the office, this young lawyer, who had bowed him out with a deft
compliment which made the client feel that he was the point about
which the universe was revolving, turned and said, as he went to his
desk, 'There goes the shallowest fool and most stupid rascal in the
state.'
"When asked how he could say such a thing after having treated the
client with such distinction, he turned with a wink of his eye, and
said: 'That is the way to work them. You don't know the world yet.
Wait till you get on in the world; it will teach you how to handle
them.'
"That young man had become thoroughly saturated with the opinion that
Ferrers, in "Ernest Maltravers," is the type to be imitated--a
character of crafty cunning, playing on the weaknesses of men. He had
gotten his opinion from the apparent success of the tricks and sharp
practises of the law. He had not seen the broader horizon above which
only those who are as good as they are capable ever rise.
"It was a fatal method for _him_. He finally failed. It was a fatal
method for at least two young students upon whom his ideals and
influences fell with determining power."
Of course; and it is a fatal view of life for any young man to get.
The young man who comes out from the ennobling influence of the
American mother will not take this view if the world does not compel
him to do so. The world, then, should not applaud any feat of
smartness or cunning on the part of the young man. It should not wink
its eye and pat him on the shoulder and say, "That was very 'smooth,'
very 'smooth' indeed; I congratulate you."
The young man confronts the world with mingled courage and timidity.
It is so vast. It seems so unconquerable. And yet he has been taught
to believe that if he meets it with a high fearlessness he will
conquer. That is what his mother taught him. Out of this thought and
his nervous timidity combined comes what appears to the world to be a
senseless courage, a foolish daring. He is very much afraid; he wants
to make the world think he is not afraid; he has been told to put up a
bold front--and men think him rash and adventurous. He is not--he is
only trying to keep you from seeing how scared he is.
In the campaign of 1898 a young man with all of these qualities, and
gifted with considerable oratorical power, was seeking an opportunity
to get a little hearing. He had just graduated from college, had
opened a law office, had never had the shadow or substance of a
client, but he had that fresh confidence and the ability back of it
which the world neglects until, finally, it is forced to accept it.
I secured for him an invitation to make some speeches in a neighboring
State. He was delighted. He went, but returned wounded in spirit by
the heedlessness of the State Committee and the indifference of the
men of prominence who had refused to notice him. And yet the fine
courage that dared take part in the great struggle just beginning was
a quality which was more valuable to his party and to the world and to
humanity, than all of the schemes of the men who rejected him.
It is this courage constantly injected into the veins of the world
which, little by little, is lifting mankind up to a more and still
more endurable estate. I shall never be able to perform a higher
service than to light again, as I did, the fires of his confidence and
young daring.
Let the world not suppose that by encouraging these great qualities of
youth which it now heedlessly represses, and only too often kills, it
will spoil the young man. The intrinsic difficulties of life are great
enough to keep him within bounds, no matter how much encouragement he
receives. The very nature of things, and the constitution of society
as he comes to examine it in its concrete manifestations, will chasten
his illusions.
The rarity of the air as he mounts upward in life will weight his
wings at last. The limitations of Nature and of affairs will in
themselves be all the chastisement he needs to correct abnormal hope,
courage, faith, or honor--yes, even more than enough. Let the world,
then--the men and women who have won their places in life--let them
nourish the enthusiasms and the elemental "illusions" of youth
wherever they see them.
After all, they are not illusions; they are the only true things in
this universe. The houses that men construct will in time decay. The
remorseless elements will rot the noblest trees down to the earth from
which they grew. The laws that men make will lose their force and be
succeeded by other statutes, equally temporary and futile. Reputations
men build will vanish almost before they are made. Civilizations they
erect will pass from their flowering into the seeds of future
civilizations and be forgotten, too.
But the "illusions" with which the young man confronts the world at
the beginning of his career are as everlasting as God's word: "Till
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one little shall in no wise pass
from the law, till all be fulfilled." The "illusions" of the young
man--of the young American particularly--are the manifestations of
that law, the eternal law of the eternal verities.
"The lyrical dream of the boy is the kingly truth.
The world is a vapor and only the Vision is real--
Yea, nothing can hold against hell but the Winged Ideal."
Let the world look to it, then, that the exalted qualities of youth
which make it indiscreet, audacious, exhilarant--yes, and spotless,
too--be not discouraged, repressed, destroyed; for these qualities are
"the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith
shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast
out, and to be trodden under foot of men."
Speaking to the world of business and of society, I therefore plead
for tolerance of all the fresh, clean, high, and splendid--absurd, if
you will--"illusions" of the young man seeking his seat at the table
where all men eat, and where all, at the end, must drink the same
hemlock cup.
