THE IMPRACTICAL MAN
"My life is a failure," wrote Sydney Williams to us, "and I do not know
why."
In middle life my grandfather Williams moved his family across the Potomac
River from Virginia in order to study to enter the ministry. He is said to
have freed some slaves at that time, so he must have been a 'planter,' He
became a Congregational minister. My grandfather Jacobs was a carpenter;
but, as I knew him, and for some years before my birth, he was a helpless
invalid from paralysis on one side.
My father graduated from college and then became a minister. He preached
for many years, then he took up work with a religious publishing house,
finally having charge of the work at St. Paul. He was there, I believe,
when he was elected president of a small school for girls. He assumed his
new duties in June and I was born the following November. (I am the
youngest of eleven children, of whom there are now three boys and five
girls still living, three boys having died while still babies before my
birth.)
Until I was nearly twelve years old we lived at the girls' school, which
father succeeded in greatly enlarging. Mother taught me to read a little
and write a little. She and others read to me a great deal. I had no
playmates except my nephews and nieces, to whom I was continually being
pointed out as a 'model.' Out of the sight of the grown-ups, I was not
always such a model as they could have wished; yet I did feel a certain
amount of responsibility that was oppressive and repressive. When nearly
eleven, I was sent to the public school, where I was soon promoted with
two others. The next year father and mother moved into a larger town, so
that I had a few months of real home life before my father's death in
April, 1893.
Then my mother, her mother, and I went to Wisconsin to live with a
married sister of mine whose husband was the Presbyterian minister there.
I entered the fourth grade of the public school that fall; but, by the end
of the school year, I had completed the fifth grade.
My mother died in May, 1896. I continued to live with my sister. Finished
the seventh grade that June, but entered preparatory school that fall. In
November, 1897, my brother-in-law moved to Iowa, and I made the mistake of
deciding to go with him. While living in Wisconsin, I had become
acquainted with a fine lot of boys. One of them organized a small military
company; I was elected quarter-master and, later, lieutenant. I now know
that that was because we were considered 'rich,' Also in Wisconsin I
overcame some of my extreme bashfulness in regard to girls, derived from
babyhood experiences. In fact, one reason I decided to leave Wisconsin was
the fear that the friendship with one girl might become too serious; I was
beginning to shun responsibility.
ATTAINMENTS IN SCHOLARSHIP
In Iowa I entered the high school and completed the tenth grade the next
June (1898). My elder brother was my official guardian and he wanted me to
make a change. As a result, in September, 1898, I had my first experience
of being away alone by entering a famous academy. There I earned the
reputation of being a 'grind,' and graduated second in my class in June,
1901. While there I went out for football, and made the third team and
even played once on the second. My poor eyesight hindered me somewhat, but
still more the fact that I was not eager to fall down on the ball on the
hard ground when it did not seem to me necessary. I was quite ready to get
hurt, if there was any reason for it. That, too, was a mistake on my part.
That September I entered Harvard University. My father had left some
insurance, and mother left some of it to me for a college education. She
expected, as did my sisters and brothers, that I would become a minister.
By the end of my Freshman year I had decided that I could not do so, but
from that time I was unable to decide what I did want to do or could do.
Consequently I did not get the good out of a college education that I
might have. Moreover, though I stood fairly well in most of my classes, I
did not always understand the subjects as well as the professors thought I
did. As soon as it became possible to elect subjects, I dropped Latin,
Greek, and German, and specialized in history, economics, etc. I graduated
'Cum Laude,' But that was really a failure, considering what I might have
done.
But I did well enough to receive recommendation for a $500 fellowship that
enabled me to return for another year. I did work which caused me to be
recommended for an A.M. degree. But I felt that I had so little in
comparison with others, that I was actually ashamed to receive it.
Socially, however, that extra year was a very delightful one for me.
During two summers as an undergraduate, I worked at Nantasket Beach
selling tickets in the bathing pavilion for $50 a month, besides room and
board. I made good, much to the surprise of the superintendent.
HUNTING A JOB
So then I was finally through college in June, 1906. It is almost
incredible how very childlike I still was, so far as my attitude toward
the world was concerned. I had high ideals, and I wanted to get into
business, but where or how I did not know. Moreover, my money was gone. A
student gave me a note with which I intended to get his previous summer's
job as a starter on an electric car line owned by a railway company. The
position was abolished, however, so I became a conductor on a suburban
line. Unfortunately, my motorman was a high-strung, nervous Irishman, who
made me so nervous that I often could not give the signals properly, and
who made life generally unpleasant for me. He professed a liking for me
and did prevent one or two serious accidents. At the same time, he said I
was the first 'square' conductor he had ever worked with, and, no doubt,
he missed his 'extra,' After three weeks of him, and of the general
public's idea that I must, of course, be knocking down fares, I resigned.
However, the superintendent offered me a job as 'inspector' of registers
on the main line, a job that he was just creating. When the rush was over
after Labor Day, I was again out of a job. I might have secured a
clerkship with the railway company, but I was foolish enough not to try.
