of life, its sunshine and calms, that makes men, but its rugged
experiences, its storms, tempests, and trials. Early poverty,
especially, is emphatically a blessing in disguise. The school of
poverty graduates the ablest pupils. It does more, perhaps, than any
thing else to develop the energetic, self-reliant traits of character,
without which the highest ability makes but sorry work of life's
battles. Thousands of men are bemoaning present indigence and obscurity
who might have won riches and honor had they only been compelled by
early poverty to develop their manhood. As well expect the oak to grow
strong in the atmosphere of the hot-house as that man would reach his
best estate surrounded from earliest years by the comforts and luxury of
wealth.
Many of the evils of poverty are imaginary, arising from mistaken
notions we may entertain as to what constitutes happiness and comfort.
There is not such a difference as some men imagine between the poor and
the rich. In pomp, show, and opinion there is a great deal, but little
as to the real pleasures and joys of life. No man is poor who does not
think himself so. But if in a full fortune, with impatience he desires
more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. We are more and
more impressed that the poor are only they who feel poor. He whom we
esteem wealthy in a true scale would perhaps be found very indigent. Of
what avail the wealth of Crœsus if the heart feels pinched and poor?
It is one of the mysteries of our life that genius, the noblest gift of
God to man, is nourished by poverty. Its noblest works have been
achieved by the sorrowing ones of the world in tears and despair. Not in
the brilliant saloon, furnished with every comfort and elegance; not in
the library, well-fitted, softly carpeted, and looking out upon a
smooth, green lawn or a broad expanse of scenery; not in ease and
competence,—is genius born and nurtured. More frequently in adversity
and destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a straitened household,
in bare and fireless garrets, is genius born and reared. This is its
birthplace, and with such surroundings have men labored, studied, and
trained themselves, until they have at last emanated out of the gloom of
that obscurity, the shining lights of their time, and exercised an
influence upon the thoughts of the world amounting to a species of
intellectual legislation.
If there is any thing in the world that a young man should be more
grateful for than another, it is the poverty which necessitates his
starting in life under very great disadvantages. Poverty is one of the
best tests of human quality in existence. A triumph over it is like
graduating with honor from West Point. It demonstrates stuff and
stamina. It is a certificate of worthy labor faithfully performed. A
young man who can not stand this test is not good for any thing. He can
never rise above a drudge or a pauper. If he can not feel his will
harden as the yoke of poverty presses upon him, and his pluck rise with
every difficulty that poverty throws in his way, he may as well withdraw
from the conflict, since his defeat is already assured. Poverty saves a
thousand times more men than it ruins; for it only ruins those who are
not worth saving, while it saves multitudes of those whom wealth would
have ruined.
It is of decided advantage for a man to be under the necessity of having
to struggle with poverty, and conquer it. "He who has battled," says
Carlyle, "were it only with poverty and toil, will be found stronger and
more expert than he who could stay at home from the battle." It is not
prosperity so much as adversity, not wealth so much as poverty, that
stimulates the perseverance of strong and healthy natures, rouses their
energy, and develops their character. Indeed, misfortune and poverty
have frequently converted the indolent votary of society into a useful
member of the community, and made him a moving power in the great
workshop of the world, teaching men, and developing the powers which
nature has bestowed on them.
Poverty is the great test of civility and the touchstone of friendship.
Amid the poverty and privation of the humblest homes are often found
scenes of magnanimity and self-denial as utterly beyond the belief as it
is the practices of the great and rich—acts of self-denial, kindness,
and generosity, which borrow no support either from the gaze of the many
or the admiration of the few, yet giving daily exhibitions of its
strength and constancy. It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy
and unenvied, to be healthy without physic, secure without a guard, and
to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are
compelled to procure by the help of art.
Few are the real wants and necessities of mankind. Some men with
thousands a year suffer more for want of means than others with only
hundreds. The reason is found in the artificial wants of the former.
