce of intellect," it has been well said, "loves distant shores. The small retail trader deals only with his neigh —
bor; when the great merchant trades, he links the four quarters of the globe."
Upon the importance of concentration we need not dwell.
While avoiding narrowness, we must remember that it will be
impossible to accumulate much reserved power if we dissipate
our strength upon many objects, instead of using it with
economy and directing it to one grand end. But how shall
we use it economically, when so many things are clamoring for
our attention? We answer, by concentrating our efforts upon
the vitally essential part of our work, and neglecting the less
important; in other words, by striking where the blows will
be most effective. We must do as William Pitt did, when
overwhelmed by official duties. He divided his work into
three parts,- that which was not worth doing, that which
would do itself, and that which was quite enough for any man
to attempt.
A vivid illustration of the advantage with which this may
be done is furnished by an incident related some years ago in
an Eastern magazine.   "We once happened," says the writer,
"into a country church on a Sunday forenoon in a strange
place, and were seated in a pew in the broad aisle. The clergyman, a weakly seeming man, with a whisper of a voice, rose to
his duties, and feebly went through the various services antecedent to the sermon. We wished ourselves out of it, but retreat
was impossible: we looked about; the church was full.
What could  people come to meeting for?  to see and hear
such a dead-and-alive performance as that?  We settled ourselves down in desperate resignation, hoping that at least the
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
sermon would be short. The sermon began, and the very first
sentence of it was like the blast of a bugle. The pallid parson
seemed all of a sudden to have had a quart of blood poured
into his veins, a gallon of lungs put into his thorax, and the
strength of a drover stowed away in his body and arms. For
a half-hour he held us almost spell-bound with the most animated delivery, powerful argumentation, and vivid original
illustration, rendered with vigor of voice, and with every
appearance of abundant physical power. So we learned the
secret of the great congregation, and the toleration of his opening dulness or stupidity. So we learned, too, how a man really
feeble, by husbanding his force against ineffective expenditures,
and exerting it all when the greatest number of minds could
be influenced at once, and by reason of the surroundings most
powerfully influenced, could do a great work weekly, and sustain himself in the high estimation and valuation of society.
Now, if this minister had attempted to conduct the whole service with as much vigor as he preached, his strength would
have given out just as the sermon was commencing, and the
effect of his whole week's labor and study would have been
measurably lost." *
Robert Hall was wont to husband his physical strength in the
same way. Though athletic in frame, he often announced his text,
and for some minutes spoke, in a tone so low as to be barely
audible.   During even the first twenty minutes there was
nothing in his discourse indicating to his hearers that a giant
stood before them; but as his voice swelled from an almost
unintelligible whisper to a trumpet peal, they were spell-bound
by the enchantment of his oratory; and when he was concluding, the effect upon the nervous system of the listener was like
the shock of artillery.
Lastly, we must avoid overwork. As we shall consider this
subject in a subsequent chapter, we shall barely glance at it here.
It is well known that the body or brain that is overtasked
will soon lose its power, if it be not even smitten with paral
* Walter Wells, in Lippincott's Magazine.
,262 
RESERVED POWER.
ysis or death. Yet, aside from the victims of necessity, who
must work at all hours, as and when they can, there is hardly
any calling in which men are not overtasking themselves,
toiling too long and too hard, to win a success which, when
it comes, they will be too enfeebled to enjoy. The blow which
struck down the Vice-President of the United States in his
chair, and sent him.staggering from the Senate Chamber, is
one which at this moment is threatening hundreds of our leading men in all the professions,- the blow that is sure, sooner
or later, to avenge overwork. His case is but one more added
to the martyrology of the nineteenth century, the martyrology, not of the stake or the scaffold, but of toil. The one
thing which the great man of to-day cannot do, is - to rest.
As  did Peel, Canning, Cobden, Sir George  C. Lewis, Sir
William Hamilton, Macaulay, Choate, Stanton, Governor
Andrew, and Raymond, so Gladstone, Bright, Bismarck, Sumner,
and Colfax are now doing, - killing themselves by inches,
exhausting their vitality by excessive brain-work.
Now, can anything be more unwise than this? When shall
we learn that play is as necessary as labor, that frequent
respites from toil are the very safety-valves of professional
men? Even if we can endure the strain, it is not prudent to
work constantly up to the very highest rate of which we,are
capable. If an engineer on a railway were to keep the speed
of his train constantly up to the maximum of which the locomotive is capable, his engine would soon be used up. Drive
a horse day after day at the top of his speed, and you soon
wind him. All machinists construct their machines ~o that
there shall be a reserve force. If the power required is fourhorse, they make a six-horse power, so that the machine may
not only work easily, but last long. Our bodies and brains
are engines, only more complex and delicate in structure,
which should be used with even greater care and economy.
The man who has strength to do ten hours' work a day, physical or intellectual, should do but seven or eight; and then he
may hope to accumulate a reserve fund of energy which will
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
not only round out his frame to fair proportions, and enable
him to toil with ease, cheerfulness, and alacrity, but furnish a
capital, a fund in bank, upon which he can draw heavily in
any emergency, when called on to do two days' work in one.
Without this capital, he will not only do his work painfully,
forever tug,ging at the oar, but he will be incapable of increasing the strain upon his powers, however urgent the necessity;
he cannot put a pound more of pressure upon the engine without an explosion.
We emphasize this point, because there is no class of persons
that need more to husband their strength than professional men.
There are some of so dull and phlegmatic a temperament"slow coaches," that jog on at so lazy a pace -that they
need no note of alarm. They need the whip, not the rein;
and the utmost speed you can get out of them will only call their
muscles into healthful activity. But there is another class,the fiery, earnest, zealous men, the nervous men, tremulous
as the aspen,  enthusiasts in their callings, -who  need to
economize their nerve-force, unless they would prematurely
exhaust themselves and sink into an early grave. Such men
need to be reminded that they have but a limited fund of
strength, upon which they are making draughts with every
breath they draw and every word they utter, and that therefore
they cannot guard too jealously against any waste of their
nerve-power. Any needless expenditure of strength, however
slight, whether by physical or mental effort, in conversation or
study, in excitement, in worry or fidgeting of any kind, is just
so much detracted from that which they need for their lifework. Throw your energy upon the effective point, whatever
that may be; but don't waste your lightning upon things of
no account.
Are you a preacher?  Don't spend your strength on little
week-day meetings and social and side matters, so that when
Sunday comes, and every word you speak should tell upon a
thousand, you will be as lifeless as a mouse in an exhausted
receiver.   It is better, one has well said, to lose a pint of
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blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Do not
make the mistake of one of New England's most brilliant lawyers,- we refer to Mr. Choate, - concerning whom a brother
advocate laments that he not only worked too much, but had
no just economy of labor. You remember his answer when
blamed  for  thus  endangering  his  constitution:  "Good
heavens, my dear fellow! my constitution was all gone years
ago, and I'm living on the by-laws."  No wonder his constitutional strength was exhausted, considering with what an utter
lack of economy he labored. " He did a thousand things,"
says Judge Thomas in the admirable address from which we
have already quoted, "which men of narrower capacity might
have done as well, or well enough. He expended upon his
work a vast amount of superfluous strength. He brought the
whole army of the reserve into action, when the victory might
have been easily and gracefully won by the van and corps of
battle."   Avoid, we  pray you, this  mistake.   Do  not assail pygmies with eighty-four-pounders. Do not imitate Dr.
Johnson, of whom Peter Pindar tells us that he
"Uplifts the club of Hercules, -for what?
To crush a butterfly, or to brain a gnat;
Creates a whirlwind, from the earth to draw
A goose's feather or exalt a straw;
Bids ocean labor with tremendous roar
To heave a cockle-shell upon the shore."
Here we may remark that the great secret of husbanding
one's strength, so as to accumulate a fund, is to work intensely,
not many hours. On this point we have the authority of one
who was himself a prodigious worker, and accomplished
the highest results, yet never worked with jaded or flagging
powers, never strained the bow till it was bent, never
weakened his brain by overtasking it.  We  refer to Daniel
Webster. Some years ago Mr. Whipple, of Rhode Island, had
occasion to consult him touching an important law-case, -a
case in which were presented many cross-questions of law and
equity, and so involved that it required days and weeks of
hard labor to discover a channel-way over its shoals and amid
12
265 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
its rocks. Meeting Mr. Whipple early in the morning, Mr. Webster by dinner-time had threaded all the avenues  and crosspaths of the labyrinth, and gave an opinion so clear and comprehensive that Mr. Whipple was constrained to ask him what
had been his system of mental culture. In reply Mr. Webster
observed, that it is a law of our natures that the body or the
mind that labors constantly must necessarily labor moderately.
He instanced the race-horse, which, by occasional.efforts in
which all its power is exerted, followed by periods of entire
rest, would in time add very largely to its speed; and the
great walkers or runners of our race, who, from small beginnings, when fifteen miles a day fatigued them, would in the
end walk off fifty miles at the rate of five or six miles an hour.
He also mentioned the London porter, who, at first staggering
under the load of one hundred and fifty or two hundred pounds,
would in time walk off with six or eight hundred pounds with
apparent ease. The same law governs the mind. When employed at all, its powers should be exerted to the utmost. Its
fatigue should be followed by its entire rest. Mr. Webster added
that, whatever mental occupation employed him, he put forth
all his power, and when his mental vision began to be obscure,
he ceased entirely, and resorted to some amusement or light
business as a relaxation.
The last hint we would give to him who would increase his
reserved power is, get plenty of  sleep.   The  harder we
work during the day, the more sleep do we require to repair
the waste of nervous energy. Americans not only work too
hard, but  sleep too little.   The rapid development of the
country, its intense industrial activities, the fiery ambition of
the people, our dry, electric atmosphere, and our sunny climate,
all tend to make us preternaturally wakeful. American students, we fear, sit up too late and get up too early. A great
many are killed by alarm-clocks. The best wakeners are sunlight and the twittering of birds.  The anecdotes  told of
Brougham, Napoleon, and others, who are said to have slept
but four or five hours out of the twenty four, but who, we sus
266 
RESERVED POWER.
pect, took a good many catnaps in the daytime, have done
much harm. The time taken out of eight hours' daily sleep is
not time gained, but time worse than wasted. We may cheat
ourselves, but we cannot cheat Nature.  Because she lets us overdraw our accounts for many years, we fancy the accounts are
not kept. But, depend upon it, she is a jealous creditor, who
is sure in the end to exact with compound interest every loan
she makes to us; and if we continue borrowing for work the
hours that are due to sleep, though we may postpone a settlement for years, the final and inevitable result will be physical
and mental bankruptcy.
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER XVII.
ECONOMY OF TIME.
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life
is made of. - FRANKLIN.
Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles, life.- YOUNG.
Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after-life
with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that the waste
of it will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and in moral stature, beyond your darkest reckonings.- W. E. GLADSTONE.
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours,
each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone
forever. -HORACE MANN.
NE of the most important lessons to be learned by every
man who would get on in his calling is the art of economizing his time.  A celebrated Italian was wont to call his time
his estate; and it is true of this as of other estates of which
the young come into possession, that it is rarely prized till it is
nearly squandered; and then, when life is fast waning, they
begin to think of spending the hours wisely, and even of husbanding the moments.   Unfortunately, habits of indolence,
listlessness, and procrastination, once firmly fixed, cannot be
suddenly thrown off, and the man who has wasted the precious
hours of life's seed-time finds that he cannot reap a harvest
in life's autumn. It is a truism which cannot be too often
repeated, that lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost
knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine,
but lost time is gone forever.
In the long catalogue of stereotyped excuses for the neglect
of duty, there is none which drops oftener from men's lips, or
which is founded on more of self-delusion, than the want of
268 
ECONOMY OF TIME.
leisure. Persons are always cheating themselves with the idea
that they would like to do this or that desirable thing, "if
they only had time." Hundreds of young men burn with an
intense desire to cultivate their minds; they realize how essential, in this age of intelligence, are mental training and knowledge to success; they see the superficial, half-instructed men
everywhere distanced in the race of life; but, alas! every moment of their waking hours is taken up by the pressing calls
of business, and they have no leisure for reading or study.
Hundreds there are who feel the profoundest sympathy for the
poor, and who would out-Howard Howard in "carrying broth
and blankets to beggars," and in distributing the bread of life
in the form of Bibles and tracts; but their own affairs usurp
all their time and attention, and they can do nothing for their
fellow-men.
Such are the pleas by which the lazy and the selfish excuse
themselves from a thousand things which conscience dictates
to be done. Now, the truth is, there is no condition in which
the chance of doing any good is less than in that of leisure.
Life, it has been truly said, is composed of an elastic material,
and wherever a solid piece of business is removed, there the
surrounding atmosphere of trifles rushes in as certainly as the
air into a bottle when you pour out its contents. If you
would exhaust the air from a given spot, you must enclose it in
a vessel of texture as firm and as carefully secured as would
be required to protect the most precious and delicate substance;
and so an hour's leisure, if one would not have it frittered
away on "trifles light as air," needs to be guarded by barriers
of resolution and precaution as strong as are needed for hours of
study and business. Go hunt out the men in any community
who have done the most for their own and the general good,
and you will find they are - who? Wealthy, leisurely
people, with extensive stomachs and highly polished shoes, who
have oceans of time to themselves, and nothing to do but to
eat, sleep, and vegetate? No; they are almost uniformly the
overworked  class, -the toil-and-moil,  almost-driven-to-dcath
269 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
men, who seem wellnigh swamped with cares, and are in a
ceaseless paroxysm of activity from January to December. It
is these men who find time to preside at philanthropic meetings,
to serve on Tract or Missionary Society committees, to visit the
poor, to attend noon prayer-meetings, and to attend to selfculture by reading not only the best old books, but the pick of
the ever-multiplying new publications of the day; while a
busy male trifler, who spends his time in laboriously doing
nothing, or a lady who lies upon her sofa, and has no creature
dependent upon her, will tell you that he or she has waited week
after week for leisure to answer a note. Persons of the former
class, however crowded with business, are always found capable
of doing a little more, and you may rely upon them in their
busiest seasons with ten times more assurance than upon the
idle man.
It is common in every community to run with business to
lawyers and doctors who are already fully employed.  This is
not wholly from a senseless veneration for a name; it is because there is an instinct that tells us that the man who does
much is most likely to do more, and to do it in the best manner. The reason is, that to do increases the power of doing;
and it is far easier for one who is always exerting himself to
exert himself a little more for an extra purpose, than for him
who does nothing to "get up steam" preparatory to the same
end. Give a busy man ten minutes to write a letter, and he
will dash it off at once; give an idle man a day, and he will
postpone it till to-morrow or next week. There is a momentum in the active man which of itself almost carries him to the
mark, just as a very light stroke will keep a hoop agoing,
when a smart one was required to set it in motion. W"rhile
others are yawning and stretching themselves to overcome the
vis inertiae, he has his eyes wide open, his faculties keyed up
for action, and is thoroughly alive in every fibre. He walks
tlrough the world with his hands unmuffled and ready by his
side, and so can sometimes do more by a single touch in passing than a vacant man is likely to do by strenuous effort.
270 
ECONOMY OF TIME.
The men who do the greatest things achieved on this globe
do them not so much by prodigious but fitful efforts, as by
steady, unremitting toil,- by turning even the moments to account. They have the genius for hard work, the most desirable
kind of genius. A continual dropping wears the stone. A
little done this hour and a little the next hour, day by day,
and year by year, brings much to pass. The largest houses are
built by laying one brick upon another. Hiow have the men
who have died millionnaires acquired their wealth? Not generally by huge windfalls, but by minute and gradual accumulations. It is not by large sums bequeathed to them one after
another, or gained by gigantic schemes of speculation, but by
economizing the petty sums which so many thoughtlessly
squander, by saving the cents and dimes and single dollars,
adding them together year after year, that they have reared
their pyramid of fortune. So with self-culture, the acquisition
of knowledge, and the doing of good deeds; the time men
often waste in needless slumber, in lounging, or in idle visits,
would enable them, were it redeemed, to execute undertakings
which seem in their hurried and worried life to be impossible.
Complain not, then, reader, of your want of leisure to do
anything.   Pather thank God that you are not cursed with
leisure; for a curse it is, in nine cases out of ten. What if, to
achieve some good work which you have deeply at heart, you
can never command an entire month, a week, or even a
day?  Shall you therefore bid it an eternal adieu, and fold
your arms in despair? No; the thought should only the more
keenly "prick the sides of your intent," and goad and stimulate and urge you on to do what you can do in this swiftly
passing life of ours. Try what you can build up from the broken fragments of your time, rendered more precious by their
brevity. It is said that in the United States Mint at Phila'delphia, when the visitor reaches the gold-working room, the
guide tells him that the singular floor is a network of wooden
bars to catch all the falling particles of the precious metal.
WVhen the day's labor is done, the floor, which is in sections or
271 
GETTING ON IN THE WVORLD.
parts, is removed, and the golden dust is swept up, to be melted and coined.   Learn from this the nobler economy of time.
Glean up its golden dust; economize with tenfold care those
raspings and parings of existence, those leavings of days and
"wee bits" of hours, - so valueless singly, so inestimable in
the aggregate,- which most persons sweep out into the waste
of life, and you will be rich in leisure.  Rely upon it, if you
are a miser of moments, if you hoard up and turn to account
odd minutes and half-hours and unexpected holidays,-  the
five-minute gaps while the table is spreading, the chasms while
you are waiting for unpunctual persons, -your careful gleanings at the end of life will have formed a colossal and solid
block of time, and you will die at last wealthier in intellectual
acquisition, wealthier in good deeds harvested, than thousands
whose time is all their own.
There are some men who must do what they do without interruption. They cannot read or think to advantage except in
sacred silence. No wave from the wild sea of life must beat
against their calm retreat. In some quiet, snuLg loophole they
must think and toil. Interruptions, distractions of any kind,
break their threads of thought, and they cannot rejoin them.
Such persons find it hard to utilize the odds and ends of time.
There are others who are so constituted that it is almost impossible for them to be systematic and continuously diligent. They
can work only by spasms, when the fit is upon them; compensating in these paroxysms of activity, by the fine frenzy with
which they labor, for the seasons in which they loaf or lounge.
Such "heaven-born geniuses" are a law unto themselves, and
are daily becoming more and more rare. Most persons, to
achieve anything, need to be always busy; and for them it is
better never to have any idle moments, but always to have
some work on the anvil to which they can turn their hand.
It is wonderful what results have been achieved by those
with whom  the clock has never "clicked lazily behind the
door," who have let none of their moments fall idly to the
ground. It is related of a German critic that he could repeat
272 
ECONOMY OF TIME.
the entire Iliad in Greek with scarcely an error.   How many
years, think you, of his brief threescore and ten, or less, did he
spend in imprinting the immortal poem on his brain?  Years
he had not, nor even months, nor weeks, for he was a physician with large practice; but he contrived to master the old
bard of Scio during the brief, hurried snatches of time when
passing from one patient to another. Dr. Mason Good, the
celebrated English physician, performed a similar feat, having
translated into English verse the whole of Lucretius during
his long walks in London to visit his patients. Dr. Darwin
composed many of his works in the same way. While driving
about in his sulky from house to house, he jotted down his
thoughts on little scraps of paper which he carried with him
for the purpose.  Matthew Hale's "Contemplations" were com-*
posed while he was travelling as judge on circuit. Locke
carried a note-book in his pocket, to catch the scintillations of
even common conversation. Pope improved the wakeful hours
of the night. Dr. Rush studied in his carriage while visiting
his patients, and thus prepared himself to write, not only upon
professional but other themes, works which are still almost as
useful as when first published. Cuvier, the father of Comparative Anatomy, also studied while passing in his carriage from
place to place, and by his ceaseless industry did perhaps more
for the physical sciences than any other man that ever lived.
The  biographer of George  Stephenson tells us  that the
smallest fragments of his time were regarded by him as precious, a    nd that "he was never so happy as when improving
them." Franklin stole his hours of study from meals and
sleep, and for years, with inflexible resolution, strove to save
for hi     s  own instruction every minute  that could be won.
Henry Kirke White learnt Greek while walking to and from
a lawyer's office.  Hugh Miller found time while pursuing his
trade as a stone-mason, not only to read, but to write, cultivating his style till he became one of the most facile and brilliant authors of the day. Elihu Burritt acquired a mastery of
eighteen  languages and twenty-two dialects, not by rare gen               12* 
273 
10
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
ius, which he disclaimed, but by improving the bits and fragments of time which he could steal from his occupation as a
blacksmith. Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece, whose work is
by far the fullest and most trustworthy on the subject, and who
also snatched time from business to write two large volumes
upon Plato, was a banker. Sir John Lubbock, the highest
English authority on prehistoric archeology, has made himself
such by stealing the time from mercantile pursuits. John
Quincy Adams, to the last day of his life, was an economist of
moments. To redeem the time, he rose early. "I feel nothing like ennui," he said. "Time is too short for me, rather
than too long. If the day were forty-eight hours long, instead
of twenty-four, I could employ them all, if I had but eyes and
hands to read and write."  While at St. Petersburg, he complained bitterly of the great loss of his time from the civilities
and visits of his friends and associates.  "I have been engaged,"
he wrote, "the whole forenoon, and though  I rise at six
o'clock, I am sometimes able to write only a part of a private
letter in the course of the day."
Let the young man who complains that he has "no leisure
for self-culture or for doing good to others, contrast if he can,
without a blush, his plea with the resolution of a Roman Emperor * who was burdened with the responsibilities of a worldwide empire,-  " not frequently, nor without necessity, to say
to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure; nor
continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our
relation to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations." All the busy workers we have named felt that life,
though short, is yet long enough, when its moments are economized, for every necessary labor. They felt as did Arnault,
when he replied to the objection of Nicole, on a new work
being proposed.  "We  are now old," said Nicole; "is it not
time we should rest R."  "Rest!" exclaimed Arnault, "have we
not'all eternity to rest in?"
There are few persons so engrossed by the cares and labors
* Marcus Aurelius.
274 
ECONOMY OF TIME.
of their calling that they cannot give thirty minutes a day to
self-culture; and even that time, wisely spent, will tell at the
end of a year.   The affections, it is well known, sometimes
crowd years into moments, and the intellect has something of
the same power.  Volumes have not only been read, but writ
ten, in flying journeys. Dr. Channing knew a man of vigorous
intellect, who had enfijoyed few advantages of early educa tion, and whose mind was almost engrossed by the details of
an extensive business, who yet composed a book of much
original thought in steamboats and on horseback, while visiting distant customers. These examples are enough, and more
than enough, to show that the moments commonly wasted
during a long life by the busiest men would suffice, if avariciously improved, for the execution of even colossal undertakings,
which seemingly demand a lifetime of uninterrupted leisure.
We say, therefore, in the language of that prodigy of industry,
Goethe, " Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good
actions, but make use of common situations. A long-continued
walk is better than a short flight." The small stones that fill
up the crevices are almost as essential to the firm wall as the
great stones; and so the wise use of spare time contributes not a
little to the building up in good proportions, and with strength,
a man's mind. If you really prize mental culture, or are deeply
anxious to do any good thing, you will find time, or make time
for it, sooner or later, however engrossed with other employments.
