Читать книгу The Young Man and the World - Albert J. Beveridge - Страница 6

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Be honest with the world and the world will be honest with you. This is the fundamental truth of all real prosperity and happiness. For the purposes of every man's daily affairs, all other maxims are to this central verity as the branches of a tree to its rooted trunk.

The world will be honest with you whether you are honest with it or not. You cannot trick it—remember that. If you try it, the world will punish you when it discovers your fraud. But be honest with the world from nobler motives than prudence.

Prudence will not make you be honest—it will only make you act honest. And you must be honest.

I do not mean that lowest form of honesty which bids you keep your hands clean of another's goods or money; I do not mean that you shall not be a "grafter," to use the foul and sinister word which certain base practices have recently compelled us to coin. Of course you will be honest in a money sense.

But that is only the beginning; you must go farther in your dealings with the world. You must be intellectually honest. Do not pretend to be what you are not—no affectations, no simulations, no falsehoods either of speech or thought, of conduct or attitude. Let truth abide in the very heart of you.

"I take no stock in that man; he poses his face, he attitudinizes his features. The man who tries to impress me by his countenance is constitutionally false," said the editor of a powerful publication, in commenting on a certain personage then somewhat in the public eye.

You see how important honesty is even in facial expression. I emphasize this veracity of character because it is elemental. You may have all the gifts and graces but if you have not this essential you are bankrupt. Be honest to the bone. Be clean of blood as well as of tongue.

Never try to create a deeper impression than Nature creates for you, and that means never attempt to create any impression at all. For example, never try to look wise. Many a front of gravity and weight conceals an intellectual desolation. In Moscow you will find the exact external counterpart of Tolstoi. It is said that it is difficult to distinguish the philosopher from his double. Yet this duplicate in appearance of the greatest of living writers is a cab driver without even the brightness of the jehu.

Be what you are, therefore, and no more; yes, and no less—which is equally important. In a word, start right. Be honest with yourself, too. If you have started wrong, go back and start over again. But don't change more than once. Some men never finish because they are always beginning. Be careful how you choose and then stick to your second choice. A poor claim steadily worked may be better than a good one half developed. The man who makes too many starts seldom makes anything else.

But don't pretend that you have a thousand dollars in bank when you hold in your hands the statement of your overdraft. Face your account with Nature like a man. For Nature is a generous, though remorseless, financier, delivering you your just due and exacting the uttermost of your debt. Also Nature renders you a daily accounting.

And, at the very beginning, Nature writes upon the tablet of your inner consciousness an inventory of your strengths and of your weaknesses, and lists there those tasks which you are best fitted to perform—those tasks which Nature meant you to perform. For Nature put you here to do something; you were not born to be an ornament.

First, then, learn your limitations. Take time enough to think out just what you cannot do. This process of elimination will soon reduce life's possibilities for you to a few things. Of these things select the one which is nearest you, and, having selected it, put all other loves from you.

It is a business maxim in my profession that "law is a jealous mistress." It is very true, but it is not more true than it is that every other calling in life is a jealous mistress. To every man his task is the hardest, his situation the most difficult.

By finding out one's limitations is not meant, of course, what society will permit you to do, or what men will permit you to do, but what Nature will permit you to do. You have no other master than Nature. Nature's limitations only are the bounds of your success. So far as your success is concerned, no man, no set of men, no society, not even all the world of humanity, is your master; but Nature is. "We cannot," says Emerson, "bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons."

"Poeta nascitur, non fit," is just as applicable to lawyers and mechanics and engineers as to poets. More failures have been caused by the old idea that a man may make himself what he will, than by any single half-truth that has crept into our common speech and belief. A man may make himself what he will within the limitations Nature has set about him.

"When I was born,

From all the seas of strength

Fate filled a chalice,

Saying, This be thy portion, child,"

declares the Persian sage. But all that Hafiz means by that is that a Paderewski shall not attempt blacksmithing, or a Rothschild try cartooning or sculpture or watchmaking, or any man undertake that for which Nature has not fitted him.

Do we not see instances every day of men made unhappy for life, and their powers lost to the world by trying to do that for which they have no aptitude? Parents obeying the attractive theory that any boy can make himself what he pleases decide upon some ambitious career for him without considering his natural abilities and efficiencies. Usually some calling of clamorous conspicuity is selected.