Though his income is great his wants are still greater, and, as a
consequence, his income is not equal to his outgo. There are many
wealthy people who, of course, enjoy their wealth, but there are
thousands who never know a moment's peace because they live above their
means. He who earns but a dollar a day, and does not run in debt, is a
happier man. The great secret of being solvent and well-to-do and
comfortable is to get ahead of your expenses. Eat and drink this month
what you earned last month, not what you are going to earn the next.
Poverty may be a bitter draught, yet it often is a tonic, strengthening
all the powers of manhood. Though the drinker makes a wry face there is,
after all, a wholesome goodness in the cup. But debt, however
courteously it may be offered, is the cup of a siren, and the wine,
spiced and delicious though it be, is poison. The man out of debt,
though with a flaw in his jerkin and a hole in his hat, is still the son
of liberty, free as the singing bird above him; but the debtor, although
clothed in the utmost bravery, what is he but a serf out upon a holiday?
a slave to be reclaimed at every instant by his owner, the creditor?
Poverty is never felt so severely as by those who have seen better days.
The poverty of the poor has
many elements of hardness, but it is endurable, and is developing their
strength and endurance. The poverty of the formerly affluent is, indeed,
hard; it avoids the light of the day and shuns the sympathy of those who
would relieve its wants; it preys upon the heart and corrodes the mind;
the sunshine of life is gone, and it requires a strong mind to
resolutely set about to mend the impaired fortune.
It is the misfortune of many young persons today that they begin life
with too many advantages. Every possible want of their many-sided nature
is supplied before it is consciously felt. Books, teachers, mental and
religious training, lectures, amusements, clothes, and food, all of the
best quality, and without stint in quantity—in short, the pick of the
world's good things—and help of every kind are lavished upon them, till
satiety results, and all ambition is extinguished. What motive has a
young man for whom life is thus "thrice winnowed" to exert himself?
Having supped full of life's sweets he finds them palling on his taste;
having done nothing to earn its good things he can not appreciate their
value. Like a hot-house plant, grown weak and spindling through too much
shelter and watching, he needs nothing so much as to be set in the open
air of the world, and to grow strong with struggling for existence.
It is a fact that the working, successful men of to-day were once
industrious, self-reliant boys. And the same thing will be repeated, for
from the ranks of the hard-working, economical, temperate, and
self-reliant boys of to-day will emanate the progressive, prominent men
of the future. All boys should grow up strong as steel bars, fighting
their way to an education, and then, when they are all ready, plunging
into real life. The majority of the men of mark in this country are not
the sons of those whose fathers could give them all they want, and much
more than they should have, but are those who were brought up in
cottages and cabins, cutting their way through difficulties on every
side to their present commanding position.
Of all poverty that of the mind is the most deplorable. And it is, at
the same time, without excuse. Every one who wills it can lay in a rich
store of mental wealth. The poor man's purse may be empty, but he has as
much gold in the sunset, and as much silver in the moon, as any body.
Wealth of heart is not dependent upon wealth of purse. Home comfort and
happiness does not depend upon elegance of surroundings. But it is found
in the spirit presiding over the household; this is the spirit of loving
kindness, and is as apt to dwell with poverty as with wealth. Thus the
evils of poverty are much exaggerated. And the evils, if evils they be,
are, after all, for our own ultimate good.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: AFFLICTION.]
[Illustration]
There is an elasticity to the human mind capable of bearing much, but
which will not show itself until a certain weight of affliction be put
upon it. "Fear not the darkness," saith the Persian proverb; "it
conceals perhaps the springs of the water of life." Experience is often
bitter, but wholesome. Only by its teachings can we learn to suffer and
be strong. Character in its highest forms is disciplined by trial and
made perfect through suffering. Even from the deepest sorrow the patient
and thoughtful mind will gather a richer mead than pleasure ever
yielded.
[Illustration: BEREAVEMENT.]