A failure to accomplish it can only demonstrate the feebleness
of your will, not that you lacked time for its execution.
" Old-fashioned economists," says the eloquent Wirt, "will
tell you never to pass an old nail, or an old horseshoe, or
buckle, or even a pin, without taking it up; because, although
you may not want it now, you will find a use for it some time
or other. I say the same thing to you with regard to knowledge. However useless it may appear to you at the moment,
seize upon all that is fairly within your reach. For there is
not a fact within the whole circle of human observation, nor
even a fugitive anecdote that you read in a newspaper, that
2 7?0 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
will not come into play at some time or other; and occasions
will arise when they involuntarily present their dim shadows
in the train of your thinking and reasoning, as belonging to that
train, and you will regret that you cannot recall them more
distinctly." Daniel Webster once repeated with effect an anecdote which he had treasured in lis memory for fourteen years.
While we thus urge upon the young man who is beginning
life the necessity of economizing his time, let us not be misunderstood. We advise no such saving of time as will rob him
of necessary recreation or sleep. Nor do we regard every
moment in which a man is seemingly idle as really wasted.
Especially is this true of intellectual pursuits.  There are some
writers who appear to think that every hour in which a man is
not grinding away, "with malice prepense and aforethought,"
at some set task,- when the mind is left to itself, instead of
doing compulsory work,- is misspent.   John Wesley took
this view of life, and therefore, as might be expected, denounced all stop-gaps in passing one's time.   "Never be unemployed," says he, "never be triflingly employed, never while
away time." All this looks very plausible, and the last advice
is just what might have been expected from one of whom Dr.
Johnson has left this opinion: "John Wesley's conversation is
good, but he is never at leisure.  He is always obliged to go at
a certain hour.  This is very disagreeable to a man who loves
to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do." Again, that
great naval hero and sterling man, Lord Collingwood, gives
the following advice touching the education of his daughters:
"They should not only read, but it requires a careful selection
of books; nor should they ever have access to two at the same
time; but when a subject is begun, it should be finished before
anything else is undertaken." This looks even more plausible;
but all history and all experience refute the doctrine. The cat
at our fireside refutes it; for she got tired of lying in the same
corner, cosey and snug and warm though it was, and so went
over to the opposite, though no whit more agreeable, because
276 
ECONOMY OF TIME.
she wanted a change. Read on but one subject at a time! As
well might one eat but one thing at a time. Must one devour
an entire ox before he is allowed to change his diet X Such
dietetics can end only in physical or mental scrofula.
But what is "whiling away time "'  When a man is roaming about his library, taking down this book and then that,
pacing the floor, scribbling on a bit of paper, glancing at a
magazine or newspaper, whistling a tune, musing by the window, looking into the fire,- or when he is sauntering in the
woods and listening to the melody of the birds, or lolling
under an old oak and drinking in the music of a babbling
brook,- is he, though seemingly idle, necessarily "whiling
away time"?   By no means.   Where  there is a vigorous,
sleepless, inquiring mind, idleness is impossible. There is no
hour in the day when the brain is not at work. When not
browsing in books, it is ruminating; when not gathering the
raw material of knowledge, it is elaborating that which has
been gathered. The mind, if it is not a mere plodding, mechanical mind, is capricious in its workings, and will not be
tyrannized over. Its methods are saltatory and impulsive. It
thrives by casualties; it is powerful obliquely, and not by the
direct stroke. It loves dearly to assert its independence, and
will be consulted as to whether it will do this or that. It is
not a mere machine, and cannot be used as if it were one. It
must often "gang its ain gait," and sometimes must be left
alone, even when it stoops to trifles.  Many of its processes go
on unbidden, without our control. In its very highest efforts
it abhors task-work, and utterly refuses to be a drudge.  The
happiest thoughts, the most brilliant fancies, the aptest similitudes, are those sudden illuminations, those flashes, which
come to us in hours of relaxation, of play, when we throw the
reins upon the neck of our winged steed and let it roam where
it will.
"Every kind of knowledge," observes a thoughtful writer,
"comes into play some time or other; not only that which is
systematic and methodized, but that which is fragmentary, even
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the odds and ends, the merest rag or tag of information. Single facts, anecdotes, expressions, recur to the mind, and, by
the power of association, just in the right place.   Many of
these are laid in during what we think our idlest days. All
that fund of matter which is used allusively in similitudes or
illustrations is collected in diversions from the path of hard
study. He will do best in this line whose range has been the
widest and the freest. A man may study so much by rule as
to lose all this, just as one may ride so much on the highway
as to know nothing that is off the road."
It has been truly said that he who sets one great truth afloat
in the world serves his generation.  "To utter one such truth
is more than to gain a field at Granicus or Waterloo. To
attain such truths is one of the great objects of living." But
they are not always obtained by deliberate search or thought.
He who is apparently whiling away his time may be discovering some new principle of philosophy or law in science,
which may become a lever to move the world. When Watt
sat in the chimnney-corner, watching the cover of the tea-kettle
as the steam forced it up, he only excited the indignation of
his relative, as he would, doubtless, that of Wesley; but he was
designing the steam-engine.  Millions had seen the phenomenon before, without their curiosity being piqued, and without
the ability to trace its cause. So with specific gravity and
gravitation. Thousands and tens of thousands before Archimedes had seen water run over the side of a vessel when another substance was immersed in it. It needed no ghost or
ghostly philosopher to tell the world of the fact; but it was
the quantity of the water and the depth of the immersion
together  which  struck  Archimedes.   Newton,  sauntering
through an orchard, does not seem to be economizing his
time; but the falling apple leads to the discovery of gravitation. Tournefort forsook his college class, that he might search
for plants in the neighboring fields; and Smeaton in petticoats
was discovered on the top of his father's barn, fixing the model
of a windmill which he had constructed. The one became the
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ECONOMY OF TIME.
celebrated naturalist who enriched science by his discoveries,
the other the engineer who built the Eddystone Lighthouse;
yet Wesley would have said that Tournefort and Smeaton, as
well as Watt and Archimedes, were triflingly employed, whiling away time,
Scores of illustrations might be cited to show that the
amusements to which the young have resorted to while away
time have colored an intellectual life.  Cowley beautifully
compares these boyish fancies to letters cut in the bark of a
young tree, which grow and widen with it. Cowley himself
might never have been a poet, had he not found the "Faerie
Queen" in his mother's parlor; Opie might have died in obscurity, had he not looked "idly" over the shoulder of his young
companion, Mark Otes, while he was drawing a butterfly.
"Only reading Robin, only Robin" (Robinson Crusoe), was
the constant excuse for absence or idleness of a boy whose
friends little dreamed that he would also be distinguished as a
man of one book, and do more than any other to correct, illustrate, and restore the text of Shakespeare.   The "Arabian
Nights" used to lie in the parlor window of the old vicarage
where the father of Coleridge resided; and he has recorded the
strange mixture of desire and apprehension with which, in his
early boyhood, he was accustomed to look at the volume, and
watch till the morning sun had reached and nearly covered it,
when, seizing the treasure, he hastened to some corner of the
play-ground, and soon lost his own identity in the magnificent
capital of Ali Raschid. Who does not see, says an English
essayist, that the temperament of the poet was influenced by
his first love? It often fares with other men as it did once
with Johnson, that their very idleness - when occasional, not
chronic- leads to advantage. In his youth, believing that his
brother had concealed some apples beneath a large folio upon
an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to make the
capture, and, finding no apples, attacked the folio, which proved
to be the works of Petrarch; and thus "his very idleness instructed him, and the apples led him to literature."
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CHAPTER XVIII.
MONEY, - ITS USE AND ABUSE.
The learned pate
Ducks to the goldenf fool.- SHAKESPEARE.
Whoever has sixpence is sovereign over all men to the extent of that
sixpence; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to
mount guard over him, -to the extent of that sixpence. - CARLYLE.
Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly,
distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly; yet have no abstract or friarly
contempt of them. -BAcON.
Economy is of itself a great revenue. - CICERO.
No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor
whose incomings exceed his outgoings. - HALIBURTON.
Les dettes abregent la vie.- JOUBERT.
HAT  Providence has endowed  man with the organ of
acquisitiveness, as phrenologists term it, for wise and beneficent purposes, and that the civilization, refinement, virtue,
wisdom, and happiness of every community are largely dependent on its exercise, is a proposition which few persons will
controvert. It is true there are declaimers on the incompatibility of wealth and virtue; but they are mere declaimers, and
nothing more. In the same breath in which they decry the
pursuit of pelf they will applaud or denounce an institution or
measure according to its tendency to increase or to diminish the
public wealth. To cry out against the universal craving and
struggling for the good things of this world, - for which
money is a synonyme,- is to waste one's breath upon the air.
Men will not listen to abstract arguments against the pursuit
of gold or greenbacks while they fear the " wolf at the door,"
and the most eloquent sermon in praise of poverty provokes
but a smile.  "Believe not much  them that seem to despise
riches," says Bacon; "for they despise them that despair of
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MONEY,-  ITS USE AND ABUSE.
them; and none worse when they come to them." Rarely is
their Spartan scorn proof against a fat legacy or other pecu niary windfall; and in nine cases out of tell their policy is
that of Virgil's harpies, that sought to excite disgust at the
banquet which they themselves were eager to devour.
There is no sacrifice which men will not make for money.
They will face belching cainon, clog their lungs with the dust
of coal-mines or with the impalpable powder inhaled in the
grinding of steel, become workers in arsenic, lead, phosphorus,
or any of the other substances so fatal to life, blast with gunpowder, live amid malaria, and risk their soul's peace in this
world and the next, for gold. No toil is so exhausting, no
danger so appalling, that men will not confront the one and
undergo the other, if the stakes are only sufficiently high.  "A
certain ten per cent.," says an English political economist, "will
insure the employment of capital anywhere. Twenty per cent.
certain will produce eagerness. Fifty per cent. positive, audacity. One hundred per cent. will make it ready to trample on
all human laws. Three hundred per cent., and there is not a
crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to
the chance of its owner being hanged." Even the preacher's
call swells from "the still small voice "to a tnrumpet peal when
it comes with the offer of a double salary. Harassing doubts
and indecision vanish like dew before the logic of five thousand a year and a parsonage. The parish that is made up of
rich merchants, brokers, and capitalists, is seen to be "a larger
field of labor" when viewed through gold spectacles.
It is easy, of course, to point out the dangers resulting from
a too intense devotion to money-getting. Bacon calls riches
"the baggage of virtue"; and we all know how the Romans, in
their heroic days, when they annihilated their foes, expressed
their contempt by a similar word, impedimenta; and that
when they grew weak and degraded they clung to their gold,
with which they bought off the barbarians who invaded them.
But whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one
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is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of
the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavorable to the exercise of the
higher functions of the mind and soul.    The poor man is
hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never
knows.   Doubtless the highest virtues are sometimes found
to flourish even in the cold clime and sterile soil of poverty.
Not only industry, honesty, frugality, perseverance amid hardships and ever-baffling discouragements, but much more miraculous attributes, as meek contentment, severe self-sacrifice, tender
affections, unwavering trust in Providence, all are found blooming in the hearts of the poorest poor,- even in the sunless
regions of absolute destitution, where honesty might be expected to wear al everlasting scowl of churlishness, and a bitter disbelief in the love of God to accompany obedience to the
laws of man.   But it is the most insufferable of all cants to
hear these qualities spoken of as if they were indigenous to
poverty, when we know that they flourish in spite of it.
We have had enough of that silly sentimentalism which
would canonize the poor because they are such; which, because Jerrold has finely said, "MIany a man who  now lacks
shoe-leather would wear golden spurs if knighthood were the
reward of worth," sees a hero in every chimney-sweep, and
Wordsworth's pedler in peripatetics who probably much more
resemble  Canning's  knife-grinder.   Poverty  is a condition
which no man should accept, unless it is forced upon him as an
inexorable necessity or as the alternative of dishonor. No
person has a right voluntarily to place himself in a position
where he will be assailed hourly by the fiercest temptations,
where he will be able to preserve his uprightness only by a
strength little short of angelic, and where he will be liable at
any moment to become by sickness a burden to his friends.
Every man, too, should make some provision for old age; for
an old man in the poor-house, or begging alms, is a sorry sight,
and suggests the suspicion, however ill-founded, that his life
has been foolishly, if not viciously spent. It is true we should
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MONEY, - ITS USE AND ABUSE.
not be over-anxious about the morrow; but they strangely
misunderstand the spirit of our Saviour's teachings, who think
that words spoken with reference to the genial climate and the
simple modes of living in Judea have a literal application in
the high latitudes and amid the desperate competitions in
which so many millions live in this country and in this nineteenth century.
We say, therefore, that the philosophy which affects to teach
us a contempt of money does not run very deep. Indeed, it
ought to be clearer to philosophers than to other men that
money is of high importance, and that its importance increases
with every generation. So manifold are its bearings upon the
lives and characters of mankind, that, as Henry Taylor observes, in his "Notes on Life," an insight which should search
out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate
into almost every cranny of his nature.  "He who knows, like St.
Paul, how to spare and how to abound, has a great knowledge:
for, if we take account of all the virtues with which money is
mixed up, - honesty, justice, generosity, charity, frugality,
forethought,  self-sacrifice,    and  of their  correlative  vices,
it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and
breadth of humanity; and a right measure and manner in getting, saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing, and
bequeathing would almost argue a perfect man."
It is money, or rather the want of it, which makes men
workers. It is the appetizing provocative that teases the business nerve of more than half the world; while most of the results of ingenuity, skill, intellect, tact, address, and competition,
depend upon its unremitting pursuit. Want of money is the
great principle of moral gravitation, the only power that is
strong enough to keep things in their places. It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this constant
hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water
and the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling
to pieces. Let every man in the community have, as a rule, a
few dollars more than he wants, and anarchy would follow.
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All labor, whether of the hand or brain, would become spasmodic and fitful, if, indeed, the great wheel of industry did not
come to a stand-still. The very labor a man has to undergo,
the self-denial he has to cultivate, in acquiring money, are of
themselves an education. They compel him to put forth intelligence, skill, energy, vigilance, zeal, bring out his practical
qualities, and gradually train his moral and intellectual powers.
MIental discipline may be got from money-getting as real as
that which is obtained from mathematics; "the soul is trained
by the ledger as much as by the calculus, and can get exercise
in the account of sales as much as in the account of stars."
The provident man must of necessity be a thoughtful man,
living, as he does, not for the present, but for the future; and
he must also practise self-denial, that virtue which is one of
the chief elements in a strong and well-formed character. As
with the acquisition, so with the use of money; the way in
which a man spends it is often one of the surest tests of character. As Bulwer says in one of the most thoughtful essays
in Caxtoniana, -" Money is a terrible blab; she will betray
the secrets of her owner, whatever he do to gag her. His
virtues will creep out in her whisper; his vices she will cry
aloud at the top of her tongue."
Again, money is not only character, but it is power.   It is
not merely for the comforts, but for the influence they bring,
that riches are so intensely desired, so  long  and painfully
sought, by any sensible man.   It is wealth that, above  all
other things, gives character, standing, and respectability in
this country. With it, the pygmy in intellect becomes a giant
in influenie; without it, the best-informed man is but a dwarf
in power.  Now, as in Shakespeare's time, "the learned pate
ducks to the golden fool."  Who does not know what weight
and significance are imparted to a truism, what raciness to a
dull jest, if they are backed up by ten thousand a year,
by bank shares, mortgages, and stocks. Rank, talents, eloquence, learning, and moral worth, all challenge a certain degree of respect; but, unconnected with property, they have
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MONEY, -ITS USE AND ABUSE.
comparatively little influence in commanding the services of
other men. Admiration they may attract, but it is property
that gives power. Detached from this, their influence is as
evanescent as the fragrance of the flowers detached from the
soil. The soil itself may not claim our respect, but it is only
by the virtues which they extract from the soil that the flowers
maintain their beauty, fragrance, and strength.   Even  the
ancient Carthaginians, who were republicans, and had no
hereditary aristocracy, would allow no man to hold office in the
State unless he was more or less wealthy. It has been truly
said that the heraldry of America is based on greenbacks. The
social standing is indicated by the bank-book. The railway
conductor accents his call, the hotel clerk assigns rooms, the
dry-goods merchant graduates the angle of his bows by it.
Even the seat to which the sexton bows you in church is
chosen with nice reference to your exchequer.
Again, as civilization advances, human life is becoming more
and more significant, richer in opportunities and enjoyments.
Science is multiplying with amazing rapidity the comforts and
luxuries of life and the means of self-culture, and money is
the necromancer by which they are placed at our disposal.
Money means a tight house, the warmest clothing, the most
nutritious food, the best medical attendance, books, music,
pictures; a good seat in the concert or lecture room,
in the cars, and even in the church; the ability to rest
when weary in body or brain, and, above all, independence
of thought. It is said that in England no man can afford to
have an opinion who has not an income of two thousand a
year; and even in this land of broad acres there are already
many men who think themselves too poor to indulge in " the
luxury of a conscience."  Every step in life is conditional on
"the root of all evil."  You must pay to eat and drink, to
sleep, to house and to clothe yourself, and even to breathe.
Every breath is a consumption of carbon, which must be paid
for as inevitably as the coal in your grate. The creditor is at
every man's heels, dogs him in his last moments, and hardly
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stops short at the graveyard gate. Not only is money thus
indispensable, but the value of this representative of values
was never before so great as now. With this talisman, a man
can surround himself with richer means of enjoyment, secure
a more varied and harmonious culture, and set in motion
grander schemes of philanthropy in this last half of the nineteenth century than at any previous period in the world's
history.   And precisely because it means so much,  because
with it life is so rich in possibilities, the want of money was
never before so keenly felt as now. Though the poor to-day
have luxuries which a Croesus could not have commanded three
centuries ago, though "the world must be comnpassed that a
washerwoman may have her tea," yet never was poverty so
hard to bear as to-day. Its pinch is far severer than in Dr.
Johnson's time; yet he, with all his philosophy, did not hesitate to pronounce it a great evil. " When I was running about
this town a very poor fellow," said he, "I was a great arguer
for the advantages of poverty. Sir, all the arguments which are
brought to represent poverty as no evil show it to be evidently
a great evil. You never find people laboring to convince you
that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune."
Want of money is the almost universal disease, which alone
will explain the weight and sadness which one so often finds
in the social atmosphere. " Even passing through the streets,
how many wrinkled brows and careworn physiognomies we
meet which we learn to trace to this one source! The poor
have no skill at disguising their anxieties. These are written
in large characters on their whole bearing, and the very title
we give them reveals the source of their anxieties; but others
who have learnt the graceful art of concealment, who wear a
social smile as part of a liberal education, how often we
catch their faces betraying, as it were, some process of mental
arithmetic, as though some sum  were being  cast up within
which will not give the wished-for answer'!.... How many
young spirits we see prematurely depressed by this want,- it
may be the consequence of their own folly!  How many man
286
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MONEY, - ITS USE AND ABUSE.
ners, tempers, peculiarities, may be interpreted by it!  How
many people are dull or proud or unsociable from the secret
irritation of want of money! How many bright intelligences
are diverted from their highest development from the same
cause!"
Again, there are men born with a genius for money-making.
They have the instinct of accumulation.   The talent and the
inclination to convert dollars into doubloons by bargains or
shrewd investments are in them just as strongly marked and
as uncontrollable as were the ability and the inclination of
Shakespeare to produce a Hamlet and an Othello, of Raphael
to paint his cartoons, of Beethoven to compose his symphonies,
or Morse to invent an electric telegraph. As it would have
been a gross dereliction of duty, a shameful perversion of gifts,
had these latter disregarded the instincts of their genius and
engaged in the scramble for wealth, so would a Rothschild, an
Astor, and a Peabody have sinned had they done violence to
their natures, and thrown their energies into channels where
they would have proved dwarfs, and not giants. The mission
of a Lawrence or a Cornell, equally with that of an Agassiz, a
Bierstadt, or a Powers, is defined in the faculties God has given
him; and no one of them has a right to turn aside from the
paths to which His finger so plainly points. Academies, colleges, hospitals, museums, libraries, railroads,- none of which
could have been possible without their accumulations, -are
the proofs of their usefulness; and though the millionnaire too
often converts his brain into a ledger and his heart into a millstone, yet this starvation of his spiritual nature is no more
necessary in his pursuit than in that of the doctor or the lawyer. Agassiz is reported to have said, half scornfully, that he
had "no time to make money," having given himself to science. But how could he get leisure to study the secrets of
nature, if others had not made money for him 
Let us, then, abandon the affectation of despising money,
and frankly own its value. Let us even admit that more persons are ruined by under-estimation of the value than by greed
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of gold; that even in our great cities, where life is at white
heat, and men stake body and soul on the prizes of the stockboard, there are twenty men who need incitements to industry
and frugality where there is one who needs to be checked in
the fierce pursuit of riches. But let us remember, at the same
time, the danger of forgetting the end in the means, and
attaching more importance to gold itself than to the things
which   it will     purchase.  Let us remember  the warning of
"holy   George H    erbert":
"Wealth is the Conjurer's Devil,
Whom, when he thinks he hath, the Devil hath him.
Gold thou mayst safely touch; but if it stick
Unto thy hands, it woundeth to the quick."
Especially should the business man, who is tempted to sacrifice everything to the golden calf, be cautioned against the
common fallacy that happiness will increase in proportion to
his gains. Dr. Johnson, indeed, once argued to the contrary.
"If six hundred pounds a year," he said, "procure a man more
consequence, and of course more happiness, than six pounds a
year, the same proportion will hold as to six thousand, and so
on as far as opulence can be carried." The facts do not sustain
this theory. It may be doubted whether large possessions do
not bring as many pains as pleasures. After one has enough
to satisfy every reasonable want, to give free play to all his
tastes in art, literature, or science, it may be questioned
whether any addition to his wealth does not bring more anxiety and responsibility than enjoyment.   Bacon wisely remarks
that a large fortune is of no solid use to the owner, except to
increase his means of giving; "the rest is but conceit; the
personal fruition in any man cannot reach to feel great riches."
The owner of capital really reaps the smallest portion of the
advantages which flow from its possession, he being, in fact,
but a kind of head bookkeeper, or chief clerk, to the business
community. Though rich as Rothschild, he can neither eat,
drink, nor wear more than one man's portion of the good things
of life. The Asters and Stewarts, whose wealth is counted by
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MONEY,   ITS USE AND ABUSE.
tens of millions, are, after all, only the stewards of the nation,
and, however selfish, grasping, or miserly they may be, are
compelled, even when they least desire to do so, to use their accu mulations for the public good.  Their money-making talents
enable them to employ their capital, which would soon melt
away in the hands of a spendthrift or bad financier, to promote
the common welfare and to increase the general prosperity.