Twenty years ago the law was the favorite avenue upon which fond parents would thus set the feet of their offspring; the law, they thought, would enable him better to "make his mark"—that is, to parade up and down before the public eye and fill the public ear with declamation. Even yet that profession has clientless members, miserable in their hearts over their self-consciousness that they are not lawyers and never can be lawyers, who would have been useful, prosperous, and happy if they could have been permitted to be architects or merchants or farmers or doctors or soldiers or sculptors or editors or what not.

One of the cleverest of our present-day writers of fiction started out to be a lawyer. But he could not keep his pen from paper nor restrain that mysterious instrument from tracing sketches of character and drawing pictures of human situations. Very well! He had the courage to obey the call of his preferences; and to-day, instead of being an unskillful attorney, he is noted and notable in the present-hour world of letters.

Anthony Hope in England is another illustration precisely in point. On the other hand, Erskine, who was intended by his parents for the army, was destined by Nature for the bar. This master-advocate of all the history of English jurisprudence felt it in his blood that he must practise law; and so his sword rusted while he studied Blackstone. Finally, he deserted the field for the forum, there to become the most illustrious barrister the United Kingdom has produced.

I therefore emphasize the importance of finding out what you can do best rather than what either you or your parents wish you could do best. For it seems to me that this is getting very close to the truth of life. The thoughtless commonplace that "every boy may be President" has worked mischief, sown unhappiness, and robbed humanity of useful workers.

Every boy cannot be President, and, what is more, every boy ought not to be. Let Edison remain in his laboratory and enrich mankind with his wizard wisdom. England would have lost her great explorer if Drake had tried to write plays; while Shakespeare would doubtless have been sea-sick on the decks of the Golden Hind. Let Verdi compose, and charm the universal heart with his witcheries of sound; let Cavour keep to his statesmanship, that a dismembered people may again be made one. Every man to his calling. "Let the shoemaker stick to his last," said Appelles.

Ito might have led the Japanese armies to defeat—Oyama led them to victory. But Ito created modern Japan, wrote its constitution and introduced those methods which made Oyama's successes possible. Each man succeeded because he chose to do what Nature fitted him to do.

Of course you may be fitted for more than one thing. Cæsar could have equaled if not surpassed Cicero in mere oratory had he not preferred to find, in war and government, a fame more enduring. But, if you try all things for which you may be equipped by Nature, you will so scatter your energies through the delta of your aptitudes that your very wealth and variety of gifts neutralizes them all. No. Pick out one of the things you can do well and let the others go. A tree is pruned on the same principle. Stick to one thing. Beware of your versatilities.

Your life's work chosen give wing to your imagination. Behold yourself preeminent in your field of effort. Dream of yourself as the best civil engineer of your time, or the soundest banker or ablest merchant. If you are a farmer fancy yourself the master of all the secrets science is daily discovering in this most engaging of occupations; picture yourself as the man who has accomplished most in the realm of agriculture.

Set for yourself the ideal of perfection in your calling—being sure that it is Nature's calling. Then let your dreams become beliefs; let your imaginings develop into faith. Complete the process by resolving to make that belief come true. Then go ahead and make it come true. Keep your resolution bright. Never let it rust. Burnish it with work—untiring, unhasting, unyielding work.

Work—that is the magic word. In these four letters all possibilities are wrapped up. "Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." Or let us paraphrase the sacred page and say—Work and you will win. Work to your ideal. If you never reach it—and who can achieve perfection?—you surely will approach it.

Do not be impatient of your progress. If, to your own measurement, you seem to be moving slowly, remember that, to the observation of your fellow men, you are making substantial and satisfactory advance and, to the eye of your rivals, you are proceeding with unreasonable speed.

Don't pay any attention to how fast you are getting on but go ahead and get on. Keep working. And work with all your might. How wise the Bible is: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." And keep on doing it—persist—persist—persist. Again the Bible: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings." Do not fear hard knocks. They are no sign that you will not finally win the battle. Indeed, ability to endure in silence is one of the best evidences that you will finally prevail.

Yes, put yourself into your work—and put all of yourself into your work. Having done that, be content with your effort—do not fret. If all you do yields the fruit you hope for, do not fret while that fruit is ripening. On the other hand, if your labor comes to nothing, still do not fret. A like fate has fallen upon uncounted millions before you and will come to unnumbered myriads after you. If you have done your best you have done better than the man who has done more than you but who has not done his best.

And so, whatever the outcome, start out with this rule and keep it to the end. For nothing wastes your powers so much as apprehension. The hardest work, if done with common sense, is after all a tonic. But fear lest that work will not yield you as much as you wish is a sort of irritating cocaine of character, numbing and deadening all of your powers and at the same time lashing your mind and nerves with the knotted thongs of unhappiness. Besides, fretting is so trivial, so little, so commonplace. Fail if you must, but do not be contemptible.

