behold the fact that he could rule others. The letter shows wise
diplomacy, frankness, kindliness, wit, tact and infinite patience.
Hooker had harshly and unjustly criticised Lincoln, his commander in
chief. But Lincoln waives all this in deference to the virtues he
believes Hooker possesses, and promotes him to succeed Burnside. In
other words, the man who had been wronged promotes the man who had
wronged him, over the head of a man whom the promotee had wronged and
for whom the promoter had a warm personal friendship.
But all personal considerations were sunk in view of the end desired.
Yet it was necessary that the man promoted should know the truth, and
Lincoln told it to him in a way that did not humiliate nor fire to
foolish anger; but which surely prevented the attack of cerebral
elephantiasis to which Hooker was liable.
Perhaps we had better give the letter entire, and so here it is:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, January 26, 1863.
Major-General Hooker:
General:--I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of
course, I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient
reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some
things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.
I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, of course, I
like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your position, in
which you are right.
You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable if not an
indispensable quality.
You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather
than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the
army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as
you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most
meritorious and honorable brother officer.
I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying
that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course, it
was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command.
Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now
ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The
government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is
neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I
much fear that the spirit you have aided to infuse into the army, of
criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will
now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down.
Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out
of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of
rashness, but with sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Yours very truly, A. LINCOLN.
One point in this letter is especially worth our consideration, for it
suggests a condition that springs up like deadly nightshade from a
poisonous soil. I refer to the habit of carping, sneering, grumbling and
criticising those who are above us. The man who is anybody and who does
anything is certainly going to be criticised, vilified and
misunderstood. This is a part of the penalty for greatness, and every
great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of
greatness. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure
contumely without resentment. Lincoln did not resent criticism; he knew
that every life was its own excuse for being, but look how he calls
Hooker's attention to the fact that the dissension Hooker has sown is
going to return and plague him! "Neither you, nor Napoleon, if he were
alive, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in
it." Hooker's fault falls on Hooker--others suffer, but Hooker suffers
most of all.
Not long ago I met a Yale student home on a vacation. I am sure he did
not represent the true Yale spirit, for he was full of criticism and
bitterness toward the institution. President Hadley came in for his
share, and I was given items, facts, data, with times and places, for a
"peach of a roast."
Very soon I saw the trouble was not with Yale, the trouble was with the
young man. He had mentally dwelt on some trivial slights until he had
gotten so out of harmony with the place that he had lost the power to
derive any benefit from it. Yale college is not a perfect institution--a
fact, I suppose, that President Hadley and most Yale men are quite
willing to admit; but Yale does supply young men certain advantages, and
it depends upon the students whether they will avail themselves of
these advantages or not. If you are a student in college, seize upon
the good that is there. You receive good by giving it. You gain by
giving--so give sympathy and cheerful loyalty to the institution. Be
proud of it. Stand by your teachers--they are doing the best they can.
If the place is faulty, make it a better place by an example of
cheerfully doing your work every day the best you can. Mind your
own business.
If the concern where you are employed is all wrong, and the Old Man is a
curmudgeon, it may be well for you to go to the Old Man and
confidentially, quietly and kindly tell him that his policy is absurd
and preposterous. Then show him how to reform his ways, and you might
offer to take charge of the concern and cleanse it of its secret faults.
Do this, or if for any reason you should prefer not, then take your
choice of these: Get Out, or Get in Line. You have got to do one or the
other--now make your choice. If you work for a man, in heaven's name
work for him.
If he pays you wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for
him--speak well of him, think well of him, stand by him and stand by
the institution that he represents.
I think if I worked for a man, I would work for him. I would not work
for him a part of the time, and the rest of the time work against him. I
would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce
of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
If you must vilify, condemn and eternally disparage, why, resign your
position, and then when you are outside, damn to your heart's content.
But I pray you, as long as you are a part of an institution, do not
condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution--not that--but when
you disparage a concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself.
More than that, you are loosening the tendrils that hold you to the
institution, and the first high wind that happens along, you will be
uprooted and blown away in the blizzard's track--and probably you will
never know why. The letter only says, "Times are dull and we regret
there is not enough work," et cetera.
Everywhere you will find these out-of-a-job fellows. Talk with them and
you will find that they are full of railing, bitterness, scorn and
condemnation. That was the trouble--thru a spirit of fault-finding they
got themselves swung around so they blocked the channel, and had to be
dynamited. They were out of harmony with the place, and no longer being
a help they had to be removed. Every employer is constantly looking for
people who can help him; naturally he is on the lookout among his
employees for those who do not help, and everything and everybody that
is a hindrance has to go. This is the law of trade--do not find fault
with it; it is founded on nature. The reward is only for the man who
helps, and in order to help you must have sympathy.