The rich man in this country, who is ambitious to increase his
riches, does not waste his money in luxuries or foolish schemes,
but, as one has well said, he invests it in all sorts of enter prises, to the selection of which he'brings enormous natural
shrewdness, strengthened by the experience of a lifetime, and
in every one of which it is devoted wholly to the employment
of labor.  "If he puts it in unproductive real estate even, as
he doubtless does sometimes, he releases some one else's money,
which goes into production. If he builds houses to let, he employs labor and helps to lower rents; if he makes railroads, he
employs miners, iron-founders, machinists, and helps to transport commodities; if he goes into spinning and weaving, or
gardening, the result is still the same,-  labor is employed, and
employed with such sagacity that it is sure to return the capital and something more. If he loaded himself with diamonds,
filled himself every day to the chin with French dishes and
wines, and wore cloth of gold, and lived in a palace, it would
be found that his salary was low. If we dismissed him, that
is, took his property from him, and employed a philanthropist
or editor or lyceum-lecturer to manage it in the interest of
'humanity,' the probabilities are that there would not be a cent
of it left at the end of five years. It would have been put
into the production of goods that nobody wanted, of roads on
which nobody would travel, or stolen by knaves and wasted by
visionaries."
These truths are well illustrated in the anecdote told some years
ago of two men who were conversing about John Jacob Astor's
property. Some one was asked if he would be willing to take
care of all the millionnaire's property - ten or fifteen millions of
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dollars - merely for his board and clothing. "1 No!" was the
indignant answer; "do you take me for a fool?"  "Well,"
rejoins the other,  "that is all Mr. Astor himself gets for
taking care of it; he's found, and that's all. The houses, the
warehouses, the ships, the farms, which he counts by the hundred, and is often obliged to take care of, are for the accommodation of others." "But then he has the income, the rents of
all this large property, five or six hundred thousand dollars per
annum."   "Yes, but he can do nothing with his income but
build more houses and warehouses and ships, or loan money
on mortgages for the convenience of others.  He's found, and
you can make nothing else out of it."
If a rich man wishes to be healthy, says Sir William Temple,
he must live like a poor one. Izaak Walton tells us that there
are as many troubles on the other side of riches as on this, and
that the cares which are the keys of riches hang heavily at
the rich man's girdle. How many men, on reaching the pinnacle of wealth, find, as they look down upon their moneybags, that they have only purchased one set of enjoyments by
the loss of another equally desirable! "Do you remember,
Bridget," writes Charles Lamb, with a tender retrospect to his
poverty, "when you and I laughed at the play from the shilling gallery? There are no good plays to laugh at now from
the boxes." Many a Sir Epicure Mammon, as he sits down
with jaded appetite to his lobster salad and champagne, thinks
with keen regret of the simple repasts which titillated his
palate when he was poor. The great railway king, Hudson,
and his wife, feasting with dukes and duchesses in their big
house at Albert Gate, looked back with many a sigh to the
days when they ate sausages for supper in the little parlor
behind their paltry shop in the city of York.
Nothing, in the abstract, seems easier than to get pleasure
out of money; yet to many persons nothing is apparently more
difficult.   It seems delightfil to be able to buy everything
you wish, without a thought of the cost; yet who does not
see that the pleasure must pall in the degree that there is no
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MONEY,- ITS USE AND ABUSE.
difficulty? Did the earl to whom Robins knocked down the
rare Boccaccio feel in his conquest a tithe of the pride and joy
which Lamb felt when he bore home that black-letter folio, to
procure which "the old brown suit was made to hang on six
weeks longer "?
Even the most specious and plausible reason for seeking
riches, namely, to be above the necessity of a rigid economny,
or the pressure of debt, Archbishop Whately shows to be
unsound and deceptive. It is worth remarking, he observes,
as a curious circumstance, and the reverse of what many would
expect, that the expenses called for by a real or imagined
necessity of those who have large incomes are greater than
those of persons with slenderer means; and that, consequently,
a larger proportion of what are called the rich are in embarrassed
circumstances than of the poorer. This is often overlooked,
because the absolute number of those with large incomes is so
much less, that, of course, the absolute number of persons
under pecuniary difficulties in the poorer classes must form a
very large majority.   But if you look to the proportions, it is
quite the reverse. Take the number of persons of each amount
of income, divided into classes from $500 per annum up to
$500,000 per annum, and you will find the percentage of
those who are under pecuniary difficulties contitually augmenting as you go upwards. And when you come to sovereign
States, whose revenue is reckoned by millions, you will hardly
find one that is not deeply involved in debt; so that it would
appear, the larger the income, the harder it is to live within it.
In other words, the tendency to spend increases in a greater ratio
than the wealth; and hence competence has been wittily defined
as three hundred a year more than you possess.
The insufficiency of mere wealth alone to confer happiness
was strikingly illustrated in the life of Nathan Myers Rothschild, the great Jew banker, who died in London some years
ago, "one of the most devoted worshippers that ever laid a
withered soul on the altar of Mammon.."   For years he wielded
the purse of the world, opening and closing it to kings and 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
emperors as he listed; and upon certain occasions was supposed
to have had more influence in Great Britain than the proudest
and wealthiest of its nobles, perhaps more than the two houses
of Parliament taken together.   He once purchased bills of
the government in a single day to the amount of ~4,000,000,
and also the gold which he knew the government must have
to pay them; and with the profits of a single loan purchased
an estate which cost him ~ 150,000. Yet, with the clearest
and widest comprehension in money matters, with the most
piercing insight into all possible causes affecting the money
market, and with ingenuity to effect the profoundest, most
subtle, and most unsuspected combinations, -an ingenuity
before which all the other prodigies which have from time to
time appeared sink into nothing, - he was, withal, a little soul.
He exercised his talents and powers of calculation, not only
for the accumulation of millions and the management of
national creditors, but also for the determination of the smallest
possible pittance on which a clerk's soul could be retained in
connection with his body. To part with a shilling in the way
of charity cut him to the heart. One of his grand rules,
"never to have anything to do with an unlucky man or place,"
-  which was also a principle of John Jacob Astor,- however
shrewd in a worldly point of view, was the very quintessence
of selfishness and mammon-worship.   "I have seen many
clever men, very clever men," he used to say, "who had not
shoes to their feet. I never act with them." He was, in short,
a thorough-going mammon-worshipper, whose soul had been
converted into a machine for coining guineas, and every noble
emotion, every immortal longing, died within him. Guineas
he did coin to a sum that seems almost fabulous; but, with
all his colossal wealth, he was profoundly unhappy, and with
sorrowful earnestness exclaimed to one congratilating him on
the gorgeous magnificence of his palatial mansion, and thence
inferring that he was happy:  "Happy! ME happy!"
Those who think Rothschild's experience singular may be
still further enlightened by that of Stephen Girard.  W5hen sur
292, 
MONEY, -ITS USE AND ABUSE.
rounded with riches, and supposed to be taking supreme delight
in the accumulation of wealth, he thus wrote to a friend: "As
to myself, I live like a galley-slave, constantly occupied, and
often passing the night without sleeping.  I am wrapped up in
a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out with cares. I do not value
a fortune. The love of labor is my highest motive. When I
rise in the morning, my only effort is to labor so hard during
the day that, when night comes, I may be enabled to sleep
soundly."
To conclude: money is a good thing, of which every man
should try to secure enough to avoid dependence upon others,
either for his bread or his opinions; but it is not so good a
thing that, to win it, one should crawl in the dust, stoop to a
mean or dishonorable action, or give his conscience a single pang.
Money-getting, is unhealthy when it impoverishes the mind,
or dries up the sources of the spiritual life; when it extinguishes the sense of beauty, and makes one indifferent to the
wonders of nature and art; when it blunts the moral sense,
and confuses the distinction between right and wrong, virtue
and vice; when it stifles religious impulse, and blots all
thought of God from the soul.   Money-getting is unhealthy,
again, when it engrosses all one's thought, leads a man to
live meanly and coarsely, to do without books, pictures, music,
travel, for the sake of greater gains, and causes him to find his
deepest and most soul-satisfying joy, not in the culture of his
heart or mind, not in doing good to himself or others, but in
the adding of eagle to eagle, in the knowledge that the money
in his chest is piled up higher and higher every year, that his
account at the bank is constantly growing, that he is adding
bonds to bonds, mortgages to mortgages, stocks to stocks, and
may say to himself, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for
many years."
There is, indeed, no more pitiable wretch than the man who
has mortgaged himself, soul and body, to Mammon, - in whom
the one giant passion for gold has starved every other affection;
no more painful spectacle than to see a man dragging his man
293 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
hood at the heels of his employment, losing life for the sake
of the means of living, disregarding the celestial crown held
over his head, and raking to himself the straws, the small
sticks, and dust of the earth. The poorest of all human beings
is the man who is rich in gold, but intellectually and spiritually bankrupt, - magnas inter opes inops. As Cowley says,
"the poor rich man's emphatically poor." Grant the utmost
that can be said of the necessity and the value of money, it
will still remain forever true that life is more than the means
by which it is sustained, more than dwellings, lands, merchandise, stocks, bonds, and dividends, more even than food
and raiment. All things are for the mind, the soul, the divine
part within us; and if this, our true self, is dwarfed and
starved, the most royal worldly possessions only serve to set
forth by contrast its deep poverty and servitude.
Let every one, then, who wishes to get on in the world,
justly  estimate the  value of money.   Let him neither, on the
one hand, make it the only gauge and object of success, nor,
on the other, affect for it a philosophic contempt which the
necessities of life will compel him to unlearn. Let him neither
strive for a mere living, nor (unless he has a rare genius for
money-making,)    for a great fortune, but gather gear, as Burns
says, -
"By every wile
That's justified by honor;
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant,
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."
A great deal has been written on the art of money-getting;
but, though comparatively few become rich, there is no real
secret about it. The pith of the world's wisdom on it is condensed into a few proverbs. To work hard, to improve small
opportunities, to economize, to avoid debt, are the general rules
in which is summed up the hoarded experience of centuries,
and the most sagacious writers have added little to them. Of
all the objects which a man can propose to himself, that of
294 
MONEY, - ITS USE AND ABUSE.
money-making is the simplest and most attainable, provided he
will take the proper steps. To become an artist, a statesman,
an orator, a poet, or a scholar, of high ability, is what few persons can expect. In some callings not even the most indefatigable effort and the most exhaustless patience are sure to win
success. The man, on the contrary, who strives to gain money,
knows that he is following no chimera, no phantom or will-o'the-wisp, which will forever beckon him on, yet forever baffle
him, or which, if attained, will only mock his expectations.
He toils for a definite end, and there is no sense of incongruity
between his toil and his hope. Money-getting is a pursuit in
which almost any diligent, earnest, prudent man may hope to
get on, without brilliant talents or genius. Any beginner in
life who has mastered the three R's, " Reading,'Ritin', and
'Rithmetic," may hope to become independent, if not rich, if he
will but work persistently, be temperate, and save a part of his
earnings. Mediocre abilities will suffice for this end, nay, may
prove more advantageous than the most dazzling mental gift'S.
There is no workingman in good health who may not become independent, if he will but carefully husband his receipts,
and guard jealously against the little leaks of useless expenditure. But, to become independent, one must be willing to pay
the price.  He must be industrious, and he must be prudent.
Perhaps the hardest of these rules to follow is the latter.
There are a hundred persons who can work hard, to every ten
who can properly husband their earnings. The classes that toil
the hardest squander most recklessly the money they earn.
Instead of hoarding their receipts, so as to provide against sickness or want of employment, they eat and drink up their earnings as they go, and thus in the first financial crisis, when mills
and factories stop, and capitalists lock up their cash instead of
using it in great enterprises, they are ruined. Men who thus
live "from hand to mouth," never keeping more than a day's
march ahead of actual want, are little better off than slaves.
They are not their own masters, but may have at any moment
to choose between the alternatives of bondage or starvation
295 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
They cannot help being servile, for they know they can neither
command their time, nor choose how and where they shall live.
To one who has seen much of the miseries of the poor, it is
hard to account for this short-sightedness of conduct; but
doubtless the main cause is the contempt with which they are
wont to look upon petty savings. Ask those who spend all as
they go why they do not put by a fraction of their daily earnings, and they will reply, "That's of no use; what good can the
saving of a few cents a day, or an occasional dollar, do? If I
could lay by four or five dollars a week, that would ultimately
amount to something." It is by this thoughtless reasoning that
thousands are kept steeped to the lips in poverty, who by a
moderate degree of self-denial might place themselves in a
state of comfort and independence, if not of affluence.  They
do not consider to what enormous sums little savings and little
spendings swell, at last, when continued through a long series
of years.
What laborer is there in good health who may not save
from his earnings fifty dollars a year? Yet this paltry sum,
compounded at six per cent. interest, amounts to $ 650 in ten
years, $ 1,860 in twenty, $ 3,950 in thirty years, and $ 7,700
in forty years; thus securing a snug provision for old age by the
saving of less than fourteen cents per day! How imperceptibly nay this last sum, or one twice as great, slip through onie's
fingers in the gratification of habits worse than useless, without
a thought of the vast aggregate to which it finally amounts!
What clerk or workingman, that spends twenty cents a day
for a couple of cigars, dreams that by this expenditure, with
the accumulated interest, he will in fifty years have smoked
away twenty thousand dollars? Yet a man who by a life of
industry had laid by such a sum would, in most country
towns, be deemed rich. It is a hard thing to begin the world
without a dollar, and yet hundreds of men, by petty savings at
the outset of their career, have amassed large fortunes from a
single shilling. Among the capitalists in one of our large
cities some years ago was a builder, worth probably some hun
296 
MONEY,    ITS USE AND ABUSE.
dreds of thousands, who began life as a bricklayer's laborer at
a dollar a day. Out of that small sum he contrived to save
fifty cents a day, and at the end of the first year had laid up
$182, from which moment his fortune was made. Like a
hound upon the right scent, he was on the track of riches, and
the game, sooner or later won, was sure to be his own. Of a
leading firm in New York city, which some years ago had accumulated an immense property, it is stated that both members
came to that city without a cent, and swept the very shop
wherein  they afterwards made  their  fortunes.   Like  the
builder, they had an indomitable spirit of industry, perseverance, and frugality, and so the first dollar became the foundation of a million.
The persons who despise small savings as unworthy of their
care are ignorant of the main object of making them in early
life, which looks not chiefly to the saving itself, but to the formation of a habit of economy.  It is true, the saving of a few
cents is in itself of little moment; but if the habit of saving
a penny or two, whether in money or any other kind of property, once becomes fixed, and the thoughts be turned in the
direction of advancement, the accumulation will go on and be
ultimately successful. Hence it has been wisely said that there
is no revolution in the history of a man so important in its
consequences as that which takes place at the moment of the
first saving. As it is the minutes that make the hours, so it is
the pennies that make the pounds, the cents that make the
dollars; and he who scrupulously economizes the former need
give himself no concern about the latter, for the habit of looking sharply after them will have insensibly formed itself. It is
for this reason that the beginning of a deposit, however small,
in a savings-bank, may be regarded as the crisis of many a
moral destiny; for from that moment the person ceases to be
a slavish dependant, without manliness or self-respect, and becomes a free, independent, self-relying man, who is under no
bondage but that of kindness to his fellows, of which he now
has the means.
13*
'2 7 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
"Whatever your means be," says Sir Edward Lytton Bul wer in an excellent essay upon "The Management of Money,"
"so apportion your wants that your means may exceed them.
Every man who earns but ten shillings a week can do this if
he please, whatever he may say to the contrary; for, if he can
live upon ten shillings a week, he can live upon nine and
elevenpence. In this rule mark the emphatic distinction be tween poverty and neediness. Poverty is relative, and there fore not ignoble. Neediness is a positive degradation. If I
have only ~ 100 a year, I am rich as compared with the major ity of my countrymen. If I have ~ 5,000 a year, I may be
poor compared with the majority of my associates, and very
poor compared to my next-door neighbor. With either of
these incomes I am relatively poor or rich; but with either of
these incomes I may be positively needy or positively free
from neediness. With the ~ 100 a year I may need no man's
help; I may at least have'my crust of bread and liberty.'
But with ~5,000 a year I may dread a ring at my bell; I may
have my tyrannical masters in servants whose wages I cannot
pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering
man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh that lies
nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales and
whetting his knife. Nor is this an exaggeration. Some of the
neediest men I ever knew have a nominal ~5,000 a year.
Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is
needy who spends less. I may so ill manage my money, that,
with ~5,000 a year, I purchase the worst evils of poverty, -
terror and shame; I may so well manage my money, that, with
~ 100 a year, I purchase the best blessings of wealth,   safety
and respect."
One of the reasons why many persons refuse to practise
economy is that it is associated in their minds with meanness.
They look upon it as degrading to a man of spirit and lofty
impulses; as the virtue of little, contracted minds. No doubt
the practice of saving may be carried too far. It is said that
the Earl of Westminster, who owns a park ten miles long and
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MONEY, - ITS USE AND ABUSE.
has an income of four millions of dollars a year, once dis mounted from his horse, when riding out, on missing a button
from his coat, and retraced his steps for some distance till he
found it. The expediency of such savings may be questioned.
Dr. Johnson once said, that "he who drinks beer, thinks beer";
and it is equally true that those who occupy themselves with
endless cares for small savings get "to think candle-ends" as
their reward. It has been justly doubted whether, among the
classes of men who, whether they are economical or not, are
sure never to go to bed hungry,  there is anything in the
accumulation of money to compensate for the deterioration of
mind and feeling which is almost sure to accompany the pursuit of so trumpery an end as screwing fourpence a week out
of the butter bill. Bit economy is a wholly different thing
from penuriousness; so different, indeed, that it is only the
economical man who can afford to be liberal, or even to live
with ease and magnanimity.
Wellington kept an exact account of all the moneys he
received or paid; and Washington, who was not a small man,
did not disdain to watch his expenditures and to scrutinize the
little items in the outgoings of his household. Not only the
independence of individuals, but that of states, depends upon
the practice of this virtue. What is the secret of England's
greatness?  Is it not her savings?'Is it not evident that public wealth, in the long run, can only flow from private prosperity? that it cannot increase when individual expenditure
exceeds private income?  Surely, the system that is grand for
a state cannot be mean for the individual. The truth is, no
amount of means or earnings can justify waste or profusion,
either by a nation or a private person. God himself cannot
afford to be extravagant. Even when displaying His infinite
power to the multitude, he teaches the needful lesson of economy. The miracle of the loaves and fishes ends with the
command "to gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing may be lost." The autumn leaves are saved to manure the
next year's crops, and the bodies of the dead fatten Sadowa's
299'
il!ll 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
soil for the future seed-time. Nature knows no waste; she
utilizes the smallest atoms; then why should man deem it
degrading to husband his means for future wants and necessities I
Again, every man who would get on in the world should,
as far as possible, avoid debt. From the very outset of his career he should sternly resolve to live within his income, however paltry it may be. The art of living easily as to money is
very simple; it is, as Bulwer advises in the passage already
quoted, to pitch your scale of living one degree below your
means.   All of the world's wisdom  on the subject is most
tersely epitomized in the words of Dickens's Micawber: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
Mr. Micawber's experience, so vividly depicted by Dickens, is
that of thousands whose whole lives are made miserable by the
folly of living beyond their means. In this country, especially
since the late war, there has been a growing tendency in all
classes of society to overspend. In every town and village there
is a fearful ambition abroad for being "genteel."  One half of
our families are engaged in a perpetual and desperate struggle
to keep up appearances,- to pass for that which they are not.
They have neither patience nor courage to go on in the paths
to which God has appointed them, but must needs force themselves into some fashionable state to which they have called
themselves, and where they may bask in the smiles of Mrs.
Grundy. Everywhere "there is a constant struggle and pres sure for front seats in the social amphitheatre, in the midst of
which all noble, self-denying resolve is trodden down, and
many fine natures are inevitably crushed to death."  Marrying
early, the young lawyer, merchant, or mechanic is not content
to begin life in the simple style in which his father began, in creasing his comforts as his earnings increase; but he must live
from the very start as the veterans of his calling live after
years of toil and economy.   The rents he pays, the furniture
30-O' 
MONEY, — IITS USE AND ABUSE.
and ornaments of his house, the luxuries of his table, the number of his servants, the clothes of himself and family, his expenditures for opera-tickets, concerts, lectures, hackney coaches,
not to include the cost of what Charles Lamb would call his
"virtuous vices," such as smoking, etc., or dinners at Delmonico's,   are all far above his means.  The result is, he gets into
debt, then more  deeply into debt,  falls into the clutches
of Shylock, is fleeced of large sums for interest, struggles vainly
in the toils in which he is involved, becomes desperate, and
mismanages his business or half does his work, and at last,
after floundering and stumbling on for a few months or
years, with inevitable bankruptcy staring him in the face, succumbs under the heavy load of debts, duns, and anxiety, when
the curtain falls, and the wretched play of "Keeping uip Appearances" is ended.
When will this wretched state of things cease? Never till
beginners in life have learned to feel a horror for debt; till
those who are ambitious of display learn that it is dishonest
to spend what they have not earned,- that, as Sir Charles
Napier once said to some of his officers, "to drink unpaid-for
champagne and unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses,
is to be a cheat, and not a gentleman." Of all the foes to
human prosperity and happiness, there is none more deadly
than debt. Dr. Johnson held it to be not only an inconvenience, but a calamity.' "Let it be your first care," he says,
"not to be in any man's debt.  Resolve not to be poor; whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human
happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some
virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult. It lowers
a man in self-respect, places him at the mercy of the tradesman
and his servant, and renders him a slave in many respects; for
he can no longer call himself his own master, nor boldly look
the world in the face."  It is also difficult for a man who is
constantly in debt to be truthful; hence it is said that "lying
rides on debt's back."
"An unthiift was a liar from all time;
Never was a debtor that was not deceiver."
-3-01 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD. 
Many a ruined man dates his downfall from the day when he
began borrowing money. It is easy to avoid the first obligation; but, that incurred, others speedily follow, one necessitating another; every day the poor victim gets more and more
inextricably entangled; then follow pretexts, excuses, lies, till
all sense of shame is lost, the whole life becomes a makeshift,
and the debtor, despairing of deliverance from his embarrassments, deliberately resolves to live by indirect robbery and
falsehood.   "I am astonished," says Sir Richard Steele, "that
men can be so insensible of the danger of running into debt.
One would think it impossible that a man who is given to contract debts should not know that his debtor has, from that
moment in which he trangresses payment, so much as that
demand comes to in his debtor's honesty, liberty, and fortune.....   Can there be a more low and servile condition
than to be ashamed or afraid to see any man breathing 7 Yet
he that is in debt is in that condition with relation to'twenty
different people. The debtor is the creditor's criminal, and all
the officers of power and state, whom we behold make so poor
a figure, are no other than so many persons in authority to
make good his charge against him.   Human society depends
on his having the vengeance the law allots him; and the
debtor owes his liberty to his neighbor as much as the murderer does his life to his prince." Yet the author of these
remarks, who could so vividly depict the miseries of indebtedness, was  perpetually struggling with them, and presents in his whole career one of the most melancholy examples which biography affords of the moral sacrifices which are
so often occasioned by a disproportion between wants and the
means of gratifying them. When reproached by Mr. Whiston
for having in -the House of Commons given some votes in flagrant contradiction to his formerly professed opinions, he replied, "Mr. Whiston, you can walk on foot, but I cannot."
