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_The_ YOUNG MAN _and_
THE WORLD
By
Albert J. Beveridge
D. Appleton and Company
New York
1905
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published October, 1905_
PREFACE
The chapters of this volume were, originally, papers published in _The
Saturday Evening Post_ of Philadelphia. The first paper on "The Young
Man and the World," which gives the title to the book, was written, at
the request of the editor of that magazine, as an addition to a series
of articles upon the Philippines and statesmen of contemporaneous
eminence.
This paper called for another, and each in its turn called for the one
that followed it. And so the series grew from day to day, largely out
of the suggestions of its readers--a sort of collaboration. A
considerable correspondence resulted, and requests were made that the
articles be collected in permanent form. This is the genesis of this
book. I hope it will do some good.
While addressed more directly to young men, these papers were yet
written for men on both sides the hill and on the crest thereof. I
would draw maturity and youth closer together. I would have the
sympathy between them ever fresh and vital. I would have them
understand one another and thus profit each by the strength of the
other.
The manner in which these papers were written created certain
repetitions. After careful consideration I have concluded to let them
remain. They are upon subjects of vital concern. Where it is necessary
to remember, it is better to be wearied than to forget. And these
papers were meant to be helpful. They are merely plain talks as of
friends conferring together.
ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE.
INDIANAPOLIS, _May 1, 1905._
CONTENTS
PAGE
I.--THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD 1
II.--THE OLD HOME 54
III.--THE COLLEGE? 83
1. The Young Man who Goes.
2. The Young Man who Cannot Go.
IV.--THE NEW HOME 152
V.--THE YOUNG LAWYER AND HIS BEGINNINGS 186
VI.--PUBLIC SPEAKING 217
VII.--THE YOUNG MAN AND THE PULPIT 246
VIII.--GREAT THINGS YET TO BE DONE 278
IX.--NEGATIVE FUNDAMENTALS 310
X.--THE YOUNG MAN AND THE NATION 334
XI.--THE WORLD AND THE YOUNG MAN 366
XII.--THE YOUNG MAN'S SECOND WIND; OR, FACING
THE WORLD AT FIFTY 387
THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD
I
THE YOUNG MAN AND THE WORLD
Be honest with the world and the world will be honest with you. This
is the fundamental truth of all real prosperity and happiness. For the
purposes of every man's daily affairs, all other maxims are to this
central verity as the branches of a tree to its rooted trunk.
The world will be honest with you whether you are honest with it or
not. You cannot trick it--remember that. If you try it, the world will
punish you when it discovers your fraud. But be honest with the world
from nobler motives than prudence.
Prudence will not make you _be_ honest--it will only make you _act_
honest. And you must be honest.
I do not mean that lowest form of honesty which bids you keep your
hands clean of another's goods or money; I do not mean that you shall
not be a "grafter," to use the foul and sinister word which certain
base practices have recently compelled us to coin. Of course you will
be honest in a money sense.
But that is only the beginning; you must go farther in your dealings
with the world. You must be intellectually honest. Do not pretend to
be what you are not--no affectations, no simulations, no falsehoods
either of speech or thought, of conduct or attitude. Let truth abide
in the very heart of you.
"I take no stock in that man; he poses his face, he attitudinizes his
features. The man who tries to impress me by his countenance is
constitutionally false," said the editor of a powerful publication, in
commenting on a certain personage then somewhat in the public eye.
You see how important honesty is even in facial expression. I
emphasize this veracity of character because it is elemental. You may
have all the gifts and graces but if you have not this essential you
are bankrupt. Be honest to the bone. Be clean of blood as well as of
tongue.
Never try to create a deeper impression than Nature creates for you,
and that means never attempt to create any impression at all. For
example, never try to look wise. Many a front of gravity and weight
conceals an intellectual desolation. In Moscow you will find the exact
external counterpart of Tolstoi. It is said that it is difficult to
distinguish the philosopher from his double. Yet this duplicate in
appearance of the greatest of living writers is a cab driver without
even the brightness of the jehu.
Be what you are, therefore, and no more; yes, and no less--which is
equally important. In a word, start right. Be honest with yourself,
too. If you have started wrong, go back and start over again. But
don't change more than once. Some men never finish because they are
always beginning. Be careful how you choose and then stick to your
second choice. A poor claim steadily worked may be better than a good
one half developed. The man who makes too many starts seldom makes
anything else.
But don't pretend that you have a thousand dollars in bank when you
hold in your hands the statement of your overdraft. Face your account
with Nature like a man. For Nature is a generous, though remorseless,
financier, delivering you your just due and exacting the uttermost of
your debt. Also Nature renders you a daily accounting.
And, at the very beginning, Nature writes upon the tablet of your
inner consciousness an inventory of your strengths and of your
weaknesses, and lists there those tasks which you are best fitted to
perform--those tasks which Nature _meant_ you to perform. For Nature
put you here to _do something_; you were not born to be an ornament.
