identical terms. The most prosperous are often the most miserable, while
happiness may dwell with him whose every effort has failed, provided
only that he hath done his best. There is, therefore, a true and a false
prosperity, much resembling each other. But the similarity is in
resemblance only, for they differ in constitution. The one is true and
substantial, and is the result of a well-lived life. Its rewards are
inward content and surroundings of comfort; the enjoyment of the real
blessings of life and the unfolding of all the better nature of man. Its
imitation is the reward gained by unjust or dishonest means. It may have
the luster, but it lacketh the ring and weight of the true metal. It may
have the outward adornment, but can not bring its possessor the inward
peace of him who hath the former. Instead of unfolding and expanding the
heart of man, it hardens it and dries up the better nature.
Engage in one kind of business only, and stick to it until you succeed,
or until your experience shows that you should abandon it. A constant
hammering will generally drive it home at last so that it can be
clinched. When a man's undivided attention is centered on one object his
mind will be constantly suggesting improvements of value, which would
escape him were his brain occupied by a dozen different objects at once.
Many a fortune has slipped through a man's fingers because of attention
thus engaged; there is good sense in the old caution against having too
many irons in the fire at once.
Adversity in early life often lays the foundation for future prosperity.
The hand of adversity is cold, but it is the hand of a friend. It
dispels from the youthful mind the pleasing, but vain, illusions of
untaught fancy, and shows that the road to success and prosperity is
always a road requiring energetic action to surmount its difficulties.
There is something sublime in the resolute, fixed purpose of him who
determines to rise superior to ill-fortune. "At thy first entrance upon
thy estate," saith a wise man, "keep a low sail that thou mayest rise
with honor; thou canst not decline without shame; he that begins where
his father ends will generally end where his father began."
As full ears load and lay corn so does too much fortune bend and break
the mind. It deserves to be considered, too, as another advantage, that
affliction moves pity and reconciles our enemies; but prosperity
provokes envy and loses us even our friends. Again, adversity is a
desolate and abandoned state, and, as rats and mice forsake a tottering
house, so do the generality of men forsake him who is cast down by
adversity. As a consequence, he who has never known adversity is but
half acquainted with others or with himself, and can not be expected to
put forth full measure of his powers.
The patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and
legitimate channels of business and enterprise is not only essential in
securing the ultimate prosperity which you seek, but it is requisite to
prepare your mind for enjoying your prosperity. Every-where in human
experience, as frequently as in nature, hardship is essential to
ultimate success. That magnificent oak was detained twenty years in its
upward growth while its roots took a great turn around a bowlder, by
which the tree was anchored to withstand the storms of centuries. They
who are eminently prosperous, or who achieve greatness or even notoriety
in any pursuit, must expect to make enemies. Whoever becomes
distinguished is sure to be a mark for the malicious spite of those who,
not deserving success themselves, are galled by the merited triumph of
the more worthy. Moreover, the opposition which originates in such
despicable motives is sure to be of the most unscrupulous character,
hesitating at no iniquity, descending to the shabbiest littleness.
Opposition, if it is honest and manly, is not in itself undesirable. It
is the whetstone by which a highly tempered nature is polished and
sharpened. Uninterrupted prosperity shows us but one side of the world.
For, as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits,
so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.
[Illustration: TRIFLES.]
[Illustration]
It is to the contempt of details that many men may trace the cause of
their present misfortune. The world is full of those who languish, not
from a lack of talents, but because, in spite of their many brilliant
parts, they lack the power of properly estimating the value of trifles.
Their souls fire with lofty conceptions of some work to be achieved,
their minds warm with enthusiasm as they contemplate the objects already
attained; but when they begin to put the scheme into execution they turn
away in disgust from the dry minutiæ and vulgar drudgery which are
requisite for its accomplishment. Such men bewail their fate. Failing to
do the small tasks of life, they have no calls to higher ones, and so
complain of neglect.
As the universe itself is composed of minute atoms, so it is little
details, mere trifles, which go to make success in any calling.
Attention to details is an element of effectiveness which no reach of
plan, no loftiness of design, no enthusiasm of purpose can dispense
with. It is this which makes the difference between the practical man,
who pushes his thoughts to a useful result, and the mere dreamer. If we
would do much good in the world we must be willing to do good in little
things, in little acts of benevolence one after another; speaking a
timely and good word here, doing an act of kindness there, and setting a
good example always. We must do the first good thing we can, and then
the next. This is the only way to accomplish much in one's lifetime. He
who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do any thing.