Think it not unkind when afflictions befall thee; it is all for the best
that they are sent. God calls those whom he loveth, and why should he
not claim his own jewels to shine in his house, though our own be made
dreary? It may seem hard under such circumstances to say that it is "all
for the best." The human heart is prone to give over to grief and
lamentations; but wait, soon, when like the tired pilgrim thou shalt
fall sick and weary, He will take you home to rejoice in finding friends
from whom you have been separated. Then how true will be the saying that
"it was all for the best!"
Sad accidents and a state of affliction are a school of virtue. It
reduces our spirits to soberness and our counsels to moderation; it
corrects levity. God, who governs the world in mercy and wisdom, never
would have suffered the virtuous ones to endure so many keen afflictions
did he not intend that they should be the seminary of comfort, the
nursery of virtue, the exercise of wisdom, and the trial of patience,
the venturing for a crown and the gate of glory. Much of the most useful
work done by men and women has been done amidst afflictions—sometimes
as a relief from it, sometimes as a sense of duty overpowering personal
sorrow.
Adversity is the touch-stone of character. As some herbs need to be
crushed to give forth their sweetest odors, so some natures need to be
tried by suffering to evoke the excellence that is in them. Grief is a
common bond that unites hearts. It can knit hearts closer than happiness
can, and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. The
visitations of sorrow are universal. There beats not a heart but that it
has felt the force of affliction. There is not an eye but has witnessed
many scenes of sorrow.
They are always impaired by sorrow who are not thereby improved. Some
natures are like grapes—the more they are downtrodden the richer
tribute they supply. It may be affirmed substantially that good men reap
more real benefit from their affliction than bad men do from their
prosperities; for what they lose in wealth, pleasure, or honor they gain
in wisdom and tranquillity of mind. "No creature would be more unhappy,"
said Demetrius, "than a man who had never known affliction." The best
need afflictions for the trial of their virtue. How can we exercise the
grace of contentment if all things succeed well? or that of forgiveness
if we have no enemies?
At a superficial view it appears that adversity happens to all alike,
without regard to rank or condition. The good are apparently as little
favored by fortune in this respect as the bad, the high as the humble.
People are continually rising and falling in all the grades of society.
We often see men of high expectations suddenly cut down, and left to
struggle with despair and ruin. If the happiness of mankind depended
upon the caprice of fortune, their condition would be wretched. But it
is possible to possess a mind which will not lose its tranquillity in
the severest adversity, or at least such a one as, being disturbed and
deprived of its wonted serenity by a sudden calamity, will recover in a
short period, and assume its native buoyancy by the shock which it has
experienced.
How uncertain is human life! There is but a breath of air and a beat of
a heart betwixt this world and the next. In the brief interval of
painful and awful suspense, while we feel that death is present with us,
we are powerless and he all powerful. The last faint pulsation here is
but the prelude of endless joys hereafter. In the midst of the stunning
calamity about to befall us, when death is in the family circle, and
some loved one is about to be taken from us, we feel as if earth had no
compensating good to mitigate the severity of our loss. But we forget
that there is no grief without some beneficent provisions to soften its
intensities. Thus in the presence of death there is also a consolation.
Has the life been stormy? There is now rest; rest for the troubled heart
and the weary head. And it can be known only by experience with what a
longing many hearts thus look forward to the rest of death. Many whom
the world regards as peculiarly blessed by Providence carry with them
such corroding, anxious cares that it is with a feeling of relief that
they contemplate the approach of death. To them death comes in its most
beautiful form. He borrows the garb of gentle sleep, lays down his iron
scepter, and his cold hand falls as warm as the hand of friendship over
the weary heart now ceasing to beat.
Grief or misfortune seems to be indispensable to the development of
intelligence, energy, and virtue. The trials to which humanity are
subject are necessary to draw them from their lethargy, to disclose
their character. Afflictions even have the effect of eliciting talents
which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. Suffering,
indeed, seems to have been as divinely appointed as joy, while it is
much more influential as a discipline of character. Suffering may be the
appointed means by which the highest nature of man is to be disciplined
and developed. Sometimes a heart-break rouses an impassive nature to
life. "What does he know," said a sage, "who has not suffered?"