He who worries not only poisons the very fountains of his own strength but arouses in the world's attitude toward him a sort of sneering pity. So the very first thing that I have to suggest to you is that you should be a man in all your doings and throughout your whole career.

That is it—be a man; a great, strong, willing, kindly man—calm in the glory of a fearless heart, serene in your trust and belief in God, the Father of the world, and so sure of the justice of His providence that you go about your daily business free from those silly cares which corrode and ruin manhood itself.

Be a man—that is the first and the last rule of the greatest success in life. For the greatest success in life does not mean dollars heaped in bank-vaults nor volumes written, nor railroads built, nor laws devised, nor armies led. No, the greatest success is none of these. The supreme success is character.

Pay no attention to mere spiteful criticism, but seek, as for gold and precious stones, the chastening advice of friends. Do not be offended if your friends say an unpleasant thing of you. And here we are at the Bible again: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful."

These recurrences to what those wise old Hebrews said make one feel that one is committing a superfluity when one attempts to say anything along the line of practical advice, since anything that any man can say is nothing more than a very weak dilution of the concentrated thought of the most acute minds of the greatest business people, the most successful material people—yes, and the most idealistic people—who ever lived, the ancient, the mysterious, the persistent Jews.

This is saying much for the Hebrew blood and genius; but have not these Jews given us our moral laws, our spiritual ideals, our sacred faith? Not only the bankers of the world are they, but the formulators of the rules of conduct between man and man, and of that adoring attitude which the enlightened mind should always maintain toward the All-Father. The Jews are the universal people.

If you like ethnology, study the Jews. Study the Germans, too. What peoples they both are—utterly unlike, yet full of the inspiration of thoughts and deeds and persistence. Persistence—there is a word of might it will pay you to ponder over.

Persistence—"stick-to-it-ive-ness." It is a quality better than genius. The Germans have that quality preeminently, and other wholesome and masterful characteristics as well. They are domestic yet warlike, industrial yet artistic, experts in commerce yet disciples of science. Study the Germans!

Though you must not fear criticism, do not disregard it. You may find a suggestion in it, and thus your enemy will become your counselor. But applause! Fly from the desire for it as from pestilence. It will weaken you infinitely. And to a strong man achievement is the only applause of value—the making of his point.

Many years ago I heard this story of Bismarck. If it is not true, it ought to be. And if it is not true specifically, it is true abstractly. He had just returned from one of his notable diplomatic victories at the beginning of his career; great crowds had assembled for a speech.

Bismarck heard it all, but smoked and drank his beer and gave no sign. His secretary rushed in with excitement, and said:

"You must go out and acknowledge the applause of the people, and make a speech."

"And why," said Bismarck; "why do they want me to speak; why are they applauding me?"

"Because of your great success in these negotiations," said the secretary.

"Humph!" said Bismarck, "suppose I had failed?" and turned back to his smoking and his beer.

Bismarck, you see, was too great for applause.

I have quoted the Bible so frequently that it suggests remarks upon one of the great influences of life—the influence of books. Like every other power, this should be exercised with judgment. Let us indulge no immoderate expectations of the results of mere reading. Reading is, at best, only second-hand information and inspiration. It is not the number of books a man has read that makes him available in the world of business.

What the world wants is power; how to get that is the question.

Books are one source of power; but, necessarily, books are artificial. That is why we cannot dispense with teachers in our schools, professors in our colleges, preachers in our pulpits, orators on the political platform. There is no real way of teaching but by word of mouth. There is no real instruction but experience.

You see that the German universities have come back to the lecture method exclusively—or did they ever depart from it? And they know what they are about, those profound old German scholars. They have created scientific scholarship. They have made what we once thought history absurd, and have rewritten the story of the world.

But all this is obiter dicta. The point is that they know the value of books as a source of power and learning, and they know their limitations, too. So does the public. Public speaking will never decline. It is Nature's method of instruction. You will listen with profit to a speech which you cannot drive your mind to read.

It would seem, therefore, that the largest wisdom dictates conservatism in mere reading. Read, of course, and deeply, widely, thoroughly. But let Discrimination select your books. Choose these intellectual companions as carefully as you pick your personal comrades. Read only "tonic books," as Goethe calls them. Yes, read, and abundantly—but don't stop there. Don't imagine that books, of themselves, will make you wise. Reading, alone, will not render you effective.