A few weeks later found me established in the district office of a
correspondence school not very far from New York City as a representative.
At first I gave good promise of success, but I lost my enthusiasm and
belief in the school and became ashamed to be numbered as one of its
workers because of the character of most of the local field force at that
time and before my time. The reputation of the school in that place was
not very good. Also I was not successful in collecting the monthly
payments from those who had hard luck stories or had been lied to by the
man who had enrolled them. By the end of two months I was ready to quit,
but my immediate superior begged me to stay, in order to keep him from
having to break in a new man just then. At the end of about four months I
did resign to save being kicked out. Mind you, I was to blame, all right;
for I had given up a real continuous effort beyond the merest routine and
the attempt to collect the monthly payments. While I was there I did write
a few contracts, among them a cash one amounting to $80. But, toward the
end, my lack of success was due to my utter disgust with myself for being
so blamed poor and for shirking.
AN ATTEMPT IN ORANGE CULTURE
Going back to a brother in New York, I tried to land a job, but, of
course, in such a state of mind, I could not. Then I went to my older
brother in Cincinnati, where he was, and is, the pastor of a large church.
Unfortunately, he did not take me by the back of the neck and kick me into
some kind of work, any kind. At last, in March, 1908, he helped me to come
out West. I landed in Los Angeles, and indirectly through a friend of his
I secured a job on an orange ranch in the San Gabriel Valley, which I held
until the end of the season. Once more I was happy and contented. It was
certainly a pleasure to work.
That fall, or rather winter (1908), I secured a place near San Diego,
where I had shelter and food during the winters and small wages during the
active seasons in return for doing the chores and other work.
I had become possessed with a desire for an orange grove, and refused to
consider how much it would take to develop one. I was finally able to
secure a small tract of unimproved land. But I found that the task of
clearing it would be too great for me because of the great trees, so for
this and other reasons I snatched at a chance to file on a homestead in
the Imperial Valley. This was in May, 1910. Later that summer I was able
to sell my piece of land near San Diego at a profit, so that in September
I went over to get settled on my homestead. I employed a fellow to help me
make a wagon trail for a mile or more and to build my cabin for me. I
moved in the first of November. Early in 1912 I decided it would be
impossible to irrigate enough land there to make a living at that time.
Also the difficulties of living alone so far out in the desert were
greater than I had anticipated. With the help of a friend, I was able to
make final proof in July and pay the government for the 160 acres, instead
of having to continue to live on it. I did stay, however, until the
general election in 1912.
AT WORK IN A SURVEYING CREW
Then I went to Los Angeles to get something to do. The town was full of
people seeking work, as usual, most of whom could present better records
than I could. To be sure, my friends and even my old correspondence school
boss gave me splendid recommendations, but I felt my lack of business
training and feared that 999 out of any 1,000 employers would not take a
chance with me on such a record as I had. Consequently I did not try very
hard. For a while I was with a real estate firm trying to secure
applications for a mortgage. The commission was $25, but, naturally, that
did not go far toward expenses. It was not long before I was in a bad
mental condition again through worrying, self-condemnation, and
uncertainty. It would not have been difficult to prove that I was
'insane.'
Finally an acquaintance of mine, a prominent lawyer, took up my case. He
has a good personal and business friend who is the general manager of a
large oil company with headquarters here in Bakersfield. When first
appealed to, this gentleman refused point blank, because he had a bad
opinion of college graduates in general (I really don't blame him or other
business men); but the lawyer used his influence to the utmost with the
result that I came up here in March, 1913, and was sent up into the oil
fields. I was put under the civil engineer, and for two months I was sort
of 'inspector' and 'force account' man in connection with the building of
a supply railroad, but I gradually worked into the regular surveying crew,
first as substitute rear chainman, and then as the regular one. Before
long I was head chainman. I could have remained a chainman with the same
crew to this time, but I left a little over a year ago, as there once more
seemed a chance to earn a place in the country.
ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT ORANGE CULTURE
A young fellow, now located near Bakersfield, whom I had known in San
Diego, told me great tales that I was too anxious to believe, and finally
made some fine promises to help me get a piece of what he said was his
land and to bring it to a productive state. But when I reached his place,
in February, he was not ready, willing or able to carry out his promises.
He kept me hanging on, however, and as I had used up my savings in a
month's attendance at the short course of the State agricultural college
and in bringing my goods from Bakersfield, I was compelled to get work
from him as one of his orchard gang. I helped to set out several hundred
trees and berry plants, and later knew what it meant to hoe for ten hours
a day. I left him the latter part of July in order to work out a scheme I
had thought of.
[Illustration: FIG. 25. "Sydney Williams." For analysis see pages 206 to
210. Here is a fine, capable intellect, good sense of humor, optimism,
cheerfulness, great refinement, and excellent critical powers in art and
literature. But there is a deficiency of practicability. Note smallness
and flatness of brows, narrowness of head just above the ears, fineness of
features and height of head in center, above temples.]