You cannot help the Old Man so long as you are explaining in an
undertone and whisper, by gesture and suggestion, by thought and mental
attitude that he is a curmudgeon and that his system is dead wrong. You
are not necessarily menacing him by stirring up this cauldron of
discontent and warming envy into strife, but you are doing this: you are
getting yourself on a well-greased chute that will give you a quick ride
down and out. When you say to other employees that the Old Man is a
curmudgeon, you reveal the fact that you are one; and when you tell them
that the policy of the institution is "rotten," you certainly show
that yours is.
This bad habit of fault-finding, criticising and complaining is a tool
that grows keener by constant use, and there is grave danger that he who
at first is only a moderate kicker may develop into a chronic knocker,
and the knife he has sharpened will sever his head.
Hooker got his promotion even in spite of his many failings; but the
chances are that your employer does not have the love that Lincoln
had--the love that suffereth long and is kind. But even Lincoln could
not protect Hooker forever. Hooker failed to do the work, and Lincoln
had to try some one else. So there came a time when Hooker was
superseded by a Silent Man, who criticised no one, railed at nobody--not
even the enemy.
And this Silent Man, who could rule his own spirit, took the cities. He
minded his own business, and did the work that no man can ever do unless
he constantly gives absolute loyalty, perfect confidence, unswerving
fidelity and untiring devotion. Let us mind our own business, and allow
others to mind theirs, thus working for self by working for the good
of all.
The Week-Day, Keep it Holy
Did it ever strike you that it is a most absurd and semi-barbaric thing
to set one day apart as "holy?"
If you are a writer and a beautiful thought comes to you, you never
hesitate because it is Sunday, but you write it down.
If you are a painter, and the picture appears before you, vivid and
clear, you make haste to materialize it ere the vision fades.
If you are a musician, you sing a song, or play it on the piano, that it
may be etched upon your memory--and for the joy of it.
But if you are a cabinet-maker, you may make a design, but you will have
to halt before you make the table, if the day happens to be the "Lord's
Day"; and if you are a blacksmith, you will not dare to lift a hammer,
for fear of conscience or the police. All of which is an admission that
we regard manual labor as a sort of necessary evil, and must be done
only at certain times and places.
The orthodox reason for abstinence from all manual labor on Sunday is
that "God made the heavens and the earth in six days and on the seventh
He rested," therefore, man, created in the image of his Maker, should
hold this day sacred. How it can be possible for a supreme, omnipotent
and all-powerful being without "body, parts or passions" to become
wearied thru physical exertion is a question that is as yet unanswered.
The idea of serving God on Sunday and then forgetting Him all the week
is a fallacy that is fostered by the Reverend Doctor Sayles and his
coadjutor, Deacon Buffum, who passes the Panama for the benefit of those
who would buy absolution. Or, if you prefer, salvation being free, what
we place in the Panama is an honorarium for Deity or his agent, just as
our noted authors never speak at banquets for pay, but accept the
honorarium that in some occult and mysterious manner is left on the
mantel. Sunday, with its immunity from work, was devised for slaves who
got out of all the work they could during the week.
Then, to tickle the approbativeness of the slave, it was declared a
virtue not to work on Sunday, a most pleasing bit of Tom Sawyer
diplomacy. By following his inclinations and doing nothing, a
mysterious, skyey benefit accrues, which the lazy man hopes to have and
to hold for eternity.
Then the slaves who do no work on Sunday, point out those who do as
beneath them in virtue, and deserving of contempt. Upon this theory all
laws which punish the person who works or plays on Sunday have been
passed. Does God cease work one day in seven, or is the work that He
does on Sunday especially different from that which He performs on
Tuesday? The Saturday half-holiday is not "sacred"--the Sunday holiday
is, and we have laws to punish those who "violate" it. No man can
violate the Sabbath; he can, however, violate his own nature, and this
he is more apt to do through enforced idleness than either work or play.
Only running water is pure, and stagnant nature of any sort is
dangerous--a breeding-place for disease.
Change of occupation is necessary to mental and physical health. As it
is, most people get too much of one kind of work. All the week they are
chained to a task, a repugnant task because the dose is too big. They
have to do this particular job or starve. This is slavery, quite as
much as when man was bought and sold as a chattel.