Mingle with the people—I mean the common people. Talk with them. Do not talk to them but talk with them, and get them to talk with you. Who that has had the experience would exchange the wit and wisdom of the "hands" at the "threshings," during the half hour of rest after eating, for the studied smartness of the salon or even the conversation of the learned? But think not to get this by going out to them and saying, "Talk up now." The farm-hand, the railroad laborer, the working man of every kind, does not wear his heart on his sleeve.

Mark the idioms in Shakespeare. He spoke the words and uttered the thoughts of hostlers as well as of kings. Observe the common language in the Bible. It is curious to note the number of the pithy expressions daily appearing among us which are repetitions of what the people were saying in the time of Isaiah.

All who love Robert Burns have their affection for him rooted in the human quality of him; and Burns's oneness with the rest of us is revealed by the earthiness of his words. They smell of home. They have the fragrance of trees and soil. We know that they were not coined by Burns the genius, but repeated from the mouths of plain men and women by Burns the reporter. It is so with all literature that lives.

Mingle with the people, therefore; be one of them. Who are you that you should not be one of them? Who is any one that he should not be one of the people? Their common thought is necessarily higher and better than the thought of any man. This is mathematical.

And the people, too, are young, eternally young. They are the source of all power, not politically speaking now, but ethnically, even commercially, speaking. The successful manager of any business will tell you that he takes as careful an inventory of public opinion as he does of the material items of his merchandise. A capable merchant told me that he makes it a point to mingle with the crowds.

"Not," said he, "to hear what they have to say, for you catch only a scrap or a sentence here and there; but to go up against them. Somehow or other you get their drift that way. Anyhow I am conscious that this helps me to understand what the people need and want. There is such a thing as commercial instinct; and contact with the people keeps this fresh and true."

We have come to that state of enlightenment where the people want to know not only that they are getting the best goods or best service, but that the business which supplies either is run all right. Who can doubt that in the universal mind there is a question as to the moral element in American business?

This is nothing but the composite conscience of the American people demanding that American business shall not only be conducted ably, but also that it shall be conducted honestly. It is a force which you must take into account. It will be a glorious asset for you if you will pay enough attention to it to understand it.

But you must mingle with the people yourself in order to comprehend this source of power. Do not sit alone in your room and read about the people; that is no way to learn about them.

Remember that no workable constitution was ever written exclusively by scholars. Recall the ordinance for the government of Carolina devised by the philosopher Locke. It failed; yet it reads well. Time and again theorists with highest purpose and broadest book wisdom have formulated laws for the good of mankind which would not work.

Most statutes that live and operate have had their origins among men of the soil as well as men of the study. The point I am making is that learning and accomplishments will do no good if you do not connect them with the people.

Is not this why so many reformers retire disappointed—men and women of finest excellencies of purpose and practical and fruitful thought—they have insisted in projecting their reforms from office or parlor upon the masses without knowing those masses? It is as impossible for the wisest man to be a statesman by confining himself to his study and his weighty volumes and his careful abstract thinking, as it is to be a chemist by reading about chemistry.

The laboratory, the test-tube, the actual contact with the real materials and forces in nature, are essential to the scientist of matter. This is much more true of the art of government. No man ever lived so wise that association with the millions would not enrich his wisdom mightily. And thus, page after page, we might go on pointing out the value of contact with the people, whom, after all, it ought to be your highest purpose to serve in some way.

For in all your doings never forget that, build you ever so cunningly, young man, you have builded in vain if the work of your hands has not helped humanity. Every occupation, trade, business, employment has its reason in service of the people.

Grocery man, harness-maker, carpenter; doctor, lawyer, or railway man; farmer, miner, or journalist; actor on the stage, teacher in the school-room, preacher in the pulpit—all your effort is for the service of the people, the ministering to their needs, the enlightenment of their minds, the uplifting of their souls. And I insist, therefore, that you shall know with the knowledge of kinship this humanity with whom you are to work and for whom you are to work.

Spend some time with Nature, too. The people and Nature—they alone contain the elemental forces. They alone are unartificial, unexhausted. You will be surprised at the strength you will get from a day in the woods. I do not mean physical strength alone, but mental vigor and spiritual insight.

The old fable of Antæus is so true that it is almost literally true. Every time he touched the earth when thrown, that common mother of us all gave him new strength; and, rising, he came to the combat as fresh as when he began.

Learn to know the trees; make friends with them. I know that this counsel will appear far-fetched if you have never cultivated the companionship of the woods. But try it, and keep on trying it, and you will find that there is such a thing as making friends with the trees. They will come to have a sort of personality for you.