A coach had become so essential to Steele, that, rather than do
without it, he was willing to abandon his most cherished political principles and do violence to his conscience.
802 
MONEY, — ITS USE AND ABUSE.
Let every young man who is shocked by the conduct of this
inconsistent writer avoid the rock on which he split. Let him
resolve early that he will at all times look his affairs squarely
in the face, that he will know his exact financial condition,
and that he will do any work that is honorable, and submit to
the most pinching privation, rather than plunge into debt.
Eloquently has Douglas Jerrold said:  "Be sure of it, he who
dines out of debt, though his meal be biscuit and an onion,
dines in' The Apollo.' And then for raiment; what warmth
in a threadbare coat, if the tailor's receipt be in the pocket!
what Tyrian purple in the faded waistcoat, the vest not owed
for! how glossy the well-worn hat, if it covers not the aching
head of a debtor!.... Debt, however courteously it be offered,
is the cup of a siren, and the wine, spiced and delicious though it
be, an eating poison. The man out of debt, though with a
flaw in his jerkin, a crack in his shoe-leather, and a hole in his
hat, is still the son of liberty, free as the singing lark above
him; but the debtor, though clothed in the utmost bravery,
what is he but a serf out upon a holiday,- a slave to be reclaimed at any instant by his owner, the creditor 7 My son, if
poor, see wine in the running spring; let thy mouth water at
a last week's roll; think a threadbare coat the'only wear';
and acknowledge a whitewashed garret the fittest housing
place for a gentleman: do this, and flee debt. So shall thy
heart be at peace and the sheriff be confounded." "
* Heads for the People.
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER XIX.
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
To succeed, one must sometimes be very bold and sometimes vcr prudent.
- NAPOLEON.
I venture to point out to you what is the best temperament, namely, a
combination of the desponding and resolute, or, as I had better express it,
of the apprehensive and the resolute. Such is the temperament of great
commanders. Secretly, they rely upon nothing and upon nobody. There is
such a powerful element of failure in all human affairs, that a shrewd man is
always saying to himself, "What shall I do, if that which I count upon does
not come out as I expect? " This foresight dwarfs and crushes all but men
of great resolution. - ARTHUR HELPS.
Let your first efforts be, not for wealth, but independence. Whatever be
your talents, whatever your prospects, never be tempted to speculate away,
on the chance of a palace, that which you need as a provision against the
workhouse.-E. L. BULWER.
A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not
strong enough. - BOVEE.
NE  of the bad features of our American life is the grow     ing disposition of our young men to get their living by
their wits, and to leave manual labor, agricultural or mechanical, to be monopolized by foreigners. Bodily toil, except of
the lightest kind, is becoming to Young America more and more
distasteful. The sons of our farmers, shoemakers, blacksmiths,
and carpenters no sooner become their own masters than they
straightway throw down the scythe, the awl, and the hammer,
and rush to the city to engage in the nobler work of weighing
sugar, selling tape, hawking books, soliciting insurance, or
posting ledgers. And yet, if any fact has been demonstrated
beyond the shadow of a doubt, it is the deceitfulness of the
apparent facilities for getting rich in cities. The fact that
while in other careers the mass of men are successful, ninetyfive at least out of every hundred who embark in commerce
304 
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
either make  shipwreck or retire sooner or later in disgust,
without having secured a competence, has not only been veri fied ag,ain and again by statistics, but is a stereotyped observa tion which drops from the lips of business men daily.
Some years ago General A. IH. S. Dearborn, of Boston, who
had long been acquainted with the leading business men of
that city, gave it as his opinion that only three men out of
every hundred doing business there were successful. A gentleman who doubted the truth of this startling statement consulted
an antiquarian friend who had known.all the merchants doing
business on Long Wharf from 1798 to 1840, and was informed
that in the latter year only five out of a hundred remained.
More striking still was the statement of a director of the
Union Bank, which began its operations in 1798, that, of one
thousand persons doing business with it, only six at the end
of forty years remained; all the rest had failed or lost their
property.  " Bankruptcy," said the director, "is like death,
and almost as certain; they fall single and alone, and are thus
forgotten; but there is no escape from it, and he is a fortunate
man who fails young."  A person who looked through the
Probate Office in the same city found that ninety per cent of
all the estates settled there were insolvent. Yet more discouraging to the commercial adventurer were the conclusions of
Governor Briggs and Secretary Calhoun, who a few years ago
gave it as their deliberate opinion, after diligent inquiry, that,
out of every hundred young men who come from the country
to seek their fortunes in the city, ninety-nine fail of success.
To all these statements may be added the opinions of some of
the shrewdest and most experienced business men of New York
and Philadelphia, that not more than one per cent of the best
class of merchants succeed without failing in the former city,
and that not more than two per cent of the merchants of the latter
retire on an independence, "after having submitted to the usual
ordeal of failure." After the crash in 1858 it was stated by high
authority that there had been annually, for some years previous,
twenty-seven thousand failures in the United States, for the
T
305 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
gross sum of $50,000,000, of which enormous indebtedness only
$10,000,000 was ever recovered by the creditors, - an estimate
probably below the truth.  In short, for every man who thrives
in trade, counting his acquisitions by thousands of dollars, we
can find scores of men with whom each day is but a desperate
struggle to keep their heads above water; and to every one
who, after again and again trembling on the verge of bankruptcy, retires at last with money enough to pass his closing
days in ease and affluence, a hundred might be named who
wind up the vicissitudes of a long life of toil in utter failure,
and spend their last days in trying to keep the wolf from the
door.
The facts we have stated will seem incredible to those who
have never weighed or investigated the subject; and yet the
proofs are open to every-man who has his eyes upon and witnesses the changes going on around him. Go into any city or
large town with which you were acquainted ten years ago, and
you will be startled to see how many signs that once greeted
the eye on stores and warehouses have been exchanged for new
ones; how many names, once familiar as "household words,"
have been blotted from the Business Directory. Indeed, so
few are the prizes and so numerous the blanks in this seeming
lottery, that some persons have been inclined to regard luck as
everything in trade, - experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if linked to an unlucky star. As we have
already observed in the chapter on "Good and Bad Luck,"
some of the shrewdest men, with indefatigable industry and
the closest economy, fail to make money; others, with apparently none of the qualities that insure success, are continually
blundering into profitable speculations, and, Midas-like, touch
nothing but it turns to gold.  The great Chicago fire, which
beggared hundreds of merchants, mechanics, and professional
men, and made a hundred thousand men, women, and children
homeless, doubled and trebled the fortunes of other men, who
were never insured and never burnt out.   But while it must
be admitted that there is such a thing as luck, meaning by it
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the occasional operations of causes over which one has no control, it would be absurd to ascribe to it the mass of failures.
Bitterly as the broken merchant may bemoan some mishap that
has blasted all his schemes and hopes, it is evident that, if
there are nine shipwrecks to one safe voyage over the sea of
business, there is some higher law than chance governing the
matter; and what this law is - in other words, what are the
chief causes of bankruptcy   we shall now try to show.
What, then, are the causes of those failures of business men
which are so numerous as to make success seem like the drawing of a prize in a lottery?  We answer,   the first and most
obvious cause is the lack of business talents. If there is any
fact demonstrated by experience, it is that no man can succeed
in a calling for which Providence did not intend him. Of
course, it is easy to exaggerate this doctrine. There are some
men who, though they succeed best in a particular sphere, yet
have a marvellous flexibility, versatility, and power of adaptation, which enables them to thrive in almnost any pursuit they
may choose.  It has been even said that "the most unhandy
person is a sort of Robinson Crusoe; plant him in a desolate
island, and he would sprout a twenty-bladed penknife." But,
in spite of exceptional cases, it may be affirmed that there is a
work to which each person is fitted, to which he is called by
his talents and endowments. As Emerson says: "He is like
a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side
but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he
sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea."
This easy thing with some men is making money in trade; but
there are others to whom it is as difficult as for a man with no
mathematical talent to calculate an eclipse, or a person with no
eye for color to paint "The Descent from the Cross."  Who
can wonder that such weaklings soon go to the wall; that in
the sharp competitions of modern trade they are outwitted and
overreached by men born for the business, and who have learned
its crooks and turns by a long apprenticeship; and that, after
stumbling on a few years, committing blunder after blunder
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
through ignorance and lack of sagacity, they are shipwrecked
by the first financial hurricane that sweeps over the land.
But it is needless to dwell on this topic, as we have already
discussed it at length in the chapter on "The Choice of a Profession."
The next cause of bankruptcies which we shall mention, and
a very prolific one, is an excessive haste to be rich.  Americans
are always in a hurry when they have an object to accomplish;
but if there is any vocation or pursuit in which gradual, slowcoach processes are scouted with peculiar detestation, it is that
of acquiring riches. Especially is this true at the present day,
when fortunes are continually changing hands, and men are so
often, by a lucky turn of the wheel, lifted from the lowest
depths of poverty to the loftiest pinnacle of wealth and affluence.   Exceptional persons there are, who  are content with
slow gains,   willing to accumulate riches by adding penny to
penny, dollar to dollar; but the mass of business men are too
apt to despise such a tedious, laborious ascent of the steep of
fortune, and to rush headlong into schemes for thb sudden acquisition of wealth. Hence honorable labor is too often
despised; a man of parts is expected to be above hard work;
and he is considered the shrewdest fellow who can throw
double-sixes  oftenest in  the  lottery of speculation.   Thus
we go, racing on like a high-pressure Mississippi steamer in the
pursuit of fortune, pitching rosin into the furnace to get along
faster, and piling weights upon the safety valves, until finally
the boilers burst, hundreds are killed or crippled, and we are
compelled to stop for a while, until we can get over the fright
of the explosion. Pretty soon the repairs are made, the steam
is up again, we are buoyant with confidence, "Hope enchanting smiles, and waves her golden hair," again we are "going
it" at a fearful pace, and in due time another crash
occurs. The warnings of the past are lost upon us; cautious
men are voted old fogies, and their advice and admonitions
clogs on the wheels of enterprise. Americans must be Americans, and blow up as a necessity of their existence.
308 
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
,l Hardly anything is more fatal to success in business than
this all-absorbing, grasping anxiety for wealth, which  is so
characteristic of the times we live in. The very ambition to
be rich, to accumulate what is called "a  big pile," and to
reckon one's property by hundreds of thousands, is self-de feating, and leads to ruin. It blinds the judgment of its vic tim, and lures him into visionary schemes and dangerous spec ulations, till at last he loses all taste for slow and sure gains
and all capacity for calm and logical reasoning. One of the
worst consequences to which it leads is overtrading.   Instead
of aiming to do a snug, easily managed, and therefore safe
business, which will yield a reasonable, but not colossal profit,
many merchants buy and try to sell double the quantity of
goods which their capital will justify. Instead of spreading an
amount of canvas proportioned to the tonnage of their craft, the
mass of those who embark on the treacherous ocean of trade
crowd on all sail, and are only ambitious to make the utmost
possible number of knots an hour. For a while,
"Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows,"
and to all appearance they will reach the haven of wealth in
half the time of the slow sailers; but suddenly, at a moment
and from a quarter least expected, a squall springs up, and they
are swept, ill spite of every effort, towards a lee shore, and
speedily go to the bottom. The great fault of many who start
in the race for riches is, that they are not willing to creep before they can walk, to walk before they run, to run before
they attempt to fly. A man who has a capital of five thousand
dollars does a business of twenty thousand; a trader with
twenty-five thousand is content to do nothing less than a business of a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand; and the
possessor of the last-mentioned sum aims at a gigantic traffic,
which would be justified only by a capital of half a million. As
in education, dissipation, and all things else, the "fast" system prevails among our merchants, and, rushing along as they
do at a race-horse pace, a crash, when it comes, produces an
amount of disaster and misery which is incalculable.
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Another fruitful cause of bankruptcies is speculation. In
every community there are men who are determined not to
work if work can be shirked. Without avowing this determination to themselves, or reflecting that they are fighting against
a law of nature, they begin life with a resolution to enjoy all
the good things that are accumulated by the labor of man,
without contributing their own share of labor to the common
stock. Hence the endless schemes for getting rich in a day,for reaching the goal of wealth by a few gigantic bounds, instead of by slow and plodding steps. It matters not in what
such men deal, whether in oroide watches or in watered stock;
whether t hey make "corners" in wheat or in gold; whether
they gamble in oats or at roulette; whether they steal a rail
way          or a  man's money by "gift-concerts," -the principle is in
all cases the same, namely, to obtain something for nothing, to
get values without parting with anything in exchange. Everybody knows the history of such men, the vicissitudes they experience,        vicissitudes rendering the millionnaire of to-day a
beggar to-morrow, and which have been thus briefly epitomized:
"Lundi, j'achetais des actions;
Mardi, j'avais des millions;
Mercredi, j'etablis mon menage;
Jeudi, je fis mon equipage;
Le Vendredi, je fus ani bal;
Et Samedi a l'hopital";
which, freely translated, means,
"Monday, I dabbled in stock operations,
Tuesday, owned millions, by all calculations;
Wednesday, my Fifth Avenue palace began;
Thursday, I drove out a spanking bay span;
Friday, I gave a magnificent ball;
And Saturday,' smashed' with nothing at all."
Such is the career of thousands in this country. Beginning
business on Monday, they are reeking and rioting in riches on
Tuesday, live gorgeously during the week, Saturday morning their paper goes to protest, and by Saturday night they
are vibrating between the sheriff and starvation.   "The dark
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MERCANTILE FAILURES.
est day," says Horace Greeley, "in any man's earthly career is
that wherein he finst fancies that there is some easier way of
gaining a dollar than by squarely earning it..... He has lost
the clew to his way through this mortal labyrinth, and must
henceforth wander as chance may dictate."
Even of those merchants who start in their careers with a
determination to avoid all gambling operations, how few perse vere to the end! How many, after having accumulated a snug
sum by years of toil and economy, are tempted by the example
of some lucky neighbor to hazard their laboriously acquired
fortune in some big speculation,- some attempt to monopo lize a commodity, - breaking down in which, they are stripped
of the earnings of years! How many lock up their ready cash
in wild lands or corner lots, which, proving dull of sale, or
falling in value, are knocked off by the auctioneer's hammer at
half the cost! Or perhaps they hire a part of the purchasemoney, project unwise improvements on the property, cover
themselves with bonds and mortgages, and finally incur "a
street debt" of some thousands, which swiftly rolls up to
double the amount, and crushes the life right out of them.
There are many such who are literally owned by brokers,who work for them, live for them, and even die for them,die literally of a street debt upon which they have weekly
exhausted their strength in a frenzied effort to roll it ahead
from one day to seven. To justify a merchant in the bold
attempt to monopolize a commodity which is largely produced,
he should have, not only plenty of cash or credit, but a profound and exact knowledge of the markets, and of the causes
of excess and scarcity, which is possessed only by the sagacious
and discerning few. Nearly all the most successful merchants
in this country have won their fortunes, not by sudden gains,
by bold and masterly yet hazardous strokes of speculation, but
by the slow but sure accumulations of commercial industry.
Peter C. Brooks, of Boston, who died worth two millions,
never once in his life indulged in speculation, and, however
brilliant the prospect of gain, shunned every transaction which
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
required the use of borrowed means. Mr. Lorillard, who died
immensely rich in New York, pursued a similar course, and
used often to remark that his prosperity arose from not having
been in haste to get rich. He launched into no wild and uncertain schemes, which risk the earnings of a life on the chances
of a day, but was content with the regular proceeds of his
legitimate business.
Perhaps there is no way in which  merchants  are oftener
involved in inextricable embarrassments than by an unwise
investment of their surplus profits. Many are tempted by
dazzling bargains to go beyond their depth. Buying when
money is abundant, they are called on to pay in a time of great
stringency, and are suddenly ruined. Let the merchant who
has a surplus capital invest it, not in dead property, but in
good floating securities, easily convertible into money; and
especially let him use it in discounting his own four or six
months' bills, and his paper will be pronounced "gilt-edged"
and "fire-proof."  Cash and property, in merchandising, it has
been well observed, are two different things, as the business of
the trader and that of the capitalist are two different pursuits.
Of all the dividend-paying investments, stocks, owing to their
flexibility and to the probability of their yielding cost, or
nearly cost, in any exigency when the money is needed, are
the best for the business man; yet the temptation to speculate
even in this kind of security should be sternly resisted by all
who are engaged in trade.  A  business man has no time to
watch the stock-market, and when he loses by gambling in
these securities, he gets little sympathy from those who suffer
by his failure.   On the other hand, a man who is overtaken
by a sudden and unavoidable calamity does not lose his credit,
even if he is able to pay but a small percentage of his debts.
If his capacity and integrity have never been challenged, he
will be promptly aided in his attempts to retrieve his fortunes,
and none will extend a readier hand than those who have
suffered most severely by his losses.
Another  cause of failures is frequent  changes of business.
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MERCANTILE FAILURES.
Every business has its peculiarities and mysteries, its crooks
and turns, a knowledge of which cannot be acquired by
intuition. Years are required to master the details of any
branch of trade; and there are some departments of commerce
in which one may go on learning for a lifetime. The shrewd est business men will admit, after twenty years' experience in
a certain trade, that, though they thought themselves wise
when they embarked in it, they were really very ignorant, and
that they have not yet exhausted all the facts relating to it.
Yet, obvious as are these truths, hundreds of men are perpetually changing from one business to another, sticking to no one
long enough to make it profitable. In every occupation they
encounter a new set of trials and perplexities, are baffled by
fresh obstacles; yet they are lured on by new will-o'-the-wisps,
enticed from their callings by stories of fortunes made in
other pursuits, and thus spend their lives in changing their
plans, getting a smattering of many kinds of business, but a
profound knowledge of none. Hardly anything is more fatal
to success in business than this impatience for immediate results. All those kinds of business which are surest in the end,
which pay best in the long run, are slowest in beginning to
yield a return. The truest success in every profession is often
like the growth of the American aloe, for many years slow and
imperceptible. Then, all at once, when the time comes, there
is a crisis.  The plant shoots up a stalk ten or fifteen feet high,
hung with innumerable flowers. To change one's occupation,
therefore, because he does not start off with a grand dash, is
an egregious mistake. It is to throw away all the progress he
has made, all the knowledge he has acquired, in the one
already begun.   "It is," as another has said, "to go back to
the beginning of the course for a fresh start. The different
professions and kinds of business in this respect are not so
much parallel tracks, where you can be switched from one into
another without loss of progress, but rather tracks radiating
from a common centre. To pass from one to another, you must
in each case go back to the original station. You must begin
14
313 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
your career anew. The comparison, of course, cannot be applied
with rigor. Yet it has substantial truth."
A good illustration of these truths is found in the following
facts stated by an American journalist: "An acquaintance, a
seed-dealer, stated that for the first five years he could not
ascertain that he made anything. But he was learning. Before ten years he was clearing five thousand dollars per year.
Another was doing well in manufacturing ropes. But he was
unstable in mind, and although his friends advised him to
'hang to the ropes,' he was not getting rich fast enough; but he
meddled with business he had not learned sufficiently, bought
a mill, bought grain, and then broke a bank by his large failure. Some farmers come to the conclusion that cows are the
most profitable; purchase animals, erect buildings, and begin
well. But, it being a new business, they do not succeed as they
expected; they might, if they would stick to it.  The next
year they sell their dairy, and buy sheep. The price of wool
is low that year; and they hear that much money has been
made by raising tobacco. Thus they go on, changing from one
thing to another, and never succeeding in any.  Stick to your
business."
Another prolific source of bankruptcies is extravagance of
living, indulgence in luxury beyond their means by the middle
classes. An English assignee in bankruptcy stated some years
ago, after examining the books and documents of seventy-six
bankrupts, that forty-nine had been ruined by expending more
than they could reasonably hope their profits would be, although
their business yielded a fair return. Another assignee found,
after a similar investigation, that, out of fifty-two failures, thirtytwo had arisen from the same cause, and the rest from imprudent expenditure combined with speculations or bad Juck.
The proportion of men in our own country who are ruined by
spendthrift habits is probably greater than in Europe. The
credit system, together with the insane anxiety of merchants
to "get off" their goods, enables and tempts thousands of men
and women to gratify their appetites for superfluities beyond
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MERCANTILE FAILURES.
their means, and they rush on in the race of extravagance at a
"killing pace." Especially do the women in our large cities,
in these high-pressure times, keep up a "two-forty" pace on the
Fashion race-course. To live in a lofty marble palace, as dreary
and comfortless as it is stately; to load the person with gorgeous
jewelry and apparel, the cost of which would be sufficient to
set up a retail trader; to outshine all rivals in the giddy circles
of Newport, Niagara, and Saratoga,- is the height of many
a woman's ambition, whose husband, instead of discouraging,
exults in her extravagance, and squanders in sustaining it sums
which he bitterly regrets when he sees the abyss of bankruptcy
staring him in the face, and knows not how to steer clear of it.
The hoop-skirts now in vogue typify the swelling conceit, the
empty pride and vanity, which, beginning with the upper
circles, is mimicked and caricatured by all the orders of society,
from the family of the millionnaire down to that of the humble
grocer and fruit-dealer. Few persons estimate the enormous
sums to which the money needlessly wasted in personal and
household expenses would accumulate, if saved and put at
interest. It is said that the merchant who half a century ago
would have lived upon five hundred dollars a year, now spends
four thousand. The difference between these two sums for fifty
years, with the accumulation of compound interest, is over a
million of dollars.
Anlother fruitful cause of bankruptcies is the credit system.
which is often pushed beyond all reasonable bounds. A merchant who has heavy notes to lift, on investigating his resources finds, instead of cash in his safe or at his banker's, a thick
pile of "promises to pay" by A., B., and C., doing business
from a mile to two thousand miles distant, and not one half of
whom can be relied on in a crisis, when the gulf of bankruptcy
yawns before him.   Formerly men scrupled to take credit, if
they doubted their ability to pay for goods. That scruple was
by no means overcome by the thought that in case of failure they might obtain a legal discharge. Just because they
were in earnest, and meant to fulfil their promises to the let
315
I 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
ter,- if necessary, by hard work and stern self-denial, - they
were cautious about imposing such tasks upon themselves.
Not so in these days of overtrading and swiftly made fortunes.
Credit is no longer what it once was, the result of many suc  cesses and hard-fought battles with the world, the smallest
stain upon which is regarded with horror.   It has ceased to be
regarded as a vase of rare and costly workmanship, which years
of skill and labor only can bring to the highest perfection,
but which an unlucky blow may shiver into fragments; as
something which should not only be kept spotless, but, like
Cmsar's wife, above suspicion. Debts, as now created, are often
the frailest of things to lean upon when one's liabilities
thicken. They are too frequently a mere stake played for in a
game of law by the debtor and creditor, until the courts and
attorneys "rake down the pile."'