[Illustration: FIG. 26. "Sydney Williams." Note flatness of brows;
smallness and fineness of features; fineness of texture; height of
forehead and crown.]
[Illustration: FIG. 27. Prof. Adolf von Menzel, Sociologist. A man of
great intellect, especially interested in theoretical and statistical
studies of people, in the mass, but not greatly interested in practical,
material affairs. Note immense dome of forehead and head, with flatness at
brows.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28. Edgar Allan Poe, Poet. Impractical, deficient in
financial sense, but keenly alive to a world of fancy, ideals, dreams,
imagery, beauty, mysticism and tragedy. Note high forehead, wide above,
flat at brows and concave at sides; small nose and mouth, deep-set, gloomy
eyes; dark complexion; and lack of symmetry and balance in head and
features.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Author. Highly
intellectual, sentimental, impractical, sensitive, emotional. A man of
high ideals and beautiful thoughts, and creative power. Note high,
dome-shaped head; flat, high brows, fine, delicate features; weak mouth,
and general softness of contour and expression.]
[Illustration: _Copyright by Harper & Brothers, N. Y_.
FIG. 30. Thomas De Quincy, Author. A man of fine, discriminating, logical
intellect along purely mental lines, but impractical in material affairs.
Note high, prominent forehead, with flat, poorly-developed brows, weak
nose and mouth and narrow head.]
[Illustration: FIG. 31. O. Henry, at the age of thirty. Impractical,
lacking in desire for money and financial judgment. Creative, humorous, a
lover of human nature, mild, rather easy-going, idealistic, constant. Note
high forehead, flat at brows, full at sides along top, concave nose, full
lips, prominent chin.]
[Illustration: FIG. 32. Edwin Reynolds, of Wisconsin. Of the practical,
matter-of-fact, literal type of intellect. Interested in facts, keenly
observant, quick in thought, alert and positive in his mental activities.
Note high, sloping forehead, very prominent at the brows, large nose, high
in the bridge and well-developed.]
"The first part of September I moved back to Bakersfield. I tried out my
scheme by mail on two of the most prominent men in the country (one of the
times when I had plenty of nerve). It did not work and the time did not
seem auspicious for trying it on a greater number, especially as I did not
have money enough to do it properly.
"While still working for the orchard man, I began to do some work in
getting subscriptions for the Curtis publications. I did get a few. Later,
about the middle of October, I went to Los Angeles, where I had a booth at
an exhibition for three weeks in the interest of a publishing house. But
it did not pay expenses, and I was deeper in debt than ever. I landed in
Bakersfield nearly 'broke.' Thanks to the kindness of the people where I
roomed and boarded, I was able to pull through until I obtained a loan
last week, secured by a mortgage on my homestead.
"I was entirely unable to force myself to do any real canvassing while I
was absolutely in need of each commission, but, now that I once more have
a bank account, I hope to make myself keep at it until I can feel
moderately successful. That is the one job I have fallen down on over and
over (I have not even mentioned many of the attempts), and I believe I
could be a real salesman if I could only get over my fear of approaching
people on any proposition of immediate profit to me."
Here we have in detail the old, old story. How often have you heard of the
man who graduated with high honors at the head of his class and was unable
to make a living afterward? How many men of highest scholarship have you
met who could not make a living for themselves and their families? Not
long ago we were offered the services of a man who had degrees from
several universities in America and Europe, who was master of several
languages, and who was glad to offer to do a little translating at
twenty-five cents an hour.
AN ANALYSIS OF SYDNEY WILLIAMS
What handicaps these men? They have good intellects, or they would be
unable to win high honors in colleges and universities. It is fitting that
they should educate themselves highly, since they are so capable of
attainment in scholarship. Surely, they ought to do some intellectual work
of some kind, because they are not fitted for manual labor. Where do they
belong? What is their particular type? What opportunities are there for
their unquestioned talents?
Here is what we wrote to Sydney Williams:
"From photographs and data submitted, I should judge your type of
organization, character and aptitudes to be as follows:
"You have inherited only a fairly good physical constitution. You will
always need to take care of yourself, but there is absolutely no reason
why you should worry in regard to your health.
"Under stress and strain your nervous system may give you trouble, and
there may be some tendency to digestive disturbances, but if you will
practice moderation, live on a well-balanced and sensibly selected diet,
and keep yourself from extremes of every kind you will probably maintain
very fair health and strength for many years.
"Intellectually you have a good, active mind of the theoretical type. Your
mind is quick to grasp theories, ideals, abstractions, and such intangible
and purely mental concepts. Your imagination is active, and is inclined to
run away with plans, schemes, and inventions, with speculations and with
visions of future prospects. However, your plans and inventions are liable
to be purely along mental and intellectual lines, rather than practical.
"You do not observe well. You are a little too careless in regard to your
facts. You therefore have a tendency to go ahead with your theories and
your plans upon insufficient data or upon data which are not accurate
because they have not been properly verified.
"This deficiency in observation also handicaps you, because you do not
see things in their right relation, and your judgment is, therefore,
liable to be erratic and unsound.