No doubt this is all in your mind. No matter, it is good for you. It makes you more natural; that means that you are more simple, kindly, and truthful. What is more soothing and restorative than to stand quite still in field or forest and listen to the thousand mingled sounds that make up that wondrous melody which Nature is always playing on the numberless strings of her golden harp. Learn the peace which that music brings to you.

In short, cultivate Nature, get close to Nature. Try to get Nature to give you what she has for you as earnestly as you try to get what you want in business; and your days and nights will be glorified with a beauty and strength the existence of which you would have denied before you experienced their blessings.

But, of course, you must work for the benefits you get from Nature, just as you must work for everything worth having. You cannot quit your office and say, "Now I shall take a ten-minutes' walk in the park and commune with Nature." Nature is not to be courted in any such way. She does not fling her favors at your feet—not until you have won her utterly. Then all of the wealth and power which Nature has for those who love her are yours in a profuse and exhaustless opulence.

There is nothing so important for a young man, especially a young American, as to resolve not to wear himself out nervously and physically. Take stated vacations, therefore. I should advise every young man who expects to run a long race to resolve, after he has established himself, that he will take one, and, if possible, two months' period of absolute vacation every year. Let him make this a part of his business, just as he makes sleeping a part of his business every day.

What matter if another lawyer gets the case that would have come to you, or another real-estate dealer secures the corner lot on which you have had your eye, or another operator makes the profitable deal which would have given you fame and fortune?

You have obtained and preserved that which they most probably have lost. You have made an investment in Youth. You have purchased power. You have taken stock in length of years. You have equipped yourself with new nerves, a rested heart, a refreshed brain, a hearty stomach, and a sane mind in a sound body.

And you have done more than all this: You have restored your perspective. You have corrected your vision, so that you see things in their just proportion. One reason why men waste energy so prodigally is that their intense pursuit of their business makes them lose all sense of the proportion of things. That which is of little consequence appears, to the distorted vision, of immense importance; and as much energy is wasted in trifles as should be expended on great affairs. This process keeps up until really first-class men are reduced to very small men.

Let a man go each year to the everlasting mountains; to the solitude of the ancient forests; to the eternal ocean with its manifestation of power and repose. Let him sit by its solemn shore listening to it sing that song which for a million years before our civilization was thought of it had been singing, and which for a million years after our civilization has become merely a line in history it will continue to sing, and he will realize how unimportant are the things which only a few weeks before seemed to him of such vast moment. Perhaps the words of the old Khayyam will come to him:

"And fear not lest Existence, closing your

Account and mine, should know the like no more;

The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd

Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour."

Or,

"When You and I behind the Veil are passed,

Oh! but the long, long while the World shall last,

Which of our Coming and Departure heeds

As the sea's self should heed a pebble cast."

Then you will come back to your work and see things in their proper dimensions. You will expend your energy on things that require it, and you will smile at the things that do not deserve your attention, and pass them by. You will substitute duty for ambition, and you will go your way with sanity for perhaps ten months. Then you will need again the elemental lesson of the forest, the mountain, or the sea.

I do not mean that you shall take a vacation until you have deserved it. What right have you to rest before you have labored—before you have earned a thread that clothes you or a mouthful that nourishes you. There are men whose whole lives are a vacation. These words are not for them. From my viewpoint, such men might as well be dead. The men upon whom I am urging the wisdom of taking periods for recuperation are those who have been pulling with the team and keeping their traces taut. And I assume that you who read are one of these worth-while men. Very well! I want you to last a long time.

On this subject, many is the talk I have had with friends who are business men. "Well," my business friend has said, "I just cannot get away this summer. Next summer I will go away, but I cannot go away this summer. You see, I have a 'deal' which I am about to close; it demands my personal attention. It would be treason to my business to leave this summer."

Yes, quite true, no doubt. But so has Nature a "deal" on with this same business man; and it will be treason to Nature if he does not go away and let Nature's ministers attend him. If he has got to be false to his business or to Nature, he had better be false to the former. It is a fine thing to be true to one's business. But be sure that you are really true to your business; and that means that, first of all, you shall look to your health. Your business demands that. Good health is good "business."

I knew a business man who was so true to his business that he was unfaithful to himself. The machinery of his superb mind had been running at highest speed for ten months. It needed a rest—oil on the heated bearings, a reburnishing of the soiled steel, a rest from the high tension. He would have given just such care to an automobile, or an engine, or any inanimate mechanism. He would have given much greater care to his horse.