For if these "illusions" are destroyed and replaced with the wisdom of
the serpent, Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" will, sure enough and in sad
reality, be replaced by the "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." Take
the young man, then, by the hand, take him to your heart, and, instead
of destroying, catch, if you can, some of the glory, the faith, the
freshness, the "illusions" of his youth; remembering that Wordsworth
uttered an ultimate note when he said:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home."
And it is these clouds of glory that still surround the young man when
he stands brave and sweet and full of faith, and with his mother's
precious precepts and counsels ringing in his ears, before the great
old world, wrinkled by its infinite centuries.
But you, young man, you for whom I am asking the world's helpful
regard--when you read this do not go to pitying yourself. That is
fatal. Do not get the notion that the world is not giving you your
just due. If you have such an idea, thrust it instantly from you. If
you think the world has downed you, up and at it again. If, a second
time, it knocks you out, still up and at it again. And keep smiling.
Never whine--you deserve defeat if you do that.
Be a "thoroughbred," as the expression of the hour has it. After "you
conquer and prevail," you will find that the world has a kindly and
even a loving heart. All you have to do is to keep in condition and
keep fighting. And that ought to be pleasant to any male
creature--what more can he want? Just go right ahead with faith in
God, believing in all the virtues and keeping up your nerve. But if
you get to pitying yourself, you are lost, and ought to be.
Furthermore, do not succumb to the fiction that there are fewer
"chances" for young men now than there used to be. Never was there a
period when there were so many opportunities as there are this very
day--_high-grade_ opportunities. They are for high-grade men--and that
is what you are, is it not? If not, why not? The calls for men of fine
equipment daily rise from every business, and are never satisfied.
And these calls are for young men, too. Indeed, it is not the young
man, but the old and middle-aged man who has the right to complain.
The exactions of modern business are discriminating in favor of the
man under forty. There are calls for all kinds of men. But the
fiercest demand is for first-class men. You have only to be a
_first-class man_ in order to be sought for by scores of firms and
corporations--and on your own terms. No! it is not the fact that there
are no chances for young men to-day. The chances are all around you.
CHAPTER XII
THE YOUNG MAN'S SECOND WIND; OR FACING THE WORLD AT FIFTY
Life has three tragedies: loss of honor, loss of health, and the black
conclusion of men past middle life who think they have failed--played
the game and lost. The young man starting out in life has my heart;
but the man past fifty who feels that he has failed has my heart
absolutely and with emphasis. Apparently he has so much to contend
against--the onsweep of the world, the pitying attitude of those of
his own age who have succeeded, and, over all, his secret feeling of
despair. But the last is the only fatal element in his problem.
As a matter of fact, the man past middle life who has not achieved
distinct success very possibly has only been "finding himself," to use
Mr. Kipling's expression. Perhaps he has only been growing. Certainly
he has been accumulating experience, knowledge, and the effective
wisdom which only these can give. And if his failure has not been
because he is a fraud, and because people found it out--if he has
been, and is, genuine--it may be that he has been unconsciously
preparing for continuous, enduring, and possibly great success, if he
only will.
I should say that the very first thing for this man to do is to see
that he does not get soured. That attitude of character is an acid
which will destroy all success. Keep yourself sweet, no matter how
snail-like your progress has been, no matter how paltry your apparent
achievements. If you are already soured on men and the world, change
that condition by a persistent habit of optimism. All death shows an
acid reaction. Hopefulness is the alkaline in character.
Make "looking on the bright side" a habit. It can be done. Mingle with
people as much as possible--especially with the young and buoyant and
beautifully hopeful. Be a part of passing events. Read the daily
newspapers. Form the habit of picking out the brighter aspects of
occurrences. There is an astonishing tonic in the daily newspaper.
When you read it, the blood of the world's great vitality is pouring
through you.
I know a man who is now a millionaire, but who at the age of forty
was without a dollar. He is now not over fifty-five. He had spent all
those forty years watching for his opportunity--aye, getting ready for
it. When it came, his beak was sharpened, his talons keen as needles
and strong as steel, and he swooped down upon that opportunity like a
bird of prey.
"No," said he, "I did not get discouraged. I was living, and my wife
and children were living; and Vanderbilt was not doing any more than
that, after all. I felt all the time that I was getting ready. I
worked a good deal harder than I have since I achieved my fortune.
Somehow, up to the time it came I had not felt equal to my chance; for
I knew that my opportunity would be a large one when it came, and I
knew that it would come. It did come."
Business men said for the first two or three years, "What a change of
luck Mr. ---- has had! But he is not equal to it. He has never
accomplished anything heretofore."