To such a pitch has the evil sometimes reached, that some
writers have seriously advocated as a remedy the repeal of all
laws for the collection of debts. But while banks, the grand
embodiment and exponent of credit, are allowed to flood the
country with its symbols, often stimulating speculation,  ihterrupting the regular course of trade, and seducing merchants
to their ruin, it is ridiculous to talk of abolishing a system created and authorized by law; not to mention that such violent,
Sangrado-like remedies are too much like cutting off one's head
to cure the toothache. There is no doubt that our country has
been largely indebted to this system for the rapid and marvellous development of her productive powers; and therefore,
though it is now admitted by all our economists that long
credit, with its attendant abuses, was the grand cause of the
financial hurricane that swept over the country in 1858,though this is proved by the fact that the crash came when
gold was pouring by millions into the land, when we were
vexed neither by war nor famine, but were exulting in a large
harvest, and suffering from no external drain, - yet we need
not expect that the practice of selling goods on time will ever
be abandoned.   The most that can be expected is, that the
'O'l 6 
MEIRCANTILE FAILURES.
system -Will be subject to certain limitations which may prevent the frightful consequences that flow from its present
abuse.
When  a vessel is sent on a whaling expedition, or despatched to China for a cargo of tea, long credit is not unreasonable, for a year or more may roll by before the merchant
can get a return. So with the East India and the California
trades, where goods have to be shipped round Cape Horn.
The same principle holds good regarding any business where
a long cycle of time must revolve between the venture and the
return.   New  avenues of communication, however, like the
Pacific Railroad, are shortening these cycles, and, by the revolutions they are causing, are rendering long credits less and
less necessary even here. But is there any analogy between
these cases and that of a country merchant who buys in the
city goods which can be brought by steamboat or railroad in a
few days to his door, and which he can turn into cash in a few
months. To sell goods on four or six months to A., B., C.,
and so on throughout the alphabet all over the Northwest or
South, or any other section of the country,- goods that can
be bought, shipped from New York to lIinnesota or Kansas,
opened and exposed for sale in a fortnight's  time,-is  a
wretched abuse of credit, which nothing but the fiercest competition among wholesale dealers could ever have led them to
tolerate. It is an abuse the more intolerable, as it damages both
debtor and creditor. Goods bought on six months are often
speedily converted into cash, and the money, lying idle in the
trader's hands, is invested in wild lands or "Peter Funk" railroad speculations; meanwhile, at the end of four months, before a dollar is paid for the former stock, a fresh one is bought
with a new "promise to pay"; and when the first note has
matured, the promiser has become bankrupt, his bubbles of
speculation have bursted, and his estate does not pay twenty
five cents on the dollar.
Abuses like this show that the short credit system is the
only safe one; and hence after every great crash, like that of
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1858, it is generally adopted, and for a while rigidly adhered
to, but the pressure of competition soon breaks it down.   Desirable as it may be, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that
it has many obstacles to overcome which are not generally
counted upon.    In order that the country storekeeper may
pay cash, or do with short credit fiom the city trader, he must
either have a large capital, or must himself sell for cash or on
short credit to customers who will pay him promptly.   All reform in this matter, to be thorough and lasting, must begin
with the consumer.   The sin of the credit system does not lie
entirely on the shoulders of the jobbers and country traders.
The farmer, the mechanic, the day-laborer, the lawyer, doctor,
and clergyman, all who run in debt instead of paying cash for
the necessaries and the luxuries of life, are equally responsible for its existence. So long have all these classes of persons
been accustomed to pay their bills semi-annually, which practically means about once in a year, that years would be requiredcl to revolutionize the present system. There is no bad
habit to which men cling with such obstinacy as to that of
getting and keeping in debt.  Cigars, tobacco, "old Bourbon,"
may be exorcised with a far less struggle.   No one trader in a
village can make any headway towards a cash or short credit
system, except by selling much cheaper than his rivals; and it
is doubtful whether this is a sufficiently powerful temptation
to the mass of purchasers to buy for cash.
Another cause of failure is the prevalent indisposition to
look resolutely and squarely at the real state of one's affairs.
Instead of taking an account of stock every year, carefully
weighing and measuring all his goods, allowing for their deterioration or depreciation, and also for his bad debts,- working
night and day, if need be, to ascertain his real position, -the
hopeful man is only anxious to increase his business; or, if he
stops to make an inventory and to see what his balance-sheet
will show, he refuses to classify his bills payable, counts them
all good, and values his merchandise at more than it will yield.
The changes in styles, and the fluctuations in the markets;
,ol8 
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
the overstock of goods not durable in quality; the loss of interest, which is certain to accrue before the whole stock is sold;
the worthlessness of some of his debtors, and the "shaky"
condition of others, -  are circumstances which are carefully
noted by the shrewd and cautious trader, but which the oversanguine merchant never looks in the face. The result is, that
his profits, like those of the shopkeeeper who made a thousand
dollars one night by simply marking up his goods ten per
cent., are always on paper, never in greenbacks or gold.   It is
a well-ascertained fact that insolvency is almost invariably accompanied by bad book-keeping. There is hardly one bankrupt in fifty who can tell with any exactness what has become
of the property which he has had in his possession, what he
has lost in his trade, and what he has spent in his family,
in short, whose accounts are not in a muddle. Out of fortyone bankrupts' estates in Great Britain, as returned by an official assignee, twenty-ninie kept no proper books and eleven
none at all.   Hence in that country, as in France and  the
Dominion of Canada, every mercantile person is required by
law to keep proper books of account, without which, says a
high authority, "it would be almost impossible to trace the insolvent's transactions in nine cases out of ten."
Again, a not infrequent cause of failures in business is partnerships hastily and inconsiderately entered into with men of
whom little is known. It is astonishing how thoughtlessly
men contract this relation with those by whose incompetency
or knavery they may be suddenly ruined.   But we have space
only tothint at this, and pass to another fruitful cause of failures, namely, the lack of liberality in business dealings. Meanness in all its forms is despicable; but especially in business
matters, when it takes the form of scrubbism. There is no
class of men who labor under a more perfect delusion than
those who practise upon this principle; who never risk a dollar to secure business, unless sure of getting it back again;
who never pay a cent for printers' ink, whether in circulars or
advertisements;  and who  think  to  get the weather-gauge
0-4 9
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
of all mankind by cribbing sixpences from the bills they incur,
passing shillings for quarters, and never giving dinners. It
is true such persons meet sometimes with a degree of success
which justifies their stinginess to themselves; but in nine
cases out of ten it will be found that they have succeeded in
spite of that quality, its natural tendency being to drag them
down. Their policy is like that of the farmer who sows three
pecks of seed where he should sow five, and is recompensed
for his leanness of soul by reaping ten bushels of grain instead
of fifteen. An English shopkeeper made it a rule never to
pay a porter for bringing a burden till the next day;  "for,"
said he, "while the fellow feels his back ache with the weight,
he charges high; but when he comes next day the feeling
is gone, and he asks only half the money."  This looks like
shrewdness; but never was a policy more suicidal. Selfishness
is always self-defeating. When the author of such a sentiment
gets wealth, it is not by his scrubbism, as he perhaps fancies,
but by his industry, perseverance, caution, and other qualities
that chance to be associated with his meanness, and which
would insure far more brilliant results without it. There is
an old English proverb that "a penny soul never came to twopence "; and when we consider how extreme narrowness in
money-dealings disgusts the public, making enemies of those on
whose good-will fortune greatly depends, and how fatal, too, is
such narrowness to that spirit of enterprise which is necessary to a
brilliant success, we shall not deem the old saw an exaggeration.
It is sometimes said that, if we would get on in the world,
we must look out for Number One, and be suspicious of our
neighbors.   "Till you know positively that he is honest, treat
every man as if he were a rogue." Of this cynical and hardhearted maxim a late writer justly says:" If this were a condition of success, success would not be worth having,- nay, indeed, it would be wholly intolerable: commend me to a life of
failure. But it is not a condition of success. To know an honest man from a rogue, and to act accordingly, is doubtless a
great thing; but if we are to treat all mankind on our journey
320 
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
through life as rogues or honest men, why, I throw up my cap
for the latter. We may be cheated, it is true; tricked, coz ened, defrauded; and we may throw away that which, worthily
bestowed, might have really contributed to our success. It is e
a serious matter to waste our strength, to squander, in this
manner, the materials of success. Successful men, it may be
said, do not make blunders of this kind. I am not quite sure
of that; besides, who knows but that the strength may not be
wasted, after all. A good deed, done in a good spirit, can never
be thrown away. The bread cast upon the waters may return
to us after many days. This at least I know, that if it be true,
as I have said, that Providence helps those who help them selves, it is no less true that Providence helps those who help
others.'The liberal deviseth liberal things, and by his liber ality shall he stand.' It was not meant that we should stand
alone in the world. Whatsoever may be our strength, whatso ever our self-reliance, there are times and seasons when we need
a helping hand; and how can we expect it to be stretched out to
us, if we always keep our own in our pockets? And if we do
not trust others, how can we hope to be trusted ourselves."
The history of business teems with illustrations of the brilliant results that flow from a generous, noble-minded policy.
It was remarked of Lafitte, the celebrated Parisian banker,
that though the generosity of his nature made him the dupe
of whoever tried to impose upon him, he yet rose from the
condition of a penniless clerk to be the first banker of his day,
and one of the most eminent public characters of his country.
His case reminds one of the remark of Jenkinson in the "Vicar
of Wakefield," about his simple, kind-hearted neighbor, Flamborough, whom he had contrived to cheat in one way or another
once a year; "and yet," said he, "Flamborough has been regularly growing in riches, while I have come to poverty and
a jail." A similar case is that of a Mr. Fowler, a famous beerbrewer in Scotland, who died very rich, and was believed to
have owed his wealth to a benevolent liberality of nature,
which, taking a professional direction, induced him to make
14*                                    U
321 
GETTING ON IN TIIE WORLD.
his liquor unusually good. He would go to his vats, and, tastk
ing the infusion, say, "Still rather poor, my lads; give it
another cast of the malt." By adhering to this course, he obtained
the highest character as a brewer, and in a few years had a
large, remunerative sale for his ale throughout Great Britain,
India, and the Colonies.
In a discussion some years ago by the directors of an English
railway about fares and arrangements for the public convenience,
the chairman is said to have remarked that a hard bargain is
ever a bad bargain for the apparent gainer, -a maxim to which
all assented; and, as a consequence, its spirit being impressed
on the whole management of the line, a writer hazards the
prophecy that the road will eventually be among the most
prosperous in Europe. Such has been and ever will be the
results of a liberal, whole-souled policy. And is it not reasonable, and only reasonable, that he should meet with the most
triumphant success in business who pursues his ends in this
spirit, rather than the picayune-minded dealer who adopts a
selfish, extorting policy  In the one case, it has been truly
observed, it is himself and a thousand minor influences working to the end; in the other, it is himself working to it, but a
thousand secret influences working against it.  "Considering
the difficulties which they needlessly raise in their course, the
successes of the selfish are far more wonderful than those of
the generous. Where, with competent prudence and skill, there
is a genuine natural suavity towards others, accompanied by a
practical liberality according to the measure of the understood
means, all works well, and ultimate triumph is certain; but
the prosperity of the thorough scrub, attained amidst the contempt and detestation of the public, can never be anything but
a kind of miracle when it occurs, and, far more probably, it is
strained after in vain."
Again, among the most fruitful causes of failures at this day
is the lack of enterprise. We live in ani age of progress, and
among the proofs of it none is more striking than the change
which has taken place within a few years in men's ideas touch
3'22 
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
ing mercantile education. That the time has come when the
standard of that education should be raised, when a broader and
severer culture should be exacted from the candidate for the
counting-room, is conceded by the veriest fossils of the "old
fogy" school of merchants. With all the keenness and sharp sig,htedness of our business men, it cannot be denied that, till
recently, they have thought more highly of shrewdness than
of solid sense, and relied more on quick-wittedness, adroitness,
and tact, than on a thorough knowledge of the laws of trade.
For a long time circumstances were such as to exaggerate the
value of the minor qualities of intellect, and the comic advice
given some years ago by Blackwood to a trader only burlesqued
an acknowledged fact.  Following riches, argued "old Ebony,"
is like following wild-geese, and you must crawl after both on
your belly; the moment you pop up your head, off they go
whistling before the wind, and you see no more of them. If
you have n't the art of stickiny by nature, it was said, you
must acquire it by art; put a couple of pounds of birdlime
upon your office stool, and sit down upon it; get a chain round
your leg, and tie yourself to your counter like a pair of shop
scissors; nail yourself up against the wall of your place of
business, like a weasel on a barn door or the sign of the spread
eagle; in short, only be a sticker, and you may get fat on a
rock.
Such was the golden rule of business in the jog4-trot days of
"Auld Lang Syne," and almost in the present half-century.
But besides this faith in the value of "sticking" talent, the
ease with which blunders are repaired, and the broken arch of
fortune reared again, overweening confidence in their versatility and power of self-transfer from one pursuit to another,
and boundless confidence in the exhaustless fertility of their
ingenuity, are all circumstances which have tended to lower
the tone of culture among the merchants of this country. But
now all is changed. The slow, plodding, illiterate, chickenhearted merchant has had his day. The man who would be
rich, and attain to eminence in his calling in this latter half of
393 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
the nineteenth century, must discard the old-fashioned methods
of getting on in the world, and be abreast with the times.  A
new epoch has been inaugurated, and all things are in a state
of metamorphosis and revolution. Around us, on every side,
the new is crowding aside the old, and "improvement" is the
watchword of the day. Machinery deemed the perfection of
ingenuity is transformed into old iron by new inventions; the
new ship dashes scornfully by the naval prodigy of last year,
and the steamer laughs at them both.   The railroad engine, as
it rushes by the crumbling banks of the canal, once regarded as
a marvel, screams out its mockery at the barge rotting piecemeal The cable of the electric telegraph reaches from continent to continent, and men's thoughts speed their lightninglike course below the monsters of the deep, and through realms
where neither light nor sound has ever penetrated. Commerce
has been leavened with the influences which have marked
these mighty changes, and from a limited and easily comprehended has become a complicated and vast affair. It is no
longer a mere dollar-and-cent traffic, requiring no apprenticeship; but a matter tasking the mind to the utmost, to be
mastered only by the highest sagacity, and after the profoundest study of facts, circumstances, and prospects.
The growth of society, acting on the interests of trade, exacts from the merchant the broadest and severest culture. No
judge or juror in civil or criminal case ever had to unravel
testimony, to sift and weigh conflicting statements, more
carefully than a great merchant has now to balance probabilities, and decide what and when it is best to buy and sell.
Only the sharpest sagacity, the most far-reaching penetration,
and the soundest judgment, will now enable one to discrimi- -
nate between profitable and ruinous schemes of investment. A
hundred things now affect the price of wheat, tobacco, sugar,
cotton, wool, that once had no influence on their value.
Within a few years articles once unknown, or deemed worthless, such as petroleum, ice, guano, etc., have created a new
trade; and who can tell how far the list may yet be extended?
324 
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
The day has gone by when mere sagacity, dexterity, and tact
would qualify a man to be a first-rate merchant. A knowledge of geography, political economy, the manners and customs of foreign countries, and a hundred other things, is indispensable; and heaven-born genius in turned-down collars is at
a discount. The times demand men of large, liberal, energetic
soul; and the man who insists upon doing business in the oldfashioned, jog-trot, humdrum way is as much out of place as
he who insists on travelling with an ox-team instead of by railway, or upon getting news by the old stage-coach instead of by
the lightning telegraph. Under these circumstances, who can
wonder that so many men who plunge into business without
talents, training, or knowledge, fail to get on?
Among  the causes of mercantile failures there  are some
which are beyond the control of the merchant, and of these
none is more disastrous than bad and unstable legislation. It
is notorious that in no country in the world is legislation so
changeful and vacillating as in the United  States.   Felix
Grundy used to say, somewhat irreverently, that everything
is foreknown but the verdict of a petit jury. He might have
said with more plausibility, "except the next acts of Congress."  Scarcely have our merchants and manufacturers adjusted their business to one policy respecting the tariff or the
currency, than another policy is announced at Washington,
and they find themselves making or selling goods at a ruinous
loss. The conflicting views which have prevailed at different
times regarding a National Bank, the Sub-Treasury System,
Hard Currency, the Return to Specie Payments, the Protective
System, have led to incessant changes in legislation, and made
it impossible for the shrewdest merchant to forecast the future.
Each political party undoes the legislation of its predecessor,
and the result of this perpetual tinkering of the laws is that
hundreds of capitalists are deterred from embarking in trade,
while thousands who venture on its fickle sea are wrecked by
financial hurricanes against which no human prudence can
guard
325 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
Still another cause of failures in business, and one the impor tance of which has been, perhaps, underestimated, is the robbery
by clerks of their employers.  Cases of this kind are becoming
more and more common in this country, and unless something
is done to arrest it, the cancer will soon have eaten into the
very vitals of our mercantile society. How many establish ments, doing a vast business, and seemingly prosperous, are
rotten at the foundation in consequence of incessant, systematic
peculation by clerks, it is impossible to estimate; but in almost
every city sudden and startling failures ever and anon occur,
whose secret cause is known to have been this, and this only.
Confidential clerks in banking-houses in New York, who have
maintained for years a stainless reputation for integrity, have
been suddenly found to have robbed their employers of thousands
and tens of thousands of dollars. A case occurred some time ago
in Chicago, where a young man was found to have embezzled
from his employer for years, - stealing not only money, but
goods, on system, converting them into cash, and making regular
deposits of the latter in a bank. In this case the thefts were practised with such adroitness and skill, and the whole physiognomy
and demeanor of the thief, who was a clergyman's son, were so
prepossessing and calculated to allay suspicion had he been
suspected, that it is no wonder he baffled the ingenuity of his
victim.  But generally merchants and shopkeepers have themselves largely to blame when they are victimized.
Sometimes they half pay a clerk, calculating with great
nicety the smallest pittance on which he can keep from starving, and then wonder that, in accepting such a situation, he
should have calculated on making up the balance of fair wages
from the pickings of the money-drawer. Then, again, a smart,
showy appearance, a superficial varnish of politeness and a flood
of small talk, are too often the ready passports to posts of trust
and honor. Who can wonder that merchants are so often
deceived, when they look less to the inner than to the outer
man, less to the moral character of their employees than to the
quality of their broadcloth or the graces of their manner, and
326 
MERCANTILE FAILURES.
never for an instant think of testing their honesty? The most
desirable young men for clerks are not always the most prepossessing at first. There is an urbanity, the result of good principles
and good-breeding, which is instantly recognized by the practised eye, and which is rarely found dissociated from good sense
and sterling integrity. This kind of politeness is not put on and
off like a cloak, nor is it characterized by any of the dazzling
fripperies of demeanor which distinguish the "swells" just
referred to. Let employers learn to distinguish between the
real article and the counterfeit; let them take no young man
into their employment about whose antecedents they are not
fully posted; let them pay fair, even liberal, salaries; and
especially let them, so far as they can do so without establishing a system of espionage, which is always despicable, acquaint
themselves with the conduct and pursuits of their officials outside of the salesroom or counting-house,- and they will not only
save themselves from the loss of many dollars, perhaps from
bankruptcy, but will prevent many a young man, trembling on
the brink of temptation, from going headlong to ruin.
Finally, in addition to the causes of bankruptcy which we
have mentioned might be added bad personal habits, such as
intemperance, lack of punctuality, etc.; the expenditure of
capital in costly fixtures and expensive ornaments, "a device
of rich old traders to monopolize a business by throwing obstacles in the way of men with limited capital"; a lack of attention
to details; and many others upon which we have not space to
dwell.  But  farther back -  behind boundless credits, overtrading, speculation, luxurious living, and all the other causes
which we have named or might name -is to be found the
primary cause of mercantile failures, all these secondary ones
being but the effect of elements lying deeper in the popular
character.  Mammon-worship, - devotion  to "the almighty
dollar," -the intense, all-devouring ambition to be the Napoleon of the mart, the man who  owns a greater amount of real
estate, bank and railroad stocks, and solid cash or mortgages,
than any other man on'Change; the impatience to attain to
327 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
wealth by a few brilliant and daring strokes, instead of by
tedious processes of labor and economy, by a few gigantic
bounds, instead of by a slow and tedious up-hill journey; the
subordination of health and happiness, the highest interests of
body and soul, to money, money, MONEY, which is made the end
instead of the means of existence, - this is the root from which
spring not merely the marvellous activity, but the giant vices,
of the American mercantile character. The race after riches
in this country is not a healthy, bracing race, but a steeplechase, a headlong, maddening rush. It is the rush of a forlorn
hope to an "imminent deadly breach," - to a breach in the
citadel of Mammon with its defences of thick competition,
mounds of bankruptcy, pitfalls of speculation, and files of bad
debts, besieged by a magazine of capital, with the large artillery
of wholesale business and the small guns of retail. The end
and aim of each, captains and privates, is to be the first to
mount the breach and plant his victorious standard on the
walls. Away with the cold dictates of virtue and prudence
and honor!  Fling honesty to the winds.  Extend no helping
hand to your comrades sinking by your side. Think only of
your own safety, and less of that than of the glorious end you
have in view. Press on with all your energies, though the balls
rain thick and fast about your ears. Stop not to stanch your
wounds. Make a bridge, if necessary, of your dead and dying
companions, and when you have carried the stronghold of
Mammon, plant your flag on its topmost battlement, look
around with a smile of triumphant satisfaction, and say, "I'm
a rich man "
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OVERWORK AND UNDER>-REST.
CHAPTER XX.
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
Steads not, to work on the clean jump,
Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump. -R. W. EMERSON.
The deepest-rooted cause of American disease is that overworking of the
brain and over-excitement of the nervous system, which are the necessary
consequences of their intense activity. Hence nervous dyspepsia, with consumption, insanity, and all its brood of fell disorders in its train. In a word,
the American works himself to death.- JAMES STIRLING.
The body has its claims, - it is a good servant; treat it well, and it will
do your work;.... attend to its wants and requirements, listen kindly and
patiently to its hints, occasionally forestall its necessities by a little indul.
gence, and your consideration will be repaid with interest. But task it and
pine it and suffocate it, make it a slave instead of a servants it may not complain much, but, like the weary camel in the desert, it will lie down and die.
- CHARLES ELAM, A Physician's Problemns.
N able London journal -$ has an article on the subject of
Drudgery, in which it protests against the modern and
absurd notion that work is an intrinsic good, or what moralists
call an end. The modern revival of the dogma of the nobleness of work it thinks was well, but it has been pushed too
far. The worship of work for its own sake it pronounces mere
fetichism, and almost as pernicious an extreme as the antiquated and now comparatively unfashionable worship of idleness.
We deeply sympathize with this protest, which was never
more urgently needed than at this hour. Everywhere men are
killing themselves by overwork, - by intense, exhausting labor
of hand and brain; and the remonstrance has come not a
moment too soon. The life of the present day is lived at feverheat. There is a fierce struggle going on in all the departments
of labor, and the mental wear and tear is enormous.   Life, in
all of the professions, is literally a battle, and men are falling
* The Saturday Review.
329 
GETTING ON IN THE WOPLD.
by hundreds in the thick of the fight. The desire to get rich
in a few years, the pride of doing "an immense business," or
of being the leader of the bar or the medical profession, leads
thousands "to work double tides"; and they go stumbling on,
robbing themselves of sleep and rest and play, till they break
down into an insane asylum or into the grave.