No soul is so obscure that God does not take thought for its schooling.
The sun is the central light of the solar system; but it has a mission
to the ripening corn and the purpling clusters on the vine, as well as
the ponderous planet. The sunshine that comes filtering through the
morning mists with healing on its wings, and charming all the birds to
singing, should have also a message from God to sad hearts. No soul is
so grief-laden that it may not be lifted to sources of heavenly comfort
by recognizing the Divine love in the perpetual recurrence of earthly
blessings.
Afflictions sent by Providence must be submitted to in a humble spirit.
Otherwise they will not conduce to lasting good. The same furnace that
hardens clay liquefies gold; and the manifestation of Divine power
Pharaoh found his punishment, but David his pardon. As the musician
straineth at his strings, and yet breaketh none of them, but maketh
thereby a sweeter melody and better concord, so God, through affliction,
makes his own better unto the fruition and enjoyment of the life to
come. Afflictions are the medicine of the mind. If they are not
toothsome, let it suffice that they are wholesome. It is not required in
physic that it should please, but that it should heal.
Let one of our loved ones be taken away, and memory recalls a thousand
sayings to regret. Death quickens recollection painfully. The grave can
not hide the white face of the one who sleeps. The coffin and the green
mound are cruel magnets. They draw us further than we would go. They
force us to remember. A man never sees so far into human life as when he
looks over a wife's or a mother's grave. His eyes get wondrous clear
then, and he sees as never before what it is to love and be loved, what
it is to injure the feelings of the beloved.
When death comes into a household, we do not philosophize; we only feel.
The eyes that are full of tears do not see, though, in the course of
time, they come to see more clearly and brightly than those that have
never known sorrow. Perhaps the heaviest affliction of life is that of
the mother who has lost a child. As the waters roll in on shore with
incessant throbs—not alone when storms prevail, but in calms as
well—so it is with a mother's heart, bereaved of her children. Death
always speaks with a voice of instruction and reproof; but when the
first death happens in a home it speaks with a voice which scarcely any
other form of tribulation can equal.
Some of the saddest experiences of life come without premonition.
Yesterday life went well; hope was in the ascendant; it was easy to be
content. To-day all is reversed. The crushed heart can scarcely lift
itself to pray; speech seems paralyzed. It seems cruel that such
calamity should be permitted, when we might have been so happy. Was
there not some way by which it could have been avoided? What are life's
compensations now? What are its ambitions worth in the face of this? In
a great affliction there is no light, either in the mind or in the sun;
for when the inward light is fed with fragrant oil, there can be no
darkness, though clouds should cover the sun. But when, like a sacred
lamp in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there is no light
outwardly, though a thousand suns should preside in the heavens.
Why should body and soul be plunged into sorrow's dungeon when God sees
fit to afflict? Is not the world as bright as of yore? Are there not
still some happy phases to life's weary pilgrimage? We should not
complain of oppression, but, with submission and love, perform the
duties of life; and though sorrow and grief come, we must not let
darkness obscure the talents which God has given to promote our own and
others' happiness, or bury them with the brighter past, but nobly use
them, and count all sorrow as naught in comparison with the future great
reward of right actions. After this life of sorrow and pain, where we
are continually weighed down with care, there is a home of perpetual
rest, the streets of which are thronged with an angelic host, who, "with
songs on their lips and with harps in their hands," tell neither the
sorrow nor grief which perhaps wasted their lives. To bear the ills of
life patiently is one of the noblest virtues, and one that requires as
vigorous an exercise of the will as to resent the encroachments of wrong.
[Illustration: DISAPPOINTMENTS.]
[Illustration]
It is sometimes of God's mercy that men in the eager pursuit of
ambitious plans are baffled; for they are very like a train on down
grade—pulling on the brake is not pleasant, but it keeps the car on the
track. We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes,
finding in our failures our real successes.