The disposition of mankind is to despise the little incidents of
every-day life. This is a lamentable mistake, since nothing in this life
is really small. In the complicated and marvelous machinery of
circumstances it is absolutely impossible to decide what would have
happened as to some event if the smallest deviation had taken place in
the march of those that preceded them. In a factory we may observe the
revolving wheel in one room and in another, many yards distant, the silk
issuing from the loom, rivaling in its tints the colors of the rainbow.
There are many events in our lives, the distance between which was much
greater than that between the wheel and ribbon, yet the connection was
much closer. It is, indeed, strange on what petty trifles the crises of
life are decided. A chance meeting with some friend, an unexpected delay
in some business venture, may be the source from which you date the rise
of good or ill fortune.
There are properly no trifles in the biography of life. The little
things in youth accumulate into character in age and destiny in
eternity. Little sums make up the grand total of life. Each day is
brightened or clouded by trifles. Great things come but seldom, and are
often unrecognized until they are passed. It has been said that if a man
conceives the idea of becoming eminent in learning, and can not toil
through the many little drudgeries necessary to carry him on, his
learning will soon be told. Or if one undertakes to become rich, but
despises the small and gradual advances by which wealth is ordinarily
acquired, his expectations will be the sum of his riches.
The difference between first and second class work in every department
of labor lies chiefly in the degree of care with which the minutiæ are
executed. No matter whether born king or peasant, our inevitable
accompaniment through life is a succession of small duties, which must
be met and overcome, or else they will defeat our plans. When we reflect
that no matter what profession or business we may follow, it demands the
closest attention to a mass of little and apparently insignificant
details, then we comprehend why it is that the patient plodder, the slow
but sure man, so universally surpasses the genius who had such a
brilliant career in college. It is all very well to form vast schemes.
It is, however, the homely details of their execution that furnish the
crucial tests of character. The successful business man at home,
surrounded by articles of luxury, is a spectacle calculated to spur on
the toiler. But the merchant at his office has had to work with trifles,
to toil over columns of figures to post his ledger; and while you were
carelessly spending a dollar, he has ransacked his books to discover
what has become of a stray shilling.
In short, success in any pursuit can not be obtained unless the trifling
details of the business are attended to. No one need hope to rise above
his present situation who suffers small things to pass unimproved, or
who, metaphorically speaking, neglects to pick up a cent because it is
not a shilling. All successful men have been remarkable, not only for
general scope and vigor, but for their attention to minute details. Like
the steam hammer, they can forge ponderous bolts or fashion a pin. It is
singular that in view of these facts men will neglect details. Many even
consider them beneath their notice, and when they hear of the success of
a business man who is, perhaps, more "solid" than brilliant, sneeringly
remark that he is "great in little things." But with character, fortune,
and the concerns of life, it is the littles combined that form the great
whole. If we look well to the disposition of these, the sum total will
be cared for. It is the pennies neglected that squander the dollars. It
is the minutes wasted that wound the hours, and mar the day.
Much of the unhappiness of life is caused by trifles. It is not the
great bowlders, but the small pebbles on the road, that bring the
traveling horse on his knees; and it is the petty annoyances of life, to
be met and conquered afresh each day, that try most severely the metal
of which we are made. Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so
many places and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they
lack in weight they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to
stand the fire of one cannon ball than a volley composed of such a
shower of bullets. The great sorrows of life are mercifully few, but the
innumerable petty ones of every day occurrence cause many to grow weary
of the burden of life.
Those acts which go to form a person's influence are little things, but
they are potential for good or evil in the lives of others. From the
little rivulets we trace the onward flowing of majestic rivers,
constantly widening until lost in the ocean; and so the little things of
an individual life, in their ever-widening influence for good or evil,
diffusing misery or happiness around them, are borne onward to swell the
joys or sorrows of the boundless ocean of eternity, and should be noted
and guarded the more carefully from their infinitely higher importance.
Words may seem to us but little things, but they possess a power beyond
calculation. They swiftly fly from us to others, and though we scarcely
give them a passing thought, their spirit lives. Though they are as
fleeting as the breath that gave them, their influence is as enduring as
the heart they reach. Ah, well may we guard our lips so that none grieve
in silence over words we have carelessly dropped. Well may we strive to
scatter loving, cheering, encouraging words, to soothe the weary, and
awaken the nobler, finer feelings of those with whom we daily come in
contact.
The happiness, also, of life is largely composed of trifles. The
occasions of great joys, like those of great sorrows, are few and far
between, but every day brings us much of good if we will but gather it.
"One principal reason," says Jeremy Bentham, "why our existence has so
much less of happiness crowded into it than is accessible to us, is that
we neglect to gather up those minute particles of pleasure which every
moment offers for our acceptance. In striving after a sum total, we
forget the ciphers of which it is composed; struggling against
inevitable results which he can not control, too often man is heedless
of those accessible pleasures whose amount is by no means inconsiderable
when collected together; stretching out his hands to catch the stars,
man forgets the flowers at his feet, so beautiful, so fragrant, so
multitudinous, so various."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: LEISURE.]