"You should compel yourself to get the facts. You should suspend judgment
until you have made sure that all of the premises from which you argue to
your conclusions are sound and accurate. Take nothing for granted. Compel
yourself to stick to the facts. Not only ask yourself the question, 'Will
it work?' but make sure that the affirmative answer is absolutely accurate
before you go ahead.
"Many of your characteristics are those of immaturity, notwithstanding
your years, your education, and your experience. You still retain many
youthful tendencies. You are inclined to be impulsive. You are very
responsive emotionally, and when your emotions are aroused you are prone
to decide important matters without reference to facts, reason, and logic.
Another very youthful characteristic in you is your tendency to be
headstrong, wilful, stubborn, and opinionated. When you have arrived at
one of your swift conclusions you find it very difficult to take advice.
Even when you do listen to what others say, you do not listen well. Your
mind jumps ahead to conclusions that are erroneous and which were never in
the mind of the person giving you the advice.
"As you can readily see, it is this inability to get competent counsel
from others, coupled with your own lack of observation and lack of
deliberation, that leads you into so many situations that turn out to be
undesirable. Here, again, you need to go more slowly, to act more
according to your knowledge and less according to impulse, to make sure
that you understand what other people say, especially when seeking for
advice. As a result of your rather emotional character, you are liable to
go to extremes and do erratic things, to be over-zealous for a short
period; also, at times, to be high tempered, although your temper quickly
evaporates. In all of these things you will see the need for cultivation
of more self-control, more poise, more calmness, more maturity of thought,
speech, and action.
"You are very idealistic. Your standards are high. You naturally expect
much. It is your hope always, when making a change, that you will get into
something which will more nearly approach perfection than the thing you
are leaving.
"But you are also critical. Indeed, you are inclined to be hypercritical,
to find too much fault, to see too many flaws and failures. For this
reason, nothing ever measures up to your ideals--you are always being
disappointed.
"You need to cultivate far more courage. By this I mean the courage which
hangs on, which meets obstacles, which overcomes difficulties, which
persists through disagreeable situations. Your impulsiveness leads you
into plenty of things, but you are so hypercritical, and you become so
easily discouraged when eventualities do not measure up to your ideals,
that you fail to finish that which you start.
"Naturally, of course, if you were to be more deliberate and more careful
in forming your judgments, you would find things more nearly ideal after
you got into them. Then, if you would stick to them, you could make a much
greater success of them.
"Your intention to be honest, is, no doubt, above reproach. However, your
conduct or the results may at times be equivalent to dishonesty, being so
regarded by others. This, of course, is the result of your immaturity,
your impulsiveness, and your tendency not to see things through.
"You are very keenly sensitive. With your great love of beauty and
refinement, anything which is coarse, crude, and ugly in your environment
is very depressing to you. You also find it difficult to associate happily
with those who are coarse and crude by nature. Unquestionably, such people
frequently hurt you cruelly when they have no intention of doing so. It
would be well if you would learn to accept other people for what they are
worth, rather than being so critical of them and so easily hurt. Praise
and blame are usually meant impersonally and should be so received. In
other words, people praise or blame the deed and not the doer.
"Your appreciation of financial and commercial values and methods is
deficient. This is due to many different things, but principally to your
lack of observation, your inability to see things in their right
relations, and your limited sense of values. For these reasons you are not
and cannot become vitally interested in financial and commercial affairs.
If your wants were supplied, and you had something interesting to do,
money would receive practically no consideration from you. For your own
sake, you ought to attach more importance to monetary considerations,
cultivate a greater sense of values, develop more practical commercial
sense. On the other hand, however, you should not attempt any vocation in
which a high development of these qualities is necessary.
"In practical affairs, you show a tendency not to learn by experience.
This is because of deficiency in your observation of facts. You do not
really understand the essential facts of the experiences through which you
pass, and, therefore, they do not impress or teach you.
"In your choice of a vocation you should make up your mind once for all
that, on account of the qualities I have described, you are not commercial
or financial, and, therefore, you do not belong in the industrial or
commercial world. Your talents are educational, dramatic, professional,
literary. You are decidedly of the mental type. Your world is a mental
world, an intellectual world. Ideas, ideals, and theories are the things
with which you can deal most successfully.
"Owing to your distaste for detail, and the difficulty you have in
applying yourself to a task until it is finished, and also on account of
your very keen and sensitive critical faculties, you are probably better
fitted for success as a critic than as a producer.
"A position in a house publishing books and magazines, where your duty
would be to read, analyze, and criticise manuscripts, would offer you far
better opportunities than anything you have yet attempted.
"You could probably do well in a mail-order house as correspondent.
"You also have some dramatic ability which, if developed and trained,
might make you a success, either on the stage or in the pulpit. In this
connection, I merely call your attention, in passing, to the
opportunities in the motion picture drama. Here is where dramatic ability
is everything and the heavier demands upon the actor in the ordinary
drama, especially in the way of physical development, voice, etc., do not
enter.