Yes, but he had been getting ready. He had been saving vitality,
building up character, indexing and pigeonholing experiences,
accumulating and systematizing a long-continued series of observations
and all the potentialities of intellect and personality out of which,
when applied to proper conditions, success alone is forged.
And so he gathered to himself great riches, and the poor man of a few
years ago is now--of course, of course, and alas! if you like--a
member of one of the most powerful trusts in the country.
Get yourself into the current of Circumstance--"in the swim," as the
colloquialism has it. A man of large experience and important
achievement said to me not long ago: "I am afraid I am getting to be a
back number." That was a distinct note of degeneration. If he thought
so that thought was the best evidence of the fact.
Do not get it into your head that you are out of step with the times.
That in itself will paralyze both intellect and will. It is an
admission of permanent failure. No matter whether you think the
changed conditions and methods of business, society, and affairs,
which almost each day brings, are inferior or superior to the old
conditions and methods or not, you must keep abreast of them; take in
the spirit of them.
An attitude of protest against the progressive order of things may be
heroic, but it is not practical or effective. These conditions and
methods which make you feel like a "back number" may not be the best;
if they are not, try to make them the best, if you will, but do not
attempt to perfect them backward by returning to yesterday. The world
is very impatient of _apparent_ retrogression; it hurts its egotism.
"What! Go back to old conditions?" says the World. "Never! never!
Progress, alone, for me!"
But sometimes it means motion, not progress; for true progress might
possibly be a return to old and superior methods. No matter, I am
speaking of _your_ practical, personal, and material success now. I am
not speaking to you as a reformer or as a teacher of the elemental
truths. _You_ are a searcher, past fifty years of age, after the
flesh-pots. Very well, then. Do not run amuck of the world. Join in
its progress, even if that progress seems to you to be unreal.
At the risk of iteration, I again urge constant mingling with people.
It is from them that you must draw your success, after all. A man over
fifty who feels that his life is a failure is apt to emphasize the
outward manners and inward habits of thought of his earlier days, as
he would, if he could, stick to the old styles and fashions of apparel
of the days of his youth. To do the latter would be to call attention
at once to his antiquity; but to retain his old mental attitude is
antiquity indeed.
People are quick to see, feel, and know that you are in deed and in
truth not of the present day. When they think that, you are
discredited and at an unnecessary disadvantage. Therefore mingle with
men. Don't withdraw into yourself. Don't be a turtle. Be an active and
present part of society, not only that your whole mind and whole
conscious being may be kept fresh and growing, but that people may not
perceive the contrary.
Growing! Growth! It is only a question of that, after all. No man can
ultimately fail who has kept himself alive, and therefore kept himself
growing. If you find that you have ceased to grow, start up the
process again. Make yourself take an interest in large and
constructive things of the present moment in your city, county, state,
and country, and in the world.
The mind and character of man are the two great exceptions to the
entire constitution of the universe. Decay is the law that controls
everything else except these; but thought and character need never
decay. They may be kept growing as long as life endures. Who shall
deny that the philosophers of India are right, and that mind and
character may continue to grow throughout illimitable series of
existences?
Only two classes of men are hopeless: those who think to prevail by
fraud and the contrivances of indirection, and those whose minds and
characters have begun to disintegrate, or degenerate, if you like the
latter word better. There is every reason why character should each
day get a truer bearing, why the mind each day should become more
luminous, elevated, and accurate.
The Stoics said that even temperament might be given steadiness and
poise by an exercise of philosophy and will, and the lives of many of
them seemed to prove it. And if all this is true, your fifty years
have given you an arsenal of power that is a considerable advantage
over younger men, if you will but use it; and it is to point out some
of the methods for its use, and some of the mistakes which I have
observed men in your condition make, that this paper is written.
A great and natural desire of men such as those to whom this paper is
addressed is to move from the places in which they have achieved no
success to new locations, where, as they put it, they "can start life
afresh." Do not do it. Such a course is, ordinarily, as fatal as it is
alluring.
If you have been an upright man--and without this there can be no
permanent success of any kind--your long residence in your community
has put you to no disadvantage, but precisely the contrary. You have,
during these years, secured the confidence of your community. They
know you to be loyal, truthful, sober, steadfast, industrious. This
popular faith in the elemental qualities of your character is the
foundation of success, and usually it requires years to establish
that.
You are at no disadvantage because the people do not have for you that
admiration which the doing of things compels. The fact that your
neighbors do not suspect your potentialities is really an advantage.
If you have that righteous and permissible craft which every man
should have, and if you take advantage of it, you can begin the work
which will bring you success without that envy and competition, that
friction of jealousy, which every man of acknowledged power arouses.
But if you, a man of fifty or over, go into a new environment, you
carry with you that heaviest of all burdens, the necessity of making
explanations.
