THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
"Nothing succeeds like success."
Perhaps the true meaning of this old French proverb is that once we
have a measure of success we are the more likely to achieve still more
victories. The discovery that our strength, perseverance and
determination have been capable of bending circumstances to our will
and bringing to fulfillment the end for which we have wished and
worked, gives us renewed courage and inspiration for the undertaking
of new and larger duties.
We learn to do by doing. Achievement leads to still greater
achievement. Orison Swett Marden, one of the world's wisest of
observers and deepest of philosophers, says, "The world makes way for
the determined man." And so it does for the determined woman, or the
determined girl or boy.
Regarding this thing called "Success," too many of us are apt to think
that it means some one, isolated, remarkable achievement, that comes
at the end of a long period of striving in some particular field of
endeavor. This is not entirely true. Every great success is made of
very many lesser successes that have preceded it. Just as the cap-stone
at the top of the tallest building is held in its lofty position
by every stone beneath it even down to the ones deep in the earth at
the very foundation of the structure, which are indeed perhaps the
most important of all.
So the thing which the world is pleased to call "Success" is built up
by a thousand little successes on which it must finally rest. The
building of a life success begins with the earliest dawn of being and
must be carried on with as much care as a mason would give to the
laying of the walls of a structure designed to stand for years. The
mason knows that if he does not lay his foundations deep and firm,
that if the walls are not kept straight and plumb, that if he puts
faulty bricks or stones in the walls, the building will not be a
success. The work at every stage must be a success or the completed
structure must be a failure.
So it is in life. If our moments are not successful, the hours can
never be so, and the days and years can but enlarge upon and emphasize
their failure. "Every day is a fresh beginning, every morn is a world
made new," says Susan Coolidge. There is a chance for attaining
success every hour and day of our lives.
Success is not alone for the great men of the world who find new
continents, explore the poles, navigate the air, write great poems,
paint great pictures, or who amass fortunes of millions of dollars.
No, success is for any and all of us, here and now, any and all the
time.
Were you prepared in your studies at school to-day? If you were, that
was success.
Have you your music lesson well in hand for this afternoon? If so,
that means success.
Have you been kind to everybody to-day, and with a pleasant word and a
willing hand, done all you could to make life pleasanter and happier
for those about you? If so, that is a fine moral success. And if you
will multiply the achievements of to-day by the days that are in the
years before you, you can see the result that you have a reason to
expect, as your life's work.
Success means doing all that we can do as well as we can do it. It may
be work or it may be play. It may be something of seemingly little
account or it may be something of importance, but unless we do it
well, and to the best of our ability it will not be a success.
"Every day," says Bunsen, "ought to be begun as a serious work,
standing alone in itself, and yet connected with the past and the
future." And Ruskin still further emphasizes this thought in the
words: "Let every dawn of morning be to you as the beginning of life,
and every setting sun be to you as its close; then let every one of
these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for
others."
We begin to achieve success when we do the things that are necessary
for such achievement. Huxley expressed the whole secret of the matter
when he said: "Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is
the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it
ought to be done, as it ought to be done, whether you like to do it or
not."
A good life, which is but another name for success, does not come by
accident. Fortune may seem to favor it but it is the disposition to
seize upon the opportunities that present themselves that make some
lives seem more blest with "good chances" than others.
Self cultivation is the secret of most all attainments in the realm of
human endeavor. As a matter of fact, all that others can do for us is
as nothing to that which we may do for ourselves. Persons who do
things usually have to work for results, or they have at some time had
to work to acquire the habits that later on make it seem so easy for
them to do fine things. "We think," says J. C. Van Dyke, "because the
completed work looks easy or reads easy, that it must have been done
easily. But the geniuses of the world have all put upon record their
conviction that there is more virtue in perspiration than in
inspiration. The great poets, whether in print or in paint, have spent
their weeks and months--yes, years--composing, adjusting, putting in
and taking out. They have known what it is to 'lick things into
shape,' to labor and be baffled, to despair and to hope anew."
With the dawning of every morning, life comes bringing to us a new and
wonderful day to employ it as we will. Shall it be a fine, gratifying
success, or shall it be a failure? Shall it be part success and part
failure? There can be no doubt about it being a matter that is very
largely in our own keeping.
MORNING GATES
Each golden dawn presents two gates
That open to the day;
Through one a path of joy awaits,
Through one a weary way.
Choose well, for by that choice is willed
If ye shall be distressed
At eventide, or richly filled
With strength and peace and rest.
"Every true life," says J. R. Miller, "should be a perpetual climbing
upward. We should put our faults under our feet, and make them steps
on which to lift ourselves daily a little higher.... We never in this
world get to a point where we may regard ourselves as having reached
life's goal, as having attained the loftiest height within our reach;
there are always other rounds of the ladder to climb."
So we know that the purpose of life is not to make a failure of it.
And we know that we cannot make it a success unless we work toward
that end. "The first great rule is, we must do something--that life
must have a purpose and an aim--that work should be not merely
occasional and spasmodic, but steady and continuous," says Lecky.