First, then, learn your limitations. Take time enough to think out
just what you _cannot_ do. This process of elimination will soon
reduce life's possibilities for you to a few things. Of these things
select the one which is nearest you, and, having selected it, put all
other loves from you.
It is a business maxim in my profession that "law is a jealous
mistress." It is very true, but it is not more true than it is that
every other calling in life is a jealous mistress. To every man _his_
task is the hardest, _his_ situation the most difficult.
By finding out one's limitations is not meant, of course, what society
will permit you to do, or what men will permit you to do, but what
Nature will permit you to do. You have no other master than Nature.
Nature's limitations only are the bounds of your success. So far as
your success is concerned, no man, no set of men, no society, not even
all the world of humanity, is your master; but Nature is. "We cannot,"
says Emerson, "bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal
with persons."
"_Poeta nascitur, non fit_," is just as applicable to lawyers and
mechanics and engineers as to poets. More failures have been caused by
the old idea that a man may make himself what he will, than by any
single half-truth that has crept into our common speech and belief. A
man may make himself what he will within the limitations Nature has
set about him.
"When I was born,
From all the seas of strength
Fate filled a chalice,
Saying, This be thy portion, child,"
declares the Persian sage. But all that Hafiz means by that is that a
Paderewski shall not attempt blacksmithing, or a Rothschild try
cartooning or sculpture or watchmaking, or any man undertake that for
which Nature has not fitted him.
Do we not see instances every day of men made unhappy for life, and
their powers lost to the world by trying to do that for which they
have no aptitude? Parents obeying the attractive theory that any boy
can make himself what he pleases decide upon some ambitious career for
him without considering his natural abilities and efficiencies.
Usually some calling of clamorous conspicuity is selected.
Twenty years ago the law was the favorite avenue upon which fond
parents would thus set the feet of their offspring; the law, they
thought, would enable him better to "make his mark"--that is, to
parade up and down before the public eye and fill the public ear with
declamation. Even yet that profession has clientless members,
miserable in their hearts over their self-consciousness that they are
not lawyers and never can be lawyers, who would have been useful,
prosperous, and happy if they could have been permitted to be
architects or merchants or farmers or doctors or soldiers or sculptors
or editors or what not.
One of the cleverest of our present-day writers of fiction started out
to be a lawyer. But he could not keep his pen from paper nor restrain
that mysterious instrument from tracing sketches of character and
drawing pictures of human situations. Very well! He had the courage to
obey the call of his preferences; and to-day, instead of being an
unskillful attorney, he is noted and notable in the present-hour world
of letters.
Anthony Hope in England is another illustration precisely in point. On
the other hand, Erskine, who was intended by his parents for the army,
was destined by Nature for the bar. This master-advocate of all the
history of English jurisprudence felt it in his blood that he _must_
practise law; and so his sword rusted while he studied Blackstone.
Finally, he deserted the field for the forum, there to become the most
illustrious barrister the United Kingdom has produced.
I therefore emphasize the importance of finding out what you can _do_
best rather than what either you or your parents _wish_ you could do
best. For it seems to me that this is getting very close to the truth
of life. The thoughtless commonplace that "every boy may be President"
has worked mischief, sown unhappiness, and robbed humanity of useful
workers.
Every boy cannot be President, and, what is more, every boy ought not
to be. Let Edison remain in his laboratory and enrich mankind with his
wizard wisdom. England would have lost her great explorer if Drake had
tried to write plays; while Shakespeare would doubtless have been
sea-sick on the decks of the Golden Hind. Let Verdi compose, and charm
the universal heart with his witcheries of sound; let Cavour keep to
his statesmanship, that a dismembered people may again be made one.
Every man to his calling. "Let the shoemaker stick to his last," said
Appelles.
Ito might have led the Japanese armies to defeat--Oyama led them to
victory. But Ito created modern Japan, wrote its constitution and
introduced those methods which made Oyama's successes possible. Each
man succeeded because he chose to do what Nature fitted him to do.
Of course you may be fitted for more than one thing. Cæsar could have
equaled if not surpassed Cicero in mere oratory had he not preferred
to find, in war and government, a fame more enduring. But, if you try
all things for which you may be equipped by Nature, you will so
scatter your energies through the delta of your aptitudes that your
very wealth and variety of gifts neutralizes them all. No. Pick out
one of the things you can do well and let the others go. A tree is
pruned on the same principle. Stick to one thing. Beware of your
versatilities.
Your life's work chosen give wing to your imagination. Behold yourself
preeminent in your field of effort. Dream of yourself as the best
civil engineer of your time, or the soundest banker or ablest
merchant. If you are a farmer fancy yourself the master of all the
secrets science is daily discovering in this most engaging of
occupations; picture yourself as the man who has accomplished most in
the realm of agriculture.
