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particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors." There is no
adaptation or universal applicability in man. Dryden has said:
"What the child admired,
The youth endeavored, and the man acquired."
Is it not so? Do we not find Michael Angelo neglecting school to copy
drawings? Henry Clay learning pieces to recite in the barn or corn field?
Yet, as Goethe says: "We should guard against a talent which we cannot
hope to practice in perfection. Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the
end, when the merit of the master has become apparent to us, painfully
lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching."
The man who would know one thing well, must have the courage to be
ignorant of a thousand other things, no matter how attractive they may be,
or how desirable it may seem to try them. P. T. Barnum, the veteran
showman, who has lost several fortunes but risen above all, paid every
dollar of his indebtedness, and is to-day a millionaire, says in his lecture on
'The Art of Money Getting':
"Be a whole man in whatever you undertake. This wholeness is just what
distinguishes the shabby, blundering mechanic from the splendid workman.
In earlier times, when our country was new, there might have been a chance
for the man who gave only one corner of his brain to his chosen calling, but
in these days of keen competition it demands the most thorough knowledge
of the business, and the most earnest application to bring success. Stick to
your business, and you may be sure that your business will stick to you. It is
this directing your whole mind and energies at one point, that brings
success."
"The first thing a young man should do after selecting his vocation is to
become thoroughly satisfied with his choice. He must be thoroughly
satisfied or he is defeated at the start. In arriving at this decision he must
bear in mind that if he would find a calling in which all will be sunshine,
where the clouds never darken the pathway, he must look in some other
world for that calling. On earth there are no such callings to be found."
"When we see Spurgeon, the great London preacher, swaying the
multitudes, we possibly do not remember the time when, as a poor boy of
but eighteen, he begins preaching on the street corners to a shabby crowd.
We would possibly be willing to partake of the fame that he may now enjoy,
but might object to the pastoral visiting he is obliged to do each week. We
would not object to the fame of Webster, of Calhoun or of Clay, but we
might think it tedious to work night after night to obtain the knowledge
which brought this fame. Ah! how many of us would 'peter' out in a short
time? When one is satisfied with his calling he must work at it, if need be,
day and night, early and late, in season and out of season, never deferring
for a single hour that which can
be done. The old proverb, 'What is
worth doing at all is worth doing well,' was never truer than it is to-day."
A certain class are clamoring for a division of the national wealth. They
are like the worthless vagabond who said to the rich man, "I have
discovered that there is money enough in the world for all of us if it was
equally divided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy together."
"But," replied the rich man, "if everybody was like you it would be spent in
two months, and what would we then do?" "Oh! divide again; keep
dividing, of course!" And yet a very considerable number of people think
this is the solution of the labor problem. The point is, we must distinguish
the dividing line between the rights of property and the wrongs of
oppression. Either extreme is fatal. Education is surely the solution of the
labor question.
Listen: Our country is the freest, the grandest, the best governed of any
nation on earth; yet we spend yearly nine hundred million dollars for drink,
and only eighty-five million for education. Thus, while one dollar tends to
education and wealth, over ten dollars is used to bring ignorance,
degradation, and want. Over ten times the influence for evil that there is for
good. Where is the remedy? Let Congress, which is supposed to control our
interests, legislate against ignorance and for education. Suppose that nine
hundred millions were yearly used to educate deserving young men and
women in colleges; inaugurated into a "fresh-air fund" for the children in
our large cities who have never been under its ennobling influence, but
who, on the contrary, have never seen aught but vice and degradation. Nine
hundred millions in one year. Nine thousand millions in ten years. How
many thousands of young men could go through college if aided each, $100
per year. If it were wholly devoted to this purpose nine million young
people could be helped through college in four years—in ten years there
would be eighteen or twenty million college graduates from this source
alone, what would be the result.
Suppose again that the money was devoted to building tenement houses
that would be fit for human beings to live in, look at the wonderful good
that could be done. I am not desirous of giving here a dry temperance
lecture; but the object of this work is to aid others to success, and if vice
and drink were removed there would be but little need for further advice.
Ah! there lies the root of the evil. Strike the root, pull it up and trample it
under foot until it is dead. Never allow it to take root again, and you can
reasonably expect to be at least fairly successful.
This chapter is on "Concentration of Effort". Possibly some will imagine
that we have wandered; not at all, as we see it. The abolition of these vices
tends toward concentration; bad habits, of no matter what nature lead to
failure and tend to draw the attention from one's calling. Then let the young
man who would succeed join his heart, his sympathies, his desires, with the
right; let him live a consistent life; let him lead a strictly temperate life; let
him give his whole influence to temperance, resting assured that if he puts
his purposes into action that he will succeed in more ways than one.
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