"Pleasure is a jewel which will retain its luster only when it is in a
setting of work, and a vacant life is one of the worst of pains,
though the islands of leisure that stud a crowded, well-occupied life
may be among the things to which we look back with the greatest
delight."
There can be no interest where there is no purpose. How tiresome it
would very soon become if we were compelled to make idle, useless
marks upon paper, without any design whatsoever. But to be able to
draw pictures is a delight that no one can forego. "The most pitiable
life is the aimless life," says Jenkin Lloyd Jones. "Heaven help the
man or woman, the boy or girl, who is not interested in anything
outside of his or her own immediate comfort and that related thereto,
who eats bread to make strength for no special cause, who pursues
science, reads poetry, studies books, for no earthly or heavenly
purpose than mere enjoyment or acquisition; who goes on accumulating
wealth, piling up money, with no definite or absorbing purpose to
apply it to anything in particular."
Perhaps we expect to-day, more than men have at any other time in the
world's history, that girls as well as boys, must look forward to
doing something definite in life. It is not deemed sufficient for
anyone simply "to be." The whole world is now living the verb "to do."
The grace, strength, beauty and worth of womanhood is being enhanced
with the constantly enlarging sphere of women's work. The primitive,
almost heathen, notion that the feminine sex constituted a handicap in
the achieving of great success in a great majority of the fields of
human endeavor is rapidly fading away. It can no longer stand in the
light of the brilliant achievements women are making everywhere.
Indeed, men are becoming well convinced that their presumed supremacy
in many of the world's spheres of work is being successfully
challenged at every point. So general is this experience becoming that
the present status of things might well be set forth somewhat after
the following style:
MAN, POOR MAN!
The question used to be, 't is true,
"What tasks are there for girls to do?"
But now we've reached an epoch when
We ask: "What is there left for men?"
They'll keep enlarging "woman's sphere"
Till man, poor, shrinking man, we fear,
Must grow quite useless, after while,
And go completely out of style.
This piece of frivolity can well be pardoned on account of its
absurdity. The great work of the world is so broad, so deep, so high,
that it calls for the best endeavors of all girls and boys, women and
men. That the door of opportunity is henceforth to be open to all is
an assurance that the work is to be more grandly and beautifully done
than ever before. What women may do in the years to come is
wonderfully set forth by what women have done in the past. All history
is filled with the splendid achievements of the women of the world. A
girl of to-day will find no reading more helpful and inspiring than
the lives of such noble women as Martha Washington, Queen Victoria,
Sally Bush--Abraham Lincoln's good step-mother--Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Miss Louisa Alcott, Laura
Bridgman, Charlotte Cushman, Maria Mitchell, Lady Franklin, Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe, and Florence Nightingale.
If the girls of to-day are to have larger rewards in the world's work,
they must fit themselves for the larger responsibilities. Every
prudent girl will, of course, talk over the prospect of her future
years with her parents, her brothers and sisters, her teachers, or
with mature and responsible friends. So very, very much depends on
laying the right foundations. But there are many qualities that must
constitute parts of every enduring foundation.
Attention, application, accuracy, method, punctuality, good behavior,
modesty, gentility, enlightenment, all of these and more are essential
to success and for the highest achievement of the true purpose of
living.
It has been well said that it is the repetition of little acts which
constitutes not only the sum of human character, but which determines
the character of nations; and where men or nations have broken down,
it will almost invariably be found that neglect of little things was
the rock on which they were wrecked.
Every human being has duties to be performed, and, therefore, has need
of cultivating the capacity for doing them--whether the sphere of
action be the management of a household, the conduct of a trade or a
profession, or the government of a nation.
The one fixed truth in the matter of character-building is the fact
that steady attention to the little matters of detail lies at the very
foundation of human progress.
The splendid trees that lift their branches heavenward depend for
their sustenance on the tiny thread-like roots that come into very
close relations with the soil and can thus take in the nourishment
needed for the making of growth. This, the larger roots have not the
capacity for doing. So in the growth of the human intellect and human
character, it is the little actions, day by day, that really do the
permanent building. With patient purpose to do successfully the many
little tasks that confront us we can later on achieve the larger
success awaiting us.
The world's history is full of the triumphs of those who have had to
struggle from beginning to end for recognition. Carey, the great
missionary, began life as a shoemaker; the chemist Vanquelin was the
son of a peasant; the poet Burns was a farmer boy and a day laborer;
Ben Jonson was a bricklayer; Livingstone, the traveler and explorer,
was a weaver; Abraham Lincoln was a "rail-splitter" and a farmer boy.
At the plow, on the bench, at the loom, these men dreamed of the
future greatness, and step by step, day by day, they persevered until
they won the full measure of success.
The great and good women of the world have won their distinction in
the same manner. They cultivated the sterling qualities that made for
success. They acquired the manners that attracted toward them help and
strength of others interested in good causes and those struggling to
advance them.