Set for yourself the ideal of perfection in your calling--being sure
that it is Nature's calling. Then let your dreams become beliefs; let
your imaginings develop into faith. Complete the process by resolving
to make that belief come true. Then go ahead and _make it come true_.
Keep your resolution bright. Never let it rust. Burnish it with
work--untiring, unhasting, unyielding work.
Work--that is the magic word. In these four letters all possibilities
are wrapped up. "Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened
unto you." Or let us paraphrase the sacred page and say--Work and you
will win. Work to your ideal. If you never reach it--and who can
achieve perfection?--you surely will approach it.
Do not be impatient of your progress. If, to your own measurement,
you seem to be moving slowly, remember that, to the observation of
your fellow men, you are making substantial and satisfactory advance
and, to the eye of your rivals, you are proceeding with unreasonable
speed.
Don't pay any attention to how _fast_ you are getting on but _go ahead
and get on_. Keep working. And work with all your might. How wise the
Bible is: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
And keep on doing it--persist--persist--persist. Again the Bible:
"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before
kings." Do not fear hard knocks. They are no sign that you will not
finally win the battle. Indeed, ability to endure in silence is one of
the best evidences that you will finally prevail.
Yes, put yourself into your work--and put all of yourself into your
work. Having done that, be content with your effort--do not fret. If
all you do yields the fruit you hope for, do not fret while that fruit
is ripening. On the other hand, if your labor comes to nothing, still
do not fret. A like fate has fallen upon uncounted millions before you
and will come to unnumbered myriads after you. If you have done your
best you have done better than the man who has done more than you but
who has not done his best.
And so, whatever the outcome, start out with this rule and keep it to
the end. For nothing wastes your powers so much as apprehension. The
hardest work, if done with common sense, is after all a tonic. But
fear lest that work will not yield you as much as you wish is a sort
of irritating cocaine of character, numbing and deadening all of your
powers and at the same time lashing your mind and nerves with the
knotted thongs of unhappiness. Besides, fretting is so trivial, so
little, so commonplace. Fail if you must, but do not be contemptible.
He who worries not only poisons the very fountains of his own strength
but arouses in the world's attitude toward him a sort of sneering
pity. So the very first thing that I have to suggest to you is that
you should _be a man_ in all your doings and throughout your whole
career.
That is it--be a man; a great, strong, willing, kindly man--calm in
the glory of a fearless heart, serene in your trust and belief in God,
the Father of the world, and so sure of the justice of His providence
that you go about your daily business free from those silly cares
which corrode and ruin manhood itself.
Be a man--that is the first and the last rule of the greatest success
in life. For the greatest success in life does not mean dollars heaped
in bank-vaults nor volumes written, nor railroads built, nor laws
devised, nor armies led. No, the greatest success is none of these.
The supreme success is character.
Pay no attention to mere spiteful criticism, but seek, as for gold and
precious stones, the chastening advice of friends. Do not be offended
if your friends say an unpleasant thing of you. And here we are at the
Bible again: "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of
an enemy are deceitful."
These recurrences to what those wise old Hebrews said make one feel
that one is committing a superfluity when one attempts to say anything
along the line of practical advice, since anything that any man can
say is nothing more than a very weak dilution of the concentrated
thought of the most acute minds of the greatest business people, the
most successful material people--yes, and the most idealistic
people--who ever lived, the ancient, the mysterious, the persistent
Jews.
This is saying much for the Hebrew blood and genius; but have not
these Jews given us our moral laws, our spiritual ideals, our sacred
faith? Not only the bankers of the world are they, but the formulators
of the rules of conduct between man and man, and of that adoring
attitude which the enlightened mind should always maintain toward the
All-Father. The Jews are the universal people.
If you like ethnology, study the Jews. Study the Germans, too. What
peoples they both are--utterly unlike, yet full of the inspiration of
thoughts and deeds and persistence. Persistence--there is a word of
might it will pay you to ponder over.
Persistence--"stick-to-it-ive-ness." It is a quality better than
genius. The Germans have that quality preeminently, and other
wholesome and masterful characteristics as well. They are domestic yet
warlike, industrial yet artistic, experts in commerce yet disciples of
science. Study the Germans!
Though you must not fear criticism, do not disregard it. You may find
a suggestion in it, and thus your enemy will become your counselor.
But applause! Fly from the desire for it as from pestilence. It will
weaken you infinitely. And to a strong man achievement is the only
applause of value--the making of his point.
Many years ago I heard this story of Bismarck. If it is not true, it
ought to be. And if it is not true specifically, it is true
abstractly. He had just returned from one of his notable diplomatic
victories at the beginning of his career; great crowds had assembled
for a speech.
Bismarck heard it all, but smoked and drank his beer and gave no sign.
His secretary rushed in with excitement, and said:
"You must go out and acknowledge the applause of the people, and make
a speech."
"And why," said Bismarck; "why do they want me to speak; why are they
applauding me?"