"Time _was_ is past—thou canst not it recall;
Time _is_ thou hast—employ the portion small;
Time _future_ is not, and may never be;
Time _present_ is the only time for thee."
[Illustration]
Spare moments are the gold-dust of time—the portion of life most
fruitful in good or evil. When gathered up and pressed into use
important results flow from thence; when neglected they are gaps through
which temptation finds a ready entrance. They are a treasure when
rightly used, but a terrible curse when abused. There are three
obligations resting upon us in regard to the use and application of
time. There is the duty to ourselves, in the care of our happiness, our
improvement, and providing for our necessities; the duty to those
dependent upon ourselves, and to society; and, lastly, our
accountability to God, who bestows upon us this valuable gift, not
without its being accompanied with the greatest inducements and the
strongest and most cogent motives to improve it to advantage in these
different respects.
A celebrated Italian was wont to call his time his estate; and it is
true of this, as of other estates of which the young come into
possession, that it is rarely prized till it is nearly squandered, and
then, when life is fast waning, they begin to think of spending the
hours wisely, and even of husbanding the moments. But habits of
idleness, listlessness, and procrastination once firmly fixed can not be
suddenly thrown off, and the man who has wasted the precious hours of
life's seed-time finds that he can not reap a harvest in life's Autumn.
The value of time is not realized. It is the most precious thing in all
the world; the only thing of which it is a virtue to be covetous, and
yet the only thing of which all men are prodigal. Time is so precious
that there is never but one moment in the world at once, and that is
always taken away before another is given.
It is astonishing what can be done in any department of life when once
the will is fired with a determination to use the leisure time rightly.
Only take care to gather up your fragments of leisure time, and employ
them judiciously, and you will find time for the accomplishment of
almost any desired purpose. Men who have the highest ambition to
accomplish something of importance in this life frequently complain of a
lack of leisure. But the truth is, there is no condition in which the
chances of accomplishing great results are less than in that of leisure.
Life is composed of an elastic material, and wherever a solid piece of
business is removed the surrounding atmosphere of trifles rushes in as
certainly as the air into a bottle when you pour out its contents. If
you would not have your hours of leisure frittered away on trifles you
must guard it by barriers of resolution and precaution as strong as are
needed for hours of study and business.
The people who, in any community, have done the most for their own and
the general good are not the wealthy, leisurely people who have nothing
to do, but are almost uniformly the overworked class, who seem well-nigh
swamped with cares, and are in a paroxysm of activity from January to
December. Persons of this class have learned how to economize time, and,
however crowded with business, are always found capable of doing a
little more; and you may rely upon them in their busiest season with far
more assurance than upon the idle man. It is much easier for one who is
always exerting himself to exert himself a little more for an extra
purpose than for him who does nothing to get up steam for the same end.
Give a busy man ten minutes in which to write a letter, and he will dash
it off at once; give an idle man a day, and he will put it off till
to-morrow or next week. There is a momentum in an active man which of
itself almost carries him to the mark, just as a very light stroke will
keep a hoop going when a smart one was required to set it in motion.
The men who do the greatest things achieved on this globe do them not so
much by fitful efforts as by steady, unremitting toil—by turning even
the moments to account. They have the genius of hard work—the most
desirable kind of genius. The time men often waste in needless slumber,
in lounging, or in idle visits, would enable them, were it employed, to
execute undertakings which seem to their hurried and worried life to be
impossible. Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time
which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which,
nevertheless, will make, at the end of life, no small deduction from the
sum total.
Time, like life, can never be recalled. It is the material out of which
all great workers have secured a rich inheritance of thoughts and deeds
for their successors. It has been written, "The hours perish, and are
laid to our charge." How many of these there are upon the records of the
past! How many hours wasted, worse than wasted in frivolous
conversation, useless employment—hours of which we can give no account,
and in which we benefited neither ourselves nor others! There are few
such hours in the busiest lives, but they make up the whole sum in the
lives of many. Many live without accomplishing any good; squander their
time away in petty, trifling things, as if the only object in life were
to kill time, as if the earth were not a place for probation, but our
abiding residence. We do not value time as we should, but let many
golden hours pass by unimproved. We loiter during the day-time of life,
and ere we know it the night draws near "when no man can work." Oh,
hours misspent and wasted! How we wish we could live them over again!