"Another line which might possibly interest you would be that of a
salesman in an art or music store, where customers come to you, or in a
book store. You probably would do better selling to women than to men.
"Whatever you do, you should work under direction, under the direction of
some one whose judgment, wisdom, honesty, and high principles you respect.
Under wise leadership you have your very best opportunities for success.
In attempting to be your own manager and to go your own way, you suffer
from the serious handicaps to which I have already referred.
"In selecting from among the vocations I have enumerated the one that is
best for you, you will, of course, be guided very largely by
opportunities. At this distance I do not know just which is your best
opportunity, and, therefore, cannot counsel you definitely to undertake
any one of these vocations in preference to the others. If the opportunity
is at hand, perhaps the position of literary or dramatic critic with a
publishing house would be most congenial for you and offer you the best
future. If not, then one of the others. You might even undertake a
position as salesman in a book store or an art store while preparing or
waiting for an opening in one of the other lines suggested.
"Whatever you undertake, however, compel yourself, in spite of obstacles,
in spite of your very natural criticisms of the situation, to stick to it
until you make a success of it.
"As you grow older, if you will patiently and conscientiously cultivate
more deliberation, more practical sense, more self-control, and more
poise, you will become more mature in judgment and gradually overcome to a
greater and greater degree the handicaps which have so far interfered with
your progress and the best and highest expression of your personality."
HANDICAPS OF THIS TYPE
To make a long story short, Sydney Williams and men of his type have
unusual intellectual powers of analysis, criticism, memory, abstraction,
and philosophy. They can master hypotheses, higher mathematics, and Hebrew
irregular verbs, but they are babes in all practical affairs. They have
some such conception of the plain facts of human nature, ordinary
financial values, and efficient methods of commerce as a man with color
blindness has of the art of Corot. Like the children they are, these
people seldom suspect their deficiencies. Oftentimes they are ambitious to
make a success in a commercial way. They try salesmanship, or, if they
have a little capital, they may embark in some ambitious business project
on their own account. They even go into farming or agriculture or poultry
raising, or some kind of fancy fruit producing, with all of the optimism
and cheerfulness and confidence in their ability that Sydney Williams felt
for his orange growing. When they fail, it is more often through their own
incompetence than because some one comes along who is mean enough to take
candy from a baby. They usually dissipate their assets by impracticable
schemes before the unscrupulous can take them. The only hope for such men
is to learn their limitations; to learn that, even though they may be
ambitious for commercial success, they are utterly unqualified for it;
that, although they may wish to do something in the way of production or
selling, they have neither talent, courage, secretiveness, persistence,
nor other qualities necessary for a success in these lines. They are too
credulous. They are too impractical. They are too lacking in fighting
qualities, and, therefore, too easily imposed upon. They are usually lazy
physically and find disagreeable situations hard, so that they are out of
place in the rough-and-tumble, strenuous, hurly-burly of business,
manufacturing, or ordinary professional life.
Perhaps a few stories would indicate what these men can do, do well, and
what they can be happy and satisfied in doing. There is a real need for
them in the world.
A CAREER IN MUSIC
George R. came to us late one evening in a little town in Illinois. He was
nervous, weak, and diffident.
"I am now," he said, "a salesman in a dry goods store. But I have only
held the job three months and do not expect that I will be permitted to
remain more than a week or so longer. I have been warned several times by
the floor-walker that my errors will cost me my position. God knows, I do
my best to succeed in the work, but it is like all the other positions
I've held. Somehow or other I don't seem to be able to give satisfaction.
While I am on my guard and as alert as I know how to be against one of the
things I've been told not to do, I am just as sure as sunshine to go and
do some other thing which is against the rules. If I don't do something
against the rules, then I forget to do something I was told to do. If I
don't forget to do something I've been told to do, then I am quite likely
to make some outlandish mistake that no one ever thought of framing a rule
to fit. The result of it all is that in about another week or, at the
most, two, I'll be out of employment again. I have tried driving a
delivery wagon. I've tried grocery stores. I've tried doing collections. I
began once as clerk in a bank. Immediately after leaving college, I
started in as newspaper reporter. I've been a newsboy on railroad trains.
I sold candies and peanuts in a fair ground. I have been night clerk in a
hotel. I've been steward on a steamboat. I've been a shipping clerk in a
publishing house, and I have been fired from every job I have ever had.
True enough, I've hated them all, but, nevertheless; I have tried to do my
best in them. Why I cannot succeed with any of them, I don't know, and yet
I have a feeling that somehow, somewhere, sometime, I will find something
to do that I will love, and that I can do well."
"Music," we said, "unquestionably music."
"Do you think I could?" he said wistfully. "Music has been my passion all
my life long. It has been my one joy, my one solace in all my wanderings
and all my failures. But I have always been afraid I would fail also in
that, and, if I should, it would break my heart sure. But if you think I
have the talent, then I shall give my whole time, my whole thought, my
whole energy to music hereafter."
It was rather late in life for this young man to begin a musical career.