"Because of your great success in these negotiations," said the
secretary.
"Humph!" said Bismarck, "suppose I had failed?" and turned back to his
smoking and his beer.
Bismarck, you see, was too great for applause.
I have quoted the Bible so frequently that it suggests remarks upon
one of the great influences of life--the influence of books. Like
every other power, this should be exercised with judgment. Let us
indulge no immoderate expectations of the results of mere reading.
Reading is, at best, only second-hand information and inspiration. It
is not the number of books a man has read that makes him available in
the world of business.
What the world wants is power; how to get that is the question.
Books are one source of power; but, necessarily, books are artificial.
That is why we cannot dispense with teachers in our schools,
professors in our colleges, preachers in our pulpits, orators on the
political platform. There is no real way of teaching but by word of
mouth. There is no real instruction but experience.
You see that the German universities have come back to the lecture
method exclusively--or did they ever depart from it? And they know
what they are about, those profound old German scholars. They have
created scientific scholarship. They have made what we once thought
history absurd, and have rewritten the story of the world.
But all this is _obiter dicta_. The point is that they know the value
of books as a source of power and learning, and they know their
limitations, too. So does the public. Public speaking will never
decline. It is Nature's method of instruction. You will listen with
profit to a speech which you cannot drive your mind to read.
It would seem, therefore, that the largest wisdom dictates
conservatism in mere reading. Read, of course, and deeply, widely,
thoroughly. But let Discrimination select your books. Choose these
intellectual companions as carefully as you pick your personal
comrades. Read only "tonic books," as Goethe calls them. Yes, read,
and abundantly--but don't stop there. Don't imagine that books, of
themselves, will make you wise. Reading, alone, will not render you
effective.
Mingle with the people--I mean the common people. Talk with them. Do
not talk _to_ them but talk _with_ them, and get them to talk with
you. Who that has had the experience would exchange the wit and wisdom
of the "hands" at the "threshings," during the half hour of rest after
eating, for the studied smartness of the salon or even the
conversation of the learned? But think not to get this by going out to
them and saying, "Talk up now." The farm-hand, the railroad laborer,
the working man of every kind, does not wear his heart on his sleeve.
Mark the idioms in Shakespeare. He spoke the words and uttered the
thoughts of hostlers as well as of kings. Observe the common language
in the Bible. It is curious to note the number of the pithy
expressions daily appearing among us which are repetitions of what the
people were saying in the time of Isaiah.
All who love Robert Burns have their affection for him rooted in the
human quality of him; and Burns's oneness with the rest of us is
revealed by the earthiness of his words. They smell of home. They have
the fragrance of trees and soil. We know that they were not coined by
Burns the genius, but repeated from the mouths of plain men and women
by Burns the reporter. It is so with all literature that lives.
Mingle with the people, therefore; be one of them. Who are you that
you should not be one of them? Who is any one that he should not be
one of the people? Their common thought is necessarily higher and
better than the thought of any man. This is mathematical.
And the people, too, are young, eternally young. They are the source
of all power, not politically speaking now, but ethnically, even
commercially, speaking. The successful manager of any business will
tell you that he takes as careful an inventory of public opinion as he
does of the material items of his merchandise. A capable merchant told
me that he makes it a point to mingle with the crowds.
"Not," said he, "to hear what they have to say, for you catch only a
scrap or a sentence here and there; but to go up against them. Somehow
or other you get their drift that way. Anyhow I am conscious that this
helps me to understand what the people need and want. There is such a
thing as commercial instinct; and contact with the people keeps this
fresh and true."
We have come to that state of enlightenment where the people want to
know not only that they are getting the best goods or best service,
but that the business which supplies either is run all right. Who can
doubt that in the universal mind there is a question as to the moral
element in American business?
This is nothing but the composite conscience of the American people
demanding that American business shall not only be conducted ably, but
also that it shall be conducted honestly. It is a force which you must
take into account. It will be a glorious asset for you if you will pay
enough attention to it to understand it.
But you must mingle with the people yourself in order to comprehend
this source of power. Do not sit alone in your room and read about the
people; that is no way to learn about them.
Remember that no workable constitution was ever written exclusively by
scholars. Recall the ordinance for the government of Carolina devised
by the philosopher Locke. It failed; yet it reads well. Time and again
theorists with highest purpose and broadest book wisdom have
formulated laws for the good of mankind which would not work.
Most statutes that live and operate have had their origins among men
of the soil as well as men of the study. The point I am making is that
learning and accomplishments will do no good if you do not connect
them with the people.
Is not this why so many reformers retire disappointed--men and women
of finest excellencies of purpose and practical and fruitful
thought--they have insisted in projecting their reforms from office or
parlor upon the masses without knowing those masses? It is as
impossible for the wisest man to be a statesman by confining himself
to his study and his weighty volumes and his careful abstract
thinking, as it is to be a chemist by reading about chemistry.