It requires no small degree of effort to resolutely employ one's time so
as to allow none of it to go to waste. There are a thousand causes
tending to the loss of time, and any one who imagines that they would do
great things if they only had leisure are mistaken. They can find time
if they only set about doing it. Complain not, then, of your want of
leisure. Rather thank God that you are not cursed with leisure, for a
curse it is in nine cases out of ten. What, if to achieve some good work
which you have deeply at heart, you can never command an entire month, a
week, or even a day? Shall you, therefore, bid it an eternal adieu, and
fold your arms in despair? The thought should only the more keenly spur
you on to do what you can in this swiftly passing life of yours.
Endeavor to compass its solution by gathering up the broken fragments of
your time, rendered more precious by their brevity.
Where they work much in gold the very dust of the room is carefully
gathered up for the few grains of gold that may thus be saved. Learn
from this the nobler economy of time. Glean up its golden dust,
economize with tenfold care those raspings and parings of existence,
those leavings of days and bits of hours, so valueless singly, so
inestimable in the aggregate, and you will be rich in leisure. Rely upon
it, if you are a miser of moments, if you hoard up and turn to account
odd minutes and half-hours and unexpected holidays, the five-minute gaps
while the table is spreading, your careful gleanings at the end of life
will have formed a colossal and solid block of time, and you will die
wealthier in good deeds harvested than thousands whose time is all their
own.
It has been written that "he who toys with time trifles with a frozen
serpent, which afterwards turns upon the hand which indulged the sport,
and inflicts a deadly wound." There are many persons who sadly realize
this in their own lives. When age with its frosts of years has come
their reflections can not be otherwise than of the saddest kind as they
ponder over wasted time, the hours they spent in a worse than foolish
manner. Death often touches with a terrible emphasis the value of time.
But, alas! the lesson comes too late. It is for the living wisely to
consider the end of their existence, to reflect on the possibilities of
life, to resolve to waste no time in idleness, but to be up and doing in
a manner befitting one who lives here a life preparatory simply to
another and better existence.
[Illustration: HAPPINESS.]
[Illustration]
Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and
sun of the whole animated universe, and where she is not it were better
that nothing should be. Without her wisdom is but a shadow, and virtue a
name.
It is in the pursuit of happiness that the energies of man are put
forth. It matters not that we are generally disappointed in the ultimate
results of our endeavors. Earthly happiness is a phantom of which we
hear much, but see little, whose promises are constantly given and
constantly broken, but as constantly believed. She cheats us with the
sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the
fruit. Anticipation is her herald, but disappointment is her companion.
In the ideal scene every thing is painted in bright colors. There are no
drawbacks, no disappointments, in that picture, but in the reality they
are sure to appear. The anticipation of a pleasure may have lasted for
weeks in the mind, and have been dwelt on in all the endless variety of
possibilities, while the reality lasts but a short time. Hence the
feeling of disappointment ensues. Hope immediately rallies the powers.
We turn to new plans, and begin again the round of anticipation, ending
in disappointments.
Happiness is much like to-morrow—only one day from us, yet never
arriving. It is, in a word, hope or anticipation. In this life we pursue
it; in the future life we hope to overtake it. It is the experience of
all that, having realized our hopes, of whatever nature they may be, we
are not satisfied. And it is well for man that he is so constituted,
since satisfaction would be a bar to future efforts. We at once form new
plans, grander and more comprehensive in their scope; we renew the
struggle, press forward to their accomplishment, finding pleasure in the
pursuit, if not in the possession. Perhaps nothing more plainly shows
the diversity of the human mind than the different methods employed in
this pursuit. Some seek it in the acquisition of wealth; others, of
power; others, of fame. Some, by plunging into society, endeavor, by a
giddy round of pleasure, to catch the same evanescent shadow that others
seek by a life of solitude. No class or race of people exist but that
have some characteristic mode in which they trust to secure happiness.
The savage seeks it in hunting and fishing, in barbarous warfare, or in
the rude war dance. National peculiarities are strongly shown in their
ideas of what constitutes happiness; the light-hearted nations of the
sunny south differing in this respect from their more serious northern
neighbors. To be happy is the summing up of all the ends and aims on
earth. It is a noble desire, implanted in the human breast by the
Creator for purposes known only to his wisdom.
We talk of wealth, fame, and power as undeniable sources of enjoyment;
and limited fortune, obscurity, and insignificance as incompatible with
felicity. This is an instance of the remarkable distinction between
theoretic conclusions and experience. However brilliant in speculation
wealth, fame, and power are found in possession impotent to confer
happiness. However decried in prospect limited fortune, obscurity, and
insignificance are, by experience, found most friendly to real and
lasting pleasure. It is not this or that or the other peculiar mode of
life, nor in any particulars of outward circumstances, nor in any
definite kind of labor or duty, that we may positively expect happiness.
If we do we shall be disappointed, for it is not in our power to have
things just our way, or to control our outward life just as we would.