But did he give it to himself? No. He had a "deal" on of large proportions; that "deal" must be consummated before attending to the mind and body that put it through. So the lever was pulled back another notch; the machine was driven to its highest burst of speed and power, and the "deal" was a success.

Mark now what followed. The next day this splendid man did not feel very well—a headache. And on the following day there was an eternal end to all his "deals." I do not call that good business. Therefore, my friend, the sea, the mountains, the forests; therefore Nature, with her medicine for body and mind and soul.

"Turn yourself out to pasture," said a wise old country doctor to an exhausted city man. Certainly, that's the thing to do—"turn yourself out to pasture."

Singular advice for young men, you will say, this counseling of restraint, calmness, and the husbanding of his powers. Yes; but I would prevent you from exhausting yourself. No nervous prostration at forty; no arrested development at fifty; no mental vacuity at fifty-five. Too many Americans cease to count after middle life. They have wasted their ammunition and are sent to the rear—there is no longer use for them on the firing-line. Youth is so strong that it wastes power like a millionaire of vitality. But you will need all this dissipated energy later on—every ounce of it.

And so, while I would have you labor to the last limit of your strength while you are about your work, I would also have you regain the strength thus consumed. I would have you let Nature fill up your empty batteries. Hence the suggestion of vacations, a level mind, and books of serenity.

While you do work, pour your full strength into every blow; but having done your best do not spoil it by lying awake over it. No half-heartedness in your task, however. If you try to save yourself while you are about your business—if you "try to do things easy"—you will neither work well nor rest well nor do anything else well.

I know there are those who cannot, for long, quit work—those who "have their noses to the grindstone," to borrow one of those picture-sentences of the people. In the far off end to which evolution tends, civilization will doubtless reach the point where every human being may have his solid month of play, repose, and recuperation—though this cannot be, of course, while nation competes with nation. A universal industrial agreement alone can compass that happy end. And do we not here perceive, afar off, one of the vast and glorious tasks for the statesmen of the future?

Meanwhile, if every man may not have an entire season of holiday, he may have every day his hour of fun and rest. For every man that, at least, is possible. And, too, he whom necessity drives hardest owns—absolutely owns—for himself one day in seven. Not so bad after all, is it? Not the ideal condition, but still quite tolerable. Fifty-two days in three hundred and sixty-five, nearly two months in the year, already given every man by the usage of our Christian civilization for the purpose of "rest from all his work"; and with divine example encouraging and instructing him in its use.

A man can get along on these two months distributed at the intervals of one in every seven days. He can get along, that is, if he really rests—really gives himself up to the sane joy of normal repose. The humblest toiler, even in our greatest cities, can find physical renewal and soul's upliftment in forest, at river's side, or on the shore of lake or ocean—thanks to rapid transit and cheap fares.

So let us not get to pitying ourselves—we are pretty well circumstanced for the alternation of work and play, even in our state of partial development. It is for us to use the opportunity already afforded us; and, speaking by and large, ought we not to deserve more by using, without waste or worse than waste, what we already have? Is there not sound philosophy in the legend which Mr. Lewis tells us was inscribed on the headboard of Jack King, deceased: "Life ain't in holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well"?

My suggestion of one or two months' outing in addition to our fifty-two Sundays and several holidays is to those who have poured out in brain-work and nervous strain more than the system can possibly replenish except by a period devoted exclusively to the manufacture of force to replace that which has been unnaturally expended. There are men who toil night and day. Mostly they are young men establishing their business or getting their "start."

I know many young men who work twelve and even fourteen hours every day, and keep it up the year round. One of the greatest merchants of my acquaintance worked from five o'clock in the morning until twelve and one o'clock at night, and then slept in his little store. He was just building up his business. We all know men who literally will not stop work while awake, and when their task is near them. Such men must go away from their business and let Nature work on them awhile.

Have your doctor look you over every six months, no matter how well you feel—or oftener, if he thinks best. Have your regular physician. Pick out a good one, and, especially, a man congenial to yourself. Make him your friend as well as medical adviser. The true doctor is a marvelous person.

How astonishing the accurate knowledge of the accomplished physician! How miracle-like the dainty and beneficent skill of the modern surgeon. The peculiar ability of a great diagnostician amounts to divination. And he, whom Nature has fitted for this noble profession, is endowed with a sympathy for you and an intuitive understanding of you very much akin to the peculiar sixth sense of woman—that strange power by which she "knows and understands."