The laboratory, the test-tube, the actual contact with the real
materials and forces in nature, are essential to the scientist of
matter. This is much more true of the art of government. No man ever
lived so wise that association with the millions would not enrich his
wisdom mightily. And thus, page after page, we might go on pointing
out the value of contact with the people, whom, after all, it ought to
be your highest purpose to serve in some way.
For in all your doings never forget that, build you ever so cunningly,
young man, you have builded in vain if the work of your hands has not
helped humanity. Every occupation, trade, business, employment has its
reason in service of the people.
Grocery man, harness-maker, carpenter; doctor, lawyer, or railway man;
farmer, miner, or journalist; actor on the stage, teacher in the
school-room, preacher in the pulpit--all your effort is for the
service of the people, the ministering to their needs, the
enlightenment of their minds, the uplifting of their souls. And I
insist, therefore, that you shall know with the knowledge of kinship
this humanity with whom you are to work and _for_ whom you are to
work.
Spend some time with Nature, too. The people and Nature--they alone
contain the elemental forces. They alone are unartificial,
unexhausted. You will be surprised at the strength you will get from a
day in the woods. I do not mean physical strength alone, but mental
vigor and spiritual insight.
The old fable of Antæus is so true that it is almost literally true.
Every time he touched the earth when thrown, that common mother of us
all gave him new strength; and, rising, he came to the combat as fresh
as when he began.
Learn to know the trees; make friends with them. I know that this
counsel will appear far-fetched if you have never cultivated the
companionship of the woods. But try it, and keep on trying it, and you
will find that there is such a thing as making friends with the trees.
They will come to have a sort of personality for you.
No doubt this is all in your mind. No matter, it is good for you. It
makes you more natural; that means that you are more simple, kindly,
and truthful. What is more soothing and restorative than to stand
quite still in field or forest and listen to the thousand mingled
sounds that make up that wondrous melody which Nature is always
playing on the numberless strings of her golden harp. Learn the peace
which that music brings to you.
In short, cultivate Nature, get close to Nature. Try to get Nature to
give you what she has for you as earnestly as you try to get what you
want in business; and your days and nights will be glorified with a
beauty and strength the existence of which you would have denied
before you experienced their blessings.
But, of course, you must work for the benefits you get from Nature,
just as you must work for everything worth having. You cannot quit
your office and say, "Now I shall take a ten-minutes' walk in the park
and commune with Nature." Nature is not to be courted in any such way.
She does not fling her favors at your feet--not until you have won her
utterly. Then all of the wealth and power which Nature has for those
who love her are yours in a profuse and exhaustless opulence.
There is nothing so important for a young man, especially a young
American, as to resolve not to wear himself out nervously and
physically. Take stated vacations, therefore. I should advise every
young man who expects to run a long race to resolve, _after he has
established himself_, that he will take one, and, if possible, two
months' period of absolute vacation every year. Let him make this a
part of his business, just as he makes sleeping a part of his business
every day.
What matter if another lawyer gets the case that would have come to
you, or another real-estate dealer secures the corner lot on which you
have had your eye, or another operator makes the profitable deal which
would have given you fame and fortune?
_You_ have obtained and preserved that which they most probably have
lost. _You_ have made an investment in Youth. You have purchased
power. You have taken stock in length of years. You have equipped
yourself with new nerves, a rested heart, a refreshed brain, a hearty
stomach, and a sane mind in a sound body.
And you have done more than all this: You have restored your
perspective. You have corrected your vision, so that you see things in
their just proportion. One reason why men waste energy so prodigally
is that their intense pursuit of their business makes them lose all
sense of the proportion of things. That which is of little consequence
appears, to the distorted vision, of immense importance; and as much
energy is wasted in trifles as should be expended on great affairs.
This process keeps up until really first-class men are reduced to very
small men.
Let a man go each year to the everlasting mountains; to the solitude
of the ancient forests; to the eternal ocean with its manifestation of
power and repose. Let him sit by its solemn shore listening to it sing
that song which for a million years before our civilization was
thought of it had been singing, and which for a million years after
our civilization has become merely a line in history it will continue
to sing, and he will realize how unimportant are the things which only
a few weeks before seemed to him of such vast moment. Perhaps the
words of the old Khayyam will come to him:
"And fear not lest Existence, closing your
Account and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour."
Or,
"When You and I behind the Veil are passed,
Oh! but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the sea's self should heed a pebble cast."
Then you will come back to your work and see things in their proper
dimensions. You will expend your energy on things that require it, and
you will smile at the things that do not deserve your attention, and
pass them by. You will substitute duty for ambition, and you will go
your way with sanity for perhaps ten months. Then you will need again
the elemental lesson of the forest, the mountain, or the sea.