Welcome, then, to the later gospel, which proclaims that
work is not an end in itself, much less the highest earthly good.
Far nearer the truth is the doctrine of Moses and of the most
ancient cosmogonists, that work is a primeval curse, the result
of sin. The curse may, indeed, like all human afflictions, be
turned into a blessing; but a curse, nevertheless, it is in itself,
and only to be borne because the alternative of idleness is infinitely worse. Work, when worshipped as it sometimes is by
its servants, or when compelled by avarice, impatience, or early
follies, t6o often degenerates into drudgery, and its most enthusiastic eulogists will not pretend that it is then a blessing.
There is nothing in drudgery that is fitted to produce happiness or beauty of character. On the contrary, its tendency is
to mar all that is fair and lovely in the most cultivated natures.
Of all the nations of the earth there is no one among whom
this doctrine of "grind" has taken deeper root than among ius
Americans.   From the days of the Puritans we have been excessively fond of work,- work, not as a means of getting a
living only, but in itself and for its own sake. It seems as if
we felt the primeval curse ever weighing upon us, and so we
continue to drudge like galley-slaves, even after we have provided for the ever-dreaded "rainy day," and the pressure of
bread-getting has long since passed. Hence we have so few
holidays and seasons of rest or recreation, that, when they do
come, we are quite perplexed to know what to do with ourselves. It is for the sanme reason that these days are grossly
abused by many in riotous dissipation, drunkennless, and otherwise swamping themselves with abominations; for, as  an
old writer says, those that seldom take lawful pleasure will
take unlawful, "and by lacing themselves too hard, grow awry
330 
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
on one side." Others, again, alternate a long spell of excessive
labor with a comparatively short spell of excessive repose,
eleven months in the treadmill with one at Saratoga,- which
is about as rational as to maintain that a man who has taken a
bottle of brandy one day and a quart of water the next has
been drinking brandy and water.
When shall we learn that, as Aristotle long ago said, the end
of labor is to gain leisure: and that hence it is possible to be
just as immoderately and evilly addicted to work as to indulgence, and that an equal amount, though a different kind of
mischief, may accrue to one's self and family in one direction as
in the other? When will the old theological idea that mortals
are sent here as to a place of sore chastisement and mortification be scouted from our minds? It is time that this everlasting drudgery should cease among us, and that some higher lesson should be impressed upon the brain of the infantile Yankee than the old saws about industry, money-getting, and the
like. Let us abate something, at least, of our devotion to the
almighty dollar, and regard the world as something better than
a huge workshop, in which we are to toil and moil unceasingly,
till death stops the human machine. Let us learn that the
surest and best way to get on in the world is not to travel by
"lightning lines," but "to hasten slowly." It is a libel on
Providence to suppose that it has designed that we should live
such a plodding, mechanical life, that we should be mere
mill-horses, treading evermore the same dull, unvarying round,
and all for grist, grist, still grist, till we have become as blind
and stupid as that most unhappy of all quadrupeds. Still
more absurd is it to suppose that to work desperately, to be
intensely employed, is in itself praiseworthy, even though it
be about something which has no truth, beauty, or usefulness
in it, and which makes no man happier or wiser. The truth is,
that, as one of the wisest of modern essayists has remarked, to
work insatiably requires much less mind than to work judiciously, and less courage than to refuse work that cannot be
done honestly.  " For a hundred men," says Arthur Helps,
3 19i 1 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
"whose appetite for work can be driven on by vanity, avarice,
ambition, or a mistaken notion of advancing their families,
there is about one who is desirous of expanding his own nature and the nature of others in all directions, of cultivating
many pursuits, of bringing himself and those around him in
contact with the universe in many points, -  of being a man,
and not a machine."
"I shall die first a-top," was the mournful exclamation of
Dean Swift, as he gazed on a noble oak whose upper branches
had been struck by lightning; "I shall be like that tree, I
shall die first a-top."  Afflicted for years with giddiness and
pain in the head, he looked forward with prophetic dread to
insanity as the probable termination of his existence; and after
nine years of mental and bodily suffering, the great satirist,
the mighty polemic, the wit and the poet, died as he had
feared and half predicted, "in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a
hole."
"Dying at the top" is the disease to which a fearful number
of Americans are to-day exposed. In the high-wrought state of
civilization to which we have attained, hardly any complaint
is more common than that of a brain overworked.   The coiplaint is not uttered by literary men and scholars only, but is
echoed by all who are striving for fame or fortune against eager
and formidable competitors. The lawyer, the clergyman, the
merchant, the speculator, - all are suffering from overwork;
from that strain of special faculties in the direction towards
special objects, out of which comes nervous exhaustion, with
the maladies consequent on overstimulus and prolonged fatigue.
In every sphere of labor, the highest as well as the lowest, we
behold on all sides men whose time and strength are completely
absorbed by the effort to get a living for themselves and their
families; "mechanics whose life is one steady, unceasing grind
in the treadmill of daily routine; merchants who have become
mere attache's of their counter, and clerks who are living
appendages of their pens; clergymen whose brains have been
converted into a gland to secrete and discharge two sermons a
332 
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
week; editors who have turned their wits into paragraphs until
they are little else than walking items and talking squibs;
women who have sewed themselves into their garments until
their life is but a thread."
It is in our great cities that this evil has reached the most
fearful pass. A person living a quiet, leisurely life in the
country can have no adequate conception of the severe and
exhausting labors to which hundreds subject themselves in a
second-rate city in his neighborhood, especially in the higher
walks of professional life; nor can the inhabitant of such a
city, groan as he may under his toils, conceive of the more
burdensome duties of the corresponding classes in a great commercial centre. The brain of a leading lawyer, merchant, or
business man is forever on the stretch. By day and by night
he can think of nothing and dream of nothing but the iron
realities of life. Anxious, perplexing thought sits on his brow
as he rubs his eyes at daybreak; hurrying to the breakfasttable, he swallows his steak and his coffee in a twinkling,
jumps up from his chair almost immediately, and, without
having spoken a pleasant word, hastens away to the high courts
of Mammon, to engage in the sharp struggle for pelf. There
he spends hour after hour in calculating how to change his
hundreds to thousands;  dinner and supper - which he bolts,
never eats -come and go almost without observation; even
nightfall finds him still employed, with body and mind jaded,
and eyes smarting with sleeplessness; till at length, far in the
night, the toil-worn laborer seeks his couch, only to think of
the struggles and anxieties of the day, or to dream of those of
to-morrow. Thus things go on day after day, till the poor
bond-slave of Mammon finds his constitution shattered; the
doctor is summoned, and sends him to Europe; he travels
listlessly,-  he cannot leave thought behind him; the disease
creeps on apace; the undertaker soon takes his dimensions in
his mind's eye; paralysis seizes him; he lives a few years
organically alive to enjoy the fruits of his labors, and then
descends to his everlasting rest, with the glorious satisfaction,
333 
GETTING ON IN THlE WORLD.
perhaps, of having gained, for his joyless days and sleepless
nights, a larger "pile" than   any other man on'Change.
It has often been remarked by foreigners that the great fault
of our American civilization is the terrible facility with which
we exhaust life. There is no end to our ingenuity in devising
plans to wear it out. We eat and drink it; we burn it with
close stoves and furnaces; we blow it away in loud, vociferous
talking; we exhaust it in business cares and anxieties; we
smash it on railroads and drown it in steamers; we rack our
invention for new ways of cutting it short. The hot, imletuous haste with which we live is the crying evil of the times.
Society appears to be split into two great classes, - those who
are over-anxious in the pursuit of wealth, passing their days in
a ceaseless paroxysm of excitement and activity, and denying'
themselves all enjoyment but that of money-getting, -  and
those thoughtless votaries of pleasure who squander their all
upon sensual enjoyment, plunge recklessly into debt, and are
only intent upon some new scheme of gratification or device
to dodge the sheriff. Between these two classes the pendulum is kept always vibrating, and can never come to rest.
Travelling by steam at thirty miles an hour is but faintly
typical of the headlong hurry, the hot, panting haste,
with which in this country we pursue both business and pleasure.   Our very faces, furrowed with  the lines of anxious
thought, bear impress of that intensity, that terrible earnestness, which is the essence of our being.  "Every American,"
says a late British traveller, "looks as if his eyes were glaring, into the far West and the far future."   Determined to get
rich in a few months or years, we cannot submit to the tedious
process of adding one year's patient legitimate gains to those of
another, but seek by gambling, by bold speculative combinations, by anticipation of intelligence received by railway or
steamer, to make or mar ourselves by one bold stroke. It is
no paradox to say that we are in such a hurry to live, that living, in any true sense of the term, becomes impossible.
"Young, America," especially, scorns all limits, whether in the
0034 
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
quest of business or pleasure.   As, when born poor, it must
make a fortune in a day, so, if it inherits wealth, it must circumnavigate the entire world of enjoyment in its gay pinnaces,
with streamers flying and music playing, before it is twentyfive. Even sleep is got through impatiently by us, with frequent stairtings and consultations of the watch, lest the morning hours be lost. We snore faster than our fathers snored,
and we grudge the hours spent in bed as so many hours cut
out of life. Our very diseases catch our contagious haste; the
lingering consumption is growing less and less frequent,- the
instantaneous apoplexy and ossification of the heart are taking
its place. Our fevers, it is said, are running all to a low typhoid
type, and men are continually sinking down in the very noonday of life from a mysterious lack of vital force. Such a departure from life as that described by Dryden two hundred
years  ago is now becoming more and more phenomenal:
"Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long,
Even wondered at because he dropped no sooner.
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years,
Yet freshly he ran on ten winters more,
Till, like a clock worn out with beating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still."
Instead of this, the toilers of to-day drop like Holmes's
"one-hoss shay," which
"Went to pieces all at once,
All at once, and nothing first, -
Just as bubbles do when they burst,"
or, if they are permitted to linger on with a kind of deati-inlife, the result of all this excitement is, by keeping the mind
perpetually on the rack, to sap all the foundations of health, and
pre-date old age. Hence in the great business marts are often
witnessed, even in persons who have barely reached the middle
of life, the haggard, care-worn face, sunken eye, -hoary hair, and
feeble gait, which properly belong to "weird eld."  Nor can
this result be surprising to those who reflect that, as a high
335 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
medical authority has remarked, anxiety is but a chronic kind
of fear, a sort of intermittent fever and ague, which as mani festly disorders the circulation and secretions as that which
arises from the poisonous malaria of the marshes,- the latter
being scarcely more deadly than that of the market in these
days of desperate speculation and all-grasping monopoly.
Who will say that such a life has been spent as God designed? Can there be a more pitiful failure than when the
means of happiness thus swallow up the end? Were suffering
to follow instantly upon the heels of transgression, were the
account to be settled with Nature daily, few persons would violate her laws. Unfortunately for such fanatical devotees of
business, she runs up long accounts with her children, and,
like a chancery lawyer, seldom brings in "that little bill " till
the whole subject of litigation has been eaten up. The poor
devotee of Mammon, who thought to outwit her, finds at last
that she is a most accurate book-keeper; that, neglecting
nothing, she has set down everything to his credit and
debited him with everything, that not the eighth part of a
cent has escaped her notice; and though the items are small,
yet, added up, they show a frightful balance against him, and
he finds himself, at forty or fifty, physically bankrupt,  a
broken-down, prematurely old man.
So frequent is the spectacle of strong men breaking down
midway in life's race, that it may be doubted whether the best
guaranty of a long life is not a feeble constitution.   The men
of iron frames and lignum-vitse nerves, of muscles wrought of
the heart of oak, of giant energy and herculean endurance, are
the very men who presume upon the inexhaustibility of their
physical capital, and soonest become bankrupt in vitality.
This madness, this self-killing- for self-killing it is, as
truly as if he were to cut a vein, and drain away his own lifeblood, drop by drop- is less astonishing in the case of the
merchant than in that of the professional man and the scholar,
who makes the acquisition of knowledge the principal end of
life.   The latter are, or ought to be, thoroughly acquainted
336 
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
with the laws of physiology; and yet the facts show that they
are either ignorant of its most elementary principles or lack
the self-command to act upon them. Not long since an Eng lish journal related of a leading barrister, that he acquired an
income of fifteen thousand pounds, but was every night so com pletely exhausted by his labors, that, for several hours after
their cessation, he could not be addressed or approached with out experiencing the acutest nervous distress.   How  many
lawyers in our own large cities break down just as they have ac quired a full mastery of the intricate science of jurisprudence,
and when their faculties of mind and body should be in the
highest vigor!  How  many clergymen are physically insol vent, mere wrecks of their former selves, at forty!  And the
scholar, - who that is familiar with literary biography, does
not know that half of the languages of Europe may be mas tered, while the prodigy that has stuffed himself with so much
learning knows not, or seems not to know, that by perpetual
study, without out-door exercise, he is committing a slow
suicide?
When Leyden, a Scotch enthusiast of this stamp, was warned
by his physician of the consequences, if he continued, while
ill with a fever and liver-complaint, to study tenl hours a day,
he coolly replied: " Whether I am to live or-die, the wheel must
go rountd to the last..... I may perish in the attempt, but if
I die without surpassing Sir William Jones a hundred-fold in
Oriental learning, let never a tear for me profane the eye of a
borderer." No wonder that he sank into his grave in his thirtysixth year, the victim of self-murder. Alexander Nicolly, a
professor of Hebrew at Oxford, who, it was said, could walk
to the wall of China without an interpreter, died a few years
ago at the same age, chiefly from the effects of intense study;
and Dr. Alexander MVurray, a similar prodigy, died at thirtyeight of the same cause. Sir Humphry Davy, in the height
of his fame, nearly killed himself by the excessive eagerness
with which he prosecuted his inquiries into the alkaline metals,
pursuing his labors in the night till three or four o'clock, and
15                                   v
337 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
even then often rising before the servants of the laboratory.
Excessive application threw Boerhave into a delirium for six
weeks; it gave a shock to the powerful frame of Newton; it
cut short the days of Sir Walter Scott, and it laid in the grave
the celebrated Weber, whose mournful exclamation, amid his
multiplied engagements, is familiar to many an admirer of his
weird-like music: "Would that I were a tailor, for then I
should have a Sunday's holiday." It was the same cause which
struck down Sir William Hamilton in his fifty-sixth year with
paralysis, and ended the life of the most brilliant and influential of American journalists, Mr. Raymond, in a cerebral crash
at the early age of forty-nine. The effects of such toil in this
country are far more disastrous than in Europe, for, owing to
climate and other agencies, work of every kind is more exhausting here than there.
It is related of Sir Philip Sidney, that, when at Frankfort,
he was advised by the celebrated printer, Languet, not to
neglect his health during his studies, "lest he should resemble
a traveller who, during a long journey, attends to himself but
not to his horse." When will professional men, business men,
and scholars act upon this homely but sensible advice. What
can be more crazy than the conduct of a traveller who, having
a journey of five hundred miles to perform, which he can
rightly perform only at the rate of fifty miles a day, lashes his
horse into a speed of a hundred, at the risk of breaking him
down in mid-journey I We are aware of the excuses given for
this insanity. We know very well that the poor bond-slave
of business pretends that he must overdraw his bank account
with nature,- though every draft will have ultimately to be
repaid with compound  interest, -in order to maintain his
position in society or on'Change, and that the intellectual
slave, besides this reason, will plead the deep enjoyment he
finds in unceasing work or study.   But it is simply absurd for
any man to state that he is compelled to maintain a particular
status in society, that he must move in this or that circle,
that he must challenge this or that degree of respect from those
'338 
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
around him.  The argument is just that by which the Swartwouts, the Schuylers, and the whole race of swindlers, embezzlers, and defaulters, have defended and excused their crimes.
There is nothing but a wretched vanity underlying all these
pretences; and he who, to gratify so low a passion, deliberately overtasks his bodily and mental energies year after year
from January to December, need not be astonished if, like
Swift, he suddenly find himself "dying a-top," or if the verdict of the public, the coroner's jury at large, should be,
after the release of his weary spirit from the more weary body,
Died by his own Hand.
There is occasionally a business man who candidly admits
that this intense and unremitting devotion to affairs, without
rest or relaxation, is but a species of slavery; but he will tell
you that it is but temporary, that he endures it for the
present in the hope of earning a competency which will enable
him at some day to purchase an exemption from these drudgeries. The grinding toil, the harassing cares, the exhausting
brain-work, the tedious, ever-dreary monotony of the present,
he cheerfully submits to, in consideration of a future which
will make up for it all in one long playday,- in an indefinite
period of repose, elegant leisure, and luxurious enjoyment.
But who needs to be told how uniformly such expectations
are doomed to disappointment? Life slips through the fingers
of such persons unfelt, unenjoyed, in the bustle and hurryscurry of preparing to live. In nineteen cases out of twenty
the competency, for the attainment of which such sacrifices are
made, is never realized; and even the envied few who are successful find the period of leisure, when it comes, to be one of
even more misery than enjoyment. Nature, as we have already
said, cannot be outraged with impunity. Though a generous
giver, she is a hard bargainer; and invariably, in the long run,
the man who works double tides, who crowds the work of
forty years into twenty, and burns his candle at both ends,
will find that he will accomplish less by attempting to overmatch or cheat Nature, than by accepting her own terms.
/
33,9 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
The mind is monarch of the body; but, if it ever so far forgets
itself as to trample upon its slave, the slave will not be generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite its
oppressor. In all likelihood, the man who toils and moils at
business, without relaxation or enjoyment, through the best
years of life, with the hope of retiring at last and making the
evening of life all holiday, all play, will never retire, except
into an untimely grave. But grant that he is what the world
calls "successful," that by ceaseless toil and self-denial he gains
the high table-land which a fixed position, competency, and
settled relations in life may be said to form, -who does not
know what almost invariably follows, when the stimulus which
has thus far goaded him up the steeps of business has lost its
power?  Ennui, world-weariness, sadness of soul and countenance, doubts "if the play be worth the candle," impatience
and restlessness,- in short, all those ailments, partly mental
and partly physical, which the French sum up in the expressive
phrase, maladie du quarante ans, seize upon him, and body
and mind, deprived of their wonted occupation, break down.
The history of society is full of examples of retired citizens
vainly seeking, in frivolous amusements and hobbies, the
means of agreeably whiling away their time, until, at length,
unable any longer to endure a vacuity for which they are
unprepared, they find it necessary to return to their former
business, if not intercepted by a death of sheer ennui and
disgust.
Nor is there anything strange in such a result. After intense and prolonged labor, rest is delightful; but after the
feeling of exhaustion is gone, nothing is more irksome than
enforced idleness. Who does not remember Charles Lamb's
letter to Wordsworth, in which the prisoner of the India-House
paints so vividly his misery on being released from his drudgery?
"I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and feeling I was
not. Holidays, even the annual month, were always uneasy
joys, with their conscious fugitiveness, the craving after making the most of them.   Now, when all is holiday, thlere are no
340 
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
holidays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless
impulse for walkings." No one who understands the force of
habit would, for a moment, expect that, after having spent
twenty or thirty years of his life in a round of ceaseless activity, a man could break off without giving his physical system
a shock; nor is it more surprising that, after having, in his
exclusive devotion to business, neglected entirely the cultivation
of his mental faculties, and thus having no inward resources to
fall back upon, he should fall a prey to etnzui and melancholy,
and end his days, like the Hebrew sage, in declaring all to be
vanity and vexation of spirit.
But, it will be urged by another class of workers, fearful as
it is to see "the fiery soul o'er-informinlg its integument of
clay," the sword wearing out the scabbard, yet it is better,
surely, to wear out than to rust out; better to drudge at the
grimiest toil than to swing in the hammock of laziness and
doze life away; better, far better, that the ship should be
shivered upon the rocks, or go down beneath the waters, than
rot ingloriously at the wharves!  The value of a life depends
upon the amount and value of the work done, not upon the
number of days to which it is prolonged. Did not Goethe
deem Schiller happy in that he died in the full vigor of his
days? Is there not, as one has said, a vast difference between
a half-life and half a life, considering that one may trickle
through a hundred years, the other may be concentrated by
force of great occasion within the limits of an hour? Do not
some men have
"The life of a long life
Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear
Upon the world's cold cheek, to make it burn
Forever,"
and die hoary at twenty, or, like Pope, become "sexagenarian
at sixteen "?
There is much force in these suggestions, though it may be
replied that these earnest and terrible workers, who have compressed the work of threescore and ten years in a half-dozen or
341 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
a dozen, might have done more for themselves and for mankind, had they rested oftener and given more time to social enjoyment. That work is more likely to be well done which is
done with the judgment, wisdom, and poise   above all with
the reserved power -which age gives. Who can estimate the
loss to the world occasioned by the early death of Mr. Buckle?
Of what priceless value would ten or twenty years more of life
have been to such a scholar and thinker!  Generations may
elapse before another literary laborer of industry so tireless, and
so colossal a capacity for generalizing colossal acquirements,
shall appear to complete the noble fragment he has left us.
It is doubtless true, also, that there are men of intellectual
tastes so constituted that with them overwork is a necessary
choice of evils.   The man whose friends deplore that he is
killing himself, often bears that within him which would more
ignobly kill him, if he did not throw himself impetuously into
the intellectual struggle, and thus withdraw his thoughts, for
a time at least, from the "Bluebeard chambers of the heart."
How often do men throw themselves into the whirlpool of intellectual excitement, as a relief from deep mental anguish!
Burton, a hypochondriac, wrote the "Anatomy of Melancholy,"
that marvel of learning, and protracted his life to the age of
sixty-four. Without mental labor, sometimes of a severe and
almost compulsory character, it may be doubted whether Cowper, constitutionally so gloomy-minded, would have reached
the verge of seventy.   Besides, there is often an enchantment,
a witchery and fascination, in literary labor, which renders
cessation therefrom more distressing, perhaps, than even the
results of overwork.
"I must write to empty my mind," said Byron, "or go
mad." When Sir Walter Scott was warned by his medical
advisers, after his first attack of apoplexy, that if he persisted
in working his brain his malady must inevitably recur with
redoubled severity, he replied: "As for bidding me not work,
Molly might as well put the kettle on the fire, and say,' Now
don't boil.'.... I foresee distinctly that if I were to be idle
942  
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
I should go mad."  Go mad he did, from excessive labor; but
not till after many a warning and presentiment of the attack
of which he died. Years before his death the reluctant conviction      forced itself on the mind of his son-in-law, Mr. Lockhart,
that the mighty magician of the pen was losing something of
his         energy. Though the faculties were there, and occasionally
blazed forth with their old meridian splendor, yet his sagacious
judgment and matchless memory were frequently at fault:
"Among the chords the fingers strayed,
And an uncertain warbling made."
Ever and anon he paused and looked around him, like one half
waking from a dream mocked with shadows.  The sad bewilderment of his gaze showed a momentary consciousness that,
like Samson in the lap of the Philistine, "his strength was
passing from him, and he was becoming weak, like unto other
men." Then came the strong effort of aroused will The
clouds dispersed as if before a resistless current of pure air; all
was bright and serene as of old; and then the sky was
shrouded again in yet deeper darkness, till at last the night
of death closed the scene. It is said that Dr. Samuel Johnson,
whose intellectual as well as his moral structure was grand and
powerful, passed all his days ill the dread of a similar intellectual eclipse.