While he had always been fond of music, he had been sent to college for a
classical course by parents to whom a classical course meant everything
that was desirable in an education. He had learned to play the piano, the
violin, the guitar, the mandolin, and some other instruments, without
education, because of his natural musical talent. He played them all as he
had opportunity, for his own amusement, but, because of his ambition for
commercial success, had never thought of music as a career. We wish we
might tell you that this young man was now one of the foremost composers
or conductors of his time. It would make an excellent story. Such,
however, is not the case.
He devoted himself to securing a thorough musical education, supporting
himself and paying his expenses in the mean-while by playing in churches,
musicales, motion picture shows, and other places. He also received a few
dollars nearly every week for playing the violin for dances and other
functions in a semi-professional orchestra. Truly this was not "art for
art's sake." Any critical musician could probably tell you that such use
of his musical talent forever shut off any hopes of his becoming a true
artist. On the other hand, it did fill his stomach and clothe him while he
was securing a sufficient musical education to enable him to make a very
fair living as teacher on various musical instruments and as a performer
at popular concerts, recitals, etc. Best of all, he was happy in his work,
felt himself growing in success and, while there were probably heights
which he never could scale and to which he may have turned his longing
eyes, he doubtless got a considerable amount of satisfaction out of the
fact that he was no longer being kicked around from pillar to post in the
commercial world.
VOCATIONS FOR THE IMPRACTICAL
Herbert Spencer felt that he was a complete and utter failure as a civil
engineer, but he made a magnificent success as a scientist, essayist, and
philosopher.
The number of great authors, scientists, philosophers, poets, actors,
preachers, teachers, lecturers, and musicians who were ludicrously
impractical is legion. Literature abounds in stories of their
idiosyncrasies. These people deal with abstractions, ideas, with theories,
and with emotions. They may be very successful in the spinning of
theories, in the working out of clever ideas, and in their appeal to the
emotions of their fellow-men. They may write poetry which is the product
of genius; they may devise profound philosophy. This is their realm. Here
is where they are supreme, and it is in this kind of work they find an
expression for all of their talent.
Right here there is need for careful distinction. There is a great
difference between the impractical man who has energy, courage, and
persistence, and the impractical man who is lazy and cowardly. No matter
what a man's natural talent may be, it takes hard work to be successful in
such callings as art, music, the pulpit, the stage, the platform, and the
pen. Inspiration may seem to have a great deal to do with success. But
even in the writing of a poem inspiration is probably only about five per
cent.; hard work constitutes the other ninety-five per cent. It is one
thing to have vague, beautiful dreams, to be an admirer of beauty, to
enjoy thrills in contemplation of beautiful thoughts or beautiful
pictures. It is quite another thing to have the energy, the courage, and
the dogged persistence necessary to create that which is beautiful.
NO EASY ROAD TO SUCCESS
We offer no golden key which unlocks the doors to success. Much as we
regret to disappoint many aspiring young men and women, we must be
truthful and admit that there is no magic way in which some wonderful,
unguessed talent can be discovered within them and made to blossom forth
in a night, as it were. Many people of this type come to us for
consultation, evidently with the delectable delusion that we can point out
to them some quick and easy way to fame and fortune. Again we must make
emphatic by repetition the hard, uncompromising truth that laziness,
cowardice, weakness, and vacilation are incompatible with true success. No
matter what a man's other aptitudes may be, no matter how great his talent
or his opportunities, we can suggest absolutely no vocation in which he
can be successful unless he has the will to overcome these deficiencies in
his character.
Many a man is deluded into the fond supposition that he is not successful
because he does not fit into the vocation where he finds himself. The
truth is that he probably is in as desirable a vocation as could possibly
be found for him. The reason he is not successful is because he has failed
to develop the fundamental qualities of industry, courage, and
persistence.
HOW TO BECOME MORE PRACTICAL
When the impractical man learns his limitations he is all too likely to go
to extremes in depreciating his own business ability. Many such people are
seemingly proud of their deficiencies in business sense. "I am no business
man. You attend to it, I'll trust you," they say. While a lack of natural
business ability may not be a man's fault, it is nothing to be proud of.
You may not be born with keen, financial sense, but that is no reason why
you may not develop more and more of it and make yourself a better
business man. As a matter of fact, every man is in business--he has
something to sell which he wishes the rest of the world to buy from him.
He has himself, at least, to support, and more than likely he has others
dependent upon him. He has no right, therefore, to neglect business
affairs and to permit others to impose upon him and to steal from him and
from those dependent upon him the proper reward for his labor.
Even the youth who is poor in mathematics can learn something about
geometry, algebra, and trigonometry; even he who "has no head for
language" can learn to speak a foreign tongue and even to read Latin or
Greek. It is not easy for either one of them and perhaps the one can never
become a great mathematician nor the other a great linguist, but both can
learn something, both can improve their grasp of the difficult subject.
There are probably few readers of these pages who have not in their school
days overcome just such handicaps in some particular subject of study.