I do not mean that you shall take a vacation until you have deserved
it. What right have you to rest before you have labored--before you
have earned a thread that clothes you or a mouthful that nourishes
you. There are men whose whole lives are a vacation. These words are
not for them. From my viewpoint, such men might as well be dead. The
men upon whom I am urging the wisdom of taking periods for
recuperation are those who have been pulling with the team and keeping
their traces taut. And I assume that you who read are one of these
worth-while men. Very well! I want you to last a long time.
On this subject, many is the talk I have had with friends who are
business men. "Well," my business friend has said, "I just cannot get
away this summer. Next summer I will go away, but I cannot go away
this summer. You see, I have a 'deal' which I am about to close; it
demands my personal attention. It would be treason to my business to
leave this summer."
Yes, quite true, no doubt. But so has Nature a "deal" on with this
same business man; and it will be treason to Nature if he does not go
away and let Nature's ministers attend him. If he has got to be false
to his business or to Nature, he had better be false to the former. It
is a fine thing to be true to one's business. But be sure that you are
_really_ true to your business; and that means that, first of all, you
shall look to your health. Your _business_ demands that. Good health
is good "business."
I knew a business man who was so true to his business that he was
unfaithful to himself. The machinery of his superb mind had been
running at highest speed for ten months. It needed a rest--oil on the
heated bearings, a reburnishing of the soiled steel, a rest from the
high tension. He would have given just such care to an automobile, or
an engine, or any inanimate mechanism. He would have given much
greater care to his horse.
But did he give it to himself? No. He had a "deal" on of large
proportions; that "deal" must be consummated before attending to the
mind and body that put it through. So the lever was pulled back
another notch; the machine was driven to its highest burst of speed
and power, and the "deal" was a success.
Mark now what followed. The next day this splendid man did not feel
very well--a headache. And on the following day there was an eternal
end to all his "deals." I do not call that good business. Therefore,
my friend, the sea, the mountains, the forests; therefore Nature, with
her medicine for body and mind and soul.
"Turn yourself out to pasture," said a wise old country doctor to an
exhausted city man. Certainly, that's the thing to do--"turn yourself
out to pasture."
Singular advice for young men, you will say, this counseling of
restraint, calmness, and the husbanding of his powers. Yes; but I
would prevent you from exhausting yourself. No nervous prostration at
forty; no arrested development at fifty; no mental vacuity at
fifty-five. Too many Americans cease to count after middle life. They
have wasted their ammunition and are sent to the rear--there is no
longer use for them on the firing-line. Youth is so strong that it
wastes power like a millionaire of vitality. But you will need all
this dissipated energy later on--every ounce of it.
And so, while I would have you labor to the last limit of your
strength while you are about your work, I would also have you regain
the strength thus consumed. I would have you let Nature fill up your
empty batteries. Hence the suggestion of vacations, a level mind, and
books of serenity.
While you _do_ work, pour your full strength into every blow; but
having done your best do not spoil it by lying awake over it. No
half-heartedness in your task, however. If you try to save yourself
while you are about your business--if you "try to do things easy"--you
will neither work well nor rest well nor do anything else well.
I know there are those who cannot, for long, quit work--those who "have
their noses to the grindstone," to borrow one of those picture-sentences
of the people. In the far off end to which evolution tends, civilization
will doubtless reach the point where every human being may have his
solid month of play, repose, and recuperation--though this cannot be, of
course, while nation competes with nation. A universal industrial
agreement alone can compass that happy end. And do we not here
perceive, afar off, one of the vast and glorious tasks for the statesmen
of the future?
Meanwhile, if every man may not have an entire season of holiday, he
may have every day his hour of fun and rest. For every man that, at
least, is possible. And, too, he whom necessity drives hardest
owns--absolutely owns--for himself one day in seven. Not so bad after
all, is it? Not the ideal condition, but still quite tolerable.
Fifty-two days in three hundred and sixty-five, nearly two months in
the year, already given every man by the usage of our Christian
civilization for the purpose of "rest from all his work"; and with
divine example encouraging and instructing him in its use.
A man can get along on these two months distributed at the intervals
of one in every seven days. He can get along, that is, if he really
rests--really gives himself up to the sane joy of normal repose. The
humblest toiler, even in our greatest cities, can find physical
renewal and soul's upliftment in forest, at river's side, or on the
shore of lake or ocean--thanks to rapid transit and cheap fares.
So let us not get to pitying ourselves--we are pretty well
circumstanced for the alternation of work and play, even in our state
of partial development. It is for us to use the opportunity already
afforded us; and, speaking by and large, ought we not to deserve more
by using, without waste or worse than waste, what we already have? Is
there not sound philosophy in the legend which Mr. Lewis tells us was
inscribed on the headboard of Jack King, deceased: "Life ain't in
holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well"?
My suggestion of one or two months' outing in addition to our
fifty-two Sundays and several holidays is to those who have poured out
in brain-work and nervous strain more than the system can possibly
replenish except by a period devoted exclusively to the manufacture of
force to replace that which has been unnaturally expended. There are
men who toil night and day. Mostly they are young men establishing
their business or getting their "start."