Will there not come a time when all men and women will work because it
is a blessed gift--a privilege? Then, if all worked, wasteful consuming
as a business would cease. As it is, there are many people who do not
work at all, and these pride themselves upon it and uphold the Sunday
laws. If the idlers would work, nobody would be overworked. If this time
ever comes shall we not cease to regard it as "wicked" to work at
certain times, just as much as we would count it absurd to pass a law
making it illegal for us to be happy on Wednesday? Isn't good work an
effort to produce a useful, necessary or beautiful thing? If so, good
work is a prayer, prompted by a loving heart--a prayer to benefit and
bless. If prayer is not a desire, backed up by a right human effort to
bring about its efficacy, then what is it?
Work is a service performed for ourselves and others. If I love you I
will surely work for you--in this way I reveal my love. And to manifest
my love in this manner is a joy and gratification to me. Thus work is
for the worker alone and labor is its own reward. These things being
true, if it is wrong to work on Sunday, it is wrong to love on Sunday;
every smile is a sin, every caress a curse, and all tenderness a crime.
Must there not come a time, if we grow in mentality and spirit, when we
shall cease to differentiate and quit calling some work secular and some
sacred? Isn't it as necessary for me to hoe corn and feed my loved ones
(and also the priest) as for the priest to preach and pray? Would any
priest ever preach and pray if somebody didn't hoe? If life is from God,
then all useful effort is divine; and to work is the highest form of
religion. If God made us, surely He is pleased to see that His work is a
success. If we are miserable, willing to liberate life with a bare
bodkin, we certainly do not compliment our Maker in thus proclaiming His
work a failure. But if our lives are full of gladness and we are
grateful for the feeling that we are one with Deity--helping God to do
His work, then, and only then do we truly serve Him.
Isn't it strange that men should have made laws declaring that it is
wicked for us to work?
Exclusive Friendships
An excellent and gentle man of my acquaintance has said, "When fifty-one
per cent of the voters believe in coöperation as opposed to competition,
the Ideal Commonwealth will cease to be a theory and become a fact."
That men should work together for the good of all is very beautiful, and
I believe the day will come when these things will be, but the simple
process of fifty-one per cent of the voters casting ballots for
socialism will not bring it about.
The matter of voting is simply the expression of a sentiment, and after
the ballots have been counted there still remains the work to be done. A
man might vote right and act like a fool the rest of the year.
The socialist who is full of bitterness, fight, faction and jealousy is
creating an opposition that will hold him and all others like him in
check. And this opposition is well, for even a very imperfect society is
forced to protect itself against dissolution and a condition which is
worse. To take over the monopolies and operate them for the good of
society is not enough, and not desirable either, so long as the idea of
rivalry is rife.
As long as self is uppermost in the minds of men, they will fear and
hate other men, and under socialism there would be precisely the same
scramble for place and power that we see in politics now.
Society can never be reconstructed until its individual members are
reconstructed. Man must be born again. When fifty-one per cent of the
voters rule their own spirit and have put fifty-one per cent of their
present envy, jealousy, bitterness, hate, fear and foolish pride out of
their hearts, then Christian socialism will be at hand, and not
until then.
The subject is entirely too big to dispose of in a paragraph, so I am
just going to content myself here with the mention of one thing, that so
far as I know has never been mentioned in print--the danger to society
of exclusive friendships between man and man, and woman and woman. No
two persons of the same sex can complement each other, neither can they
long uplift or benefit each other. Usually they deform the mental and
spiritual estate. We should have many acquaintances or none. When two
men begin to "tell each other everything," they are hiking for senility.
There must be a bit of well-defined reserve. We are told that in
matter--solid steel for instance--the molecules never touch. They never
surrender their individuality. We are all molecules of Divinity, and our
personality should not be abandoned. Be yourself, let no man be
necessary to you--your friend will think more of you if you keep him at
a little distance. Friendship, like credit, is highest where it is
not used.
I can understand how a strong man can have a great and abiding affection
for a thousand other men, and call them all by name, but how he can
regard any one of these men much higher than another and preserve his
mental balance, I do not know.
Let a man come close enough and he'll clutch you like a drowning person,
and down you both go. In a close and exclusive friendship men partake of
others' weaknesses.
In shops and factories it happens constantly that men will have their
chums. These men relate to each other their troubles--they keep nothing
back--they sympathize with each other, they mutually condole.
They combine and stand by each other. Their friendship is exclusive and
others see that it is. Jealousy creeps in, suspicion awakens, hate
crouches around the corner, and these men combine in mutual dislike for
certain things and persons. They foment each other, and their sympathy
dilutes sanity--by recognizing their troubles men make them real. Things
get out of focus, and the sense of values is lost. By thinking some one
is an enemy you evolve him into one.