In a similar way those who are impractical and have little business sense
can improve in this respect and they ought to. Such people ought to study
practical affairs, ought to give their attention to financial matters. In
fact, one of the best ways to increase financial judgment is to form the
intimate acquaintance of some one who has a keen sense of financial
values. If such a person can be persuaded to talk about what he knows, the
impractical man will do well to take a keen interest in what he says, to
qualify himself to understand it, and, if possible, to get the point of
view from which a good business man approaches his problems and studies
his affairs. Actual practice is, of course, necessary for development, and
the impractical man ought to take an interest in his affairs and ought to
do his best to handle them. Naturally, he needs to seek competent counsel
in regard to them, but he should pay some attention to the counsel given,
try to learn something from it, watch results of every course of action
and in every possible way study to make himself more practical and less
theoretical and abstract in his attitude toward life in general and toward
business affairs in particular.
Not long ago we attended a meeting of two and three hundred of the most
prominent authors, poets, and playwrights in America. We were not at all
surprised to note that nearly every one of those who had made a financial
success of his art was a man of the practical, commercial type who had
developed his business sense along with his artistic or literary talent.
A PAUPER, HE DREAMED OF MILLIONS
Some years ago we formed the acquaintance of a delightful man who is so
typical of a certain class of the impractical that his story is
instructive. When we first formed the acquaintance of this gentleman he
was about thirty years of age, rather handsome in appearance, with great
blue eyes, very fine silky blonde hair, and a clear, pink, and white
complexion. His head, somewhat narrow just above the ears, indicated a
mild, easy-going, gentle disposition. The large, rounded dome just above
temples was typical of the irrepressible optimist. His forehead, very full
and bulging just below the hair line, showed him to be of the thoughtful,
meditative, drearily type, while flatness and narrowness at the brows told
as plainly as print of the utter impracticability of his roseate dreams.
True to his exquisite blonde coloring, this man was eager, buoyant,
irrepressible, impatient of monotony, routine, and detail--social and
friendly. True to his fine texture, he shrank from hardship, was
sensitive, refined, beauty loving and luxury loving. Because of his mild
disposition and optimism and also because of his love of approval, he was
suave, affable, courteous, agreeable. He made acquaintances easily and had
many of the elements of popularity.
Because he was ambitious to occupy a position of prominence and
distinction, because he wished to gratify his luxurious and elegant
tastes, and because in his irrepressible optimism it seemed so absurdly
easy to do, he was eager to make a large fortune. Lacking the
aggressiveness, energy, willingness to undergo hardship and to work hard
and long, patiently enduring the hours and days of drudgery over details
that could not be neglected, he dreamed of making millions by successful
speculation.
LOOKING FOR A SHORT CUT TO WEALTH
It is easy to see why a man of this type, with his futile dreams of easy
conquests in the field of finance, should have scorned the slow and
painful process of acquiring an education. Yet the tragedy of his life was
that his only hope of usefulness in the world was through the careful
cultivation and development of his really fine intellect. It is also easy
to see why such a man would lack the patience to learn a trade even if he
had had the manual skill to carry on any trade successfully--which he had
not. For the same reasons he would not take pains to qualify himself for
any occupation, although he might have made a fair success in retail
salesmanship perhaps, notwithstanding his far greater fitness for
educational, ministerial, or platform work. On the contrary, he roamed
about the country occupying himself at odd times with such bits of light
mental or physical work as came his way. Being without training and taking
no real interest in his work, he never retained any job long. Sometimes,
lured by the will-o'-the-wisp of some fancied opportunity to make a
million, he gave up his work. Sometimes he merely got tired of working and
quit. But most often he was discharged for his incompetence. It is
difficult indeed for any man to attend properly to the cent-a-piece
details of an ordinary job when he is dreaming of the easy thousands he is
going to make next week.
This charming gentleman was always out of funds. Although he carefully
tonsured the ends of his trouser legs, inked the cuffs of his coat,
blackened and polished his hose and even his own, fine, fair skin where it
showed through the holes of his shoes, and turned his collars and ties
again and again, he was nearly always shabby. On rare and ever rarer
occasions he would do some relative or friend the inestimable favor and
honor of accepting a small loan, "to be repaid in a few days, as soon as a
big deal I now have under way is consummated." These loans were his only
successes in the realm of practical finance. Inasmuch as the repayment of
them was contingent upon the closing of an ever-imminent, but never
consummated, "big deal," they cost him nothing for either principal or
interest. For a few weeks after the successful negotiation of one of these
loans, he would be resplendent, opulent, fastidious, even generous. All
too soon the last dollar would slip through his unheeding fingers. If
during a period of affluence he had succeeded in establishing a little
semblance of credit, he would maintain his regal style of living as long
as it lasted. Then he would come down to the hall bedroom or even the
ten-cent lodging house, the lunch wagon, and the pawn shop. But even at
the lowest ebb of his fortunes, he never seemed to lose his cheerfulness,
his good nature, his grand manners, and his easy, confident hope and
conviction about the huge sums that were to come into his possession
"within a few days."