Disappointments seem to be the lot of man. From the little child with
golden hair attempting to catch the glancing sunbeams to the old man
who, with whitened locks and bent frame, pursues some scheme of wealth,
disappointment is the almost inevitable consequence. Well it is for us
that the future is veiled from our eyes, else we would weary of the
trials and allurements that make up the sum of our existence. The child
looks forward to manhood; his dreams are speculative; the man looks back
to childhood, and thinks of the happy days of old. From the time he sits
on his mother's knee, with the sunlight streaming in through the open
window, until the last hours of life, when the sunlight glances in
through closed shutters, he is playing with shadows.
And one of the saddest thoughts that come to us in life is the thought
that in this bright, beautiful, joy-giving world of ours there are so
many shadowed lives. If disappointment came only to the lot of the
sinning, even then we might drop a tear over him whose errors wrought
their own recompense. But it is not so. The most pure lives are
sometimes those that are the fullest of disappointments. With one it is
the wreck of a great ambition. He has builded his ship, and launched it
on the sea of life freighted with the richest jewels of his strength and
manhood. Behold, it comes back to him beaten, battered, and torn by the
fury of the gale—the wreck of a first trial.
Many are disappointed because they do not look for happiness and success
either in the right spirit or by the proper methods. There is a legend
told of a knight who,—
"In the brave days of old,"
journeyed far away in search of the Holy Grail. He engaged in great
pursuits. He sought the most arduous undertakings. But failing to seek
in the right spirit his search and his efforts were in vain. At length,
wearied and disappointed, he sought his native land. Here, in the work
of daily, trifling duties, humbly seeking to do what was right, he
unexpectedly found that for which he had so long searched. In life we
all seek happiness and success. There is but one way in which we can
succeed; when we admit that happiness is but a state of the mind, and
that success is the faithful performance of known duties, then shall we
acquire both. Though we may wander the wide world over, and gather
wealth and fame, they will be found impotent to confer happiness, and
life to us will seem full of disappointments; but it is so simply
because we failed to seek for life in that spirit of quiet content which
alone conducts us to its portals.
It never yet happened to any man since the beginning of the world, nor
ever will, to have all things according to his desires. And there never
was any one yet to whom fortune was not at some time opposite and
adverse. Those who risk nothing can, of course, lose nothing; sowing no
hopes they can not suffer from the blight of disappointment. But let him
who is enlisted for the war expect to meet the foe. It is with life's
troubles as with the risks of the battle-field; there is always less of
aggregate danger to the party who stands firm than to the one who gives
way. To give way to disappointments is to invite defeat. To bravely cast
about for means to resist them is to put them to flight, and out of
temporary misfortune to lay the foundation of a more glorious success.
Send disappointments to the winds; take life as it is, and, with a
strong will, make it as near what it should be as possible.
Dark and full of disappointments may be our lot, and we may not be able
to fathom the reason for them; but if we can only bring ourselves to see
that they are for our good, that we need their chastening influence, all
will be well in the end. In the trials of life we must look more for
consolation within than from without. The surest consolations of life
are those which we thus derive from our own thoughts. For this end it
matters not so much whether we spend time in study or toil; the thoughts
of the mind should go out and reach after higher good. In this manner we
may improve ourselves till our thoughts come to be sweet companions that
shall lead us along the paths of virtue. Thus we may grow better within,
whilst the cares of life, the losses and the disappointments lose their
sharp thorns, and the journey of life be made comparatively pleasant and
happy.
It is generally known that he who expects much will be often
disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectations. It is
human to err; so it is the lot of mortals to be disappointed, for never
yet did error secure the end wished. It is, however, the better
philosophy to take things calmly and endeavor to be content with our
lot. We may at least add some rays of sunshine to our path if we
earnestly endeavor to dispel the clouds of discontent that may arise in
our bosom, and by so doing enjoy more fully the bountiful blessing that
God gives to his humblest creatures. The great secret of avoiding
disappointment is not to expect too much. Despair follows immoderate
hopes, as the higher a body rises the heavier it falls to the ground.