I know many young men who work twelve and even fourteen hours every
day, and keep it up the year round. One of the greatest merchants of
my acquaintance worked from five o'clock in the morning until twelve
and one o'clock at night, and then slept in his little store. He was
just building up his business. We all know men who literally will not
stop work while awake, and when their task is near them. Such men must
go away from their business and let Nature work on them awhile.
Have your doctor look you over every six months, no matter how well
you feel--or oftener, if he thinks best. Have your regular physician.
Pick out a good one, and, especially, a man congenial to yourself.
Make him your friend as well as medical adviser. The true doctor is a
marvelous person.
How astonishing the accurate knowledge of the accomplished physician!
How miracle-like the dainty and beneficent skill of the modern
surgeon. The peculiar ability of a great diagnostician amounts to
divination. And he, whom Nature has fitted for this noble profession,
is endowed with a sympathy for you and an intuitive understanding of
you very much akin to the peculiar sixth sense of woman--that strange
power by which she "knows and understands."
Consult your doctor, therefore. Be careful of medicines he does not
prescribe. The most innocent drug is a veiled force, a compound of
hidden powers--the system a delicate intricacy whose condition may be
different every day. The neurosis of our American life is seducing
too many of our best and busiest men to the use of chemicals,
mixtures, nostrums, pick-me-ups, etc., which make nerves and brain
utter brave falsehoods of a strength that is not theirs.
Your doctor won't let you do this--he will stay your unconsciously
suicidal hand. If your machinery is out of order, he will tell you so,
and do what is necessary to repair it. He will comfort and reassure
you, too, and administer to the mind a medicine as potent as powder or
liquid. But you will get no false sympathy from him. If you have
nothing the matter with you, yet think you have, your doctor will take
you by the collar of your coat, stand you on your feet, and bid you be
a man. So don't dose yourself. Be a faithful guardian of the treasures
Nature gave you.
Returning now to reading: You are not to neglect books. They must be
read. If you are a professional man they must be more than read; they
must be studied, absorbed, made a part of your intellectual being. I
am not despising the accumulated learning of the past. Matthew Arnold,
in his "Literature and Dogma," quite makes this point. What I am
speaking of is miscellaneous reading.
After a while one wearies of the endless repetition, the "damnable
iteration" contained in the great mass of books. You will finally come
to care greatly for the Bible, Shakespeare, and Burns. Compared with
these most others are "twice-told tales" indeed. Of course one must
read the great scientific productions. They are an addition to
positive knowledge, and are a thing quite apart from ordinary
literature.
My recommendation of the Bible is not alone because of its spiritual
or religious influences; I am advising it from the material and even
the business view-point. By far the keenest wisdom in literature is in
the Bible, and is put in terms so apt and condensed, too, that their
very brevity proves its inspiration--_is_ an inspiration to you.
Carry the Bible with you, if for nothing else than as a matter of
literary relaxation. The tellers of the Bible stories tell the stories
and stop. "He builded him a city"--"he smote the Philistines"--"he
took her to his mother's tent." You are not wearied to death by the
details. Go into any audience addressed by a public speaker, and you
will perceive that his hearers' interest depends on whether he is
getting to the point. "Well, why doesn't he get to the point," is the
common expression in public assemblages. The Bible "gets to the
point."
And it has something for everybody. If you are a politician, or even a
statesman, no matter how astute you are, you can read with profit
several times a year the career of David, one of the cleverest
politicians and greatest statesmen who ever lived. If you are a
business man, the proverbs of Solomon will tone you up like
mountain-air.
A young woman should read Ruth. A man of practical life, a great man,
but purely a man of the world, once said to me: "If I could enact one
statute for all the young women of America, it would be that each of
them should read the book of Ruth once a month." But the limits and
purpose of this paper do not permit a dissertation on the Bible.
Shakespeare, of course, you cannot get along without. I shall say no
more about him here; for if anything at all is said about Shakespeare
(or the Bible), it ought to take up an entire paper at least. "Don't
read anybody's commentaries on Shakespeare--don't read mine; read
_Shakespeare_," was the final advice of Richard Grant White, one of
the ripest of the world's commentators on this universal poet.
From the Bible and Shakespeare roads lead down among books but little
lower in elevation and outlook. Of these the essays of Emerson furnish
a noble example; and the poems of the Concord philosopher are the
wisdom of the ancients stated in terms of Americanism. I would have
every young man spend half an hour over each page of our American
Thinker's essays on Character, Manners, Power, and Self-reliance.
Indeed, wherever you turn, among the pages of our Sage, you find no
desert place, but always a very forest of thought, tumultuous and
vibrant with fancy and suggestion, sweet and wholesome with living
truth and all helpfulness. You can form no better habit than to read a
page or two of Emerson every night.