A DILETTANTE IN REAL ESTATE
Do not imagine that this man's dreams of great and easy fortunes were mere
idle fancies--far from it. He was nearly always engaged in negotiations
for some big deal. One of his favorite pastimes was to hunt up large
holdings of real estate offered for sale, go to the owners, represent
himself as a real estate broker, and secure permission to put these
properties on his "list." This permission obtained, he would go about
trying to find buyers. But his ideas of real estate values, of the
adaptation of properties to purchasers, of the details of a real estate
transaction and of salesmanship were so vague and so impractical that if
he ever succeeded in selling a piece of real estate, we have not yet heard
of it. He lacked the practical sense necessary to inform himself upon such
important matters as taxes, assessments, insurance rates, trend of
population, direction and character of commercial expansion, bank
clearings, freight shipments, volume of retail and wholesale business,
projected municipal and public service improvements, crop reports, output
of manufacturies, and many other items which form the basis for
intelligent negotiation, in a real estate deal. He could talk only in
glittering generalities, and his suggestions were usually so impracticable
that he failed to secure the confidence of those who were in a position to
purchase properties so valuable as those he invariably hit upon for his
ambitious projects.
AN UNDESERVED BAD REPUTATION
Here, then, was a man of unusual intelligence and capacity along
theoretical, abstract, philosophical, and spiritual lines. His intentions
were good. He was kindly, sympathetic, generous to a fault, refined,
ambitious, high principled at heart and a thorough gentleman by birth,
training, and instinct. Yet, because of a lack of clear knowledge, his
life has been one of hardship, privation, disappointment, disillusionment,
galling poverty, and utter failure. He has been subjected to ridicule and
the even more blighting cruelty of good-natured, patronizing, contemptuous
tolerance. His reputation is that of a lazy, good-for-nothing,
disreputable dead beat and loafer. And yet, in a sense, nothing is further
from the truth. Notwithstanding his many disappointments, no one could
have been more sincere than he in believing that just around the corner
fortune awaited him.
DIAGNOSIS OF THE IMPRACTICAL MAN'S CASE
The fundamental difficulty with the impractical man is two fold. First,
his powers of observation are so deficient that it is difficult for him to
obtain facts. It is an axiom of conscious life that there is pleasure and
satisfaction in the use of well-developed powers and a disinclination to
use powers which are deficient in development. Because it is difficult for
the impractical man to obtain facts, he has little desire to obtain them.
He takes little interest in them, does not appreciate their value. He,
therefore, assumes his facts, takes them for granted or proceeds almost
wholly without them. Even when he does take the trouble to ascertain the
facts, he is inclined to be hasty and slipshod in his methods. He,
therefore does not obtain all of the necessary information bearing upon
his problem. He does not painstakingly verify his knowledge through
repeated observations, under all kinds of conditions. So he is frequently
mistaken and reasons to his conclusions upon supposed facts which are not
facts at all.
Second, the impractical man, as a general rule, has well-developed powers
of reason, logic, and imagination. His mind easily and unerringly leaps
from premises to conclusion and weaves long and beautiful chains of
reasoning, each link perfectly formed. The only trouble is that none of
the chains are attached to anything solid and substantial at either end.
With highly developed powers of imagination, it follows that the
impractical man loves to dream, to build castles in the air. When he
attempts to form a judgment or reach a conclusion, he may possibly begin
by attempting to ascertain the facts. But observation for him is a slow
and painful process. He does not enjoy it. He has no patience with it.
Mere facts restrict him. Practical reasoning is like walking painfully,
step by step, along a narrow, steep pathway, leading to a fixed
destination at which the traveler arrives whether he wills it or not. The
impractical man's form of reasoning, starting at the same place, soars
into the air, dips and sweeps in magnificent and inspiring curves and
finally sets him down at whatever destination seems most desirable to him.
His well-developed powers of imagination are usually more than willing to
supply the deficiencies in his powers of observation. In his own realm he
is a valuable member of society--often becomes rich and famous. But he is
a misfit in any vocation which deals wholly with concrete things.
DESCRIPTION OF THE IMPRACTICAL MAN
The impractical man is easily recognized. He may be blonde or brunette,
large or small, fine textured or coarse textured, energetic or lazy,
aggressive or mild, friendly or unfriendly, ambitious or unambitious,
honest or dishonest--but his mark is upon his forehead. If his brows are
flat or if his forehead immediately above and at the sides of his eyes is
undeveloped or only a little developed, his powers of observation are
deficient. He is not interested in facts and his judgment is based upon
hasty and mistaken premises. As a general rule, in such cases, the upper
part of the forehead is well developed. This is always the case if the man
is intelligent. If the forehead is both low and retreating and flat at the
brows, then the individual lacks both power of observation and reasoning
power, and is very deficient in intellect.
Figures 27 and 28 and 29 and 30 show some very common types of the
impractical man. Note the flatness of the brows in every case. Figures 32,
50, and 54 show the foreheads of practical men.