Consult your doctor, therefore. Be careful of medicines he does not prescribe. The most innocent drug is a veiled force, a compound of hidden powers—the system a delicate intricacy whose condition may be different every day. The neurosis of our American life is seducing too many of our best and busiest men to the use of chemicals, mixtures, nostrums, pick-me-ups, etc., which make nerves and brain utter brave falsehoods of a strength that is not theirs.

Your doctor won't let you do this—he will stay your unconsciously suicidal hand. If your machinery is out of order, he will tell you so, and do what is necessary to repair it. He will comfort and reassure you, too, and administer to the mind a medicine as potent as powder or liquid. But you will get no false sympathy from him. If you have nothing the matter with you, yet think you have, your doctor will take you by the collar of your coat, stand you on your feet, and bid you be a man. So don't dose yourself. Be a faithful guardian of the treasures Nature gave you.

Returning now to reading: You are not to neglect books. They must be read. If you are a professional man they must be more than read; they must be studied, absorbed, made a part of your intellectual being. I am not despising the accumulated learning of the past. Matthew Arnold, in his "Literature and Dogma," quite makes this point. What I am speaking of is miscellaneous reading.

After a while one wearies of the endless repetition, the "damnable iteration" contained in the great mass of books. You will finally come to care greatly for the Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns. Compared with these most others are "twice-told tales" indeed. Of course one must read the great scientific productions. They are an addition to positive knowledge, and are a thing quite apart from ordinary literature.

My recommendation of the Bible is not alone because of its spiritual or religious influences; I am advising it from the material and even the business view-point. By far the keenest wisdom in literature is in the Bible, and is put in terms so apt and condensed, too, that their very brevity proves its inspiration—is an inspiration to you.

Carry the Bible with you, if for nothing else than as a matter of literary relaxation. The tellers of the Bible stories tell the stories and stop. "He builded him a city"—"he smote the Philistines"—"he took her to his mother's tent." You are not wearied to death by the details. Go into any audience addressed by a public speaker, and you will perceive that his hearers' interest depends on whether he is getting to the point. "Well, why doesn't he get to the point," is the common expression in public assemblages. The Bible "gets to the point."

And it has something for everybody. If you are a politician, or even a statesman, no matter how astute you are, you can read with profit several times a year the career of David, one of the cleverest politicians and greatest statesmen who ever lived. If you are a business man, the proverbs of Solomon will tone you up like mountain-air.

A young woman should read Ruth. A man of practical life, a great man, but purely a man of the world, once said to me: "If I could enact one statute for all the young women of America, it would be that each of them should read the book of Ruth once a month." But the limits and purpose of this paper do not permit a dissertation on the Bible.

Shakespeare, of course, you cannot get along without. I shall say no more about him here; for if anything at all is said about Shakespeare (or the Bible), it ought to take up an entire paper at least. "Don't read anybody's commentaries on Shakespeare—don't read mine; read Shakespeare," was the final advice of Richard Grant White, one of the ripest of the world's commentators on this universal poet.

From the Bible and Shakespeare roads lead down among books but little lower in elevation and outlook. Of these the essays of Emerson furnish a noble example; and the poems of the Concord philosopher are the wisdom of the ancients stated in terms of Americanism. I would have every young man spend half an hour over each page of our American Thinker's essays on Character, Manners, Power, and Self-reliance.

Indeed, wherever you turn, among the pages of our Sage, you find no desert place, but always a very forest of thought, tumultuous and vibrant with fancy and suggestion, sweet and wholesome with living truth and all helpfulness. You can form no better habit than to read a page or two of Emerson every night.

Take Emerson as an example; read books of that sort—books that are kin to the Bible and Shakespeare. There is no excuse for your poisoning your time with idle books or low books or transient books—moth volumes that flutter an instant in the light and in an instant die. For the great books are entertaining. If you want excitement, Plutarch's Lives furnish you thrilling-narrative fiction cannot surpass—and undying inspiration besides.

The great novels, too, have in them all the blood and battle-ax the stoutest nerve can crave, all the incidents of love, self-sacrifice, and gentle invention the tenderest heart can need. Yes, certainly: Read books that come to stay—the kind of books you would like to be as a man.

The Rubaiyat would deserve mention but for the danger of misunderstanding its message. Rightly read Omar Khayyam's lesson is serenity and poise and that power and happiness which come from these. The disciple of the tent-maker is not apt to lose his bearings. He no longer regards to-day as eternity, no longer looks at the world and the universe from himself as a center. Reject the Persian poet's apotheosis of wine, absorb his philosophy of calmness, and you will do your duty regardless of consequences. And that is the chief thing, is it not?