How many literary laborers in our own country, -how
many merchants and business men generally,- are hurrying
on to a similar goal! What shall they do to counteract the
fearful effects of brain-weariness?  Shall they be counselled for
the thousandth time to take exercise,- to take long walks
and breathe fresh air? Unfortunately, exercise, taken consciously and for its own sake, with no ulterior aim, does no
good.  The mere act of walking till the nerves have registered
a certain amount of muscular fatigue, above all, a dull melancholy walk without company, degenerates into a task, and
gives no relief to the mind. A man might as well train himself for a game of base-ball or a ericket-match by a night's
hard study, as try to recruit his overtasked mind by a five-mile
343 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
stretch on the public road.  Besides, all such attempts at phys.
ical improvement, however heroically kept up for a few days
or weeks, are sure of a speedy end. Shall the sufferer try the
gymnasium?. That, too, has been tested thoroughly, and even
the most enthusiastic of its early glorifiers are now ready to
admit that it has been found wanting. Gymnastics may do
for boys whose frames have not been hardened, but are utterly
unfit for grown persons, especially for hard thinkers.  The
hurtfulness, the exhaustion, which such recreations produce, is
absolutely incompatible with much brain-work. Every man
has a certain fixed amount, or capital stock, of strength; and
few have so much that it will admit of being taken out at both
ends, head and heels, at once. The total neglect of exercise is
hardly more deleterious than too much rushed through per functorily. It is simply absurd to think that violent exertions
for a couple of hours can atone for the want of a constant supply of fresh air; and still more to think that we can save our
candle by burning it at both ends instead of at one only.
Nature is not thus to be outwitted.  The proper remedy for a
period of unhealthy living is not working double tides, not
an hour or two occupied in drawing off the remaining strength
of an overtaxed system, but, as a sensible writer has observed,
now and then an entire day or week or month given to renovation and merely physical improvement. In the intervals.
such exercise as is taken ought to be of an easy and amusing
rather than of a laborious kind. Such a change as society affords is of more value than muscular activity. But vacations, frequent holidays, though but for a day, are the true
safety-valves of professional men; and he who grants himself occasional rest will not only live longer, but do more work,
than he who drudges in the office, counting-room, or study
from January to December.
Again, one of the worst results of overworking the brain
in any exclusive direction is, that it tends, when it does not absolutely break down that organ, to produce mental deformity.
As the nursery-maid who carries her burden with one hand
344 
OVERWORK AND UNDER-REST.
exclusively is afflicted with spinal curvature, so the thinking
man who gives his intellectual energies to one subject or class
of subjects gets a twist in his brains. Those persons, therefore, who are chained to mental labor and cannot give the
brain repose, should try to vary their labors, which is another
form of repose. "Intense and prolonged application to one
subject," says a writer, "is the root of all the mischief. As
your body may be in activity during the whole of the day, if
you vary the actions sufficiently, so may the brain work all day
at varied occupations. Hold out a stick at arm's length for five
minutes, and the muscles will be more fatigued than by an
hour's rowing: the same principle holds good with the brain."
There is truth in this; yet it must be remembered that-even
where mental labor is thus varied, there is a limit beyond
which the brain cannot be safely tasked. Lands need to lie
fallow, and so do brains. You may rest oftentimes by simply
changing your work, as the boy at the grindstone rests by changing hands; but the man who gets all his head-rest that way
will suffer as truly as the boy who, with either hand, attempts
an unceasing grind. To reconcile health with perpetual work,
however ingeniously varied, demands, not a human constitution, not even that of a Hercules, but one of lignumvitse or
iron.
15'
345 
GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
CHAPTER XXI.
TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS.
We do not choose our own parts in life, and have nothing to do with those
parts.  Our simple duty is confined-to playing them well. -EPICTETUS.
I confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect for
men who do not succeed in life, as those words are commonly used. - G. S.
HILLARD.
To know
That which before us lies in daily life v
Is the prime wisdom. -MILTON.
The heart of a man is a short word, a small substance, scarce enough to
give a kite a meal; yet great in capacity, yea, so indefinite in desire that
the round globe of the world cannot fill the three corners of it! When it
desires more, and cries, "Give, give" I will set it over to the infinite
good, where the more it hath it may desire more, and see more to be desired.
BISHOP HALL.
0, keep me innocent! make others great. - QUEEN CAROLINE MATILDA,
of Denmnark.
The world will be blind, indeed, if it does not reckon amongst its great ones
such martyrs as miss the palm but not the pains of martyrdom, heroes without the laurels, and conquerors without the jubilation of triumph. -J. H.
FRISWELL, The Gentle Life.
N  the preceding chapters we  have endeavored to furnish
the beginner in life with some useful directions touching
the art of "getting on in the world," illustrating our hints by
examples of men who have succeeded and of men who have
failed. In conclusion, it should be remembered that success in
life'is to be regarded as a means, and not as an end; and that
therefore there is such a thing possible as unsuccessful success,such a thing as gaining every end, while the whole life has
been a failure. For what is this success, to which we have
been trying to point out the path? Viewed in the light of
another world, - of that measureless existence compared with
which this earthly one is but a point, -what is it, after all,
:346 
TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS.
but a comparatively vulgar, paltry affair? Is it anything for
which a man should crawl in the dust, degrade himself in his
own estimation, do violence to the divine principle within him,
or stoop to the smallest mean or dishonorable action? Is life
a scrub-race, where, at every hazard, though you have to blind
the man on your right and trip the one on your left, you must
struggle to come out ahead. Shall we subscribe to that
dangerous materialism running throughout American life, which
preaches that money is the great end and evidence of the
possession of intellect, that a man must be a failure unless
he culminates in the possession of a check-book, -a belief
worthy only of a people prepared to accept " Poor Richard's"
maxims as a New Testament? Were we sent into the world
simply, in the slang phrase of the day, "to win a pile "? And
when we have a competence, shall we sacrifice health, peace,
conscience, that we may boast of our hundreds of thousands,
though we know that incessant fear and nervous anxiety are
often the shadows that surround the glittering heap?  Is it
nothing to have a conscience void of offence, a face that never
turns pale at the accuser's voice, a bosom that never throbs at
the fear of exposure, a heart that might be turned inside out
and discover no stain of dishonor?
But perhaps you regard popularity as the great test of success; you covet the diqito pretereuntium monstrari; you would
be the focus of all eyes, "the observed of all observers," though
of that kind of honor, as Cowley says, "every mountebank
has more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than
the lord chief justice of a city." Then you live a life only
in others' breath; your happiness depends on every turn of
the weathercock; you are at the mercy of every wind that
blows. Are you the lion of to-day, because you have burned
the heart of. the world with your ardent soul? I am the lion
to-morrow, because I balance myself on a wire over the dizzy
chasm of Niagara, and you are quite forgotten.   The  confounding of excellence with pecuniary success or a seat in
Congress is both absurd and immoral. Was the divinest life
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GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.
ever led on this earth a success, humanly speaking? And are
you entitled to pronounce your fellow-man, who has humbly
tried to copy it, a cipher, because he has not, like you, courted
applause, and made some little nook or corner of the earth
ring with his name i. Has not many a man been a blessing to
the world who has made no noise in it, and who has died
a beggar? And have not thousands died rich in goods or reputation, who were intellectually and morally bankrupt? Is
it not too true of the road of ambition, that, as another has
said, "the higher it ascends the more difficult it becomes, till
at last it terminates in some elevation too narrow for friendship, too steep for safety, too sharp for repose, and where the
occupant, above the sympathy of man and below the friendship of angels, resembles in the solitude if not the depth of
his sufferings a Prometheus chained to the Caucasian rock "?
Whatever you will pay the price for, you can have in this
world, that is the rule. Be rich or popular, if you choose,bringing all your faculties, as did Bonaparte his forces, to bear
upon one point, and letting your intellectual and moral nature
lie fallow. But do not arrogate too much on the strength of this
vulgar success; do not expect admiration and applause, or even
a tacit assent to your claims, from those who are accustomed to
look below the surface. Do not deem yourself authorized to
pity those who prefer incorruptible treasures to a balance at
their banker's,   the "pearl of great price" to the jewel that
sparkles on the finger, - and who have been successful as men,
though they may have failed as lawyers, doctors, and merchants.
The possession of 5-20 bonds, and mortgages, and corner lots
does not always and necessarily reward virtuous industry;  "a
play, a book, a great work, an architect, or a general, may owe
success simply to the bad taste of the times; and, again, nonsuccess in any candidate may arise from a conscience too clear
and sensitive, a taste too good and too nice, a judgment too
discriminative, a generosity too romantic and noble, or a modesty too retiring." There is no possible valuation of human
character which would make the slightest show in the stock
348' 
TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS.
list; and hence success, truly understood, must be sought, not
in what we have, but in what we are.
All experience shows that the greatest and most continued
favors of fortune cannot, of themselves, make a man happy,
nor can the deprivation of them render altogether miserable
the possessor of a clear conscience and a well-regulated mind.
Goethe, who seems to have been born to show how little
genius, health, honor, influence, and worldly goods can do to
make a man happy, confessed that he had not, in the course
of his life, enjoyed five weeks of genuine pleasure; and a
famous caliph, looking back over a brilliant reign of fifty
years, found that he had enjoyed only fourteen days of pure
and unalloyed happiness. An ingenious Frenchman has even
written an able book to prove that no change in any man's
external circumstances, bating the case of absolute indigence,
can alter a man's essential feelings of comfort and happiness
for more than three months. Such cynicism, which, if universal, would put a sudden stop to all the wheels of the world's
industry, can have but few converts; men will still continue,
in spite of all the croakings of moralists, to crave and toil and
struggle for the world's prizes; and it must be confessed that,
in spite of all drawbacks, success, even in this vulgar sense, is
a desirable thing. Money, and a pleasant home, and freedom
from economical cares, books and pictures, travel in foreign
lands, the society of cultivated and elegant men and women,
the respect of the world, and the best viands, are all solid
advantages, which none covet more than those who affect to
despise them. Life is certainly a journey and a pilgrimage,
but "if it were only a journey of a single night, travelling
first-class would be incomparably more comfortable than travelling third."   It is therefore a great saying that "heaven is
probably a place for those who have failed on earth," - for the
"Delicate spirits, pushed away
In the hot press of the noonday."
Do you ask, then, what you shall aim at in life?  We answer, as we began: Aim to act well your part, for therein lies
349 
GETTING ON IN- TlHE WORLD.
adl the honor.  Every man has a mission to perform in this
world, for which his talents precisely fit him, and, having
found what this mission is, he must throw into it all the energies of his soul, seeking its accomplishment, not his own glory.
As Goethe wisely says: "Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do, and to
restrain himself within the limits of his power of comprehension."  Having found out what you have to do,   whether to
lead an army or to sweep a crossing, to keep a hotel or to
drive a hack, to harangue senates or address juries or prescribe medicines,  do it with all your might, because it is
your duty, your enjoyment, or the very necessity of your
being.
Are your intellectual endowments small, and do you despond
because your progress must be slow? Remember that, if you
have but one talent, you are responsible only for its wise employment. If you cannot do all you wish, you can at least do
your best; and, as Dr. Arnold says, if there be one thing on
earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, when they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated. Remembering that the battle of life cannot be fought by proxy, be your own helper, be
earnest, be watchful, be diligent, and, if you do not win success, you will have done the next best thing, - you will have
deserved it.
Is your calling one which the world calls mean or humble I
Strive to ennoble it by mixing brains with it, as Opie did with
his colors. Show by the spirit that you carry into it, that to
one who has self-respect, an exalted soul, the most despised
profession may be made honorable; that, as we have already
said, it is the heart, the inspiring motive, not the calling, that
degrades; that the mechanic may be as high-minded as the
poet, the day-laborer as noble as the artist. It is related of the
celebrated Boston merchant, William Gray, that having, on a
certain occasion, censured a mechanic for some slovenly work,
the latter, who had known Mr. Gray when he was in a very
35'O 
TRUE AND - FALSE SUCCESS.
humble position, bore the rebuke with impatience: "I tell you
what, Billy Gray, I sha' n't stand such words from you. Why,
I recollect you when you were nothing but a drummer in a
regiment!"  "And so I- was," replied Mr. Gray, "so I was a
drummer; but did n't I drum  well, eh - did n't I drum
well?" In the words, then, of Schiller:
"What shall I do lest life in silence pass?"
And if it do,
And never prompt the bray of noisy brass,
What need'st thou rue?
Remember aye the ocean deeps are mute;
The shallows roar;
Worth is the ocean, - Fame is the bruit
Along the shore.
"What shall I do to be forever known?"
Thy duty ever!
"This did full many who yet sleep unknown,"     Oh! never, never!
Think'st thou perchance that they remain unknown
Whom thou know'st not?
By angel trumps in heaven their praise is blown,
Divine their lot.
"What shall I do to gain eternal life?
Discharge aright
The simple dues with which each day is rife? "
Yea, with thy might.
Ere perfect scheme of action thou devise,
Will life be fled,
While he who ever acts as conscience cries
Shall live, though dead.
35i
i 
I 
I
INDEX.
w 
I 
INDEX.
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, of Rugby, his
politeness, 157; on energy, 191; on
inferior abilities, 350.
Assurance, 180-185, 187.
Astor, John Jacob, 290.
Asylums, often an evil, 89, 90.
Audubon, his destroyed drawings,
225.
Aurelius, Marcus, 274.
Ability  generally finds recognition,
17, 50.
Accuracy, 168, 169.
Adam, Dr. Alexander, teacher, 213.
Adams, John, 46.
Adams, John Quincy, his punctuality,
173; his economy of time, 274.
Addison, his failure as Secretary of
State, 122; his painstaking, 227, 232.
Adrian VI., Pope, 92.
Advantages, 202.
Adversity a blessing, 201- 204.
Eschylus, 61.
Agassiz, naturalist, 200; on money  making, 287.
Ainsworth,Robert, his destroyed MSS.,
224.
Alexander, Dr. J. W., on sermons, 74;
on faith, 53; on bits of knowledge,
277, 278.
Alexandre, glove-maker, 98.
Allen, Andrew Jackson, 106.
Americans,too oftenjacks-at-all-trades,
70; an imitative people, 100, 101;
their impatience, 258; their haste
to be rich, 308; their lack of indi  viduality, 95; their fast living, 334,
335.
Angelo, Michael, 42; his love for his
art, 67; his application, 226, 234;
his proposal to fortify Florence, 248.
Application, 164- 166.
Archimedes, 93, 278.
Argyle, Duke of, his elocution, 148.
Arkwright, Richard, inventor, 92.
Aristotle, his attention to bodiculture,
57.
Arnault on rest, 274.
Ba ch,  Jo hn Seba stian, 40.
Bacon,  Lord, 44; on books,  119; his
moral we  ak ness,  122;       his note  books,  227; contrasted with  Ma cau  lay, 245; on riches, 288.
Balzac, 214.
Barrow, Dr.  Isaac, 58;  his studious  ness,  229; h is m ental grasp, 246.
Bee cher, Hen ry  Ward,   on  mental
power, 54; on manner,  144; h  is In  diana pastorate, 216; his drill in
elocution, 236.
Beecher, Dr. Lyman, 236.
Bembo, Cardinal, 231.
Bentham, Jeremy, on happiness, 114;
on habit, 160.
Beethoven, on Rossini, 89; his igno  rance of finance, 123; his poverty,
123.
Bellamy, Dr., on sermons, 259.
Bentley, Dr. Richard, 68; his Phala  ris controversy, 250-252.
Beranger, 231.
Blair, Dr. Hugh, his advice to Bos  well, 81.
Blucher, Marshal, his decision, 139;
his will, 199; his defeat at Ligny,
248.
I
A.
D. 
INDEX.
Boerhave, 338. 
Boileau, his failure as a lyrist, 68.
Bolingbroke, Lord, 118.
Bonner (of the N. Y. Ledger), 98.
Boswell, James, 81.
Boyle, Hon. Charles, 250.
Braham, vocalist, 77.
Brandreth, Dr., 98.
Briggs, Gov., of Mass., on failures,
. 305.
Brindley, engineer, 118.
Brooks, James, 216-218.
Brooks, Peter C., 311.
Brougham, Lord,  his physical vigor,
61, 62; his universality, 79; on Na  poleon's attention to details, 112;
his perseverance, 196.
Brown, Dr. John, on presence of mind,
135.
Browne, Sir Thomas,  on the world's
rulers, 119.
Brummell, Beau, 21, 22, 44.
Brunelleschi, architect, his attention
to details, 110, 111.
Brydges, Sir Egerton, 244.
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 342.
Buffon, on invention, 31; on genius,
166; on style, 232.
Bulwer, Sir Henry L., on Mackintosh,
138.
Burke, Edmund, his masterpiece, 11;
his early struggles, 86; his labo  riousness,  229; his "Letter to a
Noble Lord," 232.
Burnett, Bishop, 229.
Burns, Robert, his boyhood, 41; his
bodily vigor, 60; his politeness, 157;
on gathering gear, 294.
Burr, Aaron, his manners, 148; his
will, 219.
Burritt, Elihu, 273.
Burton, Robert, 35, 342.
Business, a means of mental training,
163, 164; changes of, 313.
Business habits, 159- 177.
Business men not machines, 163.
Butler, Bishop, 78.
Butler, Cyrus, merchant, 153.
Butler, Samuel, his commonplace-book,
226; his imitators, 102.
Cady, Daniel, his attention to details,
109.
Cesar, Julius, on luck, 25; described
by De  Quincey, 32; his  power of
will, 190;
Calhoun, John C.,  44; his     faith in
himself,  94; his powe r  o f attention,
165.
Callings, all equally honorable, 8.
Campbell, Sir Colin,  his  decis i on,   139.
Campbell,  Lo rd, 211.
Canning, George, his imprudence,  72,
73; as a gentleman, 152.
Camden, Lord, 210.
Cano, Alonzo, sculptor, 233.
Capitalists are public stewards, 288  290.
Carlyle, Thomas, on poverty and toil,
86; his lack of courtesy, 157; on
work, 223; his destroyed MSS., 224.
Carnot, statesman, 44.
Caylus, Count, 36.
Cecil on method, 166.
Chalmers, Dr. Thomas, his politeness,
157.
Chambers, William and Robert, 98.
Chantrey, sculptor, 44.
Charity, 84, 85.
Charlemagne, 119.
Charles V., Emperor, his indecision,
136; on Philip II., 139.
Chatham, Lord, his manner, 148; on
impossibilities, 200; his painstak  ing, 226; his magnetism and will,
245.
Chatterton, Thomas, 43.
Chaucer, 61.
Cheerfulness, 222, 223.
Chesterfield, Lord, on choice of a call ing, 42; his son, 42; on manner,
142, 152, 153; on the Duke of Argyle,
148; his elocution, 149; on genius,
166; his translations, 226.
356
Buxton, Sir Fowell, his advice to be  ginners, 91; on will, 191.
Byron, Lord, his imitators, 105, 106;
his irritability, 194; Iiis first poem,
198; his motive for writing, 342.
C. 
INDEX.
Choate, Rufus, his power of concen   tration, 73, 74; his advice to advo   cates,-74; his legal conflicts, 218;
his waste of strength, 265.
Chitty, barrister, on qualifications for
the bar, 208.
Cicero, on luck, 25; his attention to
physical culture, 56; his versatility,
68, 229.
Circumstances,  as a cause of failure,
20, 32, 93; the power of, 24; often
controllable, 27, 31; the stepping   stones to success, 28, 92, 93.
Civility defined, 156,157; where found,
156, 157; implies self-sacrifice, 158;
how acquired, 158; a fortune of it   self, 142; a real ornament, 150.
Clark, Dr. Adam, 58, 212; on "too
many irons," 79.
Clarkson, Thomas, 41, 92.
Clay, Henry, his practice in oratory,
235.
Clergymen, their need of broad culture,
260; should economize their strength,
264.
Clerks, 326.
Clough, Arthur, 93.
Cobden, Richard, 92, 196.
Coleridge, S. T., his lack of concentra  tion, 79, 80; his indecision, 133; on
method, 166  discovery of the "Ara  bian Nights," 279.
Colfax, Vi e-President, 263.
Coligni, Admiral, his pluck, 32; his
indecision, 136.
Collingwood, Lord, on  whi   ling  awa    y
time, 276.
Colton,  C. C., on ennui, 36.
Commerce,  its present characteristics,
322- 325.
Competition, 4, 17, 18.
Concentration, 65 - 82, 222, 261; econ  omizes streng th, 74; does not imply
isolation, 74, 78; nor exclusive at  tention to one thing, 75.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1')4.
Cooper, Sir Astley, 212.
Copernicus, 92.
Corneille, 68, 122.
Correggio, 48.
Courier, Paul Louis, anecdote by, 182.
Courtesy, 150.
Cowley, on boyish fancies, 279; on
notoriety, 347.
Cowper, William, 342; his shyne s s,
122.
Credit, abuses of, 315-318.
Crichton, the Admirable, 69, 78.
Cromwell, Oliver, 25, 119, 162.
Culture, its effects when excessive,
116-120; new methods of, 242, 243.
Cumberland, Richard, quotation from,
22.
Curran, J. P., his first speech, 249.
Custom, its tyranny, 95.
Ciivier, on genius, 166; his improve  ment of time, 273.
D'Aguesseau, on F1n7 lon, 148.
D'Alembert, on  Euler, 1 93.
Dante,  68, 1      22.
Darwin,  Dr.,  author,  273.
David, painter, 47.
Davy, Sir  Humphry, 44; his intens e
labor, 337.
Dearborn, Gen. A.  H.   S., on failures
in business, 305.
Debt,     increases with riches,  291; its
miseries, 300 - 303.
Decision, 127-140; John Foster on,
127; cannot  be  created,  128; Syld  ney Smith on,  125; necessa ry i   n
battle, 130; a characteristic of Na  poleon, 130; of Wellington, 132;
striking example of, 132, 133; in
crises, 134; needed by lawyers and
physicians, 134, 135; lacked by liter  ary men, 137; lacked by Charles
V. and Coligni, 136; and by Mack  intosh, 137, 138; a characteristic of
Ledyard, Sir C. Campbell, Blucher,
and Sir T. Picton, 139; exemplified
by Tacon, 140.
Degeneracy, modern, 90.
De Maistre, Count Joseph, on battles,
199; his commonplace-books, 199.
Demosthenes, 41; on oratory, 148.
De Quincey, Thomas, 80, 180.
357,
i
D. 
INDEX.
Despatch, 174. 
Dessaix, Marshal, 199.
De Stael, Madame, 43.
Details, attention to, 107 - 114; in
trade, 107; in other callings, 108;
in literature and art, 108, 109; in
war, 110; Napoleon's care for, 111  Wellington's attention to, 113.
Dewey, Dr. Orville, on genius, 229.
Dexter, "Lord Timothy," 22, 33.
Dickens, Charles, his rules of work,
67; his painstaking, 230; on atten  tion, 230.
Difficulty, its uses, 85.