And the girl who is reading these lines, can, if she will, make her
life a happy success. She may be praised by the world or it may be by
the small circle of friends with whom she comes in contact. Her name
may never be written in history but it may be fondly spoken by
parents, sisters, brothers, schoolmates, friends. In a thousand
gracious ways she can make the hours, days and years good and golden
for her own precious self and for all who know her. She must be
thoughtful and intelligently alert to the opportunities lying all
about her ready to be fashioned into shining deeds. She must know that
she is a precious craft on the sea of life and that she must not be
permitted to drift from the harbor of youth and of home without a life
pilot. And this pilot should be her own conscience, hedged about with
the learning, the good breeding, the fine character that she herself,
under proper guidance, must cultivate through the impressionable years
of childhood and maidenhood. If she so wills it, beauty and grace and
true worth are all hers. And let her greet and go forth in the
freshness of each golden day, as indeed, she must greet life, itself,
with a glad, hopeful, helpful
MORNING PRAYER
Oh, may I be strong and brave, to-day,
And may I be kind and true,
And greet all men in a gracious way,
With frank good cheer in the things I say,
And love in the deeds I do.
May the simple heart of a child be mine,
And the grace of a rose in bloom;
Let me fill the day with a hope divine
And turn my face to the sky's glad shine,
With never a cloud of gloom.
With the golden levers of love and light
I would lift the world, and when,
Through a path with kindly deeds made bright,
I come to the calm of the starlit night,
Let me rest in peace. Amen.
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[Transcriber's Note: Sidenote quotations from the preceeding chapter are
gathered in this section.]
He who works for sweetness and light works to make reason and the will
of God prevail.--Matthew Arnold.
Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration
for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich
and beautify our life.--Phillips Brooks.
Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a
faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.--Barrow.
Good manners are part of good morals.--Whately.
After all, the kind of world one carries about within one's self is
the important thing, and the world outside takes all its grace, color
and value from that.--Lowell.
In character, in manner, in style, in all things the supreme
excellence is simplicity.--Longfellow.
The small courtesies sweeten life; the greater ennoble it.--Bovee.
Never mind if you cannot do all things just as well as you would like
to. It is only necessary to do things just as well as you can.
--Patrick Flynn.
Not so much beautiful features as a beautiful soul can make a
beautiful face.--Margaret E. Sangster.
There is a marvelous power in a well-defined individuality.--Joe
Mitchell Chapple.
Resolution always gives us courage.--A. E. Winship.
Of all fruitless errands, sending a tear to look after a day that has
gone is the most fruitless.--Dickens.
You can never be wise unless you love reading.--Johnson.
The perfecting of one's self is the fundamental base of all progress
and all moral development.--Confucius.
Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.--Ruskin.
It is not a lucky word, this same impossible; no good comes to those
who have it so often in their mouth.--Carlyle.
I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.--Shakespeare.
Youth, all possibilities are in its hands.--Longfellow.
Thought is deeper than all speech.--Cranch.
People influence us who have no business to do it, simply because we
have neglected to train ourselves to attend to our own affairs.
--A. E. Winship.
As the heart, so is the life. The within is ceaselessly becoming the
without.--James Allen.
I have faith in the people.--Abraham Lincoln.
Of all the propensities which teach mankind to torment themselves,
that of causeless fear is the most irritating, busy, painful and
pitiable.--Walter Scott.
He who cannot smile ought not to keep a shop.--Chinese Proverb.
Common sense bows to the inevitable and makes use of it.--Wendell
Phillips.
If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend,
experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope
your guardian genius.--Addison.
Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures.--Bovee.
It is generally the idle who complain they cannot find time to do that
which they fancy they wish.--Lubbock.
What ardently we wish we soon believe.--Young.
Nature never stands still, nor souls neither; they ever go up or go
down.--Julia C. R. Dorr.
Thought alone is eternal.--Owen Meredith.
Only those live who do good.--Tolstoi.
The greatest truths are the simplest.--Hare.
Many people owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous
difficulties.--Spurgeon.
Thought by thought piled, till some great truth is loosened.
--Shelley.
The child's reasoning powers are, as it were, the wings with which he
will eventually have to fly.--Landon.
Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be.
Custom will render it easy and agreeable.--Pythagoras.
Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.
--Richter.
Memory is the treasure-house of the mind.--Fuller.
Habit is an internal principle which leads us to do easily, naturally,
and with growing certainty, what we do often.--Webster.
The vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone
in your heart--this you will build your life by, this you will
become.--James Allen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By MARGARET E. SANGSTER
HAPPY SCHOOL DAYS
A Book for Girls
In this book, Mrs. Sangster, the popular friend of all girls, writes
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Handsome cover. Cloth, 12mo. $1.00
FORBES & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS--CHICAGO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By NIXON WATERMAN
"BOY WANTED"
A book of jolly, sparkling, invigorating counsel, in prose and verse,
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PUBLISHERS--CHICAGO