Do your duty, have the courage of your thought, and walk off with the old fatalist's verse soothing your soul and brain, and let the disturbed ones clamor. The clamor will cease in time and turn to applause. And whether it does or not is a matter of absolutely no importance if you have done right.

There is nothing which will more conserve the nervous forces of any serious-minded young man, nothing which will give him so much of that composure of mind and necessary concentration of powers, as the resolution to do his best and let it go at that, whether the world applaud, or laugh, or rage. Be true to your deed, whatever it may have been, and if the deed was true, the end must necessarily be satisfactory.

Burns, of course, we must read. We must have him to keep the milk of human kindness flowing in our veins—to keep sweet and sincere and loving. The good that you get from Burns cannot be analyzed. You cannot say, "I have read Burns, and find in him of wisdom so many grains, of humor so many grains, of beauty of expression so many grains," and so forth and so on to the end.

It is the general effect of Burns that is so valuable, so indispensable. Read a little bit of Burns every day, and you will find it very hard to be unkind; you are conscious that you are more human. A mellow and delightful sympathy for your fellow man—aye, and for all living things—warms your heart. And this human quality is more valuable than all the riches of all the lords of wealth.

At all cost keep your capacity for human sympathy.

The sharp, hard processes of our strictly business civilization tend to regulate even our sympathies into a system. It is as if we should say each day, "I have time to-day for five minutes of human sympathy," and promptly push the button of our stop-watch when the second-hand shows that the time has expired. Burns is the best corrective of this that I know—the best, that is, outside of the Bible itself.

Indeed the more one thinks about it the clearer it is that we might throw away all other books but the Bible, and still have all our mental and moral needs ministered to by those who through all time have thought and felt most highly; for the Bible is the record of the loftiest of all human expression, not to mention its divine origin.

Put your Bible, your Shakespeare, your Burns in your bundle when you go for a journey, and you are intellectually and spiritually equipped.

Let a man have the courage of his thought—I repeat it. Courage is where we fail, not intellect. We hear much about intellect, about "brains," as the rather coarse expression is. It is not that which is needed; it is courage.

Enter into conversation the next time you are at the club, or in a hotel, or restaurant, or wherever you meet men in intellectual hospitality, on almost any subject you may choose, you will be amazed at the information, the original thought, the keen analysis, even the constructive ideas of most of the men there.

One of the most fertile minds I have ever known is nothing but an unsuccessful lawyer in a country town; yet his intellect is as tropical, and as accurate, too, as was Napoleon's, or Gould's.

How is it that all these people do not achieve the successes to which their mere thinking entitles them? I say, to which their mere thinking entitles them, because—I say it again—if you will put them beside the great masters of affairs you will find that they have as many ideas as have these captains of business. My young friend, it is simply because they have not courage and constancy. Long ago I catalogued the qualities that make up character, in relative importance, as follows:

First: Sincerity; fidelity, the ability to be true—true to friends, true to ideas, true to ideals, true to your task, true to the truth Who shall deny that the martyrs Nero burned did not experience joys in the consuming flame more delicate and sweet than ever thrilled epicure or lover?

Second (and well-nigh first): Courage—the godlike quality that dreads not; the unanalyzable thing in man that makes him execute his conception—no matter how insane or absurd it may appear to others—if it appears rational to him, and then stride ahead to his next great deed, regardless of the gossips.

Third: Reserve—the power to hold one's forces in check, as a general disposes his army in an engagement on which the fate of an empire or of the world may depend. This power of reserve involves silence. Talk all you please, but keep your large conceptions to yourself till the hour to strike arrives, and then strike with all your might.

In politics they call some men "rubber shoes"; such men continue long, but they never achieve highly. Do not try to cultivate this quality if Nature has been so kind as not to endow you with it. It is not a masterful quality. Have the courage not only of your convictions—that is not so hard—but have the courage of your conceptions. But do not simulate courage if you have it not. False courage is worse than cowardice—it is falsehood and cowardice combined.

Reserve also includes the power to wait; and that is almost as crucial a test of greatness as courage itself. Many a battle has been lost by over-eagerness. There was the greatness of Fate itself in the order of the American officer of the Revolution who said, "Wait, men, until you see the whites of their eyes."

Time is a young man's greatest ally. That is why youth holds the whip-hand of the world. That is why youth can afford to dare. It is also why age does not dare to dare. With youth, to-morrow is merely an accession of power; but with age—ah, well, with age, as Omar says,