Soon others are involved and we have a clique. A clique is a friendship
gone to seed.
A clique develops into a faction, and a faction into a feud, and soon we
have a mob, which is a blind, stupid, insane, crazy, ramping and roaring
mass that has lost the rudder. In a mob there are no individuals--all
are of one mind, and independent thought is gone.
A feud is founded on nothing--it is a mistake--a fool idea fanned into
flame by a fool friend! And it may become a mob.
Every man who has had anything to do with communal life has noticed
that the clique is the disintegrating bacillus--and the clique has its
rise always in the exclusive friendship of two persons of the same sex,
who tell each other all unkind things that are said of each other--"so
be on your guard." Beware of the exclusive friendship! Respect all men
and try to find the good in all. To associate only with the sociable,
the witty, the wise, the brilliant, is a blunder--go among the plain,
the stupid, the uneducated, and exercise your own wit and wisdom. You
grow by giving--have no favorites--you hold your friend as much by
keeping away from him as you do by following after him.
Revere him--yes, but be natural and let space intervene. Be a Divine
molecule.
Be yourself and give your friend a chance to be himself. Thus do you
benefit him, and in benefiting him you benefit yourself.
The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.
Of course there have been cases of exclusive friendship that are pointed
out to us as grand examples of affection, but they are so rare and
exceptional that they serve to emphasize the fact that it is
exceedingly unwise for men of ordinary power and intellect to exclude
their fellow men. A few men, perhaps, who are big enough to have a place
in history, could play the part of David to another's Jonathan and yet
retain the good will of all, but the most of us would engender
bitterness and strife.
And this beautiful dream of socialism, where each shall work for the
good of all, will never come about until fifty-one per cent of the
adults shall abandon all exclusive friendships. Until that day arrives
you will have cliques, denominations--which are cliques grown
big--factions, feuds and occasional mobs.
Do not lean on any one, and let no one lean on you. The ideal society
will be made up of ideal individuals. Be a man and be a friend to
everybody.
When the Master admonished his disciples to love their enemies, he had
in mind the truth that an exclusive love is a mistake--love dies when it
is monopolized--it grows by giving. Love, lim., is an error. Your enemy
is one who misunderstands you--why should you not rise above the fog and
see his error and respect him for the good qualities you find in him?
The Folly of Living in the Future
The question is often asked, "What becomes of all the Valedictorians and
all the Class-Day Poets?"
I can give information as to two parties for whom this inquiry is
made--the Valedictorian of my class is now a most industrious and worthy
floor-walker in Siegel, Cooper & Company's store, and I was the
Class-Day Poet. Both of us had our eyes fixed on the Goal. We stood on
the Threshold and looked out upon the World preparatory to going forth,
seizing it by the tail and snapping its head off for our own
delectation.
We had our eyes fixed on the Goal--it might better have been the gaol.
It was a very absurd thing for us to fix our eyes on the Goal. It
strained our vision and took our attention from our work. We lost our
grip on the present.
To think of the Goal is to travel the distance over and over in your
mind and dwell on how awfully far off it is. We have so little
mind--doing business on such a limited capital of intellect--that to
wear it threadbare looking for a far-off thing is to get hopelessly
stranded in Siegel, Cooper & Company.
Of course, Siegel, Cooper & Company is all right, too, but the point is
this--it wasn't the Goal!
A goodly dash of indifference is a requisite in the formula for doing a
great work.
No one knows what the Goal is--we are all sailing under sealed orders.
Do your work to-day, doing it the best you can, and live one day at a
time. The man that does this is conserving his God-given energy, and not
spinning it out into tenuous spider threads so fragile and filmy that
unkind Fate will probably brush it away.
To do your work well to-day, is the certain preparation for something
better to-morrow. The past has gone from us forever; the future we
cannot reach; the present alone is ours. Each day's work is a
preparation for the next day's duties.
Live in the present--the Day is here, the time is Now.
There is only one thing that is worth praying for--that we may be in the
line of Evolution.
The Spirit of Man
Maybe I am all wrong about it, yet I cannot help believing that the
spirit of man will live again in a better world than ours. Fenelon says:
"Justice demands another life to make good the inequalities of this."
Astronomers prophesy the existence of stars long before they can see
them. They know where they ought to be, and training their telescopes in
that direction they wait, knowing they shall find them.
Materially, no one can imagine anything more beautiful than this earth,
for the simple reason that we cannot imagine anything we have not seen;
we may make new combinations, but the whole is made up of parts of
things with which we are familiar. This great green earth out of which
we have sprung, of which we are a part, that supports our bodies which
must return to it to repay the loan, is very, very beautiful.