"Why have you come among us at your age?" the people ask. "What is the
story of your past?" they very properly inquire. "It must be that you
are not a man of integrity which commanded the respect and support of
your old home," they will not unnaturally conclude; "either this, or
else you were a failure there."
These are the two necessary and inevitable deductions, and either horn
of that cruel dilemma of logic is enough to impale you. If you escape
them, you do it because you do not attract notice, and this, in
itself, is failure. And in any event, to gain the substantial
confidence of the people you must spend several years of right living
among them. And you have no time to waste in building up confidence at
your period of life. That is an asset which your whole career of
unsuccessful probity should have accumulated for you; and it is
dissipated if you remove from among those in whose minds that belief
in you exists.
I have seen this serious error made so many times, and nearly always
with such destroying results, that I give it more space than its
relative proportion deserves. I have in mind now two men who did
precisely this thing. Their success in the two country towns where
they had lived had been reasonable, but not considerable. It did not
appear to be success at all to them, though.
They were quite sure that they were bigger than their
opportunities--yes, that was what was the matter--they needed larger
opportunities, "larger fields," more "scope" for their powers. Each
man was about fifty years of age. Each was a man of far more than
ordinary talent. Each removed to a city. And in the city which each
chose, each miserably, utterly, hopelessly failed.
Had they remained where for years they had been planting the seeds of
confidence, respect, and achievement, and had they awaited the slow
processes of the harvest, each man would soon have become the leading
man in his town, county, and district, and would have remained so
until the end of his days; for the harvest was nearly theirs. They did
not understand that while it takes a long time to prepare the soil and
sow the seed, and let it grow to maturity, the ripening of the harvest
comes in a few golden days.
It is true that there are exceptions to the above rule--the rule of
abiding, of standing fast. But the exception is justified only when
you have made so many definite, tangible, and public failures in your
old home that there is absolutely no possibility of further hope. Of
course, if you are a man of lion heart and lion power, this is another
matter. Any place on earth is a fit field for achievement by these
savages of enterprise.
I know one of these who won a fortune, and lost it; won another, and
again lost; and who, finally, with judgments and executions showering
upon him, set his face to a new land and resolved again to conquer
fortune or die. He conquered--of course he conquered--and is now worth
many millions. But if you look into his kindly but deadly blue eye,
and consider the tragic and premature whiteness of his hair, and take
in the whole resistless and compelling personality of the man, you
will see why _he_ succeeded.
We are all familiar with the stirring history of a certain great
American master of millions who is now about sixty-five years of age,
and has amassed his wealth since he was fifty. He had failed, and
failed often, before that time--failed once humiliatingly and
irretrievably, so the ordinary man would say. So the ordinary man did
say, and say hard and often.
The details of his early catastrophes are not worth while here. The
point is that they did not affect him except to make him stronger.
They were the Thor-like blows with which Fate forged the
unconquerableness of this man. For unconquerable he has become.
He has carried through daring plans; he has brought great financial
institutions that opposed him to their knees; from the throne of his
audacity he has dictated terms to boards of trade, and made the
princes of the houses of commercial royalty his servants.
But if you look at his brow of power, at the merciless and yet
delicate and sensitive lips, you will become conscious of why he
succeeded--why he must eventually have succeeded anywhere. But such a
man is no example for you unless you are such a man yourself--and in
that case, you need no examples of any kind. You are your own example.
I read with keen interest, the other day, a feature article in one of
our great daily newspapers, giving incidents in the careers of fifteen
American millionaires who made their fortunes after they were fifty.
But all these had the luck of the never-say-die men. They were all of
the class that Emerson describes as having an excess of arterial
circulation.
Every failure to them was simply an access of information. They
regarded each loss as another piece of instruction in the game.
Fortune always gives the winnings to such as these at last. Fortune
loves a daring player; and while she may rebuff him for a while, it is
only to gild the refined gold of his ultimate achievings.
Another thing. Go you to church. Use clean linen. Wear good and
well-fitting clothing. Take care of your shoes. Look after all the
details of your personal grooming. In short, observe all the methods
which human experience has devised to keep men from degenerating.
There is an unalterable connection between the physical and mental and
moral.
The old saying that "cleanliness is next to godliness" has beneath it
all the philosophy of civilization.
It is an easy process that produces tramps. A few days' growth of
beard, the tolerance of certain personal habits of indolence, and your
tramp begins, vaguely, but none the less surely, to appear. This is
accompanied by a falling off in clear-cut thought, a blurring of the
moralities, and a cessation of definite and effective energy. This is
itself, of course, an interminable subject upon which several papers
might be written; but perhaps I have said enough to make apparent to
you its practical application.