Take Emerson as an example; read books of that sort--books that are
kin to the Bible and Shakespeare. There is no excuse for your
poisoning your time with idle books or low books or transient
books--moth volumes that flutter an instant in the light and in an
instant die. For the great books are entertaining. If you want
excitement, Plutarch's Lives furnish you thrilling-narrative fiction
cannot surpass--and undying inspiration besides.
The great novels, too, have in them all the blood and battle-ax the
stoutest nerve can crave, all the incidents of love, self-sacrifice,
and gentle invention the tenderest heart can need. Yes, certainly:
Read books that come to stay--the kind of books you would like to be
as a man.
The Rubaiyat would deserve mention but for the danger of
misunderstanding its message. Rightly read Omar Khayyam's lesson is
serenity and poise and that power and happiness which come from these.
The disciple of the tent-maker is not apt to lose his bearings. He no
longer regards to-day as eternity, no longer looks at the world and
the universe from himself as a center. Reject the Persian poet's
apotheosis of wine, absorb his philosophy of calmness, and you will do
your duty regardless of consequences. And that is the chief thing, is
it not?
Do your duty, have the courage of your thought, and walk off with the
old fatalist's verse soothing your soul and brain, and let the
disturbed ones clamor. The clamor will cease in time and turn to
applause. And whether it does or not is a matter of absolutely no
importance if you have done right.
There is nothing which will more conserve the nervous forces of any
serious-minded young man, nothing which will give him so much of that
composure of mind and necessary concentration of powers, as the
resolution to do his best and let it go at that, whether the world
applaud, or laugh, or rage. Be true to your deed, whatever it may have
been, and if the deed was true, the end must necessarily be
satisfactory.
Burns, of course, we must read. We must have him to keep the milk of
human kindness flowing in our veins--to keep sweet and sincere and
loving. The good that you get from Burns cannot be analyzed. You
cannot say, "I have read Burns, and find in him of wisdom so many
grains, of humor so many grains, of beauty of expression so many
grains," and so forth and so on to the end.
It is the general effect of Burns that is so valuable, so
indispensable. Read a little bit of Burns every day, and you will find
it very hard to be unkind; you are conscious that you are more human.
A mellow and delightful sympathy for your fellow man--aye, and for all
living things--warms your heart. And this human quality is more
valuable than all the riches of all the lords of wealth.
At all cost keep your capacity for human sympathy.
The sharp, hard processes of our strictly business civilization tend
to regulate even our sympathies into a system. It is as if we should
say each day, "I have time to-day for five minutes of human sympathy,"
and promptly push the button of our stop-watch when the second-hand
shows that the time has expired. Burns is the best corrective of this
that I know--the best, that is, outside of the Bible itself.
Indeed the more one thinks about it the clearer it is that we might
throw away all other books but the Bible, and still have all our
mental and moral needs ministered to by those who through all time
have thought and felt most highly; for the Bible is the record of the
loftiest of all human expression, not to mention its divine origin.
Put your Bible, your Shakespeare, your Burns in your bundle when you
go for a journey, and you are intellectually and spiritually equipped.
Let a man have the courage of his thought--I repeat it. Courage is
where we fail, not intellect. We hear much about intellect, about
"brains," as the rather coarse expression is. It is not that which is
needed; it is courage.
Enter into conversation the next time you are at the club, or in a
hotel, or restaurant, or wherever you meet men in intellectual
hospitality, on almost any subject you may choose, you will be amazed
at the information, the original thought, the keen analysis, even the
constructive ideas of most of the men there.
One of the most fertile minds I have ever known is nothing but an
unsuccessful lawyer in a country town; yet his intellect is as
tropical, and as accurate, too, as was Napoleon's, or Gould's.
How is it that all these people do not achieve the successes to which
their mere thinking entitles them? I say, to which their mere
_thinking_ entitles them, because--I say it again--if you will put
them beside the great masters of affairs you will find that they have
as many ideas as have these captains of business. My young friend, it
is simply because they have not courage and constancy. Long ago I
catalogued the qualities that make up character, in relative
importance, as follows:
First: Sincerity; fidelity, the ability to be true--true to friends,
true to ideas, true to ideals, true to your task, true to the truth
Who shall deny that the martyrs Nero burned did not experience joys in
the consuming flame more delicate and sweet than ever thrilled epicure
or lover?
Second (and well-nigh first): Courage--the godlike quality that dreads
not; the unanalyzable thing in man that makes him execute his
conception--no matter how insane or absurd it may appear to others--if
it appears rational to him, and then stride ahead to his next great
deed, regardless of the gossips.
Third: Reserve--the power to hold one's forces in check, as a general
disposes his army in an engagement on which the fate of an empire or
of the world may depend. This power of reserve involves silence. Talk
all you please, but keep your large conceptions to yourself till the
hour to strike arrives, and then strike with all your might.