Discouragements of beginners, 17, 23,
25.
Discretion, 16.
Disraeli, Benjamin, 118, 195, 249.
Distraction of pursuit, 79.
"Dr. Easy" and " Dr. Push," 183.
Drew, Samuel, 213.
Drudgery, 329 - 331.
Dryden, saying of, 18; his precocity,
42; on men of genius, 43; his fail  ure in tragedy, 68; quotation from,
335.
likely to decline,  59; her sailors, 59;
not a country for average men, 70.
Englishmen, their fondness for exer  cise, 58.
Enterprise, 99, 322 - 325.
Enthusiasm, 200.
Erskine, Lord, on success at the bar,
22; his first brief, 29; his early life,
198; his extracts from Burke, 227.
Etiquette, on rules of, 157.
Euler, mathematician, 193.
Euripides, 233.
Evarts, William M., 218.
Everett, Edward, his self-dispersion,
78.
Excellence the reward of labor, 237.
Exercise, 343.
Extempore performances, 230, 254.
Extravagance of living, 314.
Faber, manufacturer, 98.
Failure, its miseries, 8; excuses for,
20; of merchants, 37, 38, 301-328;
in the professions, 39; as a test of
ability, 45, 46; its compensations,
86; its causes, 348.
Faraday, Professor, his gentleness, 150.
Fearne, law-writer, 72.
Fenelon, Bishop, his manner, 148; his
courtesy, 154.
Ferguson, astronomer,.44.
Ferrara, Andrea, 120.
Fichte, metaphysician, 246; on reso  lutions, 128.
Fielding, Joseph, 161.
Foote, Lundy, 152.
Fortune, 23, 30, 133.
Foster, John, on decision, 127, 136;
his painstaking, 232.
Fowler, brewer, 321.
Fox, Charles James, his gallantry, 77;
maxim Qf, 133; his manners, 147;
his painstaking, 169; his practice in
spe aking, 234.
Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, 26, 161; his
improvement of time, 273.
Franklin, Sir John, 154.
Easy writing, 255, 256.
Economy, of strength, 261 - 266;  of
time, 268 - 279; of money, 295 - 298;
as a habit, 297; the secret of England's
greatness, 299; of nature, 299, 300.
Edinburgh Review, on success at the
bar, 22.
Eldon, Lord, 86; his early struggles,
209; his advice to a young man,
210; his study of Coke, 227.
Ellenborough, Lord, his early strug  gles, 211.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, on concentra  tion, 66, 69, 70; on the "silent Gre  cians " of England, 117; not an
imitator, 104; on literary imitation,
106; on tact, 121; on manner, 146;
on preparatory training, 236; on
success, 200; on special talents, 307.
England, and the Russian War, 32;
secret of her supremacy, 59; not
358
I
F.
E. 
INDEX.
Frederic the Great, his ignorance, 119;
on Joseph II., 121.
Fuller, Dr. Andrew, 58.
Fuller, Dr. Thomas, on method, 166;
on the combats of Shakespeare and
Ben Jonson, 176.
Fuseli, 88..
-Gregory VII., Pope, 92.
Grote, George, 274.
Growth necessary to professional suc  cess, 260.
Grundy, Felix, saying of, 325.
Guthrie, Dr., on Scotch and French
Gmanners, 151.
Gymnastics, 347.
G.
Galiani, Abbe, 195.
Galton on eminent men, 28, 29.
Garrison, William Lloyd, his will, 192.
Genius defined, 9, 10, 166, 205, 226,
229; does not dispense with labor,
205, 228, 229;  old idea of, 229;
works intensely, 255.
Genteel life, 300.
Gentleness, its power, 156.
George, Dr., on Frederic the Great,
75.
George IV., 30.
Getting on, 12, 13, 18.
Ghosts, 203.
Gibbon, Edward, 78, 229, 232.
Girard, Stephen, 292, 293.
Gladstone, Sir William, his versatility,
72.
Goethe, on saying of Archimedes, 93;
on authorship, 106; on human aims,
139; on use of opportunities, 275;
on Schiller, 341; on his own happi  ness, 349; on man's mission, 350.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 123.
Good, Dr. Mason, 273.
Government and individual action, 88.
Grant, Ulysses, 11.
Gray, Thomas, 182.
Gray, William, merchant, 350.
Great men, not made by great occa  sions, 11; Dr. Hunter on, 11; of
low origin, 87, 92; pygmies in body,
194, 195.
Great works, why written, 11.
Greatness, not attainable by all, 8 - 12;
the test of, 9; acquired unconscious  ly, 11; its superiority to circum  stances, 93.
Greeley, Horace, 216; on helps, 94;
on money-getting, 311.
Habit, its power, 159-162.
Hale, Matthew, his laboriousness, 229,
273.
Halifax, Earl of, 223.
Hall, Robert, saying of, 186; his econ   omy of strength, 262; his first ser  mon, 249.
Hamilton, Sir William, 213; on men  tal differences of men, 165; on genius,
166; hi s intense application,  338.
Hamilton, " Single Speech," 244.
Hannm on d, Dr., 43.
Handel, 40, 207.
Hannibal, his p o we r of will, 190.
Happines    s, 5-  7, 162.
Hardships, 85, 89.
Harvard and Oxford boat-race, 238.
Havelock, 110, 208.
Hawthorne, on shyness, 142; his shy  ness, 151; his painstaking, 233.
Hayne, Robert Y., his debate with
Webster, 252.
Hazlitt, William, on actors, 10; on
men of genius, 10; on choice of call  ing, 37; on variety of pursuits, 67,
68; on Kean's acting, 103; on busi  ness, 162; on manner, 144; on self  assurance, 181; on Pope's crooked,
ness, 195; his laboriousness, 232.
Health, a part of talent, 55; neces.
sary to authors, 58; often lacked by
great men, 60; essential in the pro  fessions, 61, 62.
Helps, Arthur, on accuracy, 169.
Helps, a disadvantage, 89.
Henry, Professor, 67.
Herbert, George, on money-getting,
286.
.359
H. 
INDEX.
Heyne, classicist, 229.
Hobbes, Thomas, metaphysician, 68.
Holmes, Oliver W., on pluck, 237.
Hogarth, 48.
Homer, 11.
Hooker, Dr. Richard, 229; his "Ec  clesiastical Polity," 11.
Hope, 6.
Horner, Sir Francis, 15, 16.
Hudson, railway king, 290.
Hume, David, his scepticism, 40; on
cheerfulness, 162; his industry, 227.
Humility, 184, 186.
Hunter, Dr. John, on great men, 11.
Huntington, Bishop, on manners, 158.
Kames, Lord, on habit, 161.
Kane, Dr. Elisha Kent, 219; on sys  tem, 168.
Kant, metaphysician, 78.
Kean, Edmund, 10, 103; on acting,
201.
Keats, on failure, 7, 198.
Kenyon, Lord, 210.
Kepler, 92.
Kingsley, Canon, on Sir Sidney Smith,
154.
Knowledge, always useful, 77; its odds
and ends valuable, 278.
Knox, John, 58.
"If," its significance, 9, 10.
Imitation, in business, 100; in litera  ture, 101, 106, 107.
Incompatibility of pursuits, 80.
Indecision, 136.
Independence of thought, 84.
Individuality, 81; American lack of,
95, 96.
Industry, 13.
Ingram, Mr., publisher of " Illustrated
News," 153.
Invalids, famous, 60.
Invention, 31.
Irving, Washington, on modest merit,
186.
Ismail, Muley, 36.
Labor necessary to happiness, 34.
Lafitte, banker, 321.
La Harpe, 135.
Lamb, Charles,    on leisure, 35, 340; on
hi s poverty, 290.
Laplace,  his  lack   of practicality,
119.
Latimner, 58.
Law, George, 41.
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 43.
Le Brun, 42.
Ledyard, traveller, his decision, 139.
Legislation a cause of bankruptcies,
325.
Leisure, needed by professional men,
259; sometimes a curse, 27, 35, 36,
266.
Leslie, Charles Robert, on instruction
in painting, 88.
Lessinig, on truth, 6; on a poetaster,
37.
Lewes, George H., on circumstances,
93.
Leyden, John, 44, 337.
Liberality in business, 319 - 322.
Life, 3, 4, 26, 239.
Jacks-at-all-trades, 70, 82.
Jerrold, Douglas, 76; his will, 220;
on ugly trades, 237; on debt, 303.
Jesting, 145.
Jesuits, their method of education, 44.
Jewell, Bishop, 229.
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  on  the elder
Sheridan, 19; on incivility, 145; his
gruffness, 156; on writing, 173; on
Samuel Butler, 226, 227; satirized
by Peter Pindar, 265; anecdote of,
279;  on opulence, 288;  on debt,
301; his dread of insanity, 343.
360
Jonquil, pai-nter, 47.
Jonson, Ben, 176.
Joseph II., of Austria, 121.
K.
i
I
I
I.
L.
J. 
INDEX.
Limp people, 91.
Liston, actor, 47.
Livingston,  Edward,  his destroyed
MSS., 224.
Lobsters, human, 84.
Locke, John, his economy of  time,
273.
Lorillard, Jacob, 312.
Lorraine, Claude, 44.
Louis XIV., 241.
Lubbock, Sir John, 274.
Lucian, fable of, 81.
Luck, good and bad, 19- 33, 306; an
abused word,  20; Rothschild on,
23; credited only with men's vices
and disasters, 24; celebrated believ  ers in, 25; Cicero on, 25; Caesar on,
25; extraordinary instances of, 25,
26; fame dependent on, 26; Riche  lieu on, 31.
Luther, 58.
Lytton, Sir E. Bulwer, on education,
47; his failures, 195; on money,
284, 298; on poverty and neediness,
298; on the power to do good, 14.
Marlboroughe, 2Duke  o f,  25; his  man  ner      s, 146, 147.
Marmontel, on the Abbe  Galiani, 195.
Marshall,  Chief Justice,  78.
Masvres, Baron, 76.
Massena, Marshal, 248.
Matsys, QuiJo tin, 189.
Meanness in bus iness dea  lings,  319,
320.
Medical practition ers,  21 2.
Mediocreal i t e,  abilities, a  reason  for effort,
13; often   highly successful,  14, 17,
92.
Meditation,  258.
Men  of genius hard workers,  228.
Mendelssohn, his precocity,     45; on
mu      s ica   l compos itio n, 225.
Ment a l stim ulants, 53.
Mer c antile failures, their causes,  etc.,
304-328.
Merchants,  the  qualifications  they
need,  324, 325.
Metastasio on habit, 160.
Method, 166 - 168.
Mill, John S., on eccentricity, 96; his
versatility, 72.
Miller, Hugh, 273.
Miller, Joe, anecdote from, 24.
Milton, John, as a humorist, 68; on
his studies, 229.
Mirabeau, 200; his charm of manner,
147.
Moliere, 231.
Moltke, 208.
Money, its use and abuse, 280-303;
useless unless earned, 87; its attrac  tions, 281; the spur to industry,
283, 284; a means of power and in  fluence, 284, 285; why desirable,
285; its value in the nineteenth cen  tury, 286; miseries caused by lack
of, 286.
Money-getting, a legitimate pursuit,
280; a means of discipline, 284;
sometimes a duty, 287; when un  healthy,  293; the art of, 294; its
advantages as a pursuit, 295.
Monmouth, Duke of, 120.
Montagu, Mary Wortley, on "getting
on," 18; on differences in men, 106.
Macaulay, Lord, on the Duke of Mon  mouth, 120; contrasted with Bacon,
245.
Macclesfield, Lord, 149.
Macdonouglh, Commodore John, 74.
Machiavelli, 122.
Mackintosh,  Sir James, his indecision,
137, 138.
Mahon, Lord, on  S ir Rob    ert Walp ole,
118.
Mammon-worship, 327, 328.
Mann, Horace, on health, 63.
Manner, 141 - 158; a test of character,
143; in preaching, 144; in oratory,
144, 149; of military men, 154;
should be a part of education, 155.
Manners, Scotch and French con  trasted, 151.
Mansfield, Lord, 211; his delivery,
148; hls translations, 226.
Marengo, battle of, 199.
16
361
It
I
i
M. 
INDEX.
Moore, Sir John, 27.
Moore, Thomas, his person, 195; his
painstaking, 232.
More, Sir Thomas, 229.
Morton, Marcus, 192.
Mott, Dr. Valentine, his advice to his
students, 152.
Murillo, painter, 42.
Murray, Dr. Alexander, 337.
Overtrading, 309, 310.
Overwork  and under-rest,  262, 329_
345; excuses for, 338-341; its ef  fects on the brain, 344; its remedies,
343.
Paley, Dr. Wiliam, 229; on habit,
160.
Parsons, Chief Justice, 254.
Partnerships in business, 319.
Pascal, 43, 229; on disease, 53.
Patience, 221; examples of, 224, 225.
Patient labor, 206 - 208.
Patton, Dr. W. W., on reserved pow  er, 257.
Paul, the Apostle, his courtesy, 156.
Peel, Sir Robert, 118, 235.
Pelissier, his coolness, 134.
Penn, Sir William, on industry, 13.
Perseverance, 195.
Pestalozzi, on self-help, 94.
Peterborough, Lord, on F6nelon, 154.
Peter Pindar, on  Dr. Johnson,  265.
Petrarch, 231.
Phalaris controversy, 250 - 252.
Phillips, Wendell, on the game of life,
28.
Physical culture, 52-64; its neglect,
52; among the Greeks and Romanls,
56; Cicero's attention to, 56; Eng  lish attention to, 59; Horace Mann
on, 63.
Physical defects, their compensations,
193, 194.
Picton, Sir Thomas, his decision, 139.
Pitt, William, on Canning, 73;  his
concentration, 73; his painstaking,
226; his division of work, 261.
Pliny, 200.
Poe, Edgar A., 104.
Poets, their physical vigor, 60, 61.
Politeness, 144, 145.
Pope, Alexander, 43; on Wharton, 81,
82; his pygmy size, 195; his indus  try, 273; an early sexagenarian, 331.
Poverty, its temptations and dangers,
281, 282; Dr. Johnson on, 286; rela  tive, 298.
Napier, Sir Charles, on debt, 301.
Napoleon I., 43; on destiny, 33; his
youthful amusements, 40; on health,
57; on war, 75; his attention to
details, 111-113; his campaign of
1805, 113, 114; his decision in the
field, 130; his strategy at the Lake
of Garda, 130, 132;  his delay at
Ligny, 132; his love of system, 167;
his punctuality, 171; his force of
will, 190; his nickname, 194; his
reserved power, 247; his opinion of
Massena, 248; his Imperial Guard,
239; his defeat at Waterloo, 239.
Neander, theologian, 75.
Nelson, Lord, 25, 32, 43; his boyish
amusements, 40; on punctuality,
171; his small stature, 194.
Nervous men, their need of rest, 264.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 78; his destroyed
MSS., 224; his great discovery, 278;
his application, 337.
Nicolly, Alexander, 337.
North cote, James, on French and Ital  ian paintings, 248.
Obstacles, 219.
One-ideaism, 75 - 77.
Originality in aims anal methods, 77  106; necessary  in business, 99 -101;
and in literattire, 101 - 106; defined,
103.
Opie, painter, 279; his self-dissatis  faction, 234.
Oratory, 234, 235.
362
P.
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INDEX.
Practical talent, 115 - 126.
Praed, Winthrop Macworth, on a vic  ar's talk, 79.
Preachers, hints to, 257.
Presence of mind, 135.
Professions and callings, choice of, 34  51, 307; Hazlitt on, 37; predilec  tions for, 39, 40, 47, 48; determined
by trifles or early impressions, 40;
aptitudes for, 42; not to be hastily
changed, 48, 49, 313, 314; humble
ones to be ennobled, 50.
Professional culture, 256.
Profits of trade, 312.
Property a hindrance to beginners, 86,
87.
Proverbs, 135, 136.
Punctuality, 169 - 174.
Sailors, English and French, 59.
Sainte-Beuve, on the  "first talent,"
42.
Salvator Rosa, 68.
Sand, George, on Anglo- Saxon shyness,
151.
Satirists, 150.
Saturday Review,  on  limp  people,
91.
Savanarola, 196.
Savings, 296, 297, 299.
Schiller on the duties of life, 351.
Scipio Africanus, 68.
Scott, Sir Walter, his early reading,
41; his imitators, 104; on punc  tuality, 170; his lameness, 194; his
speed in composition, 233; his ex  cessive labors, 338, 342, 343.
Second books, 243.
Self-advertising,  178  - 187.
Self-help,  88, 89.
Self-inistruction, 88.
Self-reliance, 83 - 96.
Sermons, 257.
Shakespeare, 11, 176; on adversity,
203; his reserved power, 246.
Shelley, saying of, 9.
Sheridan, General Philip, 249.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 145; his
first speech, 198; story from one of
his comedies, 182; his "impromp  tus," 230.
Sherman, William T., his " Great
March," 113, 114.
Shyness, Anglo-Saxon, 151.
Sixtus V., Pope, 92.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 158, 338.
Sleep, 266.
Smeaton, James, 43, 278.
Smith, Adam, 78, 123.
Smiths Rev. Sydney, on life, 26; on
choice of a calling, 39; his advice to
Rachel, actress. 44.
Racine, 70.
Rahl, Count, 172.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 30; his courtesy
to Queen Elizabeth, 149.
Raymond, Henry, journalist, 338.
Readiness, 174, 254.
Reserved power, 238 - 267; why need  ed, 241; its advantages, 248.
Rest, its necessity, 344.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on industry, 13;
on concentration, 67; on facility in
painting, 248; on Rubens, 248.
Richelieu, Cardinal, on luck, 31.
Richter, Jean Paul, on the, Germans,
76; his note-books, 227; on poverty,
237.
Robespierre, 196.
Rochefoucault, 232.
Romilly, Sir Samuel, 208.
Rothschild, Nathan Myers, 291, 292;
his advice to a brewer, 82.
Ross, Captain, navigator, 161.
Rousseau, 231.
I
363
Rubens, 248.
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, his economy of
time, 273.
Rus on genius, 12.
t
S.
Q.
Qtiixote, Don, 69.
R. 
INDEX.
Talents needed more than places, 17.
Talfourd, Thomas Noon, on stupidity,
193.
Talleyrand, 194,      212.
Talma, 198.
Taylor, Henry, on money, 283.
Taylor,  Jer emy, 229.
Temple, Dr. Frederic, on genius, 205.
Temple, Sir William, 250.
The will and the way, 188 - 238.
The world, an orchestra, 1, 2; a mar  ket, 80.
Thomas, General George W., his atten  tion to details, 114.
Thomas, Judge B. F., on Webster's
reply to Hayne, 252.
Thoreau, his first book, 294.
Thorwalsden, sculptor, his "Mer  cury," 103.
Thurlow, Lord, 210; on success at the
bar, 86; denies a commissionership
to John Scott (Lord Eldon), 86.
Time, economy of, 268 - 279.
Torstenson, General, 219.
Tournefort, naturalist, 43, 278.
Townsend, Lord, his nickname, 50.
Trifles, 145, 146.
Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 180.
Turner, painter, his conscientiousness,
I 110; on hard work, 234.
public speakers, 54; on universality,
69; on Lord John Russell, 81; on
decision, 129;  his courtesy,  154;
his cheerfulness, 223; on the price
of excellence, 229.
Social intercourse an element of suc  cess, 75.
Society, doctored too much, 89; tyr  anny of, 95.
Somers, Lord, 43, 177.
Southey, his commonplacing, 227.
Specialties, 97.
Speculation, 310, 311.
St. Bernard, 75.
Steadman, General, on General G. W.
Thomas, 114.
Steele, Sir Richard, on debt, 302.
Stephenson, George, 118, 119; his im  provement of time, 273.
Stevens, editor of Shakespeare, 279.
Stewart, Alexander, 98.
"Stickers," 323.
Strakosch, pianist, 206.
Stupidity, its compensations, 193.
Success, 4; a test of merit, 4, 5; its
pleasures, 7; its degrees, 8; a step  by-step progress, 12; how attainable,
13, 15; attainable by mediocre abil  ity, 14; won by the meritorious, 17;
at the bar, 22; demands concentra  tion, 65, 70; demands health, 55, 63,
64; promoted by social intercourse,
75; qualities it demands, 120; when
too dear, 77, 347; true and false, 346
- 351; not an end, 346; when unsuc  cessful, 346.
Sulla, 32.
Suwarrow, his will, 190.
Swift, Dean, 122, 250, 332.
Univ    ersal  scholar      s, 65.
Unlucky persons, 19; their excuses,
20.
Utility the standard of actions, 14.
V.
T.
Varro, Terentius, 199
Vernet, Horace, 200.
Vestris, dancing-master, 75.
Vinci, Leonardo  da, his  versatility,
68.
Violinist, first and second contrast  ed, 1.
Voltaire, 40; on La Harpe, 135.
Tacon, chief of police, his  decision,
140.
Tact, 121.
Taglioni, her lablors, 206.
Taine, M., on the development of tal  ents, 24.
Talent and tact, 121.
364
f
U. 
INDEX.
Whipple, John, on Daniel Webster's
habits of labor, 266.
White, Henry Kirke, 273.
Whitefield, George,166.
Wilberforce, Sir  William,  148.
W illkeshl, John, his manners, 147.
Wilkie,  David, 44.
Willf, power of, 12, 188, 189, 219.
William III. o f En gland, 119.
Willnott, Rev. R     obert A., on single  ness of purpose, 68, 69.
Wilson, Henry, Senator, his early
trials, 215.
Winaans, manufacturer, 153, 154.
Wirt, William, on Chief Justice Mar  shall, 78; on bits of knowledge, 275.
Wisdom, 118.
Witherspoon, Dr., on courtesy, 156.
Wolfe, James, his capture of Quebec,
220.
Wordsworth, William, 192.
Work not an intrinsic good, 329, 330,
331.
Workingmen, their lack of thrift, 295,
296.
Wotton, William, 250.
Walpole, Sir Robert, 118.
Walton, Isaak, on riches, 290.
Ward, Artelmus, on oratory, 175.
Washington,  George,  his politeness,
157; his punctuality, 172; his will,
199; his economy, 299.
Waterloo, battle of, 191, 239, 241.
Watt, James, 278.
Wayland, Francis, his early struggles,
197.
Wealth, how acquired, 271; does not
always confer happiness, 288, 290.
Weber, 338.
Webster, Daniel, his failure in decla  mnation, 196; his reply to Hayne,
252; his habits of labor, 265; his
use of an anecdote, 276.
Webster, Noah, 166.
Weed, Thurlow, his early trials, 215,
217.
Wellington, Duke of, 11, 33; at Water  loo, 132; his attention to details,
113  his avoidance of quarrels, 154,
155; his will, 191; his dissatisfac  tion with the army, 208; his econo  my, 299.
Wells, Walter, on economy of physical
force, 261.
Wesley, John, on whiling away time,
276.
West, Benjamin, 40.
Whewell, Professor, on great inven  tions, 31.
Whiling away time, 276- 279.
Yankees,  their will,  192.
Yates, Senator, on G-rant's genius, 11,
12.
THE END.
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
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