IX

IF I WERE TWENTY-ONE I WOULD DETERMINE, EVEN IF I COULD NEVER BE

ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD, THAT I WOULD BE A THOROUGHBRED

Thoroughbred, as it is currently used, is a word rather difficult to

define, perhaps entirely non-definable. Yet we all know what it

means--it is like Love.

But it implies being several things: One, being a good sport, by

which I mean the kind of a man that does not whine when he fails,

but gets up smiling and tackles it again, the kind of man whose fund

of cheer and courage does not depend upon success, but keeps brave

and sweet even in failure.

Let me quote what I have written elsewhere on this point:

In one of the plays of this season, "The Very Minute," one

of the characters says something to this effect: You go on

till you can go no further, you reach the limit of human

endurance, and then--you hold on another minute, and that's

the minute that counts.

The idea is a good one. That last minute, the other side of

the breaking point, is worth thinking about.

It is that which marks the thoroughbred.

There is a something in the hundredth man that bespeaks a

finer quality. It is unconquerableness, heroism,

stick-to-it-iveness, or whatever you have a mind to call it.

We have a way of attributing this to breeding, after the

analogy of horses and dogs; but while there's something in

blood I doubt if it is a very trustworthy guaranty of

excellence. So many vigorous parents have children that are

morally spindling, and so many surprising samples of

superiority come from common stock, that heredity is far

from dependable.

But the quality exists, no matter how you account for it--a

certain toughness of moral fibre, an indestructibility of

purpose.

Any mind is over matter, but there are some wills so

imperial, so dominant over the body, that they keep it from

collapse even after its strength is spent.

We see it physically in the prize fighter who "doesn't know

when he is beaten," in the race horse that throws an

unexpected dash into the last stretch even after his last

ounce of force is gone, in the Spartan soldier who exclaimed

"If I fall I fight on my knees."

Of all human qualities that have lit up the sombreness of

this tragic earth, I count this, of being a thoroughbred,

the happiest.

It has saved more souls than penance and punishment, it has

rescued more business enterprises than shrewdness, it has

won more battles and more games, and altogether felicitously

loosed more hard knots in the tangled skein of destiny than

any other virtue.

Most people are quitters. They reach the limit. They are

familiar with the last straw.

But the hundredth man is a thoroughbred. You cannot corner

him. He will not give up. He cannot find the word "fail" in

his lexicon. He has never learned to whine.

What shall we do with him? There's nothing to do but to hand

him success. It's just as well to deliver him the prize, for

he will get it eventually. There's no use trying to drown

him, for he won't sink.

There's only one creature in the world better than the man

who is a thoroughbred. It is the woman who is a

thoroughbred.

X

IF I WERE TWENTY-ONE I WOULD MAKE SOME PERMANENT, AMICABLE

ARRANGEMENT WITH MY CONSCIENCE

God, Duty, Death, and Moral Responsibility are huge facts which no

life can escape. They are the external sphinxes by the road of every

man's existence. He must frame some sort of an answer to them.

It may please the reader to know how I have answered them. It is

very simple.

I am familiar, to some extent, with most of the religions, cults,

and creeds of mankind. There are certain points common to every

decent religion, for in every kind of church you are taught to be

honest, pure-minded, unselfish, reverent, brave, loyal, and the

like.

These elements of religion may be called the Great Common Divisor of

all faiths.

This G. C. D. is my religion. It is what more than fifty years of

thought and experience has winnowed out for me. It is my religion.

And I think I glimpse what Emerson meant when he wrote that "all

good men are of one religion."

And the matter can be reduced to yet plainer terms. There is but

"one thing needful," and there's no use being "careful and troubled

about many things." That one thing is to _do right_.

To do Right and not Wrong will save any man's soul, and if he

believes any doctrine that implies doing wrong he is lost.

So, let a man of twenty-one resolve, and keep his purpose, that, no

matter what comes, no matter how mixed his theology may be, no

matter what may be the rewards of wrong-doing, or the perils and

losses of right-doing, he will do right; then, if there is any moral

law in the universe, that man must sometime, somewhere, arrive at

his inward triumph, his spiritual victory and peace.

And the corollary of this is that if I have done wrong the best and

only way to cure it is to quit doing wrong and begin to do right. If

any man will stick to this, make it his anchor in times of storm,

his pole-star in nights of uncertainty, he will cast out of his life

that which is life's greatest enemy--Fear. He need not fear man nor

woman, nor governments nor mischief-makers, nor the devil nor God.

He will be able to say with the accent of sincerity that word of

William Ernest Henley, to me the greatest spiritual declaration in

any language:

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from Pole to Pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud,

Beneath the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Let me repeat that I have not been telling what I did with the

implication that the youth of twenty-one would do well to follow me.

I did not do all these things. Far from it! I wish I had. I only say

that if I were twenty-one, as I now see life, I would do as I have

here suggested. But perhaps I would not. I might go about barking my

shins and burning my fingers, making idiotic experiments in the

endeavour to prove that I was an exception to all the rules, and

knew a little more than all the ancients. So let not the young man

be discouraged if he has committed follies; for there seems to

emerge a peculiar and vivid wisdom from error, from making an ass of

one's self, and all that, more useful to one's own life than any

wisdom he can get from sages or copybooks.

In what I have written I have not tried to indicate the art of

"getting on," or of acquiring riches or position. These usually are

what is meant by success. But success is of two kinds, outward and

inward, or apparent and real. Outward success may depend somewhat

upon what is in you, but it depends more upon luck. It is a gambling

game. And it is hardly worth a strong man's while. Inward and real

success, on the contrary, is not an affair of chance at all, but is

as certain as any natural law. Any human being that will observe the

laws of life as carefully as successful business men observe the

laws of business will come to that inward poise and triumph which is

life's happiest crown, as certainly as the stars move in their

courses.

I would, therefore, if I were twenty-one, study the art of life. It

is good to know arithmetic and geography and bookkeeping and all

practical matters, but it is better to know how to live, how to

spend your day so that at the end of it you shall be content, how to

spend your life so that you